Critical Theory in Critical Times
Critical Theory in Critical Times

Author: Penelope Deutscher

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-04-04

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 023154362X

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We live in critical times. We face a global crisis in economics and finance, a global ecological crisis, and a constant barrage of international disputes. Perhaps most dishearteningly, there seems to be little faith in our ability to address such difficult problems. However, there is also a more positive sense in which these are critical times. The world's current state of flux gives us a unique window of opportunity for shaping a new international order that will allow us to cope with current and future global crises. In Critical Theory in Critical Times, eleven of the most distinguished critical theorists offer new perspectives on recent crises and transformations of the global political and economic order. Essays from Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Cristina Lafont, Rainer Forst, Wendy Brown, Christoph Menke, Nancy Fraser, Rahel Jaeggi, Amy Allen, Penelope Deutscher, and Charles Mills address pressing issues including international human rights and democratic sovereignty, global neoliberalism, novel approaches to the critique of capitalism, critical theory's Eurocentric heritage, and new directions offered by critical race theory and postcolonial studies. Sharpening the conceptual tools of critical theory, the contributors to Critical Theory in Critical Times reveal new ways of expanding the diverse traditions of the Frankfurt School in response to some of the most urgent and important challenges of our times.

Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy
Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy

Author: Werner Bonefeld

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-08

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1441161392

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Subversive thought is none other than the cunning of reason when confronted with a social reality in which the poor and miserable are required to sustain the illusion of fictitious wealth. Yet, this subsidy is absolutely necessary in existing society, to prevent its implosion. The critique of political economy is a thoroughly subversive business. It rejects the appearance of economic reality as a natural thing, argues that economy has not independent existence, expounds economy as political economy, and rejects as conformist rebellion those anti-capitalist perspectives that derive their rationality from the existing conceptuality of society. Subversion focuses on human conditions. Its critical subject is society unaware of itself. This book develops Marx's critique of political economy as negative theory of society. It does not conform to the patterns of the world and demands that society rids itself of all the muck of ages and founds itself anew.

The Idea of a Critical Theory
The Idea of a Critical Theory

Author: Raymond Geuss

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1981-10-30

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9780521284226

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The purpose of this series is to help make contemporary European philosophy intelligible to a wider audience in the English-speaking world, and to suggest its interest and importance in particular to those trained in analytical philosophy.

The Return of Work in Critical Theory
The Return of Work in Critical Theory

Author: Christophe Dejours

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-06-19

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0231547188

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From John Maynard Keynes’s prediction of a fifteen-hour workweek to present-day speculation about automation, we have not stopped forecasting the end of work. Critical theory and political philosophy have turned their attention away from the workplace to focus on other realms of domination and emancipation. But far from coming to an end, work continues to occupy a central place in our lives. This is not only because of the amount of time people spend on the job. Many of our deepest hopes and fears are bound up in our labor—what jobs we perform, how we relate to others, how we might flourish. The Return of Work in Critical Theory presents a bold new account of the human significance of work and the human costs of contemporary forms of work organization. A collaboration among experts in philosophy, social theory, and clinical psychology, it brings together empirical research with incisive analysis of the political stakes of contemporary work. The Return of Work in Critical Theory begins by looking in detail at the ways in which work today fails to meet our expectations. It then sketches a phenomenological description of work and examines the normative premises that underlie the experience of work. Finally, it puts forward a novel conception of work that can renew critical theory’s engagement with work and point toward possibilities for transformation. Inspired by Max Horkheimer’s vision of critical theory as empirically informed reflection on the sources of social suffering with emancipatory intent, The Return of Work in Critical Theory is a lucid diagnosis of the malaise and pathologies of contemporary work that proposes powerful remedies.

The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition
The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition

Author: Peter Koslowski

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 576

ISBN-13: 3662040840

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The theory of capitalism and of the economic order is the central topic of the German economic tradition in the 20th century. Capitalism has not only been the topic for Marxist economics and for the Frankfurt School but also for the Historical School and for the postmarxist theory of capitalism in Ordo- and Neo-Liberalism as well as in Solidarism. The question of the foundations of the economic order of the market economy and of capitalism as well as the problem whether a third path between capitalism and social ism is possible occupied this tradition from the Historical School to Ordo Liberalism and the theory of the social market economy. The theory of capitalism and of the social market economy as well as the critique and reform developed in this theoretical tradition is important for the theory of economic systems as well as for today's problems of the eco nomic order. Its relevance for the present world economy is visible in the discussions whether there exist different models of capitalism and whether they can be described as the Anglo-American and as the Rhenish model of capitalism influenced by the thought of the German economic tradition. Michel Albert, the author of this classification, gave the key-word in his book Capitalism against Capitalism. The papers of this book can help to clarify this debate by giving a first hand introduction to some of the main economic thinkers of capitalism.

Critical Realism in Economics
Critical Realism in Economics

Author: Steve Fleetwood

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780415195683

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Presents a collection of articles previously published in the Review of Social Economy (1996) and in Ekonomia (1997). These articles extend insights from critical realism into the fields of economic methodology and economic theory in such a way as to open up new forms of investigation in economics and transform the nature of economic reasoning. It is argued that the specific value of this approach is that it directs attention to the structures and capacities that explain the observed phenomena of economic life. This volume includes papers from authors critical of this approach, as well as from those who discuss its full implications for contemporary economics. Paper edition (19568-3), $27.99. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Critical Theory and Interaction Design
Critical Theory and Interaction Design

Author: Jeffrey Bardzell

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 840

ISBN-13: 026203798X

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Classic texts by thinkers from Althusser to Žižek alongside essays by leaders in interaction design and HCI show the relevance of critical theory to interaction design. Why should interaction designers read critical theory? Critical theory is proving unexpectedly relevant to media and technology studies. The editors of this volume argue that reading critical theory—understood in the broadest sense, including but not limited to the Frankfurt School—can help designers do what they want to do; can teach wisdom itself; can provoke; and can introduce new ways of seeing. They illustrate their argument by presenting classic texts by thinkers in critical theory from Althusser to Žižek alongside essays in which leaders in interaction design and HCI describe the influence of the text on their work. For example, one contributor considers the relevance Umberto Eco's “Openness, Information, Communication” to digital content; another reads Walter Benjamin's “The Author as Producer” in terms of interface designers; and another reflects on the implications of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble for interaction design. The editors offer a substantive introduction that traces the various strands of critical theory. Taken together, the essays show how critical theory and interaction design can inform each other, and how interaction design, drawing on critical theory, might contribute to our deepest needs for connection, competency, self-esteem, and wellbeing. Contributors Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, Olav W. Bertelsen, Alan F. Blackwell, Mark Blythe, Kirsten Boehner, John Bowers, Gilbert Cockton, Carl DiSalvo, Paul Dourish, Melanie Feinberg, Beki Grinter, Hrönn Brynjarsdóttir Holmer, Jofish Kaye, Ann Light, John McCarthy, Søren Bro Pold, Phoebe Sengers, Erik Stolterman, Kaiton Williams., Peter Wright Classic texts Louis Althusser, Aristotle, Roland Barthes, Seyla Benhabib, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Arthur Danto, Terry Eagleton, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, Wolfgang Iser, Alan Kaprow, Søren Kierkegaard, Bruno Latour, Herbert Marcuse, Edward Said, James C. Scott, Slavoj Žižek

Critical Theory
Critical Theory

Author: Max Horkheimer

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1972-01-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0826400833

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These essays, written in the 1930s and 1940s, represent a first selection in English from the major work of the founder of the famous Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Horkheimer's writings are essential to an understanding of the intellectual background of the New Left and the to much current social-philosophical thought, including the work of Herbert Marcuse. Apart from their historical significance and even from their scholarly eminence, these essays contain an immediate relevance only now becoming fully recognized.

Critical Political Economy
Critical Political Economy

Author: Christian Arnsperger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-12-11

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1134064586

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This bold and ambitious book attempts to diagnose and remedy what is wrong with economics, so that it can become an emancipatory form of knowledge. It will be of interest to serious economists and philosophers of social science everywhere.

Critical Theory at a Crossroads
Critical Theory at a Crossroads

Author: Stijn De Cauwer

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-07-31

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0231546831

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We are living in an age of crisis—or an age in which everything is labeled a crisis. Financial, debt, and refugee “crises” have erupted. The word has also been applied to the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and many other international events. Yet the term has contradictory political and strategic meanings for those challenging power structures and those seeking to preserve them. For critics of the status quo, can the rhetoric of crisis be used to foment urgency around issues like climate change and financialization, or does framing a situation as a “crisis” play into the hands of the existing political order, which then seeks to tighten the leash by creating a state of emergency? Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past years, the protest movements that have risen up in response, and the use of the term in political discourse. Tariq Ali, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela McRobbie, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Saskia Sassen, and Joseph Vogl offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new social movements have offered, alongside an exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Roberto Esposito on theories of community. Sparring over crucial developments in these past years of catastrophe and the calamity of everyday life under capitalism, they shed light on how crises and the discourse of crisis can both obscure and reveal fundamental aspects of modern societies.