What Approach to Social Totality Does a Critical Theory Need Today?
Is there still a need for a comprehensive social theory today that clarifies the interrelation and interaction of the various social spheres? Often enough, social theoretical designs have tried to accomplish this task by postulating clear hierarchies of social phenomena and derivations between them. This strategy made social theory unattractive to many of the new social movements. Today, however, the question is what connects the inheritors of these movements or at least allows us to deal with the conflicts between them on a theoretical level. If the multiple concrete experiences of exploitation, discrimination, exclusion and so on are not to be reduced to an abstract as well as politically ineffective denominator such as “suffering” or “injustice”, must not then the hour of theories, which promise to reconstruct the coherence of social relations, strike again?
Interventions
-
Gesellschaft als Schicksal
Ein Diskussionsbeitrag im Anschluss an den Workshop "Welche Gesellschaftstheorie braucht eine kritische Theorie heute?" des Humanities and Social Change Centers an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin am 9. und 10. Dezember 2021.
26 January 2022