Critical Theory in Context

A multitude of social and political crises concerning, among others, public health, environmental justice, poverty, border struggles, and the rise of nationalist forces have brought the question of radical change – and its subject – back on the table. Herbert Marcuse, whose birthday was celebrated for the 125th time this July, prominently questioned the role of the proletariat as the sole and determined driving force of social revolutions. Not only did he analyze the fact that the proletariat had failed to fulfill its intended role in the 1930s, but he was also among the first of his peers to recognize a previously underappreciated candidate for the role of “catalyst” of revolutions to come: the groups and social movements formed by and around the socially marginalized. Much has changed since Marcuse’s famous “Essay on Liberation”, and thus the search for revolutionary subjects is, once again, on. In this special issue of “Critical Theory in Context”, we invited some of the most interesting contemporary theorists of revolution and social movements to discuss in Marcuse’s spirit the pressing questions raised by the persisting crises we face today: Who are the collective agents that have both the will and the ability to profoundly transform societies? Does it make sense to think about future revolutions as driven by a definable subject? And can the revolution be predicted?

We present the full recording of the public roundtable that took place at Vierte Welt Berlin and was part of our Critical Theory Summer School: Radical Social Change. You can find more information about our annual Summer School on criticaltheoryinberlin.de.

Participants of the debate, hosted by Robin Celikates, were Gianfranco Casuso, Alex Demirović, Verónica Gago, Sally Haslanger, Rahel Jaeggi, and Eva von Redecker. With special thanks to Vierte Welt Berlin Amin Wagner (Audio-Recording) Lane Hots (Mixing, Mastering and Audio-Restauration) Josefine Berkholz (Audio-Editing and Postproduction)

Speakers:

Gianfranco Casuso is a professor of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities of Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and director of the Research Group on Critical Theory at the same university. His teaching and research areas are political and social philosophy, the philosophy of economics, as well as theories of democracy, critical theory of society, and modern philosophy with special emphasis on the philosophy of German Idealism. He is currently working on the links between classical and contemporary critical theory and Latin American social and political thought.

Robin Celikates is a professor of Practical and Social Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin and deputy director of the Centre for Social Critique. His current work mainly focuses on critical theory, civil disobedience, democracy, migration and citizenship.

Alex Demirović is a Senior Fellow at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung and an associated member of the Centre for Social Critique. He was a professor of industrial and organizational Sociology at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. His research focuses on marxist state theory, democracy and critical theory.

Verónica Gago is Professor of social sciences at the Instituto de Altos Estudios at the Universidad Nacional de San Martìn (UNSAM) and a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Buenos Aires. Her research focuses on international social movements, feminism and the critique of neoliberal reason.

Sally Haslanger is the Ford Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and teaches in MIT’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Her main areas of research include metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, ancient philosophy, and social and political philosophy.

Rahel Jaeggi is a professor of Practical and Social Philosophy and director of the Centre for Social Critique at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her main historical research is critical theory, and her main systematic research is social philosophy, social theory, social ontology and anthropology, political philosophy and ethics.

Eva von Redecker is a philosopher and author. Until 2019, she was the deputy director of the Centre for Social Critique. Her research focuses on theories of social change, feminist theory, and the modern notion of property.

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This Roundtable was part of the Center for Social Critique's annual Summer School. All information about past and future Summer School Programs can be found at www.criticaltheoryinberlin.de.

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Rahel Jaeggi is Professor of Practical Philosophy with an emphasis on Social and Political Philosophy and director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change Berlin at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Nancy Fraser is the Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research. She works on social and political theory, feminist theory, and contemporary French and German thought.

In her work, Nancy Fraser has developed a theoretical framework that focuses on the big questions surrounding the peculiar social form known as "capitalism," upending many of our commonly held assumptions about what capitalism is and how to subject it to critique. In her recent article “Climates of Capital” (2021) she applies this expanded conception of capitalism to the question of ecological crisis.

Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi co-authored the book (ed. by Brian Milstein): “Capitalism: A conversation in critical theory” (2018), translated into German as „Kapitalismus: Ein Gespräch über Kritische Theorie“ (2020) as well as Spanish (2019), Italian (2019), and Portuguese (2020).

The Benjamin Lectures 2021 were held by Axel Honneth on “The Working Sovereign: A Democratic Theory of the Division of Labor”.

Recordings of our events are available on our website as well as on our youtube.channel As part of our series “conversations on socialism”, on July 1st we are holding a roundtable entitled “A new socialism for the new century?”, with three of the internationally most prominent socialist theorists: Christine Berry, Axel Honneth and Bhaskar Sunkara. The event was hosted by Rahel Jaeggi and a recording will be available on our website and youtube channel.

In the next episode of our podcast, we will be talking with Andreas Malm and Lise Besnoit from the Zetkin collective about their just published book: “White Skin, Black Fuel. On the Danger of Fossil Fascism” - the first comprehensive study of the far right’s role in the climate crisis.

To stay up to date with all our events sign up to our Newsletter!

And don’t forget to subscribe to “Critical Theory in Context” on any of the major platforms.

Original music composed by Anne Wellmer.

Sally Haslanger is Ford Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. She is this year's Benjamin Chair at the Center for Social Critique.

In her writings Sally Haslanger develops a contemporary critique of the structural injustices characteristic of today’s society. In particular, she focuses on the efficacy of ideologies and the underpinnings of sexism and racism.

Her reflections have been published in numerous essays, a selection of which appeared in 2012 under the title Resisting Reality. Social Construction and Social Critique.

Furthermore, she has co-authored the book: What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views which came out with Oxford University Press in 2019. Sally Haslanger is currently preparing a book entitled Doing Justice to the Social.

In february the Center for Social Critique organised a workshop with the title “Change squared. The disruptions of social structures”. You can watch the panel “Theory of Social Change” with Sally Haslanger, Michele Moody-Adams, Theodore Schatzki and Rahel Jaeggi online.

On May 30th the Center will host a panel discussion with Sally Haslanger, as well as Bafta Sarbo, Daniel James and Kristina Lepold on structural racism.

Following the Benjamin lectures there will be another big workshop coming up on 27th of June on the topic of “Ideology”. As well as a panel discussion on the topic of “radical social transformation” that will be taking place on July 5th. To stay up to date visit our website: https://criticaltheoryinberlin.de/

Subscribe to our newsletter: https://criticaltheoryinberlin.de/newsletter/

Guests are Andreas Malm and Lise Benoist from the Zetkin Collective.

We are talking about their recently published book “White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism”, which came out with Verso in 2021.

The history of fossil capital has been one of the central concerns of Andreas Malm’s work. In his book entitled “Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming”, which was published in 2016, Andreas Malm traces the historical rise of steam power and shows that the development of this technology can only be understood by taking into consideration the dynamics of class struggle.

One of Andreas Malm’s other most recent books is entitled: “Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century”, translated into German as: “Klima|x”. Rahel Jaeggi talked about the main theses of this book in an online event we hosted in 2020 “Corona Capitalism: Struggles over Nature”.

The ecological crisis has also been the topic of the first episode of our podcast series on "Climates of Capital", a conversation between Rahel Jaeggi and Nancy Fraser about the structural relation between ecological destruction and capitalism

We recently published two videos from our Summer School on “Foundations of Solidarity”: Our Roundtable on Foundations of Solidarity, with Hauke Brunkhorst, Stefan Gosepath, Asad Haider, Sabine Hark, Serene Khader, Stefan Lessenich, and Frederick Neuhouser; and the résumé with excellent summaries by Lillian Cicerchia, Noemí Ancí Paredes and Marianna Poyares.

We also continued our series „Conversations on Socialism“ with Christine Berry, Axel Honneth und Bhaskar Sunkara who discussed the contours of "A New Socialism for a New Century?" in another online event.

We will present the three German online panels of the Global Forum on Democratizing Work. The online panels will take place on 5-7 October 2021.

The campaign “#DemocratizingWork” was launched in May 2020 with the publication of the Manifesto: “WORK: DEMOCRATIZE, DECOMMODIFY, DECARBONIZE”. We hosted a conversation between Rahel Jaeggi, Neera Chandhoke, Isabelle Ferreras, Lisa Herzog on the initiative in November 2020.

Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast, on all the all major platforms.

And to stay up to date with all our events at the Humanities and Social Change Center in Berlin, sign up for our newsletter.

For more information: www.criticaltheoryinberlin.de

Original music composed by Anne Wellmer. Produced by Jonathan Klein.

Weitere Informationen zum Inhalt und Programm des Workshops finden sich in der Veranstaltungsbeschreibung auf unserer Website.

Iris Marion Young (1994) “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective.” Signs, vol. 19, no. 3, University of Chicago Press, pp. 713–38, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174775

In der nächsten Folge spricht Robin Celikates mit Kristina Lepold und Marina Martinez Mateo, über den von ihnen eingeleiteten und herausgegebenen Reader zu Critical Philosophy of Race, der 2021 bei Suhrkamp erschienen ist. https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/critical-philosophy-of-race-t-9783518299449