Penelope Deutscher - Critical Theory in Critical Times

CRITICAL THEORY IN CRITICAL TIMES

NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY

NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY

Amy Allen, General Editor

New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contemporary texts in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew and advance the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their complex interconnections.

Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment , Mara Pa Lara

The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory , Amy Allen

Democracy and the Political Unconscious , Nolle McAfee

The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment , Alessandro Ferrara

Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence , Adriana Cavarero

Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World , Nancy Fraser

Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory , Axel Honneth

States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals , Jacqueline Stevens

The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Ngritude, Vitalism, and Modernity , Donna V. Jones

Democracy in What State? , Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensad, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancire, Kristin Ross, Slavoj iek

Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues , edited by Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller

Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics , Jacques Rancire

The Right to Justification: Elements of Constructivist Theory of Justice , Rainer Forst

The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment , Albena Azmanova

The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics , Adrian Parr

Media of Reason: A Theory of Rationality , Matthias Vogel

Social Acceleration: The Transformation of Time in Modernity , Hartmut Rosa

The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of Secularization , Mara Pa Lara

Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism , James Ingram

Freedoms Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life , Axel Honneth

Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary , Chiara Bottici

Alienation , Rahel Jaeggi

The Power of Tolerance: A Debate , Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst, edited by Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey

Radical History and the Politics of Art , Gabriel Rockhill

The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel , Robyn Marasco

A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique , Anita Chari

The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory , Amy Allen

Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity , Axel Honneth and Jacques Rancire, edited by Katia Genel and Jean-Philippe Deranty

What Is a People? , Alain Badiou, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Georges Didi-Huberman, Sadri Khiari, and Jacques Rancire

Left-wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory , Enzo Traverso

CRITICAL THEORY IN CRITICAL TIMES

TRANSFORMING THE GLOBAL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ORDER

_______

EDITED BY
PENELOPE DEUTSCHER
AND CRISTINA LAFONT

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2017 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-54362-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Deutscher, Penelope, 1966 author. | Lafont, Cristina, 1963 author.

Title: Critical theory in critical times : transforming the global political and economic order / edited by Penelope Deutscher and Cristina Lafont.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Series: New directions in critical theory | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016044939 | ISBN 9780231181501 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231181518 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Critical theory.

Classification: LCC HM480 . C745 2017 | DDC 142dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044939

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher

CONTENTS

JRGEN HABERMAS

SEYLA BENHABIB

CRISTINA LAFONT

RAINER FORST

WENDY BROWN

CHRISTOPH MENKE

NANCY FRASER

RAHEL JAEGGI

AMY ALLEN

PENELOPE DEUTSCHER

CHARLES W. MILLS

This collection of essays started its life as the conference Critical Theory in Critical Times, held at Northwestern University, May 24, 2014. Neither the conference nor this volume would have been possible without the generous support of the Equality Development and Globalization Studies program at Northwesterns Buffett Institute for Global Studies. Additional support at Northwestern was provided by the departments of Communication Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Religious Studies, and Sociology; the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities; the Center for Global Culture and Communication; and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Edith Kreeger Wolf Endowment. Important support was also provided by the Goethe Institute of Chicago and the Excellence Cluster on the Formation of Normative Orders at Goethe University Frankfurt. We extend our warm thanks to these many partners, and to Jasmine Hatten, Ozge Kocak, Mara Weber, and, particularly, Tara Sadera for their extremely professional and engaged assistance. We are grateful also to our colleagues at Northwestern, especially those who acted as respondents and chairs, whose support was crucial to the success of the conference, and to an extraordinary audience, whose questions and comments generated a lively discussion throughout the sessions. We extend our gratitude also to the many graduate and undergraduate students, especially those affiliated with Northwesterns Critical Theory Cluster, who supported the conference. We are particularly grateful to Carlos Pereira Di Salvo for his superb editing of this volume. Finally, our warm thanks to Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, Amy Allen, Todd Manza, all those involved in the volumes acceptance and production at Columbia University Press, and, of course, to the volumes contributors for their participation and help in bringing this project to fruition.

PENELOPE DEUTSCHER AND CRISTINA LAFONT

W e live in critical times. There is a widely shared sense of unease about the future. On the one hand, we face global crisesan overtaxed environment, a volatile global economy, mass migrations, new forms of war and terrorism. On the other hand, there is also a crisis of confidence in the capacity for political action to address such global problems.

Yet, there is also another, more positive sense in which we live in critical times. Since the end of the cold war, the global order has been in a state of constant flux. Perhaps this is a historic window of opportunity for new visions of the transnational and new political imaginaries to address current and future crises. These also are critical times for proposals aimed at transformation and improvement, and thus are propitious times for critical theory.