Substudies: Under Construction.
About; Supporting Future Projects; Guide: Series on Substudies.
About Substudies: Materials from the Archives of Early Critical Theory.
Critics and theorists,
Hello! My name is James Crane. I’m currently a PhD candidate working on German Idealism and Romanticism. As a teacher, my focus over the last five years has been designing courses in the comparative history of world philosophy. Substudies is a passion project, and part of the broader constellation of projects of the Critical Theory Working Group (CTWG). This blog is a temporary platform for the “preliminary processing” of previously untranslated, unpublished, or otherwise largely inaccessible materials from the archives of ‘early’ Critical Theory (~1920-1950). The CTWG has recently published a series of texts on the ISR’s 1940s ‘racket theory’ as a theory of social domination:
As a work in progress, posts on Substudies have been and will continue to be subject to revisions, additions, etc. according to the demands of the project. While I do hope to find a more permanent home for many of the materials posted here, there are currently no concrete long-term plans for publication in place. As a translator, I’m still very much an enthusiastic amateur, so any and all mistakes are entirely my own—so if anyone has feedback on any of the translations, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Supporting Future Projects.
Just like with all CTWG-related projects, Substudies is free to access and always will be! However, my ability to continue translating for the blog will increasingly depend on reader support. New projects include:
Producing a complete translation of Adorno’s early draft of the ‘Odysseus’ excursus, which underwent significant revisions prior to its initial publication in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Philosophische Fragmente of 1944, the first ‘version’ of the book that would later be published as Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947.
Re-translation of sections from Ernst Bloch’s 1946 Freiheit und Ordnung: Abriß der Sozialutopien, especially his ideology critique of the bourgeois utopian project of Zionism (“Altneuland, Programm des Zionismus”).1
Translation of sections from Karl Korsch’s Arbeitsrecht für Betriebsräte (1922) on the concept of ‘juridical action.’
Translation of various selections from Julius Schaxel’s early works in ‘dialectical biology’ (forthcoming translation of Schaxel’s 1930 essay “Das biologische Individuum” through the CTWG).
Otherwise, my plan is to continue the ‘series’ already underway on Substudies, develop a more systematic organization for the materials that have already been published (including a full table of contents), and convert the posts into shareable PDFs.
If you want to help support these projects, you can sign up for a paid subscription ($5 a month, $60 a year) here:
Thank you for reading, and, as always—nil admirari,
—James Crane.
Guide: Series on Substudies.
I. Dämmerung: Social Theory in Weimar Germany (~1920-1933).
This series is dedicated to materials from the earliest stages in the formation of Critical Theory through the 1920s, organized around Horkheimer’s pseudonymous collection of radical and critical-theoretical aphorisms—Dämmerung, published in 1934 under the name ‘Heinrich Regius’ and composed between 1926 and 1931. In the future, I hope to expand this series into more translations of earlier texts by other figures, from Adorno and Marcuse to lesser-known ISR collaborators like the psychoanalyst Karl Landauer.
II. Theoretical Foundations of Critical Theory (1930s).
This series is devoted to untranslated materials from Critical Theory in the mid-to-late 1930s, particularly given its self-conception as a kind of ‘communication of Marxism and the (radical) Enlightenment.’
III. The Dialectics-project, part I: Philosophical Fragments (1944) and Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947).
Much of the work for Substudies has focused on the composition and revision process for the book that would eventually be published as Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947. Adorno and Horkheimer’s plans for a book on ‘dialectics’ date back to the mid-30s, and they began working in earnest on the book around 1939. Significant revisions were made to the ‘first’ edition of the book, the limited-printing of the Philosophische Fragmente of 1944, right up to the end of 1947. Over the course of nearly a decade, Adorno and Horkheimer would produce an archive’s worth of fragmentary sketches, one-offs, false starts, and outlines that informed the final product but ‘disappeared’ into the result. Some of the preliminary materials published here in translation has never been published before in any form (such as the 1942 ‘schemata’). Other essays (such as Adorno’s 1944 “Contra Paulum” polemic) were effectively conceived and written as floating chapters from or applications of the book. The constellation of texts for the Fragmente includes Horkheimer’s work for what would be published in 1947 as Eclipse of Reason, which he and Adorno considered the ‘exoteric’ version of the Fragmente for a broader, Anglophone audience.
IV. The Dialectics-project, part II: Notes for the Planned Sequel to Dialectic of Enlightenment (~1945-1949).
Contrary to prevailing reception, Adorno and Horkheimer did, in fact, begin composing and collecting sketches and ideas for a sequel to Dialectic of Enlightenment. The purpose of this series is to make these materials available in translation and reconstruct the original conception of the ‘second part’ of the Dialectic from the first mention of the sequel in 1944, its reconceptualization through 1949, and, ultimately, attempt to explain why the plans were abandoned after the re-founding of the ISR in West Germany (ca. 1949-1951).
V. The ISR’s Germany-project (~1939-1941).
The first collective research project the ISR proposed in the United States was a critical-historical account of the developments of German society between 1900 and 1933 and the relationship between economic and cultural, ‘objective’ and ‘subjective,’ factors of social life that resulted in ‘the collapse of democracy and the rise of National Socialism.’ While the ISR failed to secure funding for the project, it structured the kind of research the ISR would pursue for the rest of the decade in terms of both form and content.
VI. The ISR’s Studies in anti-Semitism (~1939-1944) and Prejudice (~1944-1949).
The thesis of this series is that the ‘esoteric’ dimension of the ISR’s 1940s research projects on anti-Semitism and prejudice must be both construed and denied. This ‘esoteric’ dimension—which continued to structure published works such as the Authoritarian Personality (1950)—consisted of three elements: a critical engagement with Freud’s theories of anti-Semitism and prejudice, a critical application of Marx in social research, and a critical history of political theology.
VII. Memoranda and Lectures on Post-War Reconstruction (~1942-1950/51).
In connection with the Germany-project and the Studies in anti-Semitism/Prejudice, the members of the ISR devoted considerable effort in the mid-to-late 1940s to drafting programs for post-war reconstruction and reflecting on the tasks of post-war Critical Theory.
VIII. Critical Theory in Collaboration.
Near encounters and misses between members of the ISR core and other contemporary theorists—M.N. Roy, Karl Korsch, and Otto Fenichel—and artists—Fritz Lang (“Thomas More”) and William Dieterle (“Notes on The Devil and Daniel Webster”).
Previous English translation: “Old New Land, programme of Zionism.” In: The Principle of Hope, Volume Two. Translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, & Paul Knight (MIT Press, 1995 [1986]), 598-611.