%0 Journal Article
%T The dialectic of critique and progress:  Comparing Peter Wagner and Theodor Adorno
%A Pauline Johnson
%J European Journal of Social Theory
%@ 1461-7137
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1368431017713889
%X As long as critique trails in the wake of progress, a more radical game-changing interest in its reconstruction remains blocked. This article will contrast the reforming approach adopted by Peter Wagner with Theodor Adorno¡¯s attempt to reconstruct the normative foundations of historical progress. The intention here is to use the radicalism of Adorno¡¯s critical recovery of this ideal in order to clarify and strengthen the social democratic utopianism that underlies Wagner¡¯s reconstruction of progress. The final section of the article extends the significance of this modelling of the dialectics between critique and progress, using it to guide a brief evaluation of some attempts to reclaim critique from its histories of complicity in repressive, Eurocentric versions of historical progress
%K Adorno
%K critique
%K Eurocentrism
%K progress
%K Wagner
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1368431017713889