ABSTRACT
In Cervantes's Don Quixote, only the protagonist seems to hold what both successors and opponents of the Frankfurt School would call a "critical" or cultural "theory." 1 Inspired in the arch-feminine non-woman, Dulcinea, Don Quixote's "post-" or "neochivalric" quest to restore the golden age in an age of iron seems anchored in his impossible yearning for a timeless past. Yet, in the manner of both a critical theorist and a social activist, the protagonist embarks on a mission that stems from what purports to be a rational critique of his society, and a critique of what we may call that society's discursive practices and texts. No less important, his mission also pursues an emancipatory future: the hopeful paradox of a historical Utopia, or a paradise on earth.
