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Critical theories of crisis in Europe: from Weimar to the euro
European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire
The Reinventing Critical Theory series publishes cutting edge work that seeks to reinvent critical social theory for the twenty-first century. It serves as a platform for new research in critical philosophy that examines the political, social, historical, anthropological, psychological, technological, religious, aesthetic and/or economic dynamics shaping the contemporary situation. Books in the series provide alternative accounts and points of view regarding the development of critical social theory, put critical theory in dialogue with other intellectual traditions around the world and/or advance new, radical forms of pluralist critical theory that contest the current hegemonic order.
KULT_online. Review Journal for the Study of Culture, 2018
The volume Critical Theory in Critical Times. Transforming the Global Political & Economic Order, edited by Penelope Deutscher and Cristina Lafont, re-emphasizes the link between critical theory and crisis. Eleven contributions by prominent scholars of critical theory show how political, economic or legal crises make critical theory necessary and how it can serve to explain and critically address the current multiple crises. In doing so, critical theory is undergoing a self-critique. That, in order to provide accurate diagnoses and responses to current crises, critical theory has to open for different approaches, such as feminist or postcolonial theory, is one outcome of several essays in the volume. At the same time there is a plea for sticking to the core concepts of materialist critique that should not be replaced but rather complemented by these "newer" approaches.
What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing Europeancrisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises.The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked. List of Content Introduction: European Crises of Public Power: From Weimar until Today, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen / PART I: Semantics, Notions and Narratives of Societal Crisis / 1. What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking about Crises?, David Runciman / 2. The Stakes of Crises, Janet Roitman / PART II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Ideologies of Anti-Modernism and Liberalism / 3.The Crisis of Modernity – Modernity as Crisis: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe and Beyond, Balázs Trencsényi / 4. European Legitimacy Crises – Weimar and Today: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange, John P. McCormick / 5.Crisis and the Consumer: Re-constructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Political Thought, Niklas Olsen / PART III: The Causes of Crises: From Corporatism to Governance / 6. The Constitutionalisation of Labour Law and the Crisis of National Democracy, Chris Thornhill / 7. Conflict and the Crisis in Labour Law: From Weimar to Austerity, Ruth Dukes / 8. From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance, Poul F. Kjaer / PART IV: The Euro and the Crisis of Law and Democracy / 9. What is Left of the European Economic Constitution II? From Pyrrhic Victory to Cannae Defeat, Christian Joerges / 10. Reflections on Europe’s “Rule of Law Crises”, Jan-Werner Müller / 11. Democracy under Siege: The Decay of Constitutionalisation and the Crisis of Public Law and Public Opinion, Hauke Brunkhorst / PART V: The Consequences of Crises and the Future of Europe / 12. Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and from Below, William E. Scheuerman / 13. “We could Go down the Road of Lebanon”: Crisis Thinking on the Anti-Muslim Far Right, Mikkel Thorup / 14. Conclusion and Perspectives: The Re-constitution of Europe, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen Review and review essays: Romain Bonnet (2017): European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2017.1317054 Andreas Marklund (2018) Historisk Tidsskrift, 117, 2, 637 – 39. Pablo Holmes (2018), ‘The constitutional politics of crisis in Europe’, Culture, Practice & European Policy, 3, 2, 92 – 98.
BRINGING CRITICAL BACK TO CRITICAL THEORY
To resurrect and revalorize the tradition of the early Frankfurt School, whose of Marxist-Hegelian dialectical approach to understanding the societal conditions of its emergence --post WWI Germany, the rise of fascism, New Deal politics, the defeat of fascism and the subsequent rise of consumer societyremains relevant to studying present circumstances, stressing the cultural dimension of capitalism, the proliferation of alienation, ideology and mass media, and, finally, the nature of the society-character/subjectivity nexus.
Critical Social Analysis of Crisis
Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2021
In this article, we offer a critical social analysis of crisis in light of capitalist development and, above all, in the post-2008 world. We discuss five approaches in the social sciences that deal with the problem of crisis and develop some theoretical lines for a critical approach to the theme. We argue that precarity can be an important topic for grasping the current crises via critical approaches. The text also presents the six articles that are part of the issue we edited for Praktyka Teoretyczna entitled “Latency of the crisis.”
Critical Theory Today: An Old Paradigm for New Challenges?, special issue of Azimuth Journal, VIII, 16, 2020, edited by G. Cavallo and G. Fazio, 2020
This issue of Azimuth aims at exploring the possibilities that recent theoretical and methodological reflections can offer for the diagnosis of present social pathologies. In particular, the Editors have collected papers which are representative of the way in which Critical Theory is trying nowadays to re-establish a link between social philosophy and empirical research on the background of an interdisciplinary approach which includes psychoanalysis, sociology, epistemology, and the natural sciences. Taken together, these different lines of research show the fertility and vitality of a tradition, as well as they point out some contradictions and some worrying signs of regression in our societies *** With contributions by: Vera King, Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Katia Genel, Claudia Leeb, Frieder Vogelmann, Jean-Philipp Kruse, Rodrigo Duarte, Carl Cassegård, Emmanuel Renault, Gonçalo Marcelo, Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod, Emmanuel Charreau, Felipe Torres. http://www.azimuthjournal.com/2021/01/30/critical-theory-today-an-old-paradigm-for-new-challenges/
Environmental Philosophy, 2019
Essential to the concept of crisis is, no doubt, the sense of urgency. A decision needs to be made, is already busy making itself, and time is of the essence if we are not to be merely swept along by it. The interviews and exchanges that make up Critical Theory at a Crossroads bear the marks of this impetus, the need for theory to happen in real time, or as close to it as the academic publishing apparatus will allow. They focus on events, primarily in Europe and the US—the influx of refugees, the rise of right-wing authoritarianism, the collapse of the middle class, the wealth gap exacerbated by the financial sector, protest and political “populism”—whose urgency is intimately felt today. At the heart of this urgency is the double bind of all decision: we are called upon for immediate response, but must know what to do, must take the time to formulate the theory and plan that can appropriately guide practice. The concept of crisis forms a guiding thread for the book’s interviews with several prominent political theorists. Are we living in an era of crisis? Is the term a useful heuristic for understanding what is happening and how to respond, or is it an ideological tool just as likely to justify the interventions of the powerful? (One thinks of the manufactured “border crisis” in the US as a recent example.)