Viewpoint Magazine
Remembering May
On the fiftieth anniversary of May 1968, we reproduce two new oral histories with three women who took part in those turbulent events.
Hans-Jürgen Krahl (1943-1970)
For Anglophone readers, Hans-Jürgen Krahl’s name is most distinctive as a marker for a possible alternative path within the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Yet setting aside speculation over varied intellectual genealogies, Krahl’s theoretical work is most distinctive because of the thoroughly conjunctural character of his writings.
Hans-Jürgen Krahl, For and Against Critical Theory: Introduction
For Anglophone readers, Hans-Jürgen Krahl’s name is most distinctive as a marker for a possible alternative path within the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. 1 As a leader of the German student movement, Krahl had clashed with the earlier generation of Frankfurt School theorists. While this excludes Herbert Marcuse, who remained steadfast in his support of the student movement, Krahl’s… Read more →
Hans-Jürgen Krahl: New Emancipative Desires (1943-1970)
Anti-authoritarian Movements in Late Capitalist Society Hans-Jürgen Krahl’s name is indissolubly linked to the German ’68. His death, following a February 1970 car accident, was felt as an undeniable loss for the emancipation movement in the metropolises. “The short political biography of Hans-Jürgen Krahl, whose agitating activity and theoretical work contributed significantly in determining the politics of the protest… Read more →
Personal Information
Providing personal information does not mean, even when facing a tribunal such as this, that what is defined is what still today is mockingly called “personality.” 1 Instead, it involves tracing the background contours of experience which gave rise to the process of politicization and thus also the anti-authoritarian phase of the student movement. And as regards my person, they… Read more →
Krahl and His Conjuncture: An Interview with Detlev Claussen
The following interview was conducted on July 23rd, 2017 with Detlev Claussen, Hans-Jürgen Krahl’s comrade in the German student movement, including the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), founded as the collegiate branch of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). We would like to thank Dietmar Lange for his assistance, especially concerning the relationship between German groups and Italian workerism. … Read more →
“A Work of the Self on the Self…”: Krahl and Intellectual Labor
1968 Hans-Jürgen Krahl is one of the most important figures of the German ’68. A banal observation, and yet one that signals a profound necessity. His multiple theoretical urgings, the intuitions and cutting polemics that he knew how to stir up – above all, the famous one against Habermas, to which we will turn shortly – must always be read… Read more →
Krahl, Panzieri, and Technological Capitalism
Humans’ capacity to abstract from nature, which they belong to as corporeal individuals, is their capacity for emancipation. —Hans-Jürgen Krahl Introduction My hypothesis in this essay is that a line of continuity runs between the thought of Raniero Panzieri and Hans-Jürgen Krahl. Both share implicit and explicit concerns and insights with the Frankfurt School. It is well-known that Krahl… Read more →
Subjectivity and Class Composition: Methodological Notes on Krahl and Negri
“Why do those who have no need for it take up the red flag?” “It is humanity that understands itself in activity.” 1 With this quote from Bloch, Hans-Jürgen Krahl concludes the brief political autobiography he wrote while facing the trial that saw him and several of his comrades tried for protest actions against the conferring of the peace prize… Read more →
Class Struggles in Advanced Capitalism: Adventures of the Dialectic in the Work of Hans-Jürgen Krahl
For Krahl, constitution is the engendering of modes of thought – knowledges, ideology, practical reason, arts, etc. – in and through the originary synthesis of the social totality.