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The Quest To Reprogram Cultural Software: A Hermeneutical Response To Jack Balkin's Theory Of Ideology And Critique, Francis J. Mootz Iii

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Critical theory has lost the self-assurance that defined the heady days of Marxist economics and Freudian psychoanalysis. In his famous debate with Hans-Georg Gadamer thirty years ago, Jürgen Habermas argued that critical theory was a necessary corrective to the quiescence and conventionalism that followed from Gadamer's hermeneutic perspective. As the 1960s unfolded, the second generation of the Frankfurt School appeared poised to bring sophisticated techniques of social criticism to bear on the emerging postindustrialist system of global capitalism. But the promise of critical theory failed to materialize. Today, Habermas plays the role of the aging lion who refuses to accept …