Navigating the Social Crisis through Critical Theory

Invitation pdf

Abstract

Critical theory is characterized by its twofold approach towards the social reality: critical and emancipatory. It explains the often unseen or overlooked roots of social problems, connects seemingly isolated social phenomena and uncovers sources of hope, freedom, and resistance in the ruptures of the nearly all-encompassing suppressive and distorting social system. In various forms and constellations, those two motivations of critical reflection and reconstruction of emancipatory potential appear across the theories and conceptions, from Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, across Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rahel Jaeggi to Nancy Fraser, Robin Celikates, or Eva von Redecker, to name just a few. In the current social situation, characterized by the dismissal of the environmental crisis, the increasingly accepted outbreak of global military conflicts, together with the growing resignation and indifference to the sufferings of humans and non-humans alike, the approach of critical theory is highly relevant. Many people and social groups find themselves on the periphery: geographical, or social, on the periphery of recognition, power, or social participation. The inequality leads to the rise of intolerance amongst different social groups, as well as the rise of far-right and populist political movements. Even in the grim social situation, we need to reformulate the possibilities and limitations of critical reflection and to articulate the need for emancipation from a new, darker, and peripheral perspective.

The aim of this workshop is to explore the challenges and options of critical reflection in the current social situation and to ask whether we can think of feasible ways of imagining and describing new emancipatory potential. We invite papers from across the various approaches of critical theory, discussing the historical, conceptual, practical, political, ethical, and aesthetic views on the problems of social criticism and/or social emancipation.

Programme

The conference was supported by the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme: Research on Peripheries to Strengthen the Resilience of Czech Society, Project Registration No.: CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008727.