Bøger i New Directions in Critical Theory serien

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time.According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "e;shrinking of the present,"e; a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "e;slipping slopes,"e; a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School-Jurgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst-have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like?Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization?Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity.

The Hegelian-Marxist idea of alienation fell out of favor after the postmetaphysical rejection of humanism and essentialist views of human nature. In this book Rahel Jaeggi draws on the Hegelian philosophical tradition, phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, and recent work in the analytical tradition to reconceive alienation as the absence of a meaningful relationship to oneself and others, which manifests in feelings of helplessness and the despondent acceptance of ossified social roles and expectations.A revived approach to alienation helps critical social theory engage with phenomena such as meaninglessness, isolation, and indifference. By severing alienation's link to a problematic conception of human essence while retaining its social-philosophical content, Jaeggi provides resources for a renewed critique of social pathologies, a much-neglected concern in contemporary liberal political philosophy. Her work revisits the arguments of Rousseau, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, placing them in dialogue with Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Charles Taylor.

Theories of justice often fixate on purely normative, abstract principles unrelated to real-world situations. The philosopher and theorist Axel Honneth addresses this disconnect, and constructs a theory of justice derived from the normative claims of Western liberal-democratic societies and anchored in morally legitimate laws and institutionally established practices. Honneths paradigmwhich he terms a democratic ethical lifedraws on the spirit of Hegels Philosophy of Right and his own theory of recognition, demonstrating how concrete social spheres generate the principles of individual freedom and a standard for what is just. Using social analysis to re-found a more grounded theory of justice, he argues that all crucial actions in Western civilization, whether in personal relationships, market-induced economic activities, or the public forum of politics, share one defining characteristic: they require the realization of a particular aspect of individual freedom. This fundamental truth informs the guiding principles of justice, grounding and enabling a wide-ranging reconsideration of its nature and application.

Reconfiguring cosmopolitanism to adapt to the moral and political challenges of globalization.

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays published over the past five years reclaim the relevant themes of the Frankfurt School, which counted Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, Franz Neumann, and Albrecht Wellmer as members. They also engage with Kant, Freud, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Michael Walzer, whose work on morality, history, democracy, and individuality intersects with the Frankfurt School's core concerns.Collected here for the first time in English, Honneth's essays pursue the unifying themes and theses that support the methodologies and thematics of critical social theory, and they address the possibilities of continuing this tradition through radically changed theoretical and social conditions. According to Honneth, there is a unity that underlies critical theory's multiple approaches: the way in which reason is both distorted and furthered in contemporary capitalist society. And while much is dead in the social and psychological doctrines of critical social theory, its central inquiries remain vitally relevant. Is social progress still possible after the horrors of the twentieth century? Does capitalism deform reason and, if so, in what respects? Can we justify the relationship between law and violence in secular terms, or is it inextricably bound to divine justice? How can we be free when we're subject to socialization in a highly complex and in many respects unfree society? For Honneth, suffering and moral struggle are departure points for a new "e;reconstructive"e; form of social criticism, one that is based solidly in the empirically grounded, interdisciplinary approach of the Frankfurt School.

Federico Finchelstein draws on a striking combination of thinkers-Jorge Luis Borges, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Schmitt-to consider fascism as a form of political mythmaking. At a moment when forces redolent of fascism cast a shadow over world affairs, this book provides a timely critical analysis of the dangers of myth in modern politics.

This book brings together a broad selection of Siegfried Kracauer's work on media and political communication, much of it previously unavailable in English. It features writings spanning more than two decades, from the 1930s to the early Cold War period.

Didier Fassin, Axel Honneth, and an assembly of leading thinkers examine how people experience, interpret, and contribute to the making of and the response to critical situations. Featuring analysis from below as well as above, from the inside as well as the outside, Crisis Under Critique is a singular intervention.

Didier Fassin, Axel Honneth, and an assembly of leading thinkers examine how people experience, interpret, and contribute to the making of and the response to critical situations. Featuring analysis from below as well as above, from the inside as well as the outside, Crisis Under Critique is a singular intervention.

Lorenzo C. Simpson offers a persuasive and powerful argument that hermeneutics is a valuable tool not only for critical theory but also for addressing many of the urgent issues of today. He shows its utility for unpacking intractable debates in the philosophy of science, multiculturalism, social epistemology, and racial and social justice.

Clayton Chin presents a critical reconstruction of the work of Richard Rorty that argues that that Rorty provides us with unrecognized tools for resolving key foundational issues. The Practice of Political Theory is an important response to the vexed questions of justification and pluralism.

Eva von Redecker reconsiders critical theory's understanding of radical change in order to offer a bold new account of how revolution occurs. She argues that revolutions are not singular events but extended processes: beginning from the interstices of society, they succeed by gradually rearticulating social structures toward a new paradigm.

Uncovering the melancholic tradition of the global left.

This book brings together leading scholars in social and political philosophy to develop new perspectives on recognition and its role in social life. It begins with a debate between Axel Honneth and Judith Butler, the first sustained engagement between these two major thinkers on this subject.

This book brings together leading scholars in social and political philosophy to develop new perspectives on recognition and its role in social life. It begins with a debate between Axel Honneth and Judith Butler, the first sustained engagement between these two major thinkers on this subject.

During the twentieth century, the view that assertions and norms are valid insofar as they respond to principles independent of all local and temporal contexts came under attack from two perspectives: the partiality of translation and the intersubjective constitution of the self, understood as responsive to recognition. Defenses of universalism have by and large taken the form of a thinning out of substantive universalism into various forms of proceduralism. Alessandro Ferrara instead launches an entirely different strategy for transcending the particularity of context without contradicting our pluralistic intuitions: a strategy centered on the exemplary universalism of judgment. Whereas exemplarity has long been thought to belong to the domain of aesthetics, this book explores the other uses to which it can be put in our philosophical predicament, especially in the field of politics. After defining exemplarity and describing how something unique can possess universal significance, Ferrara addresses the force exerted by exemplarity, the nature of the judgment that discloses exemplarity, and the way in which the force of the example can bridge the difference between various contexts. Drawing not only on Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment but also on the work of Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Jurgen Habermas, Ferrara outlines a view of exemplary validity that is applicable to today's central philosophical issues, including public reason, human rights, radical evil, sovereignty, republicanism and liberalism, and religion in the public sphere.

Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of its ongoing relevance. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, and mourning.

Capitalism on Edge offers a novel diagnosis of the current moment to reveal that the potential for sweeping transformation must come from an unexpected direction. Albena Azmanova demonstrates that capitalism is not on its deathbed, revolution is not in the cards, and utopianism cannot steer us toward a brighter future.

In The Experience of Injustice, the French philosopher Emmanuel Renault opens an important new chapter in critical theory. Inspired by Axel Honneth, Renault argues that a radicalized version of Honneth's ethics of recognition can provide a systematic alternative to the liberal-democratic projects of such thinkers as Rawls and Habermas.

Noelle McAfee uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the subterranean anxieties behind current crises and the ways in which democratic practices can help work through seemingly intractable political conflicts. Fear of Breakdown contends that politics needs something that only psychoanalysis has been able to offer.

C. Heike Schotten offers a critique of U.S. settler-colonial empire that draws on political, queer, and critical indigenous theory to reframe the concept of terrorism. She provides an anatomy of the War on Terror's moralism, arguing for a new interpretation of biopolitics that is focused on sovereignty and desire rather than racism and biology.

Ernst Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers' encounter with Aristotle. He argues that the great medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today.

This book presents a new account of the significance and the human costs of work. A collaboration between experts in philosophy, social theory, and clinical psychology, it brings together empirical research with incisive analysis of work's political stakes to present a diagnosis of the pathologies of contemporary work and propose powerful remedies.

Verena Erlenbusch rejects attempts to define what terrorism is in favor of a historico-philosophical investigation into the conditions under which uses of this contested term become meaningful. Genealogies of Terrorism is an empirically grounded and philosophically rigorous critical history with important political implications.

Revives the key concept of reification from Marx and the Frankfurt School to spotlight the resistance to neoliberal capitalism now forming

Adrian Parr identifies the emancipatory potential of environmental politics both inside and outside existing structures and within opposing paradigms. Ultimately, environmental politics is the refusal to surrender life to the violence of global capitalism and militarism. This defiance can serve as the source for the birth of a new earth.

The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "e;marriage of Marx and Freud,"e; psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "e;foundation stone"e; of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.