James Crane
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jamescrane.bsky.social
James Crane
@jamescrane.bsky.social
editor @ critical theory working group:
https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/
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Just began working on organizing the blog & converting to shareable PDFs, & it’s going to be a big project! For life reasons, it’s going to be harder for me to keep going now, so any support would be crazy appreciated! & thanks for reading & sharing Substudies!

open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
Reposted by James Crane
average letter from Adorno to Horkheimer in 1936/37 looked like this lol
January 23, 2026 at 6:05 AM
average letter from Adorno to Horkheimer in 1936/37 looked like this lol
January 23, 2026 at 6:05 AM
graphic design is my passion
January 23, 2026 at 12:25 AM
January 23, 2026 at 12:12 AM
get a load of this crock
January 21, 2026 at 10:06 PM
boy do i love jars
January 21, 2026 at 9:59 PM
had a vision of an instagram inspo quote graphic that said something like ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU NOT TO PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET… MUST NOT BE LAYING AS MANY EGGS 😂
January 21, 2026 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by James Crane
Wreckers of Civilisation since 1871 // Zerstörer der Zivilisation seit 1871.
January 21, 2026 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by James Crane
The new issue of Diacritics is on Walter Benjamin's short text "Fate and Character", edited by @tomvandeputte.bsky.social and others. I was so happy to contribute a text on "Liberation"
muse.jhu.edu/issue/56198
January 21, 2026 at 8:27 AM
well well well look who woke up from nap number ♾️ today to slime over to the kitchen to ask for some savory surprise. it still has 12+ hours to slow cook & is full of what to you are poisons
January 21, 2026 at 3:59 AM
Night Madness or Mud Madness? You Decide…
January 21, 2026 at 3:20 AM
cold asf again… crock pot is on… time for some slow cooked “savory surprise”
January 21, 2026 at 3:19 AM
Emmy Bridgwater, The Land of Birds (c.1950)
January 20, 2026 at 7:32 PM
to the guy in the crane elevator box repairing the power lines on my block audibly going “HEE HEE HEE HEE” while using his control pad to make the box go up & down again while he’s in it: hell yeah live your truth
January 20, 2026 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by James Crane
Finished translating the lecture & discussion notes from the ISR internal seminar on Horkheimer’s “State Capitalism” essay—the early draft of “Authoritarian State,” co-authored with Adorno! check it out 🔗 ⬇️

open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
January 20, 2026 at 8:55 AM
Reposted by James Crane
some spicy stuff in here: like Adorno-Horkheimer’s defense of the common criminal element over political criminals, & pointing out the petty-bourgeois ressentiment of party communists who accuse everything of being petty-bourgeois
January 20, 2026 at 9:18 AM
some spicy stuff in here: like Adorno-Horkheimer’s defense of the common criminal element over political criminals, & pointing out the petty-bourgeois ressentiment of party communists who accuse everything of being petty-bourgeois
January 20, 2026 at 9:18 AM
Finished translating the lecture & discussion notes from the ISR internal seminar on Horkheimer’s “State Capitalism” essay—the early draft of “Authoritarian State,” co-authored with Adorno! check it out 🔗 ⬇️

open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
January 20, 2026 at 8:55 AM
Reposted by James Crane
From Horkheimer & Adorno’s notes for an internal seminar on a draft of the essay “Authoritarian State,” published in ‘42 under Horkheimer’s name but written w/ Adorno in ‘40 under the title “State Capitalism” (where they really advance an alternative concept of SC to Pollock’s)
January 19, 2026 at 8:49 AM
From Horkheimer & Adorno’s notes for an internal seminar on a draft of the essay “Authoritarian State,” published in ‘42 under Horkheimer’s name but written w/ Adorno in ‘40 under the title “State Capitalism” (where they really advance an alternative concept of SC to Pollock’s)
January 19, 2026 at 8:49 AM
Benjamin to Horkheimer 12/6/37: Ed at ‘Mass & Wert’ said my ISR profile ‘must not be communist,’ needs ‘limiting.’ What do I tell le Dauphin.

H to B 12/17: Please feign shock at the implication we’re communists. Maybe use words like ‘culture-philosophical’—if you can stomach it.
January 18, 2026 at 10:31 PM
she has long had a curiosity about scarves so we are trying it out
January 18, 2026 at 5:22 PM
well well well if it isn’t the welcome wagon to goblin town welcome to goblin town i guess
January 16, 2026 at 10:00 PM
Clemens Brentano was funny as hell he really titled a story
January 16, 2026 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by James Crane
Löwenthal is credited as a co-author of the first 3 Theses of Elements of Anti-Semitism in the DoE Preface, but wasn’t until I found these unpublished notes—on Projection, Reification, Fascism—that I appreciated how weird & important an interlocutor he was for A&H. open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
Projection, Reification, Fascism—Leo Löwenthal (1943/44)
Unpublished Sketches for “Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment.”
open.substack.com
January 16, 2026 at 8:48 AM