Critical Theory in Revolt:How Angela Davis and the New Left Remade the Frankfurt School

A radical reinterpretation of Frankfurt School history based on new archival material.

What if the history of the Frankfurt School were told not through academia, but through activism?

This book uncovers how, amid the anticolonial and youth revolts of the 1960s, a generation of student organizers—from Angela Davis to Hans-Jürgen Krahl—revived the Frankfurt School’s anti-fascist ideas to fight for liberation movements across the globe. By tracing this grassroots transformation of Critical Theory, Sebastian restores its place as a living tradition of social critique dedicated to emancipation rather than an academic inheritance confined to the university. | Cecilia Sebastian is a JD Candidate in the Academic Scholars Program at Columbia Law School. She holds a PhD from Yale University and has written previously for Jacobin, New German Critique, Polity, and Oxford University Press. She was awarded the Polity Prize for best research article in 2024.