Hating Theory: Reading the Right Reading the Frankfurt School

Even before the first Trump election, scholars of German literature and intellectual history noticed something strange: close allies of the president talked regularly about critical theory. The phobic fascination that figures like Andrew Breitbart, Steve Bannon, and Richard Spencer evinced with Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse did not come from nowhere; nor was it only a North American phenomenon. In Europe and Latin America, too, conservative intellectuals have demonstrated intense interest in theoretical traditions that they blame for civilizational disorder and decline, from French post-structuralism to gender studies to critical race theory; under the banner of opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, some of the same preoccupations have recently appeared in East Asian media as well. 

This talk will present three case studies of how avowedly right wing, conservative, and nationalist figures have read the Frankfurt School, analyzing exposés of “cultural marxism” that date to the 1990s, explainers of “CRT” for conservative audiences published around 2020, and readings of “Theory” offered by prominent venture capitalists and CEOs in Silicon Valley. Drawing on scholarship in the history of the book and the sociology of literature, as well as in media studies, I argue that these cases all constitute versions of “hate reading”–that is, of interpretive practice that defines the interpreter in contradistinction to their object. However, these versions of hate reading differ in their affective structure, as well as their purpose. While media and communication scholars have paid a great deal of attention to conspiracism and disinformation of the kind that discourse about “cultural marxism” exemplifies, I urge us to attend to how feelings about and against theory consolidate new empiricisms and alliances “up the network.” 

Moira Weigel is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard. Her research and teaching focus on the history and theory of media technologies. Her articles have appeared in New Media and Society, Social Media + Society, International Journal of Communication, Polity, boundary 2, and the Germanic Review, among other places. Her most recent book, with Ben Tarnoff, is Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do And How They Do It (2020).