Matthew Handelman
Biographic Data
| ID | 4194763 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Handelman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Handelman |
| SIGNATURE | HANDELMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8078-0224 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 5 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Mirror of Critical Theory
A conspiracy theory surrounding the Frankfurt School has entered the mainstream. Popular in conservative media and even the current White House, the theory holds that the thinkers of the Frankfurt School are to blame for the rise of political correctness and identity politics, political polarization, and the disintegration of the so-called American way of life. The longer history of the conspiracy theory has four distinct phases, which start in c…
Walter Benjamin and the Networks of the Frankfurter Zeitung
The Frankfurter Zeitung offered an important if also often unreliable publishing venue for Walter Benjamin during the Weimar Republic. Many texts central to Benjamin’s literary and theoretical corpus appeared in the newspaper’s wellrespected feuilleton, from the Denkbilder of Einbahnstraße and some of the vignettes of Berliner Kindheit to his essays on figures like Karl Kraus. At the same time, many of Benjamin’s pieces, such as his essay on Bert…
Artificial Antisemitism
This article is a critical genealogy of Tay, an artificial-intelligence chatbot that Microsoft released on Twitter in 2016, which was quickly hijacked by internet trolls to reproduce racist, misogynist, and antisemitic language. Tay's repetition and production of hate speech calls for an approach that draws on both media and cultural theory—the Frankfurt School's dialectical analyses of language and ideology, in particular. Revisiting the Frankfu…
The Mathematical Imagination
The Mathematical Imagination is an archaeology of the undeveloped potential of mathematics for critical theory. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno first conceived of the critical project in the 1930s, critical theory steadfastly opposed the mathematization of thought. Mathematics flattened thought into a dangerous positivism that led reason to the barbarism of the Second World War. The Mathematical Imagination challenges this narrative and a…
After Language as Such
This article investigates a forgotten essay contest proposed by Gershom Scholem to Werner Kraft in the wake of Walter Benjamin's seminal text “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man” (1916). Intent on completing Benjamin's language essay by focusing on the relationship among language, symbolism, and mathematics, the contest and conversation sparked by Benjamin explores the enigmatic proposition with which his essay leaves off: that langua…
Artificial Antisemitism
This article is a critical genealogy of Tay, an artificial-intelligence chatbot that Microsoft released on Twitter in 2016, which was quickly hijacked by internet trolls to reproduce racist, misogynist, and antisemitic language. Tay's repetition and production of hate speech calls for an approach that draws on both media and cultural theory—the Frankfurt School's dialectical analyses of language and ideology, in particular. Revisiting the Frankfu…
After Language as Such
This article investigates a forgotten essay contest proposed by Gershom Scholem to Werner Kraft in the wake of Walter Benjamin's seminal text “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man” (1916). Intent on completing Benjamin's language essay by focusing on the relationship among language, symbolism, and mathematics, the contest and conversation sparked by Benjamin explores the enigmatic proposition with which his essay leaves off: that langua…
The Mathematical Imagination
The Mathematical Imagination is an archaeology of the undeveloped potential of mathematics for critical theory. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno first conceived of the critical project in the 1930s, critical theory steadfastly opposed the mathematization of thought. Mathematics flattened thought into a dangerous positivism that led reason to the barbarism of the Second World War. The Mathematical Imagination challenges this narrative and a…
Artificial Antisemitism
This article is a critical genealogy of Tay, an artificial-intelligence chatbot that Microsoft released on Twitter in 2016, which was quickly hijacked by internet trolls to reproduce racist, misogynist, and antisemitic language. Tay's repetition and production of hate speech calls for an approach that draws on both media and cultural theory—the Frankfurt School's dialectical analyses of language and ideology, in particular. Revisiting the Frankfu…
Walter Benjamin and the Networks of the Frankfurter Zeitung
The Frankfurter Zeitung offered an important if also often unreliable publishing venue for Walter Benjamin during the Weimar Republic. Many texts central to Benjamin’s literary and theoretical corpus appeared in the newspaper’s wellrespected feuilleton, from the Denkbilder of Einbahnstraße and some of the vignettes of Berliner Kindheit to his essays on figures like Karl Kraus. At the same time, many of Benjamin’s pieces, such as his essay on Bert…
The Mirror of Critical Theory
A conspiracy theory surrounding the Frankfurt School has entered the mainstream. Popular in conservative media and even the current White House, the theory holds that the thinkers of the Frankfurt School are to blame for the rise of political correctness and identity politics, political polarization, and the disintegration of the so-called American way of life. The longer history of the conspiracy theory has four distinct phases, which start in c…
Philosophy (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · History (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Art history (2 works) · Art, Politics, and Modernism (2 works) · Critical theory (2 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (2 works) · Judaism (2 works)