Famously, perhaps the most famous examination of the antinomies of European Enlightenment contains no sustained discussion of the barbarism of modern colonialism and imperialism. Yes, “the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant” (Adorno and Horkheimer 3). But addressed to the ruins of fascist Europe, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's document does not, perhaps cannot, undertake the further melancholic task of properly comparing such remains to the continuing ruinations of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the oceanic zones of the world. Such was the charge laid against the Frankfurt School by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism (1993), and his insights may be taken as a reliable index of the love-hate relationship between postcolonial studies and critical theory that has prevailed ever since.
Yet as such recent collections as Penelope Deutscher and Cristina Lafont's Critical Theory in Critical Times (2017) show, Horkheimer and Adorno remain indispensable for...
