NEW CONTRIBUTIONS FOR A NON-EUROCENTRIC CRITICAL THEORY

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: It was in 1923, with the Erste marxistische Arbeitswoche [First Week of Marxist Academic Work] in the German state of Thüringen, that the first scientific structures were established that later led to the foundation of the Institut für Sozialforschung [Institute for Social Research] in the city of Frankfurt am Main. Today, more than a hundred years later, there are different ways of interpreting the relevance of this theoretical tradition. The easiest and most usual is to re-nationalize it in German culture and re-municipalize it in the cultural and scientific heritage of Frankfurt. However, it is still not possible to completely deny that Critical Theory could only be saved as a scientific and institutional project, just as its members could only save their lives by leaving Frankfurt, Germany and Europe as soon as possible. The only one who delayed his departure from this continent, Walter Benjamin, paid for it with his arrest in the Pyrenees, on the border of France with Spain and chose suicide in the face of the threat of being deported to Germany, that is, heading for the National Socialist extermination camps.