Since the 1930s the theoretical writings of the Frankfurt School have provided tools for analyses of political and cultural developments in Europe and the United States. Initially a response to Hitler's reign of terror, this influential wing of Western Marxism focused on analyzing the totalitarian potential inherent in any democratic society. Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? "Modern Culture and Critical Theory" investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neo-conservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Throughout, Berman argues that the analysis of political processes must have an aesthetic component. The legacy of the Frankfurt School, he concludes, is one that can tell us much about our contemporary society. It offers us an alternative to the obvious conservatism in the political arena and the less obvious but significant conservatism of some contemporary critical theory.

Modern Culture and Critical Theory: Art, Politics, and the Legacy of the Frankfurt School

Politics & Social Sciences

Russell A. Berman

Social Sciences

University of Wisconsin Press

<p>The crisis of democracy, the consequences of neoliberalism and globalization, the limits of sovereignty, and of course the rise of populism: few thinkers have given more sustained attention to these matters than the French author Alain de Benoist. Democracy and Populism collects de Benoist's essays from the journal Telos, where many of his writings first appeared in English translation. Reading de Benoist in Telos provides access to a distinctive transatlantic intellectual dialogue and to an array of prescient insights into the current political condition on both continents. De Benoist clearly anticipated today's political condition: the critique of neoliberalism, the contradictions in liberalism created by the postcolonial frictions of identity politics, and the implications of a resurgent populism. The specific forms of populist movements are sure to vary in the coming years, but the crisis of liberal democracy will remain the defining feature of political life for the foreseeable future. De Benoist explains why.</p>

Democracy and Populism: The Telos Essays

Alain de Benoist

Timothy W. Luke

Telos Press Publishing

<p>"Elham Maneas The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism describes the ways in which the nonviolent forms of Islamist fundamentalism in European democracies lay the groundwork for Islamist terrorism. The book shows how Islamist groups exploit the openness of democracies and multiculturalist attitudes in order to create closed Islamist communities. These groups are transforming Islam in the West into a unified fundamentalist religion that promotes attitudes that lead to violence"--</p>

The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism

Elham Manea

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Books by Russell A. Berman