 Subjects -> SOCIAL SERVICES AND WELFARE (Total: 224 journals)
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- The platform economy’s infrastructural transformation of the public
sphere: Facebook and Cambridge Analytica revisited-
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Authors: Anna-Verena Nosthoff, Felix Maschewski
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
From a socio-theoretical and media-theoretical perspective, this article analyses exemplary practices and structural characteristics of contemporary digital political campaigning to illustrate a transformation of the public sphere through the platform economy. The article first examines Cambridge Analytica and reconstructs its operational procedure, which, far from involving exceptionally new digital campaign practices, turns out to be quite standard. It then evaluates the role of Facebook as an enabling ‘affective infrastructure’, technologically orchestrating processes of political opinion-formation. Of special concern are various tactics of ‘feedback propaganda’ and algorithmic-based user engagement that reflect, at a more theoretical level, the merging of surveillance-capitalist commercialization with a cybernetic logic of communication. The article proposes that this techno-economic dynamic reflects a continuation of the structural transformation of the public sphere. What Jürgen Habermas had analysed in terms of an economic fabrication of the public sphere in the 1960s is now advancing in a more radical form, and on a more programmatic basis, through the algorithmic architecture of social media. As the authors argue, this process will eventually lead to a new form of ‘infrastructural power’.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-09-26T01:55:23Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231203536
- The platformization of the public sphere and its challenge to democracy
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Authors: Renate Fischer, Otfried Jarren
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Democracy depends on a vivid public sphere, where ideas disseminate into the public and can be discussed – and challenged - by everyone. Journalism has contributed significantly to this social mediation by reducing complexity, providing information on salient topics and (planned) political solutions. The digital transformation of the public sphere leads to new forms of media provision, distribution, and use. Journalism has struggled to adapt to the new conditions. Journalistic news values, relevant to democracy, are being replaced by ones relevant to social media platforms’ attention seeking business model. We plead for a broad public debate about the ongoing platformization and about possible policies to ensure a media system that serves and strengthens democracy.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-09-26T01:46:02Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231203535
- The politics of drama: How Hegel’s aesthetics inform contemporary
theories of radical democracy-
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Authors: Leonie Hunter
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
The history of political philosophy is marked by a conception of politics as inherently tragic. As such, it has hardly ever been systematically contrasted with the other model of dramatic art, comedy. In this article, I explore the relation between Hegel's twofold notion of drama as an ordered genre of disorder – what he considers to be the highest form of self-reflective art – and the post-foundational concept of radical democracy. After outlining the interplay between order and disorder in post-foundationalist theories of political difference, I summarize the way in which the steps of Hegel's poetics consecutively build on each other and elaborate the role of the dramatic genres. By means of a genealogical reconstruction of the respective concepts of democracy and drama, I demonstrate the extent to which these two methodologies correspond to poetic and political order formation in a structural homology. This conceptualization concludes with the assertion of a constitutive dramatization of political modernity which does not, however, culminate in the concept of political tragedy but points towards a still-to-be-realized, comically ordered democracy.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-09-23T01:11:26Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231203519
- Politics and aesthetics: Jacques Rancière and Louis-Gabriel Gauny
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Authors: Stuart Blaney
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This paper argues that much of Jacques Rancière’s redefinition of emancipation owes a lot to one key character from his archival research on nineteenth-century worker-poets, Louis-Gabriel Gauny, the self-proclaimed plebeian philosopher. This is especially the case in regard to Rancière’s understanding of subjectivation forming a double of the self and a double of social reality as worlds within worlds. The paper puts forward that Gauny’s form of emancipation is valid today as an aesthetic revolution that reveals Rancière’s practices of equality to be an emancipatory way of life. In doing so, it will engage with Gauny’s connection with the contemporary precariat.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-08-17T07:34:33Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231197447
- Book Review: The ruthless critique of everything existing: Nature and
revolution in Marcuse’s philosophy of praxis-
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Authors: Carl Cassegård
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-07-25T07:30:20Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231191559
- The ‘mystical’ foundation of democratic society, mythmaking and truth
in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford 1962)-
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Authors: Camil Ungureanu
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
In this article, I combine political philosophy and film to examine the problematic of the ‘mystical’ foundation of authority and democracy as represented in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Ford’s filmic vision is interpretable as a parable of the passage from the state of nature to the modern republic and the deconstruction of American democratic progressivism. To analyse it, I proceed in two steps: first, I defend a middle-way critical Enlightenment perspective between the democratic-progressivist and the deconstructive approach to the question of foundations. Second, in dialogue with this critical Enlightenment perspective, I argue that Ford’s cinematic vision of the foundation remains ambivalent, given that its deconstruction of the mythology of American democratic progressivism is premised on the nostalgic mythologizing of the pre-democratic age. Moreover, I take issue with Robert Pippin’s interpretation of the movie as a cautionary tale against Enlightenment rationalism, and which poses at its center the key psychological role of myths in politics (2011). In contrast, I argue that Ford’s cinematic vision cautions against decoupling the socio-political and personal life from the vital connection to truth and acting upon truth. From this standpoint, a “politics of truth” is, against Pippin’s interpretation of Ford’s vision, compatible with taking into account the constitutive role of narratives in building political legitimacy and authority.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-07-22T03:57:04Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231187557
- Demobilized democracy: Plebiscitarianism as political theology
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Authors: Ian Zuckerman
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Drawing from Marx’s 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the work of Carl Schmitt, this article proposes a framework that critically diagnoses the plebiscitary, executive-centered conception of democratic representation as a species of political theology. I reconstruct Marx’s comments on plebiscitarianism in The 18th Brumaire through his earlier critique of political theology in ‘On the Jewish Question’, in order to contrast two modes of representation. The first, ‘theological’ representation, is a symbolic incarnation of the unity of the people in the person of the executive. The second, ‘agonistic’ representation, develops only in the legislative assembly as a forum for translating social antagonisms and divisions into political ones. Turning from Marx to the writings of Carl Schmitt on plebiscitarianism, and to more recent analyses of populism, I show how these logics of political-theological versus antagonistic representation can function in different political contexts than the one Marx diagnosed. In conclusion, I argue that plebiscitarian democracy is neither an innocuous feature of institutions, nor a decisionist democratic alternative to liberal parliamentarism. Rather, it is a contemporary expression of political theology, premised upon depoliticization and the exclusion of social antagonisms from the sphere of democratic representation.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-07-10T01:27:51Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231187547
- Political existentiality in Carl Schmitt; reenchanting the political
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Authors: Ben Van de Wall
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Carl Schmitt described the political in existential terms. The political consists in the distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction between collectivities that are existentially different. This led Richard Wolin to label Schmitt a “political existentialist” whose work relies on a specific cultural and philosophical climate of “vitalism.” Consequently, Schmitt’s thought is treated as ideology by Wolin. Instead of focusing on Schmitt’s underlying ideological affinity with a particular cultural climate, this paper attempts to conceptualize the notion of “political existentiality” as a crucial element in Schmitt’s understanding of the political and defend it as a notion that reveals something about the political condition itself. In order to understand the meaning of existentiality, we will conceptualize it against the background of Max Weber’s disenchantment thesis and conclude that through the notion of political existentiality Schmitt conceptualizes the political sphere as a locus of meaning and values and thus reenchants the political.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-07-03T06:53:35Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184496
- Fugitive freedom and radical care: Towards a standpoint theory of
normativity-
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Authors: Daniel Loick
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Epistemic standpoint theories have elaborated the effects of social situatedness on epistemic competence: Dominant groups are regularly subject to epistemic blockages that limit the possibility of cognition and knowledge production. Oppressed groups, on the other hand, have access to perceptions and insights that dominant groups lack. This diagnosis can be generalized: Not only our epistemic, but also our normative relation to the world is socially situated, that is, our values, virtues, moral sentiments are shaped by relations of domination. In this article, my goal is to sketch the general outlines of a standpoint theory of normativity. I do so by engaging with two lines of tradition. First, I review conceptions of fugitive freedom in the Black Radical Tradition, before I recapitulate the feminist debate around the concept of care work. The counter-hegemonic norms theorized in these traditions can be brought into dialogue because they are both based on similar presuppositions, namely, political struggle provoked by social contradictions.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-29T06:55:36Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231185954
- The violence inherent in the system
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Authors: Joseph Heath
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
The concept of ‘the violence inherent in the system’ was famously satirized by Monty Python in their movie The Holy Grail. In order to avoid ridicule, left-wing theorists and activists for a long time stopped using the expression. The underlying social critique, which had given rise to the expression, was also widely dismissed from serious consideration, merely through invocation of the phrase. Because of this, there has been little explicit discussion of the actual political theory that was being satirized in this scene. And yet the theory has continued to exercise considerable influence on the practice of many left-wing groups, particularly in the way that protest is conceptualized and carried out. The central objective in this paper will be to provide an explicit articulation of the theory, in order to show how it falls short of providing a meaningful critique of any aspect of our social practices.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-27T12:00:25Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231186130
- Whose idea of socialism' Conflicting conceptions of the family and
women’s subordination-
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Authors: Lois McNay
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article compares Honneth’s attempt to revise socialist thinking on women’s subordination in the family with feminist work on the topic. Both identify economism as the reason why socialism has historically failed to come up with an adequate account of women’s oppression in the family. However, their attempts to overcome economism proceed in different directions. Feminists overcome economism by expanding and enriching ideas of the economic and value producing activity and applying these reworked categories to women’s reproductive labour. Honneth overcomes economism by suspending materialist explanation and focussing on emancipatory ethical dynamics implicit in the family. In comparison to feminist work, Honneth’s ethicised account of gender and family is as reductive as the economism it aims to surmount. First, his progressive historiography engenders a Whiggish narrative of the steady expansion of women’s social freedom in the family that downplays ambiguous and negative historical developments related to the changing nature of patriarchy. Second, his reified archetype of the family obscures the systemic causes of persistent gendered asymmetries within households. Finally, his Hegelian endorsement of institutionally expressed normativity leads in a reformist political direction and away from the radical, deep-democratic options that socialist feminists deem necessary to counteract women’s subordination.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-27T07:40:19Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184488
- Designing for epistemic justice: Epistemic apprenticeship as an
institutional commitment-
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Authors: Millicent Churcher
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This paper develops the concept of epistemic apprenticeship as a response to failures among privileged social actors to perceive the knowledge bases of unjustly marginalised groups as sources of valuable insight. Inspired by Elizabeth Spelman’s reflections on apprenticeship and intersectional feminism, an epistemic apprenticeship represents an obverse form of apprenticeship; one in which socially privileged knowers become apprentices to those who do not enjoy equivalent power and privilege. This paper critiques and extends Spelman’s account of apprenticeship by focussing on how the institutional sedimentation of dominant social imaginaries works against the volitional and virtuous practice of apprenticeship, and by exploring what a commitment to epistemic apprenticeship demands at the level of institutional practice. As part of this discussion, I scrutinise the conditions under which institutionalised apprenticeships may fall short of their meliorative potential, and may obstruct rather than aid efforts to achieve greater epistemic justice.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-27T05:05:38Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184493
- Multiaccentual coalitions, dialogic grief and carnivalesque assemblies:
Judith Butler and Mikhail Bakhtin meet in the world of ethics-
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Authors: John M. Roberts
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article for the first time seeks to bring together theoretical insights from Judith Butler and Mikhail Bakhtin in order to strengthen their respective understanding of ethics. First, the article suggests that Bakhtin’s theory of dialogic events and the ‘multiaccentuality’ and thematic nature of everyday utterances can help Butler address criticisms that suggest her work concentrates too heavily on invariant meanings in utterances. Second, Butler’s theory of coalitions can usefully politicise Bakhtin’s ideas on utterances, while her ethics of grief is a crucial way to think about how we forge bonds with the ‘Other’. Correspondingly, Bakhtin’s theory of the ethical ‘I’ adds an important moment of ‘empathy’ to Butler’s account of grief and the ‘Other’. Third, Butler’s theory of state hegemony and counter-hegemonic assemblies can provide an important addition to Bakhtin’s theory, while Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalesque democracy strengthens Butler’s insights on equality in assemblies and occupying a liveable life.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-26T09:20:57Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184495
- Foucault’s anarchaeology of Christianity: Understanding confession as a
basic form of obedience-
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Authors: Chris Barker
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
In his later lectures, Foucault analyzes confession as a key exercise of the Christian pastoral power. The pastoral power’s creation of a lifelong obligation to speak the truth of oneself is a ‘prelude’ to modern practices of government, and a key facet of modernity. There has been some confusion regarding the scope of Foucault’s study. Is it medieval Christian confessional practices or Christian obedience itself that is his theme' In this article, I revisit all of the later lectures touching on confession and avowal in order to clarify Foucault’s ambivalence about Christian proto-governmentality. Foucault exposes two regimes of truth, belief and confession, and offer a practice-based, confession-centred history of the pre-modern self. Connecting his lectures to his method of anarchaeology clarifies how the force of truth (the ‘you have to’) is, for Foucault, a fundamental if ambivalent historical-cultural problem of government.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-23T07:56:01Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184489
- The carceral appropriation of communications technology through the
imaginal-
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Authors: Harrison S Jackson
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article explores the effect that communications technology has on hegemonic power. The first section establishes a theoretical framework combining Foucault’s carceral archipelago theory with Chiara Bottici’s concept of the social imaginal describing the medium through which inter- and trans-subjective imagination occurs. The remainder employs this framework to examine how four technological innovations (print media, radio, television and Internet) impact the (re)production of discursive hegemonic ideology, integrating a variety of historical and contemporary theories on public discourse and ideological dominance. I conclude by arguing that each case demonstrates a dialectic pattern that explains the techno-social evolution of the carceral archipelago.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-23T06:56:26Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184485
- The disappointment of Rosa Luxemburg: Rethinking revolutionary commitment
in the face of failure-
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Authors: Maša Mrovlje
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Despite the recent revival of revolutionary commitment in response to left melancholia, I suggest that the contemporary academic left has not adequately addressed the difficulty of responding to failure as an inevitable aspect of revolutionary politics. The dominant tendency has been to try to offset the risk of failure by managing revolutionary action in line with a pre-given model of revolutionary change – only to limit the range of possibilities for revolutionary engagement. To address this problem, I draw on Rosa Luxemburg, a foremost revolutionary thinker, whose experiences of disappointment led her to rethink the notion of revolutionary commitment as a practice of learning from failure. This rethinking of commitment suggests a different way of engaging with failure – one that expands our imagination of political possibilities beyond the confines of the dominant contemporary responses to left melancholia and enriches their visions of revolutionary change.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-19T02:57:10Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184406
- Work of art in the Age of Its AI Reproduction
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Authors: Ignas Kalpokas
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
From a Benjaminian point of view, AI-generated art is distinct from both ‘traditional’ art and technologically enabled reproduction, for example, photography and film. Instead of mere mechanical representation of the world as it is presented to a device, AI-generated art involves identification and inventive representation of data patterns. This specific mode of data-based generation exceeds mere surface-level mimicry and enables deeper meaning, namely, an insight into the collective unconscious of the society. In this way, AI-generated art is never detached from society and the predominant social conditions while also reflecting the technology-induced transformations that today’s societies are undergoing. Thus, AI-generated art can be seen as capable of partly reversing the loss of auratic capacities that hand ensued with mechanical reproduction. Still, as a matter of continuity, AI-generated works enable the maximisation of exhibition value and capacity for audience enjoyment, rendering AI-generated art perfect for the age of increasing distraction.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-19T02:10:10Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184490
- The anatomo-politics of affect: An investigation of affective
governmentality-
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Authors: Jonathan Harmat
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
The present inquiry concerns ‘affective governmentality’ and is guided by the following question: How did affects become intelligible objects of knowledge and what enabled a scientific conception of affect to turn into a distinctive government of affect' In answering this question, the article first outlines how a lineage of thinkers used the speculative tools of geometry to conceptualize and deduce human affects. Through an analysis of Spinoza’s Political Treatise, the article then investigates how this geometric conception of affect enabled a productive and indirect government of affect. The article’s contribution to the study of affective governmentality is twofold: First, it advances the methodological claim that the proper register to study affects in governmentality is anatomo-political rather than biopolitical. Second, the analysis of the Political Treatise exemplifies, nuances and substantiates our understanding of how desires and affects were reconceptualized geometrically to conceive a government of bodies and souls.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-19T01:47:04Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184494
- Afropessimism and the Specter of Black Nihilism
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Authors: Orlando Hawkins
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
In arguing that slavery is not a relic of the past, but a relational dynamic undergirded by an ontology of anti-Blackness that prevents Blacks from ever being considered human beings, the self-described Afropessimist, Frank Wilderson III, argues that Black people occupy the position of social death in the present. Due to this anti-Black condition, Wilderson concludes that no form of redress is possible to assuage, liberate, and redeem Black people from this anti-Black condition other than the “End of the World.” Drawing upon Fredrich Nietzsche’s understanding of the problem of nihilism and its existential consequences, I argue that while Afropessimism is useful for articulating the problem of anti-Blackness, it makes a nihilistic turn through Wilderson’s “End of the World” since there is no world where Blackness is experienced as anything other than social death. As a response to Wilderson, I conclude that the philosopher Jacqueline Scott’s life-affirming Nietzschean philosophy and her anti-racist activism in “Racial Nihilism as Racial Courage” is one adequate response to the nihilistic threat to Black America if Black people are condemned to a life of social death because of the enduring nature of anti-Black racism.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-17T08:57:11Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231184486
- Incompatible sovereigns: Populism, democracy and the two peoples
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Authors: Leonardo Fiorespino
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
The article aims to investigate the problematic relationship between populism and democracy by comparing the conceptions of ‘the people’ and popular sovereignty which they presuppose. In the first two sections, the populist and the democratic ‘peoples’ are reconstructed, and the unbridgeable gap dividing them is highlighted. The discussion of the democratic people requires a concise analysis of the main contemporary democratic frameworks, including deliberative democracy, ‘neo-Roman’ republicanism, agonistic democracy. The article works out the implications of the incompatibility between the two ‘sovereign peoples’ identified, and concludes that such an incompatibility undercuts the kinship of populism and democracy. While, populism is often said to intertwine with democracy in some way, the article argues that it significantly departs from democratic theory and practice, and belongs to a distinct conceptual space. It cannot be made to overlap with ‘illiberal democracy’, a ‘democratic myth’, a crude electoral majoritarianism, nor does it amount to hiding undemocratic policies into properly democratic justifications. The boundary dividing populism and democracy, therefore, starts unfolding at the level of the conception of the people. While, democratic theory invariably assumes a people intended as simultaneously heterogeneous and united, populism conceives of the people as a moral whole, internally undifferentiated, whose homogeneity and intrinsic righteousness preclude the task of specifying what popular sovereignty ultimately means. Such specification, on the other hand, is inescapable for any democrat assuming the people as a composite unity. The last section addresses four possible objections to the argument, variously formulated by Ernesto Laclau and by scholars approaching populism from a post-Laclauian or discursive-performative perspective.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-06-12T03:51:43Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231182912
- For a Negative Hermeneutics: Adorno, Gadamer and Critical Consciousness
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Authors: Vangelis Giannakakis
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
The present social-historical moment is marked by a sharp divide, a harrowing ‘communication breakdown’ between subject and object, between humanity and nature, between humanity and itself. This state of affairs pleads for the (re-)elaboration of a consciousness that resonates critically with the social, political and cultural realities of its time. This paper studies the lessons that can be drawn in this regard from the intersection between, on the one hand, Theodor W. Adorno’s ‘philosophical interpretation’ and his idea of an historically adequate consciousness, and, on the other, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ‘philosophical hermeneutics’ and his conception of the historically effected consciousness. The paper opens with a concise reconstruction of Adorno’s ‘philosophical interpretation’ as a critical response to instrumental rationality that borrows insights from radical historicism. The focus then shifts to Gadamer’s ‘philosophical hermeneutics’ which is read as a similar type of protest against instrumental reason that privileges dialogical forms of enculturation. Finally, the paper closes with some suggestive yet inconclusive reflections on some important elements of convergence/divergence between the two thinkers, notably, their theorisations of immanent and transcended critique, the role they ascribe to tradition and language vis-à-vis experience, and the special place of ‘mimesis’ in it. Overall, the argument is made that a ‘negative hermeneutics’ may be what is needed to fashion new interpretations of the world, to foster alternative ways of thinking about and being in it, which, pace Marx, go hand in hand with its transformation – or, perhaps more aptly nowadays, the mere feat of sparing it.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-05-24T11:24:33Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231176460
- The owl of Minerva and the dialectic of human freedom: A heterodox reading
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Authors: Bernardo Ferro
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
In the preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel compares the philosopher’s work to the flight of the owl of Minerva: just as the latter begins only with the fall of dusk, so too is philosophy bound to ‘come on the scene’ too late to teach ‘what the world ought to be’. This well-known passage has been read in many quarters as a heavy, if not fatal blow to philosophy’s critical role. While some interpreters regard Hegel’s metaphor as an outright rejection of critical theory, others see it as a restriction of philosophy’s normative dimension. In this article, I argue against both of these interpretations. In my view, Hegel’s methodological indications are not incompatible with a critical outlook on received reality. What is more, they do not preclude the possibility of a radical critique of received reality. To show why, I argue that the Philosophy of Right is primarily aimed at a normative reconstruction of existing social and political arrangements, which entails both a retrospective and a prospective dimension. Moreover, I claim that this duality is one of the most original features of Hegel’s practical thought, and the key to its enduring political relevance.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-05-06T11:02:32Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231171418
- A Marxist reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Making the case for social and
political change-
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Authors: Marc James Deegan
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article offers a Marxist reading of Wittgenstein and juxtaposes his famous dictum that philosophy ‘leaves everything as it is’ with the idea of transformative action. I seek to align the later philosophy of Wittgenstein with Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach. I advance an unorthodox view interpreting Wittgenstein as an advocate for social and political reform. Wittgenstein’s philosophy encourages us to imagine alternatives and contemplate concrete possibilities for changing the world. The debate operates within the philosophy of education and draws inspiration from related inquiries in political thought and, more specifically, from Marxist connections with Wittgenstein.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-05-03T11:15:44Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231170907
- Three theories of separation: Kelsen, Schmitt and Pashukanis and the
historical development of the legal form-
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Authors: Matthew Bolton
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article examines the different approaches to the relation between law, state and economy in the works of Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt and Evgeny Pashukanis. It begins with Kelsen’s depiction of law as a dynamic and ‘self-regulating’ system of norms, founded on his rejection of ‘dualist’ separations of state and law, before turning to Schmitt and Pashukanis’s respective critiques. For all their differences, both agree Kelsen ignores the historical basis of the law – for Schmitt, the sovereign power of ‘the political’, for Pashukanis, the social relations of commodity exchange. The article responds to these criticisms in a most un-Kelsenian manner, drawing upon historical sociological literature on early modern state formation to cast doubt on both Schmitt and Pashukanis’s historical accounts. It argues that the forms of political power and commodity exchange upon which Schmitt and Pashukanis’s theories rely were historically specific possibilities opened up by the same process of generalisation and depersonalisation of power relations that allowed for an autonomous ‘public’ system of legal norms. Thus, rather than the fixed causal ground for the development of modern law, ‘the political’ and exchange between equals exist in a relation of ‘difference-in-unity’ with the law. The article concludes that Kelsen’s notion of the Grundnorm is best explained as an attempt to capture the new possibilities and responsibilities opened up a normative system whose ultimate justification now lies only within itself.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-04-28T09:56:51Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231170908
- Does contemporary recognition theory rest on a mistake'
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Authors: Paul Giladi
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
My aim in this paper is to argue, contra Axel Honneth, that ‘the summons’ (Aufforderung), the central pillar of Fichte’s transcendentalist account of recognition, is best made sense of not as an ‘invitation’, but rather as a second-personal demand, whose illocutionary content draws attention to the demandingness of responsibilities towards vulnerable agents. Because of this, the summons has good explanatory force in terms of disclosing the phenomenological dynamics of psychosocially and politically significant reactive attitudes. Under my reading, then, Fichte’s position, contra Honneth’s ‘negative’ treatment of it, is anything but an empty formalism that ‘fails to refer to subjects of flesh and blood’.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-04-21T11:26:10Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231170905
- The humanism of critical theory: The Frankfurt School’s
‘realer humanismus’-
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Authors: Alice Nilsson
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Theodor Adorno has been quoted as responding to the Humanist Union stating ‘I might possibly be willing to join if your club had been called an inhuman union, but I could not join one that calls itself “humanist”’. Adorno’s opposition to forms of humanism (both liberal and Marxist) which posit the existence of our humanity is reflected in readings of The Frankfurt Institute’s history such as that produced by Martin Jay. While this is the case, one of Adorno’s highly admired students, Alfred Schmidt, commemorated his teacher by proclaiming him a ‘philosopher of Real Humanism’. In categorising Adorno’s work as embodying a ‘Real Humanism’, Schmidt points towards an understanding and orientation towards the human (and our understanding of it) which cannot be accurately characterised through the philosophies of Humanism and Anti-Humanism as oppositional viewpoints. Rather, the Real Humanism of Adorno (as well as some of his fellow travellers) understands the human as the negative image of our currently existing society’s inhumanity, and urges us to take an ethical orientation towards the constitution of the human through the abolition of our inhumanity. If we, like Adorno, are to believe in the new categorical imperative that we must make sure ‘that Auschwitz never repeats itself, so that nothing similar ever happen[s] again’, then we must fundamentally orient ourselves towards the goal of ‘real humanism’ – a society free from the domination of ourselves and the other.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-04-20T10:45:57Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231170904
- Against insular liberalism: Sayyid Qutb, illiberal Islam and the forceless
force of the better argument-
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Authors: Marilie Coetsee
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often presents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals’ own core principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold ‘unreasonable’, and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even ‘unreasonable’, illiberal citizens may be fair-minded: that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state’s own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals’ own commitments oblige them to address even ‘unreasonable’ political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-03-31T06:50:32Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221109904
- Book Review: A glitch in the matrix: Vivek Chibber and the cltural turn
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Authors: Katie Ebner-Landy
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Chibber’s The Class Matrix and Confronting Capitalism aim to rescue class from the cultural turn. Rather than thinking that mass media mollified the working class, he suggests we re-investigate capitalism itself. We can then see how hard capitalism makes it to take risks for the collective. Chibber’s solution is to shift people from ‘individualistic to solidaristic’ ways of thinking through lived practices, rather than the arts. This review argues, however, that by excluding the culture industry from encouraging solidaristic ways of thinking, Chibber removes a crucial tool in the socialist armory: the way in which artistic representations can help us see ourselves and the world differently.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-03-18T07:31:27Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231160798
- Supplication as violence: The provision of institutionalized care and the
essence of giving-
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Authors: Prashan Ranasinghe
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article casts its attention on acts of supplication in institutional settings. The article focuses upon institutions geared towards the provision of care, that is, sites that are designed to provide services to those in need. The article claims that every act of supplication is an act of violence deployed upon the supplicant by his/her interlocutor and the institution more broadly. This is not violence of an overt type; it is tacit and subtle and takes root at the very essence of the supplicant, that is, his/her being. The article draws on Jacques Derrida’s provocative reading of the impossibility of the gift, an analysis that is indebted to Marcel Mauss’ exposition of the gift as obligatory and, thus, an existential nullity. Drawing upon both theorists, the article theorizes the violence of the gift and proceeds to read the violence in/of care/caring. The article explicates the grounding of this violence and how it is written into each request for care.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-23T09:54:05Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157381
- History, critique, experience: On the dialectical relationship between art
and philosophy in Adorno’s aesthetic theory-
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Authors: Justin Neville Kaushall
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno argues that, in modernity, art and philosophy are reciprocally dependent upon each other for legitimation and critical force. This claim has puzzled scholars and provoked controversy. I argue that Adorno’s thesis may be comprehended in the following manner: art requires philosophy because, without the latter, art would lack the power to critique social and historical reality (in particular, the ideological elements that often remain invisible as second nature), and to rationally interpret the material particularity expressed by such reality; and, conversely, philosophy requires art because the latter expresses historical experience to reason. Such material historical experience is necessary in order to prevent philosophy from falling into ideological convention; idle speculation; or abstract and reified instrumentality. Thus, the constellation of history, art, and philosophy is essential to Adorno’s aesthetics.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-23T01:12:27Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231158150
- The symbolic work of political discourse. Populist reason and its
foundational myth-
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Authors: Javier Toscano
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article locates Ernesto Laclau’s populist reason as a point of departure to understand the contemporary democratic logic and its so-called ‘excesses’. It argues that, even if resourceful, Laclau’s findings can be supplemented with a theory of the imaginary as developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, as well as with key remarks from a discussion of the theologico-political as this was characterized by Claude Lefort. The aim is to construct an understanding on the political as it is structured by language and the symbolic, presenting thus democracy and populism as two opposing sides of a foundational political myth.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-20T01:54:22Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157375
- Embedded agency: A critique of negative liberty and free markets
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Authors: Senem Saner
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
The concept of negative liberty as non-interference is operative in the concept of a free market and stipulates that market relations remain outside the purview of social control. As a purported self-regulating system, however, the market functions as a system of necessity that facilitates and rules social life. I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s defense of negative liberty leads to a paradox as it entails subjection to the external necessity of a self-regulating market. The argument for the self-defeating nature of negative liberty relies on two philosophical insights that have their roots in G. W. F. Hegel’s theory of self-determination. First, negative liberty fails to account for the inner and outer conditions of freedom and thus reduces to mere whim or arbitrariness, subject to heteronomous forces but masquerading as license. Second, individual freedom is intersubjectively mediated in its deliberative process and framed by social and political institutions in its exercise; thus, free agency must be theorized as embedded agency. I challenge the association of freedom and the market and the automatic and unchallenged implication of deregulation and freedom. Deregulation, rather, leaves the community’s future development to the whims of economic players using a rhetoric of freedom as both lure and principle.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-17T12:42:15Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157439
- From agonistic to insurgent democracy
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Authors: Lorenzo Buti
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article uncovers an internal tension within theories of agonistic democracy. On the one hand, as radical pluralists, agonistic democrats want to institute a ‘symmetrical’ political scene where different identities can struggle on an equally legitimate basis. On the other hand, they often normatively prioritize the struggles of oppressed groups against domination. In response, this article proposes to collapse any strict distinction between pluralism and social relations of domination. The result is a move from agonistic to insurgent democracy, where insurgent struggles against domination give the central impetus to any democracy. To do so, it turns to the writings of Étienne Balibar, who argues that most, if not all, symmetrical political conflict is built on asymmetrical forms of domination or oppression. This leads us to develop an account of democratic conflict that is incessantly asymmetrical. Finally, this article suggests an alternative way of rescuing the political principle of pluralism cherished by agonistic democrats. Balibar’s writings on the ‘ideology of the dominated’ show that every insurgent struggle expresses itself ideologically, which harbours the risk of obscuring other forms of domination. Therefore, democracy is not only kept alive by insurgent movements, it requires that the latter democratize themselves by maintaining a permanent openness to alternative calls against domination or oppression.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-15T11:17:52Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231157383
- On militant democracy’s institutional conservatism
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Authors: Patrick Nitzschner
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article critically reconstructs militant democracy’s ‘institutional conservatism’, a theoretical preference for institutions that restrain transformation. It offers two arguments, one historical and one normative. Firstly, it traces a historical development from a substantive to a procedural version of institutional conservatism from the traditional militant democratic thought of Schmitt, Loewenstein and Popper to the contemporary militant democratic theories of Kirshner and Rijpkema. Substantive institutional conservatisms theorize institutions that hinder transformation of the existing order; procedural conservatisms encourage transformation but contain and limit it within the boundaries of existing institutions. Secondly, the article uses resources internal to this historical reconstruction to make the normative case that even the procedural version of institutional conservatism, which characterizes contemporary theories of militant democracy, is problematic from a democratic perspective. The reason for this is that it unjustifiably restricts fundamental democratic change to existing institutions. In conclusion, the article calls for further engagement with modes of democratic defence that do not limit the possibility of radical democratic change but nevertheless enable the protection of democratic institutions against authoritarian regression.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-09T10:11:47Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150462
- Understanding and evaluating populist strategy
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Authors: David Jenkins
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Populism describes those strategies which actors endorsing populist ideas must use in order to be considered populist. Typical populist strategies include the hijacking of state institutions; the development of clientelistic relationships with constituencies labelled the people, or employing certain rhetorical moves in which enmity between the people and a corrupt elite looms large. In this paper, I argue against tendencies to define populism according to a specific set of tactics that are supposed to flow directly from populist ideas. Instead, populism should be understood in terms of a particular orientation, which grounds and justifies a range of strategies, all of which – nefarious or otherwise – should be considered populist. This orientation posits that enmity between ‘the people’ and an elite is a defining feature of political life, in part because it is responsible for serious failures in a country’s ostensibly democratic institutions. These failures create a degree of ambivalence with respect to these institutions’ claims to authority and obedience, and generate the perception that political actors thereby enjoy an expanded set of moral permissions. Finally, populists argue that elites prosecute revanchist projects aimed at resisting populist pathways to power and undermining them once in office. Populist strategies then are simply whatever range of tactics political actors use who accept the validity of that above orientation.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-02-07T06:03:09Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537231155171
- Power and normativity: Rainer Forst on noumenal power
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Authors: Tim Heyssse
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
According to Rainer Forst, a critical theory of power must break with the tendency of political theorists to conceive of power in opposition to normativity. Appropriately, Forst proposes a noumenal definition according to which power is normative: It works through recognition of reasons and is thereby open to critical assessment. In this discussion note, I first clarify the normativity of power in Forst’s noumenal theory by means of Donald Davidson’s theory of action and then explain how theory of action leads to a different understanding of force and violence from Forst’s noumenal theory. In doing this, I find reason to endorse a non-normative definition of power on the lines proposed by Robert Dahl and endorsed by most authors in analytical political theory. This definition nevertheless remains faithful to Forst’s methodological guideline that a theory of power must keep in view the relations between power and normativity.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-18T07:17:25Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150460
- Brothers in arms: Adorno and Foucault on resistance
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Authors: Giovanni Maria Mascaretti
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article offers a comparative exploration of the practices of resistance Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault champion against the structures of modern power their enquiries have the merit to illuminate and contest. After a preliminary examination of their views about the relationship between theory and praxis, I shall pursue two goals: first, I shall illustrate the limitations of Adorno’s negativist portrait of an ethics of resistance and contrast it with Foucault’s more promising notion of resistance as strategic counter-conduct, which in his late ethico-political writings becomes the heart of a distinctive politics of the governed. Second, despite their dissimilarities, I shall argue that their ideas can be brought together to elaborate a ‘compounded’ account of resistance, where Adorno’s politics of suffering figures as the necessary pre-condition for the creative practices of freedom Foucault seeks to encourage.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-13T12:49:33Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150497
- Whose time is it' Rancière on taking time, unproductive doing and
democratic emancipation-
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Authors: Michael Räber
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This essay argues that an alternative conception of time to that underlying the ideology of productivism and growth is not only possible, but desirable. The creation of this time requires what I refer to as the practice of refusal via taking time: the self-determined arrangement of the nexus of time, action and utility that begins with the a-synchronous insertion of unproductive time into the synchronous horizontal time of productivism. The essay is divided into three sections. The first offers the reader a discussion of Jacques Rancière’s notion of time as a social and political medium that partitions and distributes actions and utility. The subsequent section of the essay elaborates in aesthetic terms an account of unproductive time that is indifferent to the time of productivism. In the final section, I discuss examples that show how taking time to do ‘nothing’ can elicit an emancipatory politics that seeks to liberate us from the hegemony of productivism. I conclude that political theory should attend to time as a political medium and to the possibilities of its occupation, and that picturing the taking of time in terms of stopping the force of productivism’s normalized horizontal time by entering the unproductive time of reverie and aesthetic experience, provides a promising perspective from which to apprehend a time for thriftless refusals, deliberate dis-identifications, and the forging of cooperation among people(s) and with nature.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-13T12:43:13Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150457
- Reconsidering the ethics of cosmopolitan memory: In the name of difference
and memories to-come-
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Authors: Zlatan Filipovic
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Departing from what Levey and Sznaider (2002) in their seminal work ‘Memory Unbound’ refer to as ‘cosmopolitan memory’ that emerges as one of the fundamental forms ‘collective memories take in the age of globalization’, this article will consider the underlying ethical implications of global memory formation that have yet to be adequately theorized. Since global disseminations of local memory cultures and the implicit canonization of its traumas are intimately related to the concept of archive, I will first focus on what Derrida (1996) in Archive Fever calls ‘archival violence’ and will show its inherent relation to the formation of cosmopolitan memory. Another related concept that I will use and that will problematize the transformation of living, embodied memory into archival, cultural memory upon which the formation of cosmopolitan memory depends is the witness. Using Agamben’s writing (2002) in this context that in Remnants of Auschwitz focuses on the foundational (im)possibilities of bearing witness, I will show that this transformation that determines the very possibility of cosmopolitan memory is far from unproblematic and readily accessible as Levy and Sznaider seem to assume. What will emerge as the most distinctive concern of global memory formation is the ethical material of difference as that which both makes its imperatives historically and politically exigent and that which signifies the difficulties of its unified articulation. Solidarity with the suffering of the other that mobilizes the very formation of cosmopolitan memory is also what should solicit vigilance against the universalistic ritualizations of its prerogatives.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-13T11:06:04Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150519
- Beyond emergency politics: Carl Schmitt’s substantive
constitutionalism-
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Authors: Mariano Croce, Andrea Salvatore
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
This article problematizes the recent comeback of the exceptionalist jargon as it is conjured by both critics and sympathizers. While in the last decades governments across the globe had recourse to emergency measures to cope with far-reaching emergencies, from terrorism to the COVID-19 pandemic, the received view has it that political power takes advantage of states of emergency as they put themselves in the position to circumvent constitutional limitations. Carl Schmitt is claimed to be the major advocate of this conception of emergency politics in that he elaborated on the concept of the state of exception as the heart of the state political power. This article contends that the received view is doubly wrong. First, soon after his espousal of exceptionalism, Schmitt realized that emergency legislation is an ineffective and costly governmental device that should be transitory and is as unstable as the crisis it is meant to overcome. Second, the received view neglects how Schmitt came to his model of ultraconservative substantive constitutionalism as he maintained that the main task of politics is to protect the normative life of a limited set of state-sponsored institutions as well as the substantive contents they produce.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-12T10:00:03Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150459
- ‘Taking politics seriously: A prudential justification of political
realism’-
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Authors: Greta Favara
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Political realists have devoted much effort to clarifying the methodological specificity of realist theorising and defending its consistency as an approach to political reasoning. Yet the question of how to justify the realist approach has not received the same attention. In this article, I offer a prudential justification of political realism. To do so, I first characterise realism as anti-moralism. I then outline three possible arguments for the realist approach by availing myself of recent inquiries into the metatheoretical basis of realism: The metaethical, the ethical and the prudential arguments. I explain that the prudential argument offers the most solid basis for political realism because it relies on the least controversial premises. Still, I delve into the metaethical and ethical arguments for two reasons: The prudential argument takes advantage of the theses defended by the rival arguments and elaborating the other arguments shows the comparative strengths of the prudential argument.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-10T09:28:37Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221145547
- Understanding the democratic promise of the city
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Authors: Verena Frick
Abstract: Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print.
Looking at current theoretical approaches to democracy and the city, this article deepens our understanding of the democratic relevance of cities. It suggests four ideals of the democratic city which are labelled the city as a school of democracy, the urban cosmopolis, the city as a commons and the sustainable city. Tracing commonalities between the ideals, while avoiding their pitfalls, the article develops an argument for understanding the democratic promise of the city by linking John Dewey’s concept of democratic action as experimental problem-solving to the spatiality of the city. Building on Dewey, the article introduces the concept of urban experimentalism and points out prospects for a spatialized understanding of democracy and pathways for democratizing urban space.
Citation: Philosophy & Social Criticism
PubDate: 2023-01-07T08:04:33Z
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150456
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