doi: 10.1111/1467-8675.

12169

Decolonizing Critical Theory

Bruce Baum

In its emancipatory aims, the Critical Theory of the that by now society itself can be properly understood
Frankfurt School envisioned what Max Horkheimer and only through Antisemitism. It demonstrates on the ex-
Theodor Adorno called a truly human society that would ample of the minority which is, as a matter of fact, in
foster the freedom and meet the needs of all members store for the majority as well: that change into admin-
istrative objects.”8
of society.1 The first generation of critical theorists fol-
lowed Marx to focus largely on class domination in
capitalist societies even as they revised Marxism to Based on this insight, Horkheimer and Adorno provided
meet changes in 20th century capitalism.2 This focus a compelling but underdeveloped framework for a crit-
bequeathed some limitations for contemporary scholars ical theory of racism and colonialism.
concerned with issues like racism, sexism, and colonial- Since their initial effort, which focused almost
ism. Regarding racism and colonialism, Edward Said exclusively on European anti-Semitism, subsequent
has insisted that despite its insights into domination in Critical Theorists have belatedly taken up this task. The
modern society, Frankfurt School Critical Theory “is two most sustained efforts in Critical Theory to theorize
stunningly silent on racist theory, anti-imperialist resis- racism have followed divergent paths. Outlaw, in a
tance, and oppositional practice in the empire.”3 series of essays, initiated the efforts of recent Frankfurt
There is truth to Said’s comment but he overstates his School-inspired critical theorists to analyze the role
case in consequential ways. Such understandings of the of racism in shaping socially and politically structured
Frankfurt School have led many contemporary critical relations of inequality and domination.9 He looked
thinkers to turn away from the Frankfurt School in favor back to Horkheimer and Adorno but without exploring
of alternative approaches to critical social theory. I ap- the depth of their contribution in this area.10 Thomas
McCarthy, in Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human
preciate this impulse. I hope to show, however, that with
Development, employs the work of Habermas and Kant
respect to confronting racism and colonialism, Frank-
to outline a “critical theory of global development”
furt School Critical Theory offers analytical resources
that emphasizes autonomy, moral progress, societal
that have been underestimated.4 As Lucius Outlaw
explains, the early Frankfurt School theorists — notably development, and human dignity.11 Axel Honneth
Horkheimer and Adorno — were “not known initially distinguishes these two tendencies as follows. On one
so much for theorizing about racial problems . . . as side, there is an engagement with mainstream political
for [their] insightful critique of social domination philosophy that yields “a normative reinforcement
generally.”5 Yet Critical Theory’s focus shifted in the of the liberal-democratic tradition”; the other side
late 1930s and early 1940s as the Institute for Social focuses on “a critical questioning of this institutional
Research temporarily moved to the U.S.A. with the rise arrangement, which is accompanied by the suspicion
of a social pathology of capitalist society as a whole.”12
of the Nazis in Germany. The Institute joined
Without denying the value of the first tendency, repre-
the battle against fascism, with [its] debates centering sented by McCarthy, this essay is aligned more closely
on the character of the changed nature of the economy with the second. My analysis returns to Horkheimer
in twentieth-century capitalism, that is, the expression and Adorno to recover undeveloped intimations for a
of group sentiments were to be understood in the his- critical theory of racism and colonialism. Although they
torical context of society.6 focused on European anti-Semitism, Horkheimer and
With their aim “not merely to describe prejudice but Adorno began to address the role of racism in shaping
to explain it in order to help in its eradication,” Critical modern society, especially how the racial domination of
Theory, as Outlaw says, “provided a way for getting at European Jews was intertwined with the perpetuation
the problems of race — more precisely of racism — that of the class-based inequalities of capitalism. They
was both critical and radical.”7 recognized that while anti-Semitism was integrally
In letter of 1941, Horkheimer strikingly linked the related to class-based inequalities it was not a mere
task of a critical analysis of anti-Semitism to the larger epiphenomenon of capitalism’s class divisions; and
project of a critical theory of modern society: they offered insights into the psychodynamics of
racism.
As true as it is that one can understand anti-Semitism That said, Said was correct that the Frankfurt
only from our society, as true it appears to me to become School failed to engage adequately colonial racism and

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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 421

anti-colonial resistance.13 The critical theorists’ ac- The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961. In the midst of the
count of racism was Eurocentric and too narrowly decolonization movement of peoples of Asia and Africa,
focused on anti-Semitism. They rightly intimated that Sartre declared that
understanding racism is necessary for an adequate
we in Europe too are being decolonized: that is to say
critical theory of modern capitalist society; yet their
that the settler which is in every one of us is being
focus on anti-Semitism was insufficient for this task. savagely rooted out. Let us look at ourselves . . . and
As Paul Gilroy says, to realize “a world free of racial see what is becoming of us.24
hierarchies . . . we will need to reconstruct the history
of ‘race’ in modernity.”14 Anti-Semitism has been just Insofar as the early critical theorists failed to address
one important part of this larger history. colonial racism and anti-colonial resistance, Critical
Horkheimer and Adorno’s failure to address ade- Theory itself needs to be decolonized.
quately colonial racism went hand-in-hand with short- I contribute to this project by reconsidering
comings in their Marxian account of the interplay of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s critical theory of anti-
capitalism and racism, or “race” and class. Frantz Fanon Semitism. In section one, I highlight the strengths and
explained in The Wretched of the Earth that when we the limitations of Horkheimer and Adorno’s critical
consider colonialism, “it is clear that what divides the analysis of anti-Semitism and racism. In section two,
world is first and foremost . . . what race one belongs I draw on ideas from Fanon, Outlaw, McCarthy, and
to.”15 As a result, “Marxist analysis should always be Honneth to outline a more historically attuned and
slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colo- hermeneutic Critical Theory of racism and colonialism
nial issue.”16 As Fanon recognized, modern capital- — that is, a Critical Theory oriented to the political-
ism has never been one-dimensionally class-divided, historical character and meaningfulness of racialized
with profits generated in relation to a uniform class of identities and struggles. Overall, then, this essay is an
wage laborers; the classes of modern capitalism have effort to reconsider what Frankfurt School Critical The-
been internally fractured by racialized status hierar- ory has contributed to critical theorizing about racism
chies (as well as by gender and other modes of social and to indicate what this means for the larger project of
differentiation).17 This has been due to racial slavery, critical theory.
colonialism, and the role that racism has played — in
the face of transnational flows of people and capital —
in shaping states’ immigration policies, and delimiting I. Horkheimer and Adorno on Anti-Semitism
access to national labor markets.18 and Other Racisms
The constitutive role of modernity’s racialized sta- The subject of critical thought, Horkheimer wrote, was
tus orders in shaping the social stratification of cap-
a definite individual in his real relation to other individ-
italist society has important implications for Critical
uals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class,
Theory. Fanon’s emphasis on the need to stretch Marx-
and, finally, in the resultant web of relationships with
ian analysis to address colonialism lends support to the social totality and with nature.25
Honneth’s claim that group struggles for recognition
“normatively underlie the social stratification of capi- He envisioned a “reasonable organization of society that
talist society.”19 Honneth maintains that modern capi- will meet the needs of the whole community,” with
talist society’s “recognition order” — the historically special attention to “the oppressed class” in capitalist
variable “socially constitutive expectations of recog- societies, the proletariat.26
nition” — shapes the distribution of power, income, Horkheimer and Adorno reoriented Critical The-
and wealth generated by capitalism.20 In brief, an ad- ory when they undertook their critical analysis of anti-
equate critique of political economy for modern capi- Semitism in the late 1930s and 1940s.27 They brought
talist societies must confront their character as funda- together Marxism and psychoanalysis to illuminate the
mentally racialized capitalist societies, or racial states.21 roots of authoritarianism and group dynamics of “so-
At the same time, an egalitarian politics suitable to cial discrimination,” including “religious and racial
this history requires, as Outlaw insists, a hermeneu- hatreds.”28 Their anti-Semitism project first took shape
tic approach to racialized identity — one that does not in Horkheimer’s essay “The Jews and Europe” (1939)
dismiss the recognition claims of racialized groups as and in the “Research Project on Anti-Semitism: Idea of
simply an offshoot of class or status politics.22 It must the Project,” which Adorno published in 1941.29 This
also confront the historical injustice that is part of the work came to fruition in the chapter “Elements of Anti-
legacy of modern racism, as Fanon and McCarthy have Semitism” in Horkheimer and Adorno’s book, Dialectic
emphasized.23 of Enlightenment, in their collaborative research project
My notion of decolonizing Critical Theory builds on in the U.S.A., The Authoritarian Personality, and in
a remark by Jean-Paul Sartre in his “Preface” to Fanon’s Adorno’s book, Minima Moralia. Adorno signaled how


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they understood this work in a letter to Horkheimer in ogy of race and the reality of class both equally reveal
October 1941. He wrote that anti-Semitism had become only an abstract difference from the majority.38
the “central injustice” of the contemporary world and
Thus, in National Socialism, immersed in the ideology
that Critical Theory should “attend to the world where
of race and the reality of class, “the majority” — that
it shows its face at its most gruesome.”30 Horkheimer,
is, the non-Jewish working class and the petit bourgeois
in early notes for the project, declared that “Hatred of
Germans — perceived only an “abstract” difference be-
the Jew” was “hatred of democracy” and that
tween themselves and the “responsible elite” — that is,
organized investigation into the psychology of anti- German capitalists and allied political elites; the power
Semitism is in no way a matter concerning Jews exclu- of the responsible elite was masked.
sively, but is of the greatest importance for all who are Nazi race thinking had an ideological purpose be-
interested in the fate of democratic civilization.31 yond its stated aims: it distracted non-Jewish German
In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer working people from the class domination basic to
comprehended the Nazi regime, which killed nearly 6 capitalist societies and thus divided the working class.
million European Jews, thousands of Roma, and about “Bourgeois anti-Semitism has a specific economic pur-
200,000 disabled persons, as part of “the destructive pose: to conceal domination in production” — the dom-
side” of the European Enlightenment’s promotion of ination of capitalists over workers:39
instrumental rationality.32 The Nazis mobilized “soci-
The workers, who are the real target, are understandably
ety’s domination over nature” to dominate the masses not told as much to their face; the blacks must be kept
and carry out mass murder.33 Rather than rejecting in their place, but the Jews must be wiped from the face
“enlightenment thinking” as a whole, Horkheimer and of the earth.40
Adorno regarded it as a double-edged sword: along-
side its potential for advancing human freedom and Race, Horkheimer and Adorno contended:
well-being, it also “contains the germ of regression.”34
They sought to elucidate “why humanity, instead of is not, as the racial nationalists claim, an immediate nat-
ural peculiarity. Rather, it is a regression to nature as
entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind
mere violence, to the hidebound particularism which,
of barbarism.”35 In the rest of this section I summarize in the existing order, constitutes precisely the universal.
their contribution to a critical theory of racism in terms Race today is the self-assertion of the bourgeois indi-
of four sets of themes: (i) capitalism, race, and class; vidual, integrated into the barbaric collective . . . . The
(ii) a tripartite racial schema; (iii) mimesis, difference, persecution of the Jews, like any persecution, cannot
and racist misrecognition; and (iv) emancipation, social be separated from that order.41
justice, and “working through the past.”
Two points here are key. First, in their view, “race” does
not refer to an actual fundamental difference between
I.1. Capitalism, Race, and Class human beings. Instead, the ideology of race entails a
Their revisions of Marxism recognized convergences false belief in fundamental differences between Blacks
in the politico-economic power structures of different and Jews and “true” (“Aryan”) Germans. The ideology
forms of modern industrial societies — post-liberal of race denied the equal human dignity of certain
capitalist, fascist state capitalist, and bureaucratic so- groups and was a means for the Nazi regime to manage
cialist — with respect to hierarchy, concentrations of violently the inequalities and exclusions intrinsic to
power, and the deployment of industrial technologies; capitalism. Nazi anti-Semitism thus was different from
yet they did not ignore the differences among these so- old-style anti-Jewish sentiment; it was a full-fledged
cial orders.36 In National Socialism, they argued, these racial theory.42 National Socialism regarded a particular
tendencies were manifest in how “rancor” among the group, the “Aryan” Germans, as “the universal” — that
“dominated subjects” (that is, subordinated workers) is, as those meriting full recognition as human — in
against their domination by the economic and political terms of their supposed racial difference from Jews and
elite “is always ready to attack the natural minority [that Blacks.
is, minoritized races], even though it is the social mi- Second, Adorno and Horkheimer understood
nority which these subjects primarily threaten.”37 The Nazism as a pathological reaction to developments in
domination of the “responsible elite” in contemporary modern capitalist societies but not a mere side-effect of
capitalism has become obscured: capitalism. Focusing on the anti-Semites’ idea of “the
Jew,” they wrote,
The socially responsible elite is . . . far harder to pin
down than other minorities. In the murky intertwine- As the bearers of capitalist modes of existence from
ment of property, ownership, control, and management country to country [the Jews] earned the hatred of those
it successfully eludes theoretical definition. The ideol- who suffered under the system . . . . Now it is their turn


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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 423

to bear the brunt of [capitalism’s] exclusive, particular- Adorno elaborated on this thought in Minima Moralia.
istic character.43 He countered attempts to deflect criticism of modern
society with the claim “that things have always been
The historical basis for this attribution was that, due like this” as follows:
to Christian prohibitions on “usury,” Jews in medieval
and early modern Europe played a prominent role in He who registers the death-camps as a technical mishap
money lending and finance. Anti-Semitism cast the Jews in civilization’s triumphal procession, the martyrdom of
the Jews as world-historically irrelevant, not only falls
as archetypical predatory capitalists, thereby insulat-
short of the dialectical vision but reverses the mean-
ing capitalism — and capitalists as the dominant class
ing of his own politics: to hold ultimate calamity in
within it — from criticism. It gave working class non- check . . . . If the Jews as a group were eradicated while
Jewish Germans a target for their frustrations and vicari- society continues to reproduce the life of the workers,
ous symbolic empowerment as part of the Nazis’ “Third then the argument that the former were bourgeois and
Reich,” even as capitalism promised them, the “cheated their fate unimportant for the great dynamic of history,
masses,” happiness but left them a subordinated class becomes economic sophistry.52
“without power.”44 The Nazis joined non-Jewish Ger-
man workers and non-Jewish German capitalists in a Anti-Semitism revealed its sui generis character in the
cross-class “barbaric collective,” the so-called “Aryan Nazis’ attempt to eradicate the Jews. Adorno recog-
race” — an imagined but politically effective collec- nized that the “fate of the Jews” was associated with
tivity that aligned racially “proper” Germans violently capitalism; but he recognized that Nazi anti-Semitism
against Jews and Blacks. had theological, psychological, and anthropological
When Adorno and Horkheimer declared “the work- aspects.53
ers” were the Nazis’ “real target,” they seemed to reduce At the same time, Horkheimer and Adorno noted
Nazi anti-Semitism to an epiphenomenon of capitalist affinities between anti-Semitism and other forms of
class conflict.45 Likewise, in related discussions of the “social discrimination.”54 “The blindness of anti-
sociology of class they failed to address how social Semitism,” they said, lends support to the idea that it
classes have been fractured by racism. Adorno sug- serves as “a release valve” for frustrations of working-
gested in “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942) that, class non-Jewish Germans:
while the development of monopolies “vindicate[d] the Rage is vented on those who are both conspicuous and
doctrine of class struggle,” it “makes people forget the unprotected. And just as, depending on the constella-
actual existence of hostile classes.”46 He discussed rea- tion, the victims are interchangeable: vagrants, Jews,
sons for this “invisibility of the classes” but without con- Protestants, Catholics, so each of them can replace the
sidering racism.47 Horkheimer, in an unpublished work, murderer, in the same lust for killing, as soon as he
explored internal fissures within all classes through a feels the power of representing the norm.55
theory of “rackets.” “Every ruling class has been mo- The German working class projected its frustrations on
nopolistic,” Horkheimer wrote, “to the extent that it ex- the “alien” ethnic groups that “are transported to differ-
cluded the overwhelming majority of human beings.”48 ent latitudes; [and] individuals labeled ‘Jew’ [who] are
Within the working class “the racket of labor functions dispatched to the gas chambers.”56 Adorno, in Minima
as a monopoly only for its leaders and for the worker- Moralia, identified an array of exclusionary practices,
aristocracy.”49 Yet, like Adorno, he did not consider how including “the immigration laws that exclude all non-
racism has produced such “rackets.” Caucasians from Social-Democratic Australia, . . . right
up to the Fascist eradication of the racial minority.”57
Horkheimer and Adorno thus understood Nazism as
I.2. A Tripartite Racial Schema: “Aryan” Germans, an extreme form of a pervasive tendency toward so-
Jews, and Blacks cial discrimination generated by the inequalities and
While highlighting distinctive features of anti- exclusions intrinsic to capitalist societies. While the
Semitism, Horkheimer and Adorno offered passing re- victims and perpetrators vary across national contexts,
marks about how other racialized groups fit into the the subordinated classes of the dominant ethno-national
European and global political economies of modern or racial groups often vent their rage against “con-
racism. In the “Research Project on Anti-Semitism,” spicuous and unprotected” groups instead of joining
Adorno wrote, “The purpose of this project is to show in a pan-ethnic working-class movement to transform
that anti-Semitism is one of the dangers inherent in all capitalism.
more recent culture.”50 Regarding the distinctiveness of Horkheimer and Adorno offered no sustained anal-
anti-Semitism, recall Horkheimer and Adorno’s remark ysis of anti-Black racism, colonialism, and other forms
that for the Nazis “the blacks must be kept in their place, of racism, however.58 Yet their remark that for the
but the Jews must be wiped from the face of the earth.”51 Nazis “the blacks must be kept in their place, but the


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424 Constellations Volume 22, Number 3, 2015

Jews must be wiped from the face of the earth,” sug- If mimesis makes itself resemble its surroundings,
gests a triadic racial schema with which to begin to false projection makes its surroundings resemble itself.
comprehend racism globally: a dominant racial group If, for the former . . . the alien becomes the intimately
— here the “Aryan race”; elsewhere the so-called “white known, the latter displaces the volatile inward into the
outer world, branding the intimate friend as foe.69
race” — stands opposed to two differentially subordi-
nated racial status groups — here Blacks and Jews.59 In Nazism, false projective
This general racial schema has had wider resonance.
It captures provisionally broad contours of modern behavior is adopted by politics; the object of the [para-
racial dynamics, or racial formations that have been noiac] illness is declared true to reality, the system
of delusions the reasonable norm in the world which
manifested where nation-states have governed national
makes deviation neurosis.70
economies and populations, partly through the discourse
of race in relation to colonial histories and the transna- Whereas through mimesis proper the subject accom-
tional flows of people and capital. modates herself to the variegated world of people and
non-human nature, false projection represses difference.
Subjects try to make their surroundings conform to what
I.3. Mimesis, Difference, and Racist Misrecognition they already know — that is, to the limited range of dif-
In a third aspect of Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis ference with which they are comfortable. In false projec-
of anti-Semitism, they drew on psychoanalysis to illu- tion anti-Semites fail to distinguish between traits that
minate how anti-Semites dealt with their perceptions they project on to Jews — typically, distorted stereo-
of nonidentity or difference with respect to themselves types of “the Jew” — and the qualities that actual Jews
and Jews. Adorno thought that the Jews had (in An- possess. “The person chosen as foe is already perceived
son Rabinbach’s words) a “broader significance . . . as as foe.”71
representatives of the principle of nonidentity in the Horkheimer and Adorno’s larger argument was
modern world.”60 His concept of mimesis was central that in industrial society, autonomous “reflecting
to his and Horkheimer’s view of how people deal with mimesis” has largely replaced objectifying instrumental
difference. Speaking of humanity’s “mimetic heritage,” rationality:
Adorno wrote, “The human is indissolubly linked to
Social and individual education reinforces the objecti-
imitation: a human being only becomes human at all
fying behavior required by work . . . . In the bourgeois
by imitating other human beings.”61 He maintained that mode of production the ineradicable mimetic heritage
“making oneself similar to an Other” is a fundamen- present in all praxis is consigned to oblivion.72
tal aspect of mimesis.62 Our mimetic capacity has both
“true,” or autonomous, and “false,” or repressed, mani- Nazism radicalized this tendency. It sought to eradicate
festations, and our use of these different forms of mime- the “difference” that Jews represented by eradicating
sis is integral to whether we deal with differences in a the Jews.73
respectful or hostile manner. True mimesis, “mimetic The problem was not projective behavior per se, “but
behavior proper,” involves “the organic adaptation to the exclusion of reflection from that behavior.”74 As hu-
otherness.”63 It requires us to grasp similarity and dif- man society becomes increasingly complex, “individu-
ference together as “non-identical similitude.”64 Crude als must learn both to refine and to inhibit” projection
mimicry typifies bad or regressive mimesis.65 so that it does not degenerate “into the false projection
Adorno and Horkheimer located one version of which is essential to anti-Semitism.”75 Although Jews
regressive mimesis in objectifying conceptual thinking, were the primary targets of “fascist rabble-rousers,” they
which Adorno called “identity thinking.”66 They main- were not the only targets:
tained that conceptual thinking could be dialectical,
The screamers deliberately use the wail of the victim,
recognizing internal differences within whatever is
which first called violence by its name, and even the
designated, where each thing is recognized as “what mere word which designates the victim — Frenchman,
it is only by becoming what it is not.”67 Dialectical Negro, Jew — to induce in themselves the desperation
thinking enables people to appreciate the heterogeneity of the persecuted who have to hit out . . . . The mere
encompassed by our concepts; yet such thinking can existence of the other is a provocation.76
be neutralized by the fear of difference. “The cry
of terror called forth by the unfamiliar becomes its As Adorno observed, various groups might become tar-
name.”68 gets of “terrified mimesis”77 :
Anti-Semites and other racists manifest fearful iden- Indignation over cruelty diminishes in proportion as
tity thinking through the psychological mechanism of the victims are less like normal readers, the more they
“false projection,” which “has deep affinities to the are swarthy, “dirty,” dago-like . . . . Perhaps the social
repressed” form of mimesis: schematization of perception in anti-Semites is such


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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 425

that they do not see the Jews as human beings at the “objective” political and economic conditions that
all. The constantly encountered assertion that savages, foster “racial prejudices.”84 They envisioned that their
blacks, Japanese are like animals . . . is the key to the “turning point” would require a democratic and social-
pogrom . . . . [T]hose in power perceive as human only ist political and economic order that would overcome
their own reflected image, instead of reflecting back
class-based as well as racialized inequalities. The goal
the human as precisely what is different.78
would be to affirm the equal human dignity of all persons
Dominant groups thus employ the ideology of race to in political and economic relationships free of domina-
gauge the extent to which other groups are like or un- tion and exploitation.85 Their conception of equality
like themselves. They rationalize the dehumanization included due respect for meaningful differences among
of “alien” races in proportion to the degree that these people (for example, of religion and culture) and some
groups fail to meet their racial standard of humanness, awareness of the need to address the relationship of
“reassur[ing] themselves that [their victim] is ‘only an equality and difference historically.
animal.’”79 Adorno addressed the idea of an egalitarian,
By examining anti-Semitism in light of psychoanal- non-racial respect for differences among people in
ysis and mimesis, then, Adorno and Horkheimer high- Minima Moralia. He rejected as “bad equality” the idea
lighted how the inequities of capitalist societies foster that equality demanded treating everyone as being just
tendencies to regressive mimesis among vulnerable sub- the same:
jects. Through anti-Semitism and other forms of racism,
That all men are alike is exactly what society would like
these tendencies have led to a sometimes violent repres-
to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as
sion of difference in two respects: a denial of the full stigmas indicating that not enough has been done . . . .
humanity of the targets of racism; and the misconstrual The technique of the concentration camp is to make
of religious and cultural — if not merely superficial — prisoners like their guards, the murdered, murderers.
differences between groups as racial differences. The racial difference is raised to an absolute so that it
can be abolished absolutely, if only in the sense that
nothing that is different survives. An emancipated so-
I.4. Emancipation and Social Justice ciety, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state,
Two remarks by Horkheimer and Adorno convey the but the reconciliation of differences.86
gist of their vision of a “truly human state.”80 First, at To assert abstractly “that all people and all races are
the end of “Elements of Anti-Semitism” they declared: equal” was to invite
Only the liberation of thought from power . . . could the simple refutation of the senses, and the most com-
realize the idea which has been unrealized until now: pelling anthropological proofs that the Jews are not
that the Jew is a human being. This would be a step away a race will . . . scarcely alter the fact that totalitarians
from the anti-Semitic society, which drives both Jews know full well whom they do and whom they do not
and others into sickness and toward the human one. intend to murder.87
Such a step would fulfill the fascist lie by contradicting
it: the Jewish question would indeed prove the turning Adorno added, “To assure the black man that he is ex-
point of history . . . . [H]umanity would cease to be the actly like the white man, while he obviously is not, is
universal antirace and become the species which, as secretly to wrong him still further.”88
nature, is more than mere nature, in that it is aware of His contrast between “the black man” and “the white
its own image.81 man” is ambiguous — and potentially problematic —
Second, returning to the matter of mimesis and false given his and Horkheimer’s observation elsewhere that
projection, they wrote, race “is not . . . an immediate natural peculiarity.”89
Adorno may have accepted the idea that “white” and
The individual and social emancipation from domina- “black” people were distinct races even though he
tion is the countermovement to false projection, and and Horkheimer rejected the idea that European Jews
no longer would Jews seek, by resembling it, to ap-
constituted a distinct race. This was a commonplace
pease the evil senselessly visited on them as on all the
humanist view in the mid-20th century: that there were
persecuted, whether animals or human beings.82
a few biologically distinct human races but that ideas
Adorno and Horkheimer’s sense that contradicting the about racial superiority and inferiority were bogus.90
“fascist lie” of anti-Semitism could become a “turn- Alternatively, Adorno may have meant that the different
ing point of history” follows from their claim that groups that we have come to call “black people” and
“[t]he persecution of the Jews, like any persecution, “white people” historically have been treated as
cannot be separated from” the existing social order.83 members of distinct racial groups, with often dire con-
The task of overcoming racist degradation of different sequences, have had different life experiences, and may
groups is integrally linked with the goal of undoing have (or practice) different customs, traditions, beliefs,


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426 Constellations Volume 22, Number 3, 2015

and so on. His deeper point was that “an emancipated,” Post-war Germans needed to develop a reflective con-
egalitarian society would neither repress nor ignore sciousness on their “entanglement” in the social con-
differences; it would enable people to “be different ditions that have produced racial prejudice.102 In short,
without fear.”91 civic education “must transform itself into sociology,
Regarding how a society might respect differences that is, it must teach about the societal play of forces
among people that have been misconstrued as racial, that operate beneath the surface of political forces.”103
Horkheimer and Adorno said, “Society’s emancipation
from anti-Semitism depends on whether the content of
that idiosyncrasy is raised to the level of the concept and II. Towards a New Critical Theory of Racism
becomes aware of its own senselessness.”92 The various Overall, Horkheimer and Adorno compellingly compre-
members of society — especially those who have been hended Nazi anti-Semitism as an extreme manifestation
considered members of the dominant “racial” group, of pathologies of capitalist modernity. Their focus on
the “the universal antirace” — must learn to appreci- European anti-Semitism was understandable given the
ate the manifold heterogeneity of the human species. immediacy of the horrors of Nazism and the Jewish
In rejecting the “fascist lie” about the Jews’ inhuman- backgrounds of members of the Frankfurt School.104
ity, “humanity” would thus cease to be defined in an Nonetheless, given their aim of attacking the “central
exclusionary way. Idiosyncrasy, as anti-Semites under- injustices” of the contemporary world (see above), it is
stood it in terms of the Jews’ distinctiveness, would thus striking that they largely neglected the history of Euro-
cease to be regarded as such; humanity would be appre- pean colonialism, including Germany’s involvement in
ciated in all its heterogeneity.93 In practical terms, for this process. Germany had a relatively short-lived over-
this sort of democratic politics to be realized, autonomy, seas colonial empire (from ca. 1884 to World War II) and
or reflective thought and action, would need to become comparatively limited involvement in the Atlantic slave
widely manifest in society.94 This would lead people trade. Yet Germany participated in the wider European
to understand others — including unfamiliar religious colonial project.105
and ethnic groups — in their concrete particularity and, Adorno and Horkheimer thus failed to appreciate
thus, avoid false projection with respect to them.95 the extent to which racism, including colonial racism,
In “The Meaning of Working through the Past” has been a formative feature of global capitalist de-
(1959), Adorno began to address the relationship of velopment and Western modernity. Consequently, they
equality and difference historically with respect the failed to discern the broader implications of their own
challenge for post-World War II Germany of facing up observation that collectively contradicting the “fascist
to the legacy of Nazism. He was troubled by the extent to lie,” which denied the Jews’ humanity, could become
which Germans already were reluctant to accept any re- the “turning point of history” towards a “truly hu-
sponsibility for the atrocities committed by the Nazis.96 man state.”106 Once we recognize the scope of modern
To face the past responsibly demanded historical racism, it becomes apparent that this “turning point”
memory and he discerned an “effacement of memory” must involve more than contradicting anti-Semitism; it
already evident among Germans — “the readiness to must entail rejecting all types of racist norms and prac-
minimize or deny what happened.”97 Through such tices. Fanon made this connection from an anti-colonial
“collective amnesia” those who had been murdered perspective, noting “that the anti-Semite is inevitably a
would be robbed “of the single remaining thing that negrophobe.”107
our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.”98 Adorno and Horkheimer’s failure to address ade-
Adorno suggested that the sense of timeless equiv- quately the role of European racism and colonialism
alence basic to capitalist exchange relationships has in global capitalist development entailed notable short-
fostered the effacement of memory: “Bourgeois soci- comings of their effort to reformulate Marxism with re-
ety is universally situated under the law of exchange, spect to the interplay of “race” and class. They failed to
of the like-for-like accounts that match and that leave appreciate how, as Fanon said, Marxist analysis needed
no remainder. In its very essence exchange is some- to be revised to address colonialism: “in the colonies
thing timeless.”99 In short, as the subjects of capitalism the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The
become accustomed to the immediacy of market ex- cause is the effect: You are rich because you are white,
changes, they become desensitized to the “innumerable you are white because you are rich.”108 “The black prob-
societal processes” through which past historical events lem,” he wrote, “is not just about Blacks living among
have shaped the present. In this way, “advancing bour- Whites, but about the Black man exploited, enslaved,
geois society” ruins historical memory.100 and despised by a colonialist and capitalist society that
Adorno remained hopeful that through civic edu- happens to be white.”109 The political-economic amal-
cation citizens of a democratic society could learn to gamation of colonial racism and capitalism has divided
work through the past responsibly to pursue justice.101 people from each other by “race” and class — and


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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 427

also gender — in social relations of status, produc- ing class an illusion of collective empowerment (see
tion, and exchange. In a global perspective, capitalist above).117 And as I noted earlier, they developed an
development fundamentally has involved racialized embryonic theory of the internal fracturing of classes
capitalist societies, or racial states. “Free” wage la- with their theory of rackets; but they paid too little how
borers have been a subordinated class in capitalist racism has produced such rackets. Understanding the
societies.110 Yet the class position of the quintessential racialized fissures within classes is arguably a central
“free” wage laborer often has entailed a relatively ad- challenge for an adequate critique of political economy,
vantaged racialized status among the laboring classes of and the problem begs for an approach that follows Max
capitalist modernity, often reserved for laborers racial- Weber in comprehending class and social status as dis-
ized as white.111 tinct but intersecting modes of social stratification.118
Fanon’s call to revise Marxism to deal with colonial Status, Weber explained, refers to a “position of posi-
racism corroborates Honneth’s thesis that the recogni- tive or negative privilege in social esteem” in a given
tion orders of capitalist societies are analytically prior to society.119 A “status group” is
their “distributive conflicts.”112 Modern racism has been
simultaneously a political economic order and a recog- a group of human beings who . . . effectively claims a
special evaluation of their status and certain monopolies
nition order; it has parceled out recognition and mis-
[of powers of domination and resources] on the grounds
recognition, or denigration, among racialized groups.
of their status” in relation to other groups.120
For instance, in white racism, which has been basic to
the modern global racial order, racial whiteness has been A society’s status order thereby entails status-based re-
the measure of “true human being.”113 White racism strictions on market allocations of land, labor, capital,
has bloated the self-esteem and self-worth those peo- offices, and other goods, such as housing.121
ple who have been regarded (and have regarded them- With regard to racism, dominant groups have
selves) as “white” while it has diminished that of non- employed ideas about racial difference to establish “a
white people.114 These racist dynamics of recognition privileged and protected status vis-à-vis members of
and misrecognition simultaneously have shaped social another group or groups.”122 This has produced various
stratification within racial states (for example, the U.S., hierarchically ranked racialized status orders in differ-
Canada, Brazil and South Africa) as well as across states ent countries.123 Dominant racialized groups sometimes
and societies in the modern world, especially in rela- have enacted practices of outright racial segregation and
tion to European colonialism and imperialism.115 Con- exclusion (for example, whites in the U.S.A. instituted
sequently, the struggles for recognition by historically racial slavery and later the Jim Crow system of racial
deprecated racialized groups, such as Black and Indige- segregation; white South Africans instituted apartheid);
nous peoples, have been a key part of the larger struggle racialized status inequalities also have been manifest in
for liberation and social justice.116 more subtle forms of labor market discrimination, dis-
Therefore, to decolonize Critical Theory and develop crimination in rental and housing markets, and in states’
a critical theory of racism, Horkheimer’s remark that racially restrictive immigration policies. Cultural racism
anti-Semitism can be comprehended adequately only has operated in analogous ways.124
through a critical examination of modern capitalist so- These processes structure how members of different
ciety, and vice versa, must be reformulated as follows: status groups are distributed within a given society’s
modern racism can be comprehended adequately only class structure; yet class and racial status are analyti-
through a critical examination of modern capitalist soci- cally distinct modes of social stratification.125 The in-
ety, and modern society itself can be adequately under- terplay of racialized identity and class is manifest in
stood only through a critical analysis of modern racism. two notable ways. First, racialized status shapes the
In the rest of this section I revise Horkheimer’s and distribution of income, wealth, educational opportuni-
Adorno’s Critical Theory to outline a framework for a ties, and economic and political power; it shapes who
new critical theory of racism through four constellations becomes rich and poor, a wage-laborer, a capitalist,
of concepts: (i) race, class, and status; (ii) racialized or a professional, along with how class positions are
identity and the politics of recognition; (iii) a political- experienced.126 One basic aspect of this dynamic has
racial schema; and (iv) historical injustice and “working been how European settler states have justified the ex-
through the past.” propriations of the lands of Indigenous peoples in racial
terms.127
Nancy Fraser has elaborated this point by concep-
II.1. “Race,” Class, and Status tualizing racialized identity as “a bivalent mode of col-
With their use of psychoanalysis, Horkheimer and lectivity, a compound of class and status.”128 Racialized
Adorno offered insight into the psychodynamics of how identity is indeed bivalent, but it is usually better un-
anti-Semitism gave the (non-Jewish) German work- derstood as a compound of status and identity than of


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428 Constellations Volume 22, Number 3, 2015

class and status. This is due to the interplay of racialized While racialized status orders confer unequal so-
status and class hierarchy as well as to how racialized cial esteem on different racial groups, racialized iden-
identity is not merely a form of status, as I explain below. tities are not reducible to their status aspect. They are
In relation to racialized slavery and peonage — racial “also hermeneutic horizons,” sites “from which we per-
formations that have a caste-like character — racialized ceive, act, and engage with others.”135 For this reason,
identity was basically a compound of status and class: a critical theory of racism requires a dual approach
racialized status largely coincided with class positions. to racialized identity, genealogical and hermeneutic:
But this often has not been the case. a genealogical analysis of the political construction
Second, racialized status and class are cross-cutting of racialized identities as modes of domination and
modes of social stratification. This is particularly ev- structured inequality, along with a hermeneutic ac-
ident in our post-colonial world, which is marked by count of people’s lived experiences of their racialized
a partial break with the prior white supremacist global identities.136
racial order.129 This break altered the relationship be- Since I have focused so far on racialized identi-
tween racialized status and class, but without sever- ties as modalities of domination and inequality, I will
ing the linkage. Racism and racialization processes still now consider their character as sources of meaning.
shape how different racialized groups are distributed As racialized identities persist, their character as cul-
across social classes, but racialized identity varies in- tural modes of self-identification, affiliation, and self-
dependently of class in new ways. For instance, some expression is evident in both laudable and oppressive
members of subordinate racialized groups (but dispro- ways. This self-expressive aspect of racialized identity
portionately few) attain privileged class positions; and is evident, for instance, among racialized groups whose
many members of dominant racialized groups (but dis- cultural practices aim to positively revalue previously
proportionately few) are poor and working class. This demeaned “racial” identities — for example, the Black
point is further complicated by how in societies charac- Power movements in the U.S.A., the Caribbean, and
terized by more than two racialized groups the various South African in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.137 The
subordinated or non-dominant racialized groups often self-expressive side of racialized identity has also been
experience differing degrees or forms of racism.130 evident, however, when dominant racialized groups
have expressed their racialized identities through racist
cultural practices and modes of identification, such
II.2. Racialized Identity and the Politics white supremacism. And problematic cultural enact-
of Recognition ments of racialized identity also take more subtle forms,
Adorno and Horkheimer’s hybrid Marxian-psyc- including the tacit perpetuation of dominant racial-
hoanalytic approach to racialized identity and the Webe- ized cultural norms, such as white norms of physical
rian status approach share a common shortcoming: nei- attractiveness.
ther approach is well suited to address fully how racial- Adorno and Horkheimer’s Marxian-psychoanalytic
ized identities are sources of meaning, identity, affili- approach helps us to make sense of such dominating
ation, and self-expression. Both perspectives focus too racialized identifications. The Marxian side turns our
exclusively on the historically predominant side of racial attention to the material vulnerabilities and inequities
thought and action: “race” as a modality of invidious that fuel racist modes of identification and affiliation;
social categorization that entails a rank ordering of so- the psychoanalytic side illuminates how members of
called racial groups.131 While Weber’s approach focuses dominant racialized groups can fall prey to false pro-
on social stratification, Adorno and Horkheimer illumi- jection with respect to minoritized racial groups. It also
nate how the enactment of dominating racialized iden- sheds light on the unconscious psychological invest-
tities, such as Nazi “Aryanism,” exhibits “self-assertion ments of members of dominant racialized groups (for
unhampered by reflection.”132 Each approach fails to example, white Americans, South Africans, and Brazil-
address what Outlaw calls ians) in national-cultural narratives that minimize the
histories of racism in their societies.138
the other side of scientific accounts of raciality: . . . the These considerations are consistent with the fact
lived-experiences of real persons whose experiences that racialized identities are social constructions with
are forged in life worlds in part constituted to a quite no timeless essences.139 “Black,” “white,” and “Asian”
significant extent by self-understandings that are in
racialized identities, for example, have had specific his-
large measure racial, no matter how arguably inade-
tories, and where they persist under such designations
quate scientifically.133
people experience them in different ways due to their
This is so even though Adorno envisioned an emanci- different positions “at the different intersections of vari-
pated society as a place in people could “be different ous race, class, gender, religious, and geographical axes
without fear.”134 of identity.”140


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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 429

Although I cannot defend this claim here, I suggest II.3. A Politico-racial Schema
that given the bivalent character of racialized identity as Racial states have been made up of differing racial or-
status and identity, a critical theory of racism requires ders. Nonetheless, Horkheimer and Adorno’s remark
a dualistic politics of difference, combining anti-racism that for the Nazis “the blacks must be kept in their
— to overcome systemic racialized inequality — with place, but the Jews must be wiped from the face of the
a politics of cultural recognition.141 As Lawrence Blum earth,” remains suggestive: it speaks to how systemic
explains, the two approaches differ with regard to which racism has been bound up with political struggles in
aspects of group identities they consider salient. An many modern states and globally to negotiate the in-
antiracist perspective considers groups primarily in their equalities and dislocations of capitalist development; to
positions within social orders of racialized domination construct and manage “national” populations in the face
and subordination, of structured inequality.142 Thus, to of modern mass migrations; and to deal with differences,
consider the claims of Native Americans and African real and imagined, among people. Their rudimentary tri-
Americans from an antiracism perspective would focus adic racial schema would be enriched, however, if we
on how combined it with an appreciation of different forms of
racism and Weber’s notion of status groups.
these groups have been oppressed, undermined, and
As Adorno noted, modern racial thinking has in-
mistreated by white America; . . . the beliefs and poli-
cies that have supported this mistreatment; and . . . the cluded a tendency among dominant groups to imagine
subordinate group’s resistance to this mistreatment.143 gradations of similarity between themselves and other
groups, ranging from racial kinship to radical difference
A politics of cultural recognition would emphasize “a (see above section I.3). A related insight implicit in his
group’s customs, rituals, language, systems of thought and Horkheimer’s schema is that racial politics often
and religion, forms of cultural expression, accomplish- involves an array of racialized status groups, where dif-
ments, and contributions to the wider society of which ferent groups might experience injuries of racism in dif-
they are a part.”144 The aim here would not be to treat ferent ways.148 Globally and in various countries, racial
systemic racialized inequality chiefly as a matter of politics typically has involved something more than bi-
recognition of reified cultural differences, as in some nary divisions — such as between “white” and “black,”
forms of multiculturalism. Rather, the task would be to colonizer and colonized, anti-Semite and Jew. This has
grapple critically with the issues of structured racial- been the case, for example, in Europe, Brazil, South
ized inequality and cultural pluralization as basic parts Africa, the U.S.A, and Canada.149
of the history of modern racism, colonialism, and post- Joining Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis of the
colonial migrations. role of false projection in anti-Semitism with the idea
Given the duality of racialized identity, a poli- of cultural racism sheds light on the persistence of anti-
tics that combines antiracism and cultural recognition Semitism, on Islamophobia in Europe, North Amer-
seems necessary to achieve an emancipated society that ica, and elsewhere, and on other cases where dominant
would realize what Adorno called “the reconciliation of ethno-national groups treat some immigrants as unas-
differences.”145 Racialized identities involve not only similable “aliens.”150 Yet even this revised version of
some differences of groups’ histories and forms of cul- Horkheimer and Adorno’s racial schema has limita-
tural expression that call for recognition, but also status tions: it fails to address what Andrea Smith calls the
and material inequalities that must be undone in the second pillar of white supremacy: the logic of genocide
name of social justice.146 Moreover, a critical theory of in white settler states by which that “indigenous peoples
racism in the spirit of Fanon’s conception of decolo- must disappear.”151
nization must confront the racially based experiences
of both subordinate and dominant groups. Reorienting
societies’ recognition orders to achieve a reconciliation II.4. Historical Injustice and “Working through
the Past”
of differences must involve a positive revaluation of
historically demeaned racialized identities as well as a Finally, the notion of historical injustice concerns the
deconstructive transformation of historically dominant injustice inflicted in the past by individuals, groups,
racialized identities, such as whiteness. As Fanon noted and institutions on other individuals and groups that has
with regard to “the Black–White relationship” central substantial effects on the descendants of these groups in
to European colonialism in Africa, white people need to the present.152 Adorno elaborated his notion of working
escape the social valuations and self-delusions of their through the past in response to one important example
whiteness as much as Black people need to transcend of the historical injustice produced by systemic racism
the historical fetters of their blackness.147 This possibil- — the legacy in post-war Germany of the crimes of
ity demands the kind of working through the past that the Nazis. The problem, however, is fundamental to
Adorno advocated. the larger legacy of racism, as Fanon indicated when


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430 Constellations Volume 22, Number 3, 2015

he suggested in The Wretched of the Earth that Euro- from various racialized groups (including members of
pean colonial states owed reparations to the peoples they dominant groups that benefit in various ways from his-
colonized: torical and ongoing forms of racism) face up to how
they are implicated in this history and support efforts to
Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt redress it. For educators, this calls for special efforts to
to us once they have withdrawn their flag and their po- reveal these histories.
lice force from our territories . . . . Deportations, mas-
This is a difficult task for several reasons, and I will
sacres, forced labor, and slavery were the primary meth-
briefly mention three. First, people are positioned in re-
ods used by capitalism to increase its gold and diamond
reserves, and to establish its wealth power . . . . Moral lation to the historical legacies of racism not only by
reparation for national independence does not fool us various racialized statuses — and in different ways in
and it doesn’t feed us.153 different racial states — but also by the wider array of in-
tersecting social identities, including class, gender, reli-
Fanon noted that European demands in the aftermath of gion, sexual orientation, and able-bodiedness/disability.
World World II for “reparations and restitution” for the Therefore, our encounters with the legacies of racism is
damage Germany inflicted on the rest of Europe during complicated by our multifaceted identities, which posi-
the war, particularly to European Jews, set a precedent tion us each in relation to several axes of advantage and
for such reparations.154 European states exploited their disadvantage. For instance, due to the interplay of race
colonies through violent expropriation of land and labor; and class the task of working through the past is compli-
and this has shaped the divergent economic and political cated for some people — say, poor and working-class
trajectories of these regions (for example, North Atlantic white people in South Africa, Brazil, and the U.S.A.
versus African societies).155 — by their relatively subordinated class positions: they
Historical racial injustice is also evident in at least must face up to their complicity in the legacy of racist
two other kinds of cases. First, white settler states in the injustice even as they themselves experience class-
U.S.A., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, based disempowerment. Other people are relatively ad-
and South America have inflicted similar racist colonial vantaged by racial and class hierarchies but disadvan-
processes on Indigenous peoples, sometimes in tandem taged due to inequalities rooted in gender, sexuality, or
with Black enslavement and its aftermath.156 Second, disability.
historical racial injustice is a key aspect of the legacy Second, Adorno discerned a more generalized obsta-
of racism with regard to other groups in racial states. cle to working through the past in capitalist societies:
This systematic racism has been partially overturned by market capitalism tends to liquidate historical memory
decolonization and civil rights movements of the 20th by habituating people to think that social and political
century. But, in addition to the persisting racism in these relationships and institutions can be comprehended ad-
states, the histories of racism have had profound effects equately in their immediacy (see above, I.4). Yet the
on the descendants of different racialized groups in the problem of historical inequality in capitalist society
present. Consider, for instance, the apartheid system in runs even deeper than this. As Horkheimer and Adorno
South Africa; slavery and anti-Black segregation and noted, following Marx, in the basic exchange of labor for
discrimination in the U.S.A. and residential schools in wages, workers produce a considerable surplus of value
the U.S.A. and Canada, into which Indigenous children for which they are not compensated; this surplus is ac-
were forced to root out the “Indian” in them.157 These cumulated by capitalists, generating great inequalities
forms of institutionalized racism have generated ongo- of income and wealth.160 Like the historical injustices
ing racialized inequalities. of racism, this inequality is passed on across genera-
Therefore, a critical theory of racism should address tions through inequalities of social capital and wealth.
the historical injustice produced by racism with respect Consequently, insofar as these systemic class-based in-
to both global inequalities (for example, between colo- equalities are obscured in capitalist societies, we should
nizing and colonized states) and racialized inequalities not be surprised by the failure of historical memory in
within racial states. Globally and in particular racial these societies of the legacy of racial oppression, which
states there has been only limited support for this am- is more historically mediated.
bitious project.158 One significant obstacle concerns the Third, there is a tragic dimension to the historical in-
tendency of dominant groups and national populations justice of racism as it has been experienced by Blacks,
more generally “to minimize or deny what happened,” uprooted Indigenous peoples, murdered Jews, and colo-
as Adorno said of post-war Germans159 ; another con- nial subjects, among others. These deep injustices de-
cerns the psychological and material investments that mand acknowledgement, but no reparations could fully
dominant groups have in maintaining their status. Here compensate for the damage done. As the Black poet and
there is a vital need to work through the past in Adorno’s songwriter Gil Scott-Heron asked, “Who’ll pay repara-
sense. This task demands that a critical mass of people tions on my soul?”161


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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 431

NOTES 13. Among major postwar European intellectuals only

Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre explicitly linked Euro-
1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic pean fascism to European colonial racism. Several pre-war
of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. by Gunzelin and postwar Black intellectuals analyzed Western imperialism
Schmid Noerr; trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford and colonial racism, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright,
University Press, [1947] 2002), xiv. C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, Leopold Senghor, and Frantz
2. Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Fanon, whom I discuss. See Richard H. King, Race, Culture,
in Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970 (Baltimore: The Johns Hop-
Matthew J. O’Connell (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), 213– kins University Press, 2004), 14.
18. The name “critical theory” referred originally to the work 14. Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (New York:
of the Institute for Social Research, established in Frankfurt, Columbia University Press, 2005), 30.
Germany in the late 1920s. It is still used with reference to 15. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans.
the work by scholars in the Frankfurt School tradition. I use Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, [1961] 2004), 5.
“critical theory” with capital letters to distinguish this tradition 16. Ibid.
from other approaches to critical social theorizing. 17. I speak of “racialized” identity to signify that “race”
3. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: is a socially constructed product of “race” ideological processes
Vintage Books, 1994), 278. “whereby social significance is attached to certain (usually
4. Vincent Pecora has similarly detected “an implicit the- phenotypic) human features, on the basis of which those people
ory of imperialism and racism in Dialectic of Enlightenment.” possessing those characteristics are designated as a distinct
See Vincent P. Pecora, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, Critical The- collectivity” (Robert Miles, Racism [New York and London:
ory,” New German Critique, 53 (1991): 112 n. 15. For negative Routledge, 1989], 74).
assessments, see Ehrhard Bahr, “The Anti-Semitism Studies 18. See Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American
of the Frankfurt School: The Failure of Critical Theory,” Ger- Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), ch. 1.
man Studies Review 1 (1978): 125–38; Martin Jay, “The Jews 19. Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A
and the Frankfurt. School: Critical Theory’s Analysis of Anti- Response to Fraser,” in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redis-
Semitism,” New German Critique, 19, (1980): 137–49; Clay tribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange,
Steinman, “Beyond Eurocentrism: The Frankfurt School and trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram and Christiane Wilke (London
Whiteness Theory,” in Globalizing Critical Theory, ed. Max and New York: Verso, 2003), 152, 171.
Pensky (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). 20. Honneth, “The Point of Recognition: A Rejoinder to
5. Lucius Outlaw, Critical Social Theory in the Interests a Rejoinder,” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recog-
of Black Folks (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), nition? 250, 247. Honneth has not addressed racism in a sus-
93. tained way, although his theory of recognition has inspired
6. Ibid. efforts to explore these issues. See Melvin L. Rogers, “Reread-
7. Max Horkheimer and Samuel H. Flowerman, “Fore- ing Honneth: Exodus Politics and the Paradox of Recognition,”
word to Studies in Prejudice,” in Theodor W. Adorno et al., The European Journal of Political Theory 8, (2009): 183–206.
Authoritarian Personality (New York: W.W. Norton, 1950), vi; 21. Racial states, Étienne Balibar explains, are states that
Outlaw, Critical Social Theory, 94–5. are “inscribed in an institutional program of managing race re-
8. Max Horkheimer, draft of letter to Harold Laski, lations or, rather, racist conflicts and representations” (“Racism
March 10, 1941, quoted in Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frank- Revisited: Sources, Relevance, and Aporias of a Modern Con-
furter Schule: Geschichte Theoretische Entwicklung Politische cept,” PMLA 123, [2008]: 1636).
Bedeutung (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1987), 22. See Outlaw, “Lifeworlds, Modernity, and Philosoph-
347. Michael Robertson, who translated the book into English, ical Praxis.”
“corrected” Horkheimer’s English wording of this passage in 23. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 57–8; McCarthy,
his translation. See Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its Race, Empire, ch. 4.
History, Theories, and Political Significance, trans. Michael 24. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface,” in Fanon, Wretched of
Robertson (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 1995), 309–10 and the Earth, lvii.
690 n. 124. Robertson also failed to note clearly that this pas- 25. Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” 211.
sage was in Horkheimer’s draft of his letter to Laski but not the 26. Ibid., 213–18.
letter that he sent to Laski (Rolf Wiggershaus, private commu- 27. Theodor W. Adorno, “Research Project on Anti-
nication to the author, March 20, 2014). Semitism: Idea of the Project,” in Adorno, The Stars Down
9. Lucius Outlaw, Jr., “Lifeworlds, Modernity, and Philo- to Earth and other essays on the Irrational in Culture, ed.
sophical Praxis: Race, Ethnicity, and Critical Social Theory,” Stephen Crook (London: Routledge, 1994), 181–230; Wigger-
in Culture and Modernity: East–West Philosophic Perspec- shaus, Frankfurt School, 350–80; Jack Jacobs, “Horkheimer,
tives, ed. Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, Adorno, and the Significance of Anti-Semitism: The Exile
1991), 21–49; Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy (New York and Years,” in Exile, Science, and Bildung: The Contested Legacies
London: Routledge, 1996), Outlaw, Critical Social Theory. of German Émigré Intellectuals, eds. David Kettler and Ger-
10. Outlaw, Critical Social Theory, 81–106. Outlaw hard Lauer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
maintained that during their stay in the U.S A., Frankfurt 2005), 157–68. Ehrhard Bahr notes that the Frankfurt School
School theorists became focused less and less on anti-Semitism theorists were slow to address this matter given the events in
in particular and “increasingly on prejudice” (ibid., 94). Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1938. See Bahr, “The Anti-
11. Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire, and the Idea Semitism Studies of the Frankfurt School,” 126–27.
of Human Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University 28. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
Press, 2009). ment, 172; Horkheimer and Flowerman, “Foreword to Studies
12. Axel Honneth, “Reply to Andreas Kalyvas, ‘Critical in Prejudice,” v–vii; Horkheimer, “Preface,” in Adorno, The
Theory at the Crossroads: Comments on Axel Honneth’s The- Authoritarian Personality, ix. Adorno later said, “The ‘Ele-
ory of Recognition,’” European Journal of Social Theory 2, ments of Anti-Semitism’ theoretically shifted racial prejudice
(1999): 249. into the context of an objectively oriented critical theory of


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432 Constellations Volume 22, Number 3, 2015

society,” while The Authoritarian Personality focused on psy- 54. Max Horkheimer and Samuel H. Flowerman, “Fore-
chological aspects of the problem. See Theodor W. Adorno, word to Studies in Prejudice,” in Adorno et al., The Authori-
“Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America,” tarian Personality, v–vii.
in Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, 55. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University ment, 140. Adorno later remarked, “Tomorrow a group other
Press, 2005), 230. than the Jews may come along, say the elderly, who were in-
29. Max Horkheimer, “The Jews and Europe,” in Crit- deed still spared in the Third Reich, or the intellectuals, or sim-
ical Theory and Society: A Reader, eds. Stephen Eric Bron- ply deviant groups” (“Education after Auschwitz,” in Adorno,
ner and Douglas MacKay Kellner (New York and London: Critical Models, 203).
Routledge, 1989), 77–94; Adorno, “Research Project on Anti- 56. Ibid., 167.
Semitism.” 57. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 78–79.
30. Theodor Adorno, Letter to Horkheimer, October, 58. In The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno and his
1941, quoted in Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 309. colleagues examined anti-Semitism, “prejudice,” and “ethno-
31. Max Horkheimer, “Notes on Horkheimer’s Re- centrism” but without a comparison to racism against Blacks or
marks,” in Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, XVII, 521–22, Native Americans. See Theodor W. Adorno et al., “Introduc-
quoted in Jacobs, “Horkheimer, Adorno, and the Significance tion,” to The Authoritarian Personality, reprinted in Critical
of Anti-Semitism,” 163. Theory and Society, 219; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 365;
32. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlight- Steinman, “Beyond Eurocentrism.”
enment, xvi; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 59. Neil MacMaster distinguishes two paradigmatic
“Introduction to the Holocaust,” n.d., accessed March 28, 2008, forms of European racism in the 19th and 20th centuries:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId “anti-black racism with its historic roots in slavery and
=10005143. colonial conquest, and racial anti-Semitism grounded in a
33. Ibid., xvii, 138. totally different tradition of Christian oppression” (Racism
34. Ibid., xvi. in Europe, 1870–2000 [Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave,
35. Ibid., xiv. 2001], 2).
36. Theodor W. Adorno, “Is Marx Obsolete?,” Diogenes 60. Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe,
16 (1968): 1–16; Moishe Postone, “Critique, state, and econ- 186.
omy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, ed. 61. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 154.
Fred Rush (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 62. Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, in Adorno,
165–93. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1970),
37. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- 487, quoted in Michael Cahn, “Subversive Mimesis: Theodor
ment, 172. W. Adorno and the Modern Impasse of Critique,” in Mimesis in
38. Ibid. Contemporary Theory: An Interdisciplinary Approach: Volume
39. Ibid., 142. 1: The Literary and Philosophical Debate, ed. Mihai Spar-
40. Ibid., 137. iosu (Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1984),
41. Ibid., 138–39. 34.
42. See also Max Horkheimer, “Sociological Back- 63. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
ground of the Psychoanalytic Approach,” in Anti-Semitism: ment, 148.
A Social Disease, ed. Ernst Simmel (New York: Interna- 64. Andreas Huyssen, “Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading
tional University Press, 1946), 7; Theodor W. Adorno, Min- Spiegelman with Adorno,” New German Critique, 81 (2000):
ima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. 72.
Jephcott (London and New York: Verso, 2005), 110. 65. Cahn, “Subversive Mimesis,” 34.
43. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- 66. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectic (New York:
ment, 143. Continuum, 1973), 149–50.
44. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- 67. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
ment, 141; Theodor W. Adorno, “The Meaning of Working ment, 11.
through the Past,” in Adorno, Critical Models, 95. 68. Ibid., pp. 10–11; Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catas-
45. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- trophe, 184.
ment, 137. 69. Ibid., 154.
46. Theodor W. Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” 70. Ibid.
(1942), in Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical 71. Ibid.
Reader, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer- 72. Ibid., 148–49.
sity Press, 2003), 96. 73. Ibid., 153, 159, 165.
47. Ibid., 99, 102–05. 74. Ibid., 154, 156.
48. Max Horkheimer, “Zur Soziologie der Klassen- 75. Ibid., 155.
verhältnisse” (1943), in Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte 76. Ibid., 150.
Schriften, vol. 12 (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 101–04, quoted 77. Ibid.
in Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, “Editor’s Afterword,” in Dialectic 78. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 68.
of Enlightenment, 236. 79. Ibid. One feature of the Nazi’s political anti-
49. Ibid. Semitism was a routinized mimicry of “the Jew” that
50. Adorno, “Research Project on Anti-Semitism,” 182. Horkheimer and Adorno regarded as the “mimesis of mime-
51. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- sis”: “There is no anti-Semite who does not feel an instinc-
ment, 137. tive urge to ape what he takes to be Jewishness” (Dialectic of
52. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 234. Enlightenment, 151).
53. Anson Rabinbach, In the of Catastrophe: Ger- 80. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
man Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment ment, xiv.
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 81. Ibid., 165.
187–88. 82. Ibid.


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 Decolonizing Critical Theory: Bruce Baum 433

83. Ibid., 139. I leave aside their dubious claim here that European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge,
Jews sought to “appease evil” by seeking to “resemble” anti- MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Sandro Mezzadra points
Semitic stereotypes of “the Jew.” out that once we consider the global history of modernity we
84. Theodor W. Adorno, “Discussion of Professor find “how contested, limited and contradictory the deployment
Adorno’s Lecture ‘The Meaning of Working through the Past,’” of the abstract standards of citizenship and ‘free’ wage labour”
in Adorno, Critical Models, 297–99. was even within European history (“How many histories of
85. Adorno, Negative Dialectic, 203–4. labour?”, 157).
86. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 103. 112. Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Re-
87. Ibid., 102. sponse to Fraser,” 171.
88. Ibid., 103. 113. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 2–23; Charles W.
89. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
ment, 138. Press, 1997).
90. Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian 114. Frantz Fanon, “Racism and Culture,” in Fanon, To-
Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (New York: New ward the African Revolution, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New
York University Press, 2006), ch. 6. York: Grove Press, 1967), 38; Axel Honneth, The Struggle for
91. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 103. Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans.
92. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- Joel Anderson (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 128–30.
ment, 147. 115. Winant, World is a Ghetto; Ulrich Beck, Power in
93. Jan Plug, “Idiosyncrasies: of anti-Semitism,” in Lan- the Global Age, trans. Kathleen Cross (Cambridge and Malden,
guage without Soil: Adorno and Late Philosophical Modernity, MA: Polity Press, 2006), 24–34, 227.
ed. Gerhard Richter (New York: Fordham University Press, 116. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, chaps. 5 & 7; Hon-
2010), 58. neth, “Redistribution as Recognition,” 162; Glen S. Coulthard,
94. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of
ment, 160–69; Theodor W. Adorno and Hellmut Becker, “Ed- Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6
ucation for maturity and responsibility,” History of the Human (2007): 437–60.
Sciences 12 (1999): 21–34. 117. W.E.B. Du Bois earlier had noted that in the late 19th
95. Dan Diner, “Reason and the ‘Other’: Horkheimer’s century U.S.A. racialized whiteness gave poor and working-
Reflections on Anti-Semitism and Mass Annihilation,” in class whites a “public and psychological wage” that partly
On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, ed. Seyla Benhabib, offset their subordinate class position in the emerging cap-
‫‏‬Wolfgang Bonss, and ‫‏‬John McCole (Cambridge, MA: MIT italist economy. See W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction
Press, 1993), 335–63; Plug, “Idiosyncrasies.” in the United States, 1860–1880 (New York [1935] 1977),
96. Adorno, “Working through the Past,” 90. 700–1.
97. Ibid., 90, 92. 118. Nancy Fraser, “Another Pragmatism: Alain Locke,
98. Adorno, “Discussion of Professor Adorno’s Lec- Critical ‘Race’ Theory, and the Politics of Culture,” in The
ture,” 295; Adorno, “Working through the Past,” 91. Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law,
99. Adorno, “Working through the Past,” 344–45 n. 11. and Culture, ed. Morris Dickerstein (Durham: Duke University
100. Ibid., Adorno, “Discussion of Professor Adorno’s Press, 1998); Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Poli-
Lecture,” 296. tics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” in Tanner
101. Adorno, “Working through the Past,” pp. 90, 99; Lectures on Human Values, vol. 19, ed. Grethe B. Peterson (Salt
Adorno, “Discussion of Professor Adorno’s Lecture,” 296. Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998).
102. Adorno, “Discussion of Professor Adorno’s Lec- 119. Max Weber, “Postscript: The Concepts of Status
ture,” 296–99; Adorno, “Working through the Past,” 102. Groups and Classes,” in Max Weber: Selections in Translation,
103. Adorno, “Education after Auschwitz,” 203. ed. W.G. Runciman (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
104. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 4–6; Anson Rabin- University Press, 1978), 60.
bach, “‘Why Were the Jews Sacrificed?’: The Place of Anti- 120. Ibid., 60, 61.
semitism in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlight- 121. Max Weber, “The Distribution of Power within the
enment,” in Adorno: A Critical Reader, ed. Nigel Gibson and Political Community: Class, Status, Party,” in Weber, Economy
Andrew Rubin (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, vol. 2, eds.
132. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of
105. George Steinmetz, “Decolonizing German The- California Press, 1978), 937.
ory,” Postcolonial Studies 9 (2006): 3; MacMaster, Racism 122. George M. Fredrickson, “Reflections on the Com-
in Europe, ch. 2. parative History and Sociology of Racism,” in Racism, ed.
106. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- Leonard Harris (Humanities Press, 1999), 335.
ment, 165, xiv. 123. Winant, The World is a Ghetto, Part II.
107. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. 124. Fanon, “Racism and Culture”; Étienne Balibar, “Is
Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, [1952] 2008), 101. there a ‘Neo-Racism’?” In Étienne Balibar and Immanuel
108. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 5. Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, trans.
109. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 178. Chris Turner (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 17–28.
110. Sandro Mezzadra, “How many histories of labour? 125. Fraser, ““Social Justice,” 39.
Towards a theory of postcolonial capitalism,” Postcolonial 126. Miles, Racism, 121–31; Fredrickson, “Reflec-
Studies 14 (2011): 151–70. I put “free” in quotes to indicate, tions”; Fraser, “Social Justice,” 8–9.
following Marx and Messadra, that while wage labor includes 127. Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire”; Andrea Smith,
an element of freedom compared to coercive labor regimes, it “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy,” in
is not fully non-coerced. Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Daniel Mar-
111. Howard Winant, The World is a Ghetto: Race and tinez HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido (Berkeley
Democracy since World War II (New York: Basic Books, and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012).
2001. Racial “whiteness” has had historically shifting bound- 128. “Fraser, “Social Justice,” 18.
aries (Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: 129. Winant, World is a Ghetto, 133ff.


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434 Constellations Volume 22, Number 3, 2015

130. Bhikhu Parekh, “Achieving Racial Equality,” in 147. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, xiii, 206.
Ethnicity, Social Mobility, and Public Policy: Comparing the 148. Parekh, “Achieving Racial Equality,” 610.
USA and UK, eds. Glenn C. Loury, Tariq Modood, and Steven 149. Winant, World is a Ghetto, Part II.
M. Teles (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 150. Fanon, “Racism and Culture”; Étienne Balibar, “Is
2005), 602–17. there a ‘Neo-Racism’?,” in Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein,
131. Outlaw, Critical Social Theory, 90. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, 17–28.
132. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten- 151. Smith, “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White
ment, 165. Supremacy,” 69.
133. Outlaw, Critical Social Theory, 97–8. 152. Duncan Ivison, “Historical Injustice,” in The
134. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 103. Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, eds. John S. Dryzek,
135. Linda Martı́n Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gen- Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University
der, and the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 287. Press, 2006), 50.
136. Outlaw, Critical Social Theory, 101; McCarthy, 153. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, pp. 57–8.
Race, Empire, 14 n. 26. 154. Ibid.
137. Ibid. 155. Winant, World is a Ghetto, chaps. 2–3; McCarthy,
138. Theodor W. Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Race, Empire, chaps. 6–7.
Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” in The Essential Frankfurt 156. Winant, World is a Ghetto; Carole Pateman and
School Reader, eds. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New Charles W. Mills, Contract and Domination (Malden, MA:
York: Continuum, 1985), 128–34; Alfred J. Lopez, Post- Polity Press, 2007); Smith, “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism,
colonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire White Supremacy.”
(Albany: SUNY Press, 2005). 157. McCarthy, Race, Empire, 123; Coulthard, “Subjects
139. Alcoff, Visible Identities, 179–204. of Empire.”
140. Joe L. Kincheloe, “The Struggle to Define and 158. Winant, World is a Ghetto; Naomi Klein, “Mi-
Reinvent Whiteness: A Pedagogical Analysis,” College Lit- nority Death Match: Jews, Blacks, and the ‘Post-Racial’
erature 26 (1999): 1–19. Presidency,” Harper’s Magazine (2009).accessed June 30,
141. Lawrence Blum, “Multiculturalism, Racial Justice, 2015, http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/08/minority-
and Community: Reflections on Charles Taylor’s ‘The Pol- death-match-jews-blacks-and-post-racial-presidency.
itics of Recognition,’” in Defending Diversity: Contempo- 159. Adorno, “Meaning of Working through the Past,”
rary Philosophical Perspectives on Pluralism and Diversity, 90.
eds. L. Foster and P. Herzog (Amherst, MA: University of 160. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlighten-
Massachusetts Press, 1994); Charles Taylor, “The Politics ment, 142; Adorno, “Is Marx Obsolete?,” 5.
of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics 161. Gil Scott-Heron, “Who’ll Pay Reparations on My
of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Soul?,” Small Talk at 125th Lennox (Flying Dutchman, 1970).
University Press, 1994), 25–73.
142. Blum, “Multiculturalism, Racial Justice and Com-
munity,” 188–89. Bruce Baum is Associate Professor of Political Science
143. Ibid., 189.
at the University of British Columbia. He is author of
144. Ibid.
145. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 103. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race (2006) and
146. Blum, ““Multiculturalism, Racial Justice,” 189. The Post-Liberal Imagination (2015).


C 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.