Decolonizing Critical Theory?

Abstract

Theorists working within the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory have not been immune to calls to “decolonize” that have been circulating in and beyond the academic world. This article asks what it means to seek to decolonize a tradition of thought that has never explicitly acknowledged colonial histories. What is needed, instead, this article suggests, is consideration of the very implications of the “colonial modern”—that is, an acknowledgement of the colonial constitution of modernity—for Frankfurt School critical theory's idea of historical progress. The issue is more extensive than simply acknowledging the substantive neglect of colonialism within the tradition; rather, this article suggests that its categories of critique and their associated normative claims are also necessarily implicated by this neglect and require transformation. Acknowledgment of colonial histories requires material reparations for the substantive inequalities bequeathed as legacies of the past, but these reparations also require a transformation of understandings and a recognition of “epistemological justice.”

Community-Level Health Interventions are Crucial in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Lessons from Africa’s Proactive Public Health Policy Interventions

“…This paper practices a combination of emancipatory theorising and decolonization of theories, policies and methods (Bhambra 2021 ) used in framing narratives about sustainable global health (United Nations 2020 ). Here, different forms of emancipatory approaches of theorising are employed to point to critical health ideals while questioning received wisdom and biased colonial views or systems of domination and how to not only subvert them, but also to prescribe ways in which they can be improved or replaced (Cornelissen et al 2021 ).…”

“…Rather, he or she becomes an active agent and a crucial part of the discourse and not a bystander (Deetz 1996 ). The objective is to imbue new forms of meaning into a discourse and to disrupt the status quo through the creation of new realities with new theories in seeking epistemic and substantive justice (Bhambra 2021 ). It is about boosting what is conceptually, instrumentally and legitimately relevant/impactful in a defined context (Nicolai and Seidl 2010 ) instead of pretending that there are no self-interests or foreign policy agendas that profit from crises—whether they are wars or pandemics.…”

The reproduction of canonical silences: re-reading Habermas in the context of slavery and the slave trade

“…A number of scholars have highlighted the elision of race, colonialism, and slavery in accounts of liberal modernity, and scholars affiliated to the Frankfurt School more specifically (Bhambra, 2021;Hesse, 2007;Mukherjee, 2020). Ju ¨rgen Habermas is often seen as part of the younger generation of Frankfurt School scholars who followed in the footsteps of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Theodor W. Adorno.…”

“…However, his understanding of the 18th-century public sphere in Britain, France, and Germany was predominantly a national one. Given the intimate and connected nature of histories between Europe, Africa, and the Americas as highlighted by Lowe (2015) and Bhambra (2019Bhambra ( , 2021, it is important to revisit Habermas' historical account of the emergence of the 18th-century public sphere in Britain. As Bhambra (2021, p. 81) The canon and uses of history in media and communication studies…”

Settled knowledge practices, truncated imaginations

“…This discursive slippage reveals how an Eurocentric understanding can gloss over corporations' roles in colonial extraction. The Enlightenment project of modernity and progress was simultaneously constituted through a denial of freedom to others and the invasion, enslavement, and loot of South America, the Caribbeans, Africa, and Asia (Bhambra, 2021). This Eurocentric project deemed the colonized, the women, the indigenous, and the Black people as incapable of scientific knowledge or reason (Vergès, 2021).…”