The trade in philosophical ideas: The French proponents of the Frankfurt School's "critical theory"

It took some time for French readers to develop an interest in the Frankfurt School. Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno, as a musicologist, were the first to capture their attention. Then, in the 1975-1985 period, French proponents of the Frankfurt School shone the spotlight first and foremost on its idea of "critical theory." This strategy made it possible to reconcile the theoretical ambitions of young aspiring philosophers with the search for a noble, renewed, and radical form of Marxism: they celebrated an "open" form of thought (rather than an orthodox one), complex and tormented but more or less indefinable. This article aims to connect the trajectories of these proponents to the space of political-intellectual possibilities marked by the post-May 1968 disillusionment and by the political perspectives of the ruling Left.