Colonial Pasts, Decolonial Futures: Allen’s The End of Progress (original) (raw)
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Critical theory in a decolonial age
Educational Philosophy and Theory
This article considers the critical theory of the Frankfurt School in the context of decolonisation and asks whether it can have continuing relevance given its foundations in white, western traditions which bear the hallmarks of colonialism. Despite critical theory, particularly in its early radical figurations, situating itself as an alternative to traditional western philosophy it undoubtedly shares some of the myopic and Eurocentric traits of this tradition. Mindful of not wishing to perpetuate colonial impulses to appropriate Indigenous philosophies, this article harnesses the twin ideas of a decolonial conversation and interacting in a third space, both of which foreground historical power imbalances and injustices. Only on that basis can a genuine engagement occur between western and Indigenous thought. My aim, as a western scholar, is to explore the relevance of critical theory in this decolonial age. By highlighting intersections, while acknowledging crucial differences, between critical theory and Indigenous philosophies I seek to show that critical theory can play a crucial role in how western scholars respond to and embrace the necessary and compelling movement of decolonialisation, but only first by acknowledging their own shortcomings, particularly in relation to race, racism and colonialism.
Political Theory, 2018
In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School critical theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages with. In what follows I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in the wider sense), after which I pose a few questions. These questions are not meant to prove that there are any serious problems with her argumentation. Rather, they are meant in the spirit of dialogue and to allow her to further elaborate her work for the audience. Throughout the book, and in particular chapter one, Allen brings feminist post-and de-colonial theory in conversation with contemporary 759469P TXXXX10.
Despite being similar, related, and overlapping projects, Frankfurt School Critical Theory and postcolonialism have had remarkably little to do with each other. This chapter explores the deeper reasons for this from both sides, exploring what this reveals about the histories and limits of both enterprises. It then takes up recent works that attempt to bridge the divide, suggesting how Critical Theory can benefit from opening itself to postcolonial influences, approaches, and themes.
Amy Allen’s The End of Progress is a landmark effort to decolonize Critical Theory. The book’s goal, more specifically, is to criticize the work of contemporary critical theorist and to bring the insights of postcolonial and decolonial thought, along with Adorno and Foucault, to bear upon the problem of the normative foundations of Critical Theory. Amy Allen argues that Adorno and Foucault, despite their ostensible Eurocentrism, offer resources that complement postcolonial theory in this project of decolonizing Critical Theory. The book does not argue that postcolonial theory is an extension of European critical theory or that Critical Theory offers resources for postcolonial theorizing. Instead, this is an intervention into the normative program of Critical Theory.
Decoloniality and decolonizing Critical Theory
Constellations, 2018
It has become clear that Critical Theory, understood as the tradition originating from and remaining attached to the Frankfurt School, has to confront questions about its own limitations. 1 This has been understood not just in terms of its project (which, especially in its Habermasian form, appears increasingly unable to deal with the rise of the far right in Europe and the USA) but also in terms of its own limitations as regards gender and race, and its implicitly Eurocentric orientation. It is the last limitation, its inherent Eurocentrism, that has been most resisted integration, insofar as Critical Theory from its inception has retained within it an account of the history of reason that retains a certain Hegelianism, with Europe being the stage of history, and the location of historical, cultural, and intellectual progress. While Horkheimer and Adorno criticized the development of reason in this way, they nonetheless tacitly accepted this formulation of the history of rationality as univocal and distinctly European. Habermas replicates this, even as he criticizes the univocal conception of rationality found in their work. As many have suggested, the time has come to take stock of this and see if Critical Theory cannot be revised in such a way as to make it a project that may still retain a truly universalist character while still recognizing its weaknesses, especially its implicit Eurocentrism. Decolonial and postcolonial theory have both made a major part of their respective tasks the criticism of this conception of rationality, utilizing the existence of their own respective precolonial cultures as a means with which to criticize European rationality. That it has taken so long for this critique to be received with more than just resistance can be read in many ways, of course. One reason is likely due to the theoretical tendencies of those in the postcolonial camp especially, as many of these approaches are influenced by Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and others lumped together under the label of postmodernism. Given the antipathy to these authors of those on the forefront of contemporary Critical Theory, at least those who accept the Habermasian critique of postmodernism, this resistance makes sense. But it would appear that a point has been reached where Critical Theory can no longer ignore such critiques. This has been made especially clear by the publication of Amy Allen's recent monograph, which attempts to recognize the salience of the postcolonial and decolonial criticisms of Critical Theory and shows why theorists in the Frankfurt School vein of thought can no longer afford to ignore these critiques. However, there is one question that has not been confronted in this discussion, one that can easily be missed and yet is of utmost important-can Critical Theory engage with decolonial or postcolonial theory in a manner that integrates the relative insights of each? This article is focused on the first question and leaves aside the postcolonial one. The answer to this question, as will be seen, is no, at least as far as this is the way the question is put. In effect, to attempt to integrate the insights of decolonial thought into Critical Theory is to engage in the project from the wrong direction. If one is to remain faithful to the decolonial approach, it cannot be a matter of integrating decolonial thought into Critical Theory but rather of integrating the insights of Critical Theory into decolonial philosophy. Thus, if Critical Theory is to be decolonized it must first take on the decolonial perspective and then see what is left of Critical Theory after the shift, the decolonial turn, as Walter Mignolo puts it.
Critical Theory, Colonialism, and the Historicity of Thought
This essay probes the critical import of Latin American decolonial thought from the perspective of the dialectical legacy of Critical Theory in the works of Theodor W. Adorno and Roberto Schwarz. It critically interrogates the decolonizing motif as it relates to intellectual discourses and bodies of work. This argument is pursued through a critique of the rather indiscriminate critique of Eurocentricism, an elucidation of the ways in which decolonial thought thematize colonialism and constitutes a regression in terms of how colonialism has been conceptualized, and in terms of how decolonial accounts fundamentally misrecognize and distort the historicity of thought. It concludes with an original formulation of dialectical account of the historicity of thought that adequately accounts for historical sedimentations, genesis and validity, and formulates a dialectical account of originality. Published in Constellations 25 (March 2018): 54-70
Critical Theory and the Critique of Anti-Imperialism
The rejection of 'anti-imperialism' marks one of the most visible and significant differences between 'Frankfurt School' Critical Theory and most other tendencies of the Marxist left. The dispute on the meaning and relevance of 'imperialism' and 'anti-imperialism' is implicated in related discussions on the critique of nation and state, colonialism and post-coloniality, racism and race, and antisemitism. 'Frankfurt School' Critical Theory deliberately aims to formulate a critique of the capitalist mode of production that includes the phenomena typically addressed as 'imperialism' without recourse to the concept of 'anti-imperialism'. It takes the perspective that 'imperialism' is an intrinsic aspect of the capitalist mode of production rather than an object in its own right that is to be distinguished from the latter and to be fought 'as such': the concept of 'anti-imperialism' presupposes the reification and fetishization of 'imperialism'. The present chapter firstly aims to establish the ways in which the concept of 'imperialism' is used in the writings of Marx as well as in the texts of some of the canonical writers of 'Frankfurt School' Critical Theory. It is argued that the Critical Theorists' Marxian usage of the term prevented the emergence of a concept of 'anti-imperialism' in their writings: 'imperialism' was for them simply an aspect of the more general concept of capitalism. The remainder of the chapter engages with some positions formulated in the tradition or under the influence of Critical Theory since the 1960s, broadly conceived, that directly engage with 'anti-imperialism': the latter had in the meantime become a key issue in some of the social movements of the time due to the role played within post-WWII decolonization by Leninism/Stalinism as well as bourgeois-liberal anti-imperialist ideology (Hobson) that had already been one of the sources of the former.