Critical Theory and the Political

The book explores whether critical theory constitutes a political argument for modernity and an argument for politics within modernity. Each contributor presents a focal point of research and demonstrates the link between critical theory and a variety of political and social phenomena, which characterise modern societies and political systems. The construction of the present volume rests upon the idea that there is politics beyond parties and policies and beyond states and geographical borders. The book comprises contributions that study the argumentation of critical theory with a focus on political phenomena that have become distinctive in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. In particular, contributions range from systematic approaches to the first generation of critical theorists in comparison with issues of political realism and global social order (Bronner, Baynes, Ibsen, Marinopoulou) to critical institutionalism, civil disobedience and critical theories of justice (Buchstein, Flynn, Kreide, Neuhann). Furthermore, issues of focused political argumentation of critical theory in the twenty-first century with an emphasis on epistemology, metaphysics and feminist epistemology are examined (Bianchin) that pave the epistemological way for the critical theory of the twenty-first century to consider topics of praxis, the transformation of the public sphere and populist political communication (Ingram, Corchia). All the contributions emphasise timely political phenomena as experienced by contemporary societies during the multiple and plurivalent crises of the last fifty years, namely, from the economic and environmental crises to social tensions and uprisings that challenge steadily and equally political theorisation and praxis. The volume includes a final assessment of the political argumentation of critical theory with an emphasis on the political phenomena of the twenty-first century written by Joshua Clover, who contributes the Postscript. The book addresses what is political in critical theory and which aspects, arguments or notions of critical theory maintain political significance for the 20th and the 21st centuries. The collection of essays comprises itself of a series of clear and critical perspectives that analyze the extent to which critical theory relates political argument to modern societies and, thereby, exerts a critique of the multiple social and political phenomena of late modernity. The contributors focus on a multiplicity of universal phenomena such as globalization, multiple crises, late capitalism and the social role of the sciences, and posit some novel criticism of the contemporary social sphere, as it is situated within the wider system of global capitalism. They also present a plurivalent critique that links arguments in Marxism and Freud to all three generations of critical theory.

Pagina's: 274, Hardcover, Manchester University Press