Adorno, Foucault and the Critique of the West

Praise

“Defying conventional wisdom, Deborah Cook makes a compelling case for the complementarity of Adorno and Foucault’s critical projects. In so doing, she makes clear that the theoretical legacy of the past century still has much to offer in the struggle to meet the daunting challenges of our own.”
—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

“Foucault’s relation to the Frankfurt School and the work of one of its key theorists was long overdue a critical reappraisal. Neither reducing one thinker to the other nor drawing artificial lines between traditions, this is a bold and thoughtful contribution to this valuable work. It should be required reading and the basis of wide critical engagement.”
—Stuart Elden, University of Warwick and author of Foucault: The Birth of Power and Foucault’s Last Decade

“Michel Foucault once observed that had he known earlier in life about Frankfurt School critical theorists such as Adorno, he might have written little more than commentaries on their work, and he might have avoided some mistakes as well. Although Adorno and Foucault were surely dissimilar in many respects, Deborah Cook succeeds admirably in marking out the coordinates for their comparison. Alerting us to shared philosophical themes and emancipatory purposes, she has performed a truly important service by building a bridge between these two titans of modern social thought.”
—Peter E. Gordon

“Adorno was never confronted with structuralism and Foucault barely mentioned the Frankfurt School. Nevertheless, their critique of capitalism and Western civilization astonishingly converged. Cannot contemporary radical thought draw inspiration from both Adorno’s unmasking of instrumental reason and Foucault’s lucid investigation of biopolitical power? Deborah Cook establishes an extremely fruitful posthumous dialogue between these great thinkers. Highly readable and admiringly clear, her compelling essay provides many valuable ammunitions for critical theory in the twenty-first century.”
—Enzo Traverso