An End to "Childhood Amnesia": The Utopian Idealof Childhoodin Critical Theory

Abstract

The examination focuses on how critical theory has viewed childhood and employed the image and meaning of childhood in ideological elaboration. It explores how critical theorists such as Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Bloch, and Marcuse contrasted the riches of childhood experience with the poverty of mature adult perception and with the notion of societal progress. By uniting lost experiential dimensions of childhood and restoring childhood memory, critical theoryanticipates arelease ofemancipaory reflection and transformed social praxis.