Bureaucratically Distorted Communication: The Case of Managed Mental Health Care

My recent article from Social Theory & Health 14(4), September 2016. Abstract Mental health treatment providers today are subject to insurance company regulation. Using grounded theory to analyze 33 interviews of treatment providers, I portray this regulation as a form of surveillance that operates through discourse, and ask how treatment providers communicate with and through this system. … Read more

Adorno – Lecture 1 on Negative Dialectics: “The Concept of Contradiction” (11/9/1965)

This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Adorno denotes non-identity as a central motif of his negative dialectics, distinguishing it from the more typical ‘positive’ dialectics epitomized in Hegel. In … Read more

Towards a New Manifesto

*This is reblogged from The Utopian, originally posted on 6/27/2012. By Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. “We cannot call for the defence of the Western world.” In 1956, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer sat down to write an updated version of the Communist Manifesto. These are previously unpublished notes from their discussions. 12 March 1956 … Read more

Marcuse – “Philosophy and Critical Theory”

This is the first installment of what I intend to be an ongoing personal blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I will provide summaries and brief reflections of writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Because I am personally drawn toward epistemology, first generation Frankfurt School, Foucault and Deleuze, these … Read more