Description:

The Andean Cultures and Histories working group and the Dept of German present Prof. Rocío Zambrana (U. or Oregon):

"Notes for a Decolonial Critical Theory: Critique in Adorno & Horkheimer, Castro-Gomez and Quijano"

This seminar aims to reflect on the very idea of critique by considering the points of convergence and divergence between Frankfurt School critical theory and Decolonial thought. I seek to rethink the logic of critique in a decolonial key by distilling and assessing conceptions of modernity, rationality, and totality within a selection of Adorno and Horkheimer, Santiago Castro-Gómez, and Aníbal Quijano’s texts.

Prof. Zambrana’s work examines conceptions of critique in Kant and German Idealism (especially Hegel), Marx and Frankfurt School Critical Theory, and Decolonial Thought. Her first book, Hegel’s Theory of Intelligibility (U Chicago, 2015), offers an interpretation of the Science of Logic in light of revisionist readings of Hegel. Her second book, Neoliberal Coloniality, Critique, Resistance, develops the concept "neoliberal coloniality" and reconstructs critique as resistance in conversation with Marx and first generation Frankfurt School critical theory, Puerto Rican social and political criticism, and Decolonial thought.