Bücher der Reihe Reinventing Critical Theory

This book offers a broad reconstruction of the modern notion of sovereignty, a comprehensive critique of state-inflicted violence, and a concept of non-coercive law for our contemporary world society.

The book calls into the question the critical value of the concept of "democracy" at a time characterized by the rise of Right-wing populist movements and the persistence of pathological political beliefs (such as climate skepticism).

Under what conditions can political philosophy and sociology open up new spaces of freedom? In a globalized world, how can we both ensure individual autonomy and guarantee greater levels of social justice? How can we effectively rearticulate a critique of domination and a philosophy of emancipation? Domination and Emancipation presents an exchange between the sociologist Luc Boltanski and the political philosopher Nancy Fraser, reorganized, revised, and introduced by Philippe Corcuff. The first part of the book is based on questions that were presented during a debate between the two at the 2012 festival ''Mode d''emploi'', an exchange that is certain to become a classic debate of critical theory. The debate is augmented by newly translated interviews that see Boltanski venturing into radical politics with Olivier Besancenot and Fraser discussing the future of feminism. The book concludes with a rethinking of individualism and alienation in order to provide the groundwork for a new social theory for the 21st Century.

With and beyond the political philosophy of Jacques Ranciere, this book rethinks critical agency and its emancipatory effects today through an examination of the body.

Working at the margins of aesthetics and politics, Patrick Vauday challenges the dominant assumptions of our mediatized society and its disposition towards images. This challenge does not advocate eliminating images altogether, but rather entreats us to see them in a different light.

The value of democracy is taken for granted today, even by those interested in criticizing the fundamental structures of society. Things would be better, the argument goes, if only things were more democratic. The word ΓÇ£democracyΓÇ¥ means ΓÇ£the power of the people,ΓÇ¥ and scholars with a critical and progressive outlook often invoke this meaning as a way of justifying the honorific status accorded to the term: the power of the people to resist racism, sexism, imperialism, climate change, etc. But if the people have the power to resist these structures of domination and inequality, they also have the power to reinforce them. By treating democracy as an end in itself, political theorists of a critical bent overwhelmingly assume that the demos, if given the opportunity, will advance progressive or even radical politics. But given the recent successes of right-wing populism, and the persistence of pathological views such as climate skepticism, is this assumption still warranted? If not, then can democracy really save us?

This volume offers an accessible intellectual dialogue on the very nature of critical thought and on its social and political translations. Castoriadis is pushed to address challenges raised by decolonial thought, by critiques of ethnocentrism, and broadly by the international context of radical critical thought.

This book engages with recent philosophical interventions into democracy, equality, and human rights to demonstrate their relevance to the field of Francophone Postcolonial Studies. The book explores the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the postcolonial Algerian novel.

This book provides truly interdisciplinary analysis, bridging the gap between humanities, legal and social science approaches to the ongoing crisis in Europe.

This important collection of essays by Andrew Feenberg presents his critical theory of technology, an innovative approach to philosophy and sociology of technology based on a synthesis of ideas drawn from STS and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The volume includes chapters on citizenship, modernity, and Heidegger and Marcuse.

This important collection of essays by Andrew Feenberg presents his critical theory of technology, an innovative approach to philosophy and sociology of technology based on a synthesis of ideas drawn from STS and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The volume includes chapters on citizenship, modernity, and Heidegger and Marcuse.

An advanced introduction to the new philosophical anthropology and an understanding of the most contemporary developments in it.

This book provides truly interdisciplinary analysis, bridging the gap between humanities, legal and social science approaches to the ongoing crisis in Europe.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the neoliberal ideas that arguably caused the damage have been triumphant in presenting themselves as the only possible solution for it. How can we account for the persistence of neoliberal hegemony, in spite of its obviously disastrous effects upon labor, capital, ecology, and society? The argument pursued in this book is that part of the persistence of neoliberalism has to do with the archaic and obscure political theology upon which of much of its discourse trades. This is a political theology of chance that both underwrites and obscures sacrificial devotion to market outcomes. Joshua Ramey structures this political theology around hidden homologies between modern markets, as non-rational randomizing ';meta-information processors', and archaic divination tools, which are used in public acts of tradition-bound attempts to interpret the deliverances of chance. Ramey argues that only by recognizing the persistently sacred character of chance within putatively secularized discourses of risk and randomness can the investments of neoliberal power be exposed at their sacred source, and an alternative political theology be constructed.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ';postnational' or ';cosmopolitan' politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ';cosmopolitan point of view.' Drawing on Kant';s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas';s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ';commercium' of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society.

How can a people overthrow 500 years of colonial oppression? What can be done to decolonize mentalities, economic structures, and political institutions? In this book, which includes the first translation of the text ';Analysis of a Few Types of Resistance' as well as ';The Role of Culture in the Struggle for Independence,' the African revolutionary Amlcar Cabral explores these and other questions. These texts demonstrate his frank and insightful directives to his comrades in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde's party for independence, as well as reflections on culture and combat written the year prior to his assassination by the Portuguese secret police. As one of the most important and profound African revolutionary leaders in the 20th century, and justly compared in importance to Frantz Fanon, Cabral's thoughts and instructions as articulated here help us to rethink important issues concerning nationalism, culture, vanguardism, revolution, liberation, colonialism, race, and history. The volume also includes two introductory essays: the first introduces Cabral's work within the context of Africana critical theory, and the second situates these texts in the context their historical-political context and analyzes their relevance for contemporary anti-imperialism.

An advanced introduction to the new philosophical anthropology and an understanding of the most contemporary developments in it.