What is recognition and why is it so important? This book develops a synoptic conception of the significance of recognition in its many forms for human persons by means of a rational reconstruction and internal critique of classical and contemporary accounts. The book begins with a clarification of several fundamental questions concerning recognition. It then reconstructs the core ideas of Fichte, Hegel, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth and utilizes the insights and conceptual tools developed across these chapters for (...) developing a case for the universal importance of recognition for humans. It argues in favour of a universalist anthropological position, unusual in the literature on recognition, that aims to construe a philosophically sound basis for a discourse of common humanity, or of a shared human life-form for which moral relations of recognition are essential. This synthetic conception of the importance of recognition provides tools for articulating deep intuitions shared across cultures about what makes human life and forms of human co-existence better or worse, and thus tools for mutual understanding about the deepest shared concerns of humanity, or of what makes us all human persons despite our differences. -/- Recognition and the Human Life-Form will appeal to readers interested in philosophical anthropology, social and political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of philosophy. It also provides ideas and conceptual tools for fields such as anthropology, education, disability studies, international relations, law, politics, religious studies, sociology, and social research. (shrink)

language-theoretic attempt to ground a post-liberal theory of democracy on Kant's intuitions concerning subjective autonomy is flawed because it leaves unexamined the internally contradictory experiential content of the Cartesian subject's experience of self. This case is made through reference to aspects of Habermas’ reconstructions of Kant and Mead; iek's criticisms of Kant, Heidegger and Habermas; and Honneth's idea that autonomy, for the post-Cartesian self, involves the ability of the subject to come to terms with the experience of negativity. The article (...) concludes by arguing that a post-liberal account of democracy needs to leave behind the Kantian notion of autonomous subjectivity and base itself on a fundamentally different, post-individualist understanding of the self. Key Words: autonomy • critical theory • democratic theory • Jürgen Habermas • Axel Honneth • subjectivity • Slavojiek. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse Axel Honneth's theory of recognition by focusing on two distinct methodological approaches present in it, namely, critique and reconstruction. The critical moment in Honneth's theory of recognition is articulated around two concepts: world-disclosing critique, which is based on the attempt to suggest new and provocative points of view on social reality through the usage of rhetorical devices; and misrecognition, as the empirical starting-point for the theoretical model. These two notions, which can be traced back to (...) Adorno and the so called "first generation" of the Frankfurt School, are interpreted as the mainlines of the diagnostic moment in Honneth's critical theory, as they provide an effective analytical insight into the reality of social suffering. Furthermore, they represent the basic fundament upon which the second level, reconstruction, is articulated. By bringing to light the core aspects of social interaction, they provide the initial clues for the development of the normative framework of recognition, the formal idea of a "good life". The final part of the paper argues that such an interpretation of Honneth's theory of recognition helps to overcome some of its most problematic aspects and thus to deepen its critical potential. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to a critical understanding of the multifaceted nature of power, emphasizing its capacity to shape the development of society by permeating constitutive aspects of human reality. To this end, the article proposes an outline of a multidimensional approach to power. It does so by identifying and examining several - arguably universal - features and functions of power. On the basis of 15 theses, it is argued that, within the social world, the power of power derives (...) from the fact that it is ubiquitous, productive, relational, intangible, habitual, discursive, corporeal, polycentric, performative, normative, spatial, temporal, disciplinary, circular, and transcendental. By way of conclusion, the article provides a comprehensive summary of the main insights gained and challenges arising from such a multidimensional approach to power. nema. (shrink)

Trata-se de analisar os usos da racionalidade mimética em Jacques Lacan e Theodor Adorno, isto a fim de mostrar como, nos dois casos, encontramos uma estratégia de reflexão sobre a mimesis que a eleva à condição de elemento fundamental para uma teoria do reconhecimento que não se esgote na temática da intersubjetividade. Neste sentido, este estudo insere-se em uma pesquisa mais ampla a respeito dos modos de aproximação entre psicanálise lacaniana e Escola de Frankfurt no que diz respeito ao problema (...) dos destinos da categoria de sujeito e dos processos de reconhecimento. (shrink)

To question power means also to ask what makes us governable and enables us to govern. This paper addresses this issue by rephrasing the question ‘what is power?’ into the question: ‘to what problem can power be seen as a response?’. This transformation allows us to keep the ‘power of power’ in sight. It then elucidates the ‘how’ of power through some conceptual explorations and theoretical clarifications as well as through an explicitly anthropological problematisation of power, as the way in (...) which power is understood depends always also on the way in which people understand themselves. Reassessing Foucault's rejection of anthropological reflections, the paper sketches a structural matrix of human self‐conceptions through which power and also critique can be reconstructed systematically. (shrink)

This article aims to confront the principal arguments of the concept of critique in sociology and to demonstrate the emergence in recent years of a re-dimensioned conception of critique, on the one hand, of a pragmatic, pluralistic and contingent nature, and, on the other, show how the need for a strong and transcendental concept of critique that does not renounce the possibility of individual and collective emancipation is still present. This article argues that the analytic and empirical space in which (...) we can better observe the meeting between the contingent and normative aspects of critique is that of the social movements, that unsurprisingly have been important reference points for many of the different sociological traditions of critique. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. Our focus is a defence of the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to consistently envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem we combine insights from three distant corners of the philosophical landscape: theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams (...) and other realists, Frankfurt School-inspired Critical Theory, and recent analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology, and social construction. The upshot is a novel account of realism as empirically-informed diagnosis- critique of social and political phenomena. This view rejects a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so is an alternative to the anti- empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise. (shrink)

Malinchism is a social phenomenon, distinctive of Latin America, which generates an internalisation of valuation patterns characterised by denying and underestimating local cultural expressions and...

Social philosophy is a somewhat broad and imprecise term. In this article I discuss the social philosophy of Habermas, Foucault and Honneth, arguing that the latter’s work is an interesting, but not unproblematic, conception of the discipline. Following Habermas and Honneth, I argue that social philosophy should be reconstructive, but incorporate insights from Foucault. Specifically, reconstructive social philosophy can be both normative and descriptive, and at the same time establish a dialectical relationship between philosophy and the social sciences, thus fulfilling (...) the ambition for social philosophy originally put forward by Horkheimer. The thesis I defend in this article is that reconstructive social philosophy in Habermasian or Honnethian fashion has the resources available to accomplish this ambitious task. (shrink)

This paper explores the ambivalent effects of recognition through a critical examination of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. I argue that his underlying perfectionist account and his focus on the psychic effects of recognition lead him to overlook important connections between recognition and power. These claims are substantiated through Butler’s theory of gender performativity and recognition; and issues connected to the socio-institutional recognition of transgender identities. I conclude by suggesting that certain problems with Butler’s own position can corrected by drawing (...) more from the Foucauldian aspects of her work. I argue that this is the most promising way to conceptualise recognition and its complex, ambivalent effects. (shrink)

Oksala’s book is the latest in a series of attempts to examine Foucault’s work during the late 1970s. We can delineate two clear trends in recent Foucault scholarship on this period: the first trend provides analyses and evaluations of this period while asecond trend attempts to apply Foucault’s analyses of these key concepts to contemporary society. Oksala’s book attempts to do both, although if forced to choose one would have to place it more firmly in the first camp than the (...) second. Accordingly, the first section of this review essay situates Oksala’s book within this recent context. I discuss her analysis and reconstruction of Foucault’s late 1970s work before turning in the final section to the various ways that she applies this analysis to current legal and political debates. (shrink)

Axel Honneth may be criticised for reducing political philosophy to moral psychology. In what follows, I argue that if his theory of recognition is reframed as one of democracy, quite another picture will appear. To do this, I systematically reconstruct Honneth’s stance as a multidimensional version of radical democracy. The question I discuss is the manner in which this framework combines the three dimensions of democratic deliberation, culture, and conflict. I then discuss Honneth’s picture from both a deliberative and agonistic (...) viewpoint. How one understands the way in which he combines the abovementioned dimensions is dependent upon which one of these two approaches one may choose. I claim that when taken together, these three dimensions form the grounding of a radical-democratic understanding of a struggle for recognition, which I term institutional agonism. (shrink)

I would like to thank Geoff Stokes and the journal's anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

This article argues against the doxa that Foucault's analysis of education inevitably undermines self-originating ethical intention on the part of teachers or students. By attending to Foucault's lesser known, later work—in particular, the notion of ‘biopower’ and the deepened level of materiality it entails—the article shows how the earlier Foucauldian conception of power is intensified to such an extent that it overflows its original domain, and comes to ‘infuse’ the subject that might previously have been taken as a mere effect. (...) What emerges, accordingly, is a subject divested of ‘traditional’, substantial, formation, located wholly on an immanent plane, and yet centrally concerned with the practice of freedom and ethical resistance. In turn, what seemed to have no place at all in the earlier Foucault becomes central: in general, active subjectivization (subjectivation) as a counter to passive subjection (assujetissement); more particularly, subjects' ongoing production and creation (via strategic decisions and localized opposition) of a new ethos, new ‘practices of self’, and new kinds of relations. With this alternative Foucauldian position outlined, the article then focuses more particularly on the practices of education: it concludes that, instead of being rendered merely the factories of obedient behaviour, schools or colleges can be the locus for a critically-informed, oppositional micro-politics. In other words: the power-relations that (quite literally) constitute education can now be regarded, on Foucault's own terms, as being creative, ‘enabling’ and positive. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of individual rights in the production of active citizenship. In recent years, the notion of ‘active citizenship’ has become an object of research in both political and social science. Studies that draw on the Foucaultian governmentality tradition have been particularly interested in various societal discourses and practices through which active citizenship is being produced. However, the role of law and rights has been neglected or even rejected in these studies. The aim of this article is (...) thus to show that certain procedural rights, the right to participate in particular, constitute an important legal technology in the production of active citizenship. The analysis is based on the recent developments in Finnish social and health care law. It will also be argued that despite the apparently convergent subject-matter, Jürgen Habermas’s normative theory of the ‘procedural paradigm of law’ does not offer a meaningful framework in which to address the relationship between active citizenship and procedural rights since it is based on an overly narrow conception of subjectivity. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’ characterization of Adorno’s project as an aestheticization of philosophy continues to influence our reading of his work. In contradiction to Lambert Zuidervaart, who suggests that in order to be understood as politically relevant, Adorno’s philosophy must be supplemented with empirical research, I argue in this article that Adorno’s work contains many of the resources we would need to theorize an ethical politics. First, it both identifies the moral debt carried by the subject and addresses the need for social (...) transformation in order to change this situation. Second, it proposes an ethical comportment of self-relinquishment as a first step towards this reorganization of the social. The self-relinquishment of philosophy to its object is modeled upon aesthetic experience, which, according to Adorno, we must regard as a remorseful atonement for the subject’s domination of the object in its attempt to ‘wrest itself free’ ( Aesthetic Theory, 1997c: 112) of undifferentiated being. By incorporating into philosophical thought the mimetic bodily impulses tamed by aesthetic form, we may engender within ourselves a solidarity with objectivity. Rather than the self-possessing and conservative subject that constitutes its world mentally, Adorno theorizes a subject for whom thinking is a temporalization or a becoming. Thinking produces otherness within the subject itself. In this thinking-as-becoming, we see the beginnings of a highly individuated political subjectivity capable of acting in solidarity with the other. This brings us to the third element within Adorno’s philosophy that can serve us in formulating an ethical politics: the non-violent organizational principle of the modern work of art. In mobilizing the logic of the modern work of art, the autonomous individual is empowered to forge a politics that preserves contradiction in the facilitation of a non-violent relation with others. (shrink)

Normative political philosophy always refers to a standard against which a society's institutions are judged. In the first, analytical part of the article, the different possible forms of normative criticism are examined according to whether the standards it appeals to are external or internal to the society in question. In the tradition of Socrates and Hegel, it is argued that reconstructing the kind of norms that are implicit in practices enables a critique that does not force the critic's particular views (...) on the addressee and can also be motivationally effective. In the second part of the article, Axel Honneth's theory of recognition is examined as a form of such reconstructive internal critique . It is argued that while the implicit norms of recognition made explicit in Honneth's philosophical anthropology help explain progressive social struggles as moral ones, his theory faces two challenges in justifying internal critique. The Priority Challenge asks for the reasons why the implicit norms of recognition should be taken as the standard against which other implicit and explicit norms are to be judged. The Application Challenge asks why a social group should, by its own lights, extend equal recognition to all its members and even non-members. The kind of functional, prudential, conceptual, and moral considerations that could serve to answer these challenges are sketched. (shrink)

Abstract According to Habermas' colonization thesis, reification is a social pathology that arises when the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld is 'colonized' by money and power. In this paper I argue that, thirty years after the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action, this thesis remains compelling. However, while Habermas offers a functionalist explanation of reification, his normative criticism of it remains largely implicit: he never explains what is wrong with reification from the perspective of the people whose social relations (...) are reified. As a result, Habermas cannot explain why only some forms of colonization lead to reification effects. In particular, he suggests that reification effects result from the juridification of communicatively structured domains of action but not from the commodification of labour power. I criticize this argument and suggest that if the normative dimension of the colonization thesis is made explicit, a more nuanced explanation of reification becomes possible. (shrink)

Major sociological work related to the culture industry thesis was undertaken by Adorno during his period as a ‘refugee scholar’ in the USA. It has been charged with a ‘sociological deficit’ by leading figures within critical theory, typically without reference to that US context. A dialogue with Márkus’s work on Adorno and the Marxian production paradigm can redress failings in those critiques. However, such a task is complicated by the limitations of Márkus’s own major essay on this topic. This paper (...) thus conducts an immanent critique of Márkus: ‘Márkus against Márkus’. Márkus’s proposals for the application of the Marxian production paradigm to aesthetic culture and his prospective vision for critical theory are so found to be very compatible with Adorno’s related work. (shrink)

Adorno’s commitment to anti-foundationalism generates a concern over how his ethically normative appraisals of social phenomena can be founded. Drawing on both Kohlmann and Bernstein’s account, I produce a new reading which contends somatic impulses are capable of bearing intrinsically normative epistemic and moral content. This entails a new way of understanding Adorno’s contention that Auschwitz produced a new categorical imperative. Working with Bernstein’s account, I claim that Auschwitz makes manifest the hostility of the instrumentalization of reason to the somatic (...) grounds of reason. One’s mimetic identification with the victims of Auschwitz arouses a self-preserving desire to intercede in and re-orient the progress of reason itself, for the sake of one’s own somatic integrity. In closing, I claim – contra Zuidervaart – that this reading allows us to place the ethical as primary in Adorno, without reducing the political to it. (shrink)

In response to an impasse, articulated in the late 1980s, the cognitive capacities of ordinary people assumed central place in contemporary critical social theory. The participants’ perspective gained precedence over scientific standards branded as external. The notion of cognition, however, went unchallenged. This article continues the move away from external standards, and discusses two models of critique, which differ based on their underlying notions of cognition. The representational model builds on cognitive content, misrecognition and normativity; three features which are illustrated (...) with positions adopted by prominent exponents of critical social theory. An alternative understanding relies on action-oriented disclosure and the participants’ basic familiarity with the social world. On this reading, what clashes with unequal structures is skilful coping, rather than representations and normative standards. The action-oriented approach may overcome the dilemma of understanding both the impact and the possible transcendence of unequal structures, although it cannot ultimately replace representational critique. (shrink)

In this article we, the authors, outline the thematic concerns of our special issue of the Journal of Global Ethics . We argue for a need to engage with notions of violence from an interdisciplinary and transformative perspective. The theoretical framework that provides such a perspective is critical theory, broadly construed. Critical theory has always been concerned with the relation between practice and theory, as well as notions of violence. It is therefore surprising to note that in the current critical (...) theoretical debates a sustained engagement with the theme of violence has largely been sidelined. We argue that critical theory is not only fruitful for the study of conflict and violence, but also that such practical issues can shed and help further develop critical theory itself. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas' view that Adorno's thinking is characterized by a commitment to a philosophy of consciousness, and that therefore the only alternative to identitarian reason is to appeal to an intuitive competence operating beyond the range of conceptual thought, it is arged (1) that Adorno conceptualizes the modern epistemic subject (the subject of a philosophy of consciousness) as based on a reification, and (2) that he denies the possibility of a concept-transcendent (foundationalist) constraint on judgments. In seeking to demonstrate against (...) versions of subjective idealism and foundationalism how thought can be responsive to a non-identical (mind-independent) reality, Adorno defends an intersubjectivist and historicist view of knowledge according to which the operative and yet anamnetic aspiration of knowledge is to know reflectively the object as it is in itself. The conclusion is that although Adorno questions the modern (Kantian) stress on epistemic autonomy, he does not take leave of modernity in the sense ascribed to him by Habermas. (shrink)

The debate between Marcuse and Habermas over technology marked a significant turning point in the history of the Frankfurt School. After the 1960s Habermas's influence grew as Marcuse's declined and Critical Theory adopted a far less Utopian stance. Recently there has been a revival of quite radical technology criticism in the environmental movement and under the influence of Foucault and constructivism. This article takes a new look at the earlier debate from the standpoint of these recent developments. While much of (...) Habermas's argument remains persuasive, his defense of modernity now seems to concede far too much to the claims of autonomous technology. His essentialist picture of technology as an application of a purely instrumental form of nonsocial rationality is less plausible after a decade of historicizing research in technology studies. The article argues that Marcuse was right after all to claim that technology is socially determined even if he was unable to develop his insight fruitfully. The article derives a new approach to technology criticism from both constructivism and Habermas's communication theory. The essence of technology is shown to be historical and reflexive, like the essence of other social institutions. As such an institution, its rationality is always implemented in value?biased forms subject to political critique. (shrink)

Axel Honneth’s philosophical reflections always had significant historical dimensions, but it is only recently, in Recognition. A Chapter in the History of European Ideas, that he has attended to the history of recognition as a concept. This essay examines the cogency and the implications of this turn to intellectual history in the theory of recognition. The first section summarises the main historical claims put forward by Honneth. Section two raises critical doubts regarding three aspects of his narrative: the cultural contexts (...) that are said to have influenced particular conceptions of recognition; the conceptions of recognition that are supposed to be tied to national cultures; and the method of linking particular meanings of recognition to national cultures. The third section broadens the scope and attempts to show why this turn to intellectual history, despite some shortcomings, raises tantalising questions for recognition theory, and beyond it, for critical theory. (shrink)

This article argues that Axel Honneth’s ethics of recognition offers a robust model for a renewed critical theory of society, provided that it does not shy away from its political dimensions. First, the ethics of recognition needs to clarify its political moment at the conceptual level to remain conceptually sustainable. This requires a clarification of the notion of identity in relation to the three spheres of recognition, and a clarification of its exact place in a politics of recognition. We suggest (...) that a return to Hegel’s mature theory of subjectivity helps specify the relationship between the normative demand for autonomous identity and its realization in and through politics. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider succinctly the main Marxist objections to Honneth’s model of critical social theory, and Honneth’s key objections to Marx-inspired models. I then seek to outline a rapprochement between the two positions, by showing how Honneth’s normative concept of recognition is not antithetical to functionalist arguments, but in fact contains a social-theoretical dimension, the idea that social reproduction and social evolution revolve around struggles around the interpretation of core societal norms. By highlighting the social theoretical side of (...) recognition, one can outline a model of critical social theory that in fact corresponds to the descriptive and normative features outlined by Marx himself. However, the price of this rapprochement for Honnethian critical theory is a greater emphasis on the division of labour as the central mechanism of social reproduction. (shrink)

While the critique of neoliberalism, as the form of contemporary capitalism, has been advanced from Marxian and Foucauldian perspectives, it has had limited attention from the perspective of Critical Theory. Largely unrecognized is the suitability of the theory of reification for this critique, specifically, Habermas’s version. This article reconsiders Habermas’s colonization thesis as the basis for a critical theory of neoliberalism, refining its theoretical framework to deepen its critical diagnosis. Against the dismissal of the system–lifeworld concept, a novel critique is (...) advanced to suggest its original elaboration fell confusedly between two versions of social systems theory. Drawing from late developments, the scheme is reinterpreted as distinguishing two forms of communication in capitalist society: delinguistified and linguistic. This opens the way to reframe and communicatively transform colonization as relinguistification; that is, the translation of monetary coding into ordinary language such that communicative action is distorted from within by reifying concepts. (shrink)

Modern social orders are legitimized by the ideal of freedom. Most conceptions of this ideal are theorized against the backdrop of nature understood as governed by its own laws beyond the realm of the social. However, such an understanding of nature is now being challenged by the ‘Anthropocene’ hypothesis. This article investigates the consequences of this hypothesis for freedom as an ideal legitimizing social order. We begin by discussing the conception of legitimation, after which we examine three classical notions of (...) freedom (developed by Hobbes, Kant, and Hegel), in light of the Anthropocene. Following our claim that these notions all have severe weaknesses in view of the Anthropocene, we argue that modern social orders are facing a new legitimation crisis. Such a crisis, we suggest, involves a ‘brutalization of social conflicts’, which under the conditions of the Anthropocene assumes the form of geo-social conflict. (shrink)

This article considers Theodor W. Adorno’s thesis of the ‘liquidation of the individual’ as a contribution to the critique of political economy insofar as it links structural economic imperatives o...

Recently, following the social and subjective consequences of the neoliberal wave, there seems to be a renewed interest in work as occupying a central place in social and subjective life. For the first time in decades, both sociologists and critical theorists once more again regard work as a major constituent of the subject’s identity and thus as an appropriate object of analysis for those engaged in critique of the social pathologies. The aim of this article is to present a succinct (...) analysis of Axel Honneth’s thoughts on the concept of work and to propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory. To this end, this article will embark upon a reappraisal of the importance of the material and psychological dimensions of the subject’s interactions in the world of work. It aims to demonstrate that the normative demands associated with these dimensions are, like the normative demands of recognition, immanent and universal. In other words, it will argue that the normative ideals related to individuals’ bodily and psychic life (in the workplace and beyond) are not necessarily utopian in the negative sense (abstract and unrealistic). If this is indeed the case, theorists could take these normative demands for emancipation as a guide to analyzing the sociological, political and moral implications of the transition from the ‘Fordist’ to the ‘post-Fordist’ organization of labor. (shrink)

Feminist theory needs both explanatory-diagnostic and anticipatory-utopian moments in order to be truly critical and truly feminist. However, the explanatory-diagnostic task of analyzing the workings of gendered power relations in all of their depth and complexity seems to undercut the very possibility of emancipation on which the anticipatory-utopian task relies. In this paper, I take this looming paradox as an invitation to rethink our understanding of emancipation and its relation to the anticipatory-utopian dimensions of critique, asking what conception of emancipation (...) is compatible with a complex explanatory-diagnostic analysis of contemporary gender domination as it is intertwined and entangled with race, class, sexuality, and empire. I explore this question through an analysis of two specific debates in which the paradoxical relationship between power and emancipation emerges in particularly salient and seemingly intractable forms: debates over subjection and modernity. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that a negativistic conception of emancipation offers the best way for feminist critical theory to transform the paradox of power and emancipation into a productive tension that can fuel critique. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Adorno’s thought for business ethicists working in the critical tradition by showing how his critique of modern social life anticipated, and ofers continuing illumination of, recent technological transformations of capitalism. It develops and extrapolates Adorno’s thought regarding three central spheres of modern society, which have seen radical changes in light of recent technological developments: work, in which employee monitoring has become ever more sophisticated and intrusive; leisure consumption, in which the algorithmic (...) developments of the culture industry have paved the way for entertainment products to dominate us; and political discourse, in which social media has exacerbated the anti-democratic tendencies Adorno warned of in the mid-twentieth century. We conclude by presenting, as a rejoinder to these developments, the contours of an Adornian ethics of resistance to the reifcation and dehumanisation of such developments. (shrink)

What if education were not about becoming something, making something of yourself, becoming some thing? What if we were to consider education as becoming-world? These questions are posed against the background of the current populist nationalist backlash against the consequences of globalization, along with growing anti-intellectualism and anti-democratic sentiment. How can education contribute locally and globally to fostering and safeguarding the very possibility of democratic practices against the neoliberal consecration of reified social relations? Becoming Things, Becoming-world contributes to contemporary discussions (...) in philosophy of education by developing a vision of a critical educational cosmopolitanism founded upon a renewed critique of reification. While cosmopolitan education has often been articulated in terms of an ethical and political response to globalization, this thesis proposes a different outlook. I argue that the idea of cosmopolitan education predates the onset of what we now term globalization, and that it provides a meaningful conception of education beyond the present socio-political condition. Moreover, I propose to rethink cosmopolitan education as a critique of reification, i.e. a critique of social relations taking on the character of mere things. The critique of reification helps to foreground aspects that have previously been neglected and marginalized in educational cosmopolitanism, such as its economic-material dimensions. At the same time, a critical cosmopolitan perspective is needed for a timely de-centering of critical social theory. Re-assessing the Cynic tradition and drawing on critical theorists such as Gerard Delanty and Axel Honneth as well as on New Wittgensteinian philosophers as Alice Crary, I advance a post-universalist understanding of cosmopolitanism. This is based on dynamic social relations and a broad understanding of rationality which includes imaginary aspects as well as the education of our sensitivities. Cosmopolitanism is understood as a lived practice which critically challenges reified social and cultural relations, including the strictures of particular socio-economic structures. The notion of reification is distinguished from other forms of alienation, objectification and instrumentalization and is deployed to characterize lasting distortions of our relations to each other, to the world and to ourselves. Against any idealizing take on communicative practice, I show that language, knowledge, and education do not necessarily counter-act reifying tendencies. Indeed, they themselves can become sources for enhancing processes of reification. A fresh look at the critique of reification allows us adequately to describe and understand the interrelation between contemporary capitalism, the forms of subjectivity it produces and the possibilities of democratic education and education towards democracy. Such an understanding is needed in face of the apparent impossibility of imagining a society, and envisioning an education, beyond the conditions formulated by contemporary neoliberal policies. Education as becoming-world maintains a hopeful outlook on the possibilities of our globalizing and pluralizing social reality as well as a keen focus on the tensions and challenges that this poses for contemporary educational endeavors on individual as well as structural levels. (shrink)

The 'critical turn' in tourism studies is defined as a research perspective that explores social transfor- mation in and through tourism by facing the negative impact of strategic-instrumental rationality on this activity. This work explores the features of discourse ethics that may normatively support tourism transformation, a gap that has not been thoroughly discussed in tourism research. For this purpose, the study combines the use of critical and ethical theory with an analysis of discourse ethics in tourism literature to demonstrate (...) that the use of Habermasian discourse ethics needs to be complemented with the Apelian approach. Through these steps the work reveals the theoretical bases of discourse ethics to discuss whether understandings between stakeholders guided by strategic-instrumental rationality can be reached not only in the political sphere —Habermas—, but also in the ethical field —Apel. (shrink)

La teoría feminista necesita tanto momentos de diagnóstico explicativo como de utopía anticipatoria con el fin de ser realmente crítica y verdaderamente feminista. Sin embargo, la tarea de diagnóstico explicativo en el análisis del funcionamiento de las relaciones de poder basadas en el género en toda su complejidad parece cortar la posibilidad misma de emancipación, de la cual depende la tarea de una utopía anticipatoria. En este artículo, considero esta inminente paradoja como una invitación a repensar nuestro entendimiento de la (...) emancipación y su relación con las dimensiones de utopía anticipatoria de la crítica; asimismo, cuestiono cuál es la concepción de emancipación compatible con un análisis de diagnóstico explicativo sobre la dominación de género, en la medida en que se encuentra ligada e involucrada con la raza, clase, sexualidad e imperio. Siguiendo a Michel Foucault, sostengo que una concepción negativista de la emancipación ofrece el mejor camino para que la teoría feminista transforme la paradoja de poder y emancipación en una tensión productiva que pueda alimentar a la crítica. (shrink)

In this dissertation I explore the conceptual relationship between equality and resistance in political philosophy. Through examination of the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Dewey, and Jacques Rancière, I formulate a position called Fractured Social Holism. This is a problematic that attempts to articulate core issues at stake in the debates surrounding the purposes, meanings, and possibilities for politics. Through Fractured Social Holism I articulate a theory of equality that emphasizes the communities upon which societys institutions intend to (...) distribute equality, arguing that resistance on the part of a populationgroup opposition, formal or informal, to some element of the societal status quoconceptually grounds equality and its distribution by articulating its very possibilities. My central questionHow is equality constituted?focuses on the community itself in order to shift agency from institutions that distribute equality to those who demand it. It emphasizes the active role of the people in the constitution of a community of equals, as well as the fact that the very notion of the people is what is at stake in that constitution; popular resistance challenges the very meaning and content of any given people. I understand equality in the broadest possible sense, in terms of the opportunity of each and all within society to participate in dictating the terms of their public engagement with that society and with others within it. I argue for the possibility of resistance within egalitarian community in Rousseau, the limits of what that resistance in egalitarian society looks like in Marx, how egalitarian communities can organize themselves in Dewey, and how subjectivity relates to mechanisms of resistance and political action within society in Rancière. These historical interpretations and the conceptual framework they engender provide a novel means of thinking about issues of paramount importance in contemporary political philosophy, including pluralism, oppression and domination, and the purposes and meaning of politics, remaining true to a normative vision of equality while insisting on the necessity of the peoples resistance to the status quo in the name of a re-imagined vision of social harmony. (shrink)

In this paper, I will analyze Axel Honneth’s theory against the background of some of the criticisms that Amy Allen levelled against it. His endeavor seems to partially compromise his ability to identify the domineering forms of power that the subject does not acknowledge consciously and affectively. I will argue that, despite some significant limitations, Honneth’s theory has become increasingly able to analyze social negativity since The struggle for recognition. Also, in both defending Honneth’s methodology and delimiting its scope, I (...) aim to contribute to the debate between two understandings of power: power as ‘domination’ and power as ‘constitution’. (shrink)