Departures: Space in the Frankfurt School

The theme issue Departures charts the formative significance of space, spatiality, and geography in the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory and its political relevance to the present. For Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and others associated with the first generation of the Institute for Social Research, the spatial experience of displacement, exile, and migration played a crucial role in shaping the orientation of critical thought. And yet, while geographical motifs of negativity, unmooring, and boundary crossing imbue the writings of the Frankfurt School theorists, the actual relationship between space and critical theory has received relatively little scholarly attention. The theme issue develops a robust spatial reading of critical theory by fostering a collective dialogue among scholars across disciplines, drawing on the Frankfurt School tradition to investigate the problem of space in its connection to everyday praxis, critique, and struggles for social transformation.