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Critical theory once offered a powerful, distinctive approach to social research, enabling sociologists to diagnose the irrationalities of the social world across institutions and forms of thought, even within the subject’s deepest desires. Yet, with the work of Axel Honneth, such analytical potency has been lost. The ‘domestication’ of critical theory stems from the programme’s embrace of Honneth’s ‘recognition-cognitivist’ understanding of social problems; where all social maladies are understood to lie, ultimately, within the head of social subjects and within the intersubjective relationships they enact. This book explores the manifold limitations of this dominant understanding of social pathologies and builds towards an alternate theoretical infrastructure, drawn from a marriage of insights from Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. While Honneth’s critical theory leads to researchers exploring all social problems as ‘pathologies of recognition’, a return to Fromm and Marcuse reminds critical theorists that power precedes subjectivation and that a wide range of pressing social problems exists which are invisible to the recognition framework. As such, this book urges critical theorists to once again think beyond recognition.
Interlude 2 Songs, jokes, movies and other diversions This interlude will explore the conversations we had with migrants in the UK and Italy about fun and entertainment. Speaking to migrants about fun and entertainment may seem counterintuitive from the perspective of mainstream media coverage, in which migrants are rarely asked about anything other than their migration journey, which frequently involves testimonials of hardship. However, this reduces the role of migrants to one-dimensional figures of heroic suffering. Also, participants had experienced quite
deleted, a tweet comparing the word ‘women’ with ‘the n word’.13 While first-wave white feminism was concerned with women’s suffrage, health and education, the second wave that swelled in the 1960s focused on knottier problems such as sexuality, abortion and rape. ‘The personal is political’ was the rallying cry. Mainstream feminist ideas about sexual violence date mainly from this time and reflect the domination of activism and scholarship by bourgeois white women. Although the literature is not homogeneous, the best-known texts tend to have a one-dimensional focus on
shiny dreamworld of the automobile showroom. In 1944, Elizabeth Bowen had observed Blitz survivors piecing themselves together by collecting old fragments from the rubble; in 1964, Herbert Marcuse noted: ‘The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.’ 8 One-Dimensional Man , his influential study of consumerism and its ability to penetrate the personal, shows how the new became more important than the old during the intervening decades, yet his
have seen, many Edwardian Unionists felt that they could not rely on traditional cries, Thackeray.indd 55 1/10/2013 10:11:13 AM 56 Edwardian politics which had served them well in the Victorian era but had been undermined by Liberal counter-appeals. Unionist attempts to engage with class identities in Edwardian Britain were far from one dimensional and grew in sophistication after 1912 as the Conservative Party developed a targeted, pluralistic campaign strategy across the nation. In the run-up to the 1907 LCC elections the London Municipal Society distributed
democracy in general and deliberative democracy in particular is a way of settling differences of value and opinion in ways that make possible solutions that everyone could reasonably accept. Ordinary politics employs the egalitarian norms of democracy to settle disputes and to accommodate even permanent disagreements along one dimension. Conflicts of opinion are settled in fairly standard ways, using recognised procedures and assumptions. Even when these do not work, toleration of differences of opinion can leave wide disagreements in place. In practices of inquiry
. The power wielded in the cultural imaginary by myths of potent masculinity is mercilessly mocked in the film’s visual humour. Les Bronzés constitutes a sketch of the social mores of its time, using the techniques of an oppositional theatrical mode that is clearly identifiable as part of the post-’68 fashion for derisive social satire. Characterization is one-dimensional in Les Bronzés and Leconte
- century debate among whites over the fate of black Americans was typically constrained by a belief in black inferiority – in physical, intellectual, and societal terms – that was either innate or subject to very slow change. Only “a tiny (and often uncertain) minority of white spokesmen” rejected these premises.8 Many white atheists and freethinkers were part of this skeptical minority, although this is not to say that all of them resisted stereotypical conceptions of black people. One-dimensional tropes of black people often featured in freethought newspapers. These
illness by informing the audience of ‘the facts’, but in practice offered a rather one-dimensional analysis of the problems posed by mental illness which precluded debate and did little to alleviate public concerns regarding electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery. Assessing contemporary media coverage, recent commentators argue that constraints within the media field militate against informative broadcasting. ‘THE PUBLIC MUST BE WOOED’ 195 Thus Pierre Bourdieu argued that demands for audience ratings, the pressure to dramatise events, time limitations and
10 Legacy Despite his prominence as a historical figure and the length of his career, Michael Logue has suffered to a surprising degree in the historiography of the period. When not ignored by historians, he has often been dismissed as a known quantity, a one-dimensional character lacking nuance and depth. Most often, historians have questioned his nationalist credentials. Miller’s description of the cardinal has remained rather typical. ‘He enjoyed waiting upon royalty’, he has stated, and ‘delighted in entertaining visiting British dignitaries with champagne