Abstract

It is easy to sympathize with the contemporary urge to be post something. But if the affix is to have historical cogency, it must be restricted to: Post Late-Capitalism. We are back to that beginning, where the pristine blossoms with a stale exhalation. This is why the conference question — “Does Critical Theory Have A Future?” — seems so weirdly chipper: as if the Future were straight ahead and doubt overshadows just this one paper boat — Critical Theory — as it sails out of pre-war Germany onto the high seas of all time-to-come. Will Critical Theory make it? Probably not, it is implied. So far as this Future is concerned, leaving everything behind, stamped “obsolete,” is a matter of principle.