Critical Theory

Raymond Geuss has been viewed as one of the figureheads of the recent debates about realism in political theory. This interpretation, however, depends on a truncated understanding of his work of the past 30 years. I will offer the first sustained engagement with this work (in English and  German) which allows understanding his realism as a project for reorienting political theory, particularly the relationship between political theory and politics. I interpret this  reorientation as a radicalization of realism in political theory through the combination of the emphasis on the critical  purpose of political theory and the provision of practical, contextual orientation. Their compatibility depends on Geuss’
understanding of criticism as negative, of power as ‘detoxified’ and of the critical purchase of political theory as based on the diagnostic engagement with its context. This radicalization particularly challenges the understanding of how political theory relates to its political context.

This paper will outline the findings of a small-scale research project and will start by introducing the literature related to the theory of critical pedagogy as a means of developing textbook content. Such critical content can enable students to question the status quo and their role in society, potentially increasing their awareness of social issues that directly affect their lives. This will be contrasted with the Frontrunner series, a mainstream, commercial and aspirational textbook for teenage learners between 14 and 17 years of age. Arguments will be presented indicating such mainstream and aspirational content prevents the discussion of social issues within EFL classrooms, whereas there should be more of a union of L2 language development and awareness of current social issues. Consequently, a ‘critical issues supplement’ extending one of the mainstream Frontrunner units and discussing homelessness was developed in an attempt to provide such a union. The research questions were developed to determine the exiting knowledge of critical pedagogy as well as reaction to the critical issues supplement. This gave rise to the identification of various implications relating to critical pedagogy in contexts that may be seen as unfavourable to such a transformative methodology.

Keywords: Critical applied linguistics; Critical pedagogy; Critical action research; EFL; textbook development; disruptive innovation

The paper explores the relevance of critical theories of modernity in the research of memory  transmission and political socialization. Firstly, the relevant concepts of Habermas, Giddens and Bourdieu  are overviewed. Secondly, the notion of political culture and memory transmission are reinterpreted from  the perspective of these theories, revealing different sources and forms of radicalism. Finally, divergent con - stellations of modernization are reintroduced as the broadest context of the processes of political formation.

My thoughts on the state of the world in this thesis are based on my three years of coursework and fellowships on the topics of Sustainability, Alternative (Hi)stories, and Localization, in addition to my observations as a graduate student of the social, environmental, political, and economic conditions of production during my visits to Portland, Oregon; Oaxaca, México; Fukushima, Japan; Tanzania; and Dow Chemical Headquarters. These experiences have been moulded by my interactions with such thinkers as Bunker Roy, Ron Broglio, and Tom Seeley, and artists such as Lee Mingwei, Ben Kinmont, Steve Lambert, Oron Catts, and Amy Youngs. These observations and encounters have been tempered by years of reading the works of authors that range from Henry Thoreau and Peter Kropotkin, to David Harvey, Rob Nixon, and Masanobu Fukuoka. I have, whenever possible, tried to remain intellectually omnivorous in an attempt to digest the breadth of work that attempts to confront the meaning of humanity in an age of self-aware, self-inflicted annihilation. I have been careful to meld both data and empiricism, which in aggregate serve as a foundation on which I understand and address the world as an artist, activist, and craftsperson. At times my thesis will be fortified by data, but will most often be based in an empiricism of the spirit. I do not claim to be right. I don’t know that I believe in singular answers any more. An array of responses, made with positive intentions and strong insight, seems to be the only approach to the impending “century of crises” and what I describe as the “great transition.” However, as I intend to demonstrate, my work seeks to occupy a hybrid practice, one that reconsiders Joseph Beuys’ notion of Social Sculpture and his famous maxim “everyone is an artist,” and reframes it through the writings of Lucy Lippard, Howard Risatti, Octavio Paz, and Chögyam Trungpa into a theory of “Social Craft.” It is my position that everyone is a craftsperson, each of us endowed with the capacities to mindfully transform society in preparation for the Great Transition. Furthermore, I look to honeybee society as a model for social transformation. I contend, as others such as Kropotkin have, that the honeybee exhibits a profound model when considering methods of social change. Therefore, it is my intention in this thesis to demonstrate what a Social Craft practice could be, with the hope that others will realize their own capacities to positively participate in the great transition.

Il convegno nazionale “La Critica oggi”, promosso e voluto dall’Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in collaborazione con la Triennale di Milano, è l’occasione di un confronto concreto sul ruolo della critica nei vari ambiti culturali: arte, architettura, letteratura, media, design, cinema, musica, teatro, moda e fotografia.

"The term “Anthropocene” is deployed to designate a period during which human activity has significantly altered global eco-systems and climate. But the term presents geological change as if it were something humanity controls, rather than a state of affairs out of our control. In his reading of the Anthropocene as a fetishization of the relationship between nature and humanity, Daniel Cunha calls for a radical break with a capitalist logic that has made catastrophic climate change an inevitable outcome." (Presentation by Mediations 28:2)

At first the financial crisis that began in 2008-2009 looked as if it was going to constitute a major a threat to the credibility and long-term viability of neoliberalism. After all, how could the majority of people continue to have faith in free-market capitalism and its ability to deliver growth and prosperity, when it had so visibly brought the world to the brink of economic disaster? Viewed from the vantage point of only a few years later and things have taken on a very different hue. Now what the financial crisis seems to have done is given the champions of neoliberalism an opportunity to carry out, with renewed vigour their programme of privatisation, deregulation, and reduction to a minimum of the state, public sector and welfare.

What is it that makes Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy so disturbing even today? Why does ‘untrammelled’ life always break out anew where one does not want it? Why does this legacy not fit into the seemingly clear frontlines of the 20th century and what is it that precisely for this reason turns this legacy into such an inspiration for the renewal of socialism in the 21st century? Why is it that one side as much as the other can co-opt her and why is it so hard for both sides to reduce Rosa Luxemburg’s thinking to a simple formula? The reason, I believe, lies in the fact that Rosa Luxemburg tried to unite the concepts of socialism and democracy, which throughout the history of the 20th century seemed wholly incompatible. This attempt of hers, I believe, makes it necessary to radically revisit both socialism and democracy. Let me quote only a few, but therefore all the more important sentences from Ernst Bloch’s book Natural Law and Human Dignity. He wrote these sentences with Rosa Luxemburg in mind: ‘The ultimate quintessence of classical natural law, without all of the other accessories, remains the postulate of human dignity; man, and not only his class (as Brecht said), is not happy when he finds a boot in his face, [...] Thus we find the authentic inheritance of the natural law that was revolutionary: the abolition of all relations that have alienated man from things that have not only been reduced to being merchandise but are even stripped of all their own value [Ernst Bloch here clearly had in mind the experiences of the national socialist extermination of human beings and Stalinism – M.B.]. No democracy without socialism, no socialism without democracy - that is the formula of an interaction that will decide the future.’

We should be aware that there is no longer the one great question and certainly there is not the one subject, the one protagonist of social protest, which would be able to shape all societal confrontations. If effective changes are to take place then different connections between the most diverse questions, problems and movements have to be created and the conflicts ‘articulated’ in a new way (Laclau and Mouffe 2006). One of the conditions for convergence is the consciousness of the common bases of conflicts. If one could conduct a conversation on the possible coherence of the different, if the fragments could fit into a mosaic with transformational force, then the ‘multitude’ (Hardt and Negri 2004) could assume concrete form. The revealing of the relationship of the spheres of production of social wealth to today’s central conflicts would be one possible path towards convergence. It would entail a four-in-one perspective, to use Frigga Haug’s (2009) formulation. What Frigga Haug elucidated exemplarily in connection with labour and labour time – the solidaristic interconnection of the different – is generalised in the present study. This should make it possible to introduce the interrelation between different social struggles and their solidary intermeshing not just as an extra condition that has to be forced on them from outside. The ‘four’ would be the four spheres of wealth: nature; social-individual life worlds; the societal institutions enabling security, trust, justice and democratic self-determination; and the world of the cultural-public. And the 6 ‘one’ stands for the production of a solidaristic combination that aims at the overcoming of the social inequality in life opportunities, power, and property in a capital-dominated society (see my own analysis in Brie 2006). It represents a common perspective on the posing of the four most important contemporary questions (see for a solidaristic perspective Dellheim, Brangsch, Wolf, and Spangenberg 2012). This article is an attempt to introduce into the current discussions a proposal, which could promote solidary cooperation. It lays out the rationale for a common foundation in uncertain times. Whether such a four-in-one perspective can be maintained throughout the processes of practical cooperation is still to be seen. This article is an intellectual experiment, nothing more nor less. Its purpose is to create a ‘living form’ (Schiller 1975, 311), which can help us to move forward in a more solidary way in today’s conflicts. 

From the very beginning a misunderstanding has to be cleared up – the reduction of Polanyi’s work to that of a reformer who wants to counter the excesses of market radicalism with social protective measures and believes that the crisis of modern civilisation can be overcome in this way. This leads to the second and third part of the dialogue, in which Polanyi speaks as a socialist and antifascist who sees the ‘Great Transformation’ as the overcoming of capitalist market society, which is necessary if we are to live in freedom. On this basis Nancy Fraser’s triple movement will then be taken up in a fourth dialogue and expanded to a quadruple movement in which market radicalism and social protection, on the one hand, and emancipatory and oppression movements, on the other, confront each other. Fifth, we will then see that even this does not suffice for understanding the ‘political grammar’ (Nancy Fraser) of the present. A space of alternatives will be sketched in which solidary emancipatory movements and authoritarian movements of oppression confront each other with the contradiction of inter-subjective claims to freedom and demands for access to the basic goods of society. Sixth, this leads to a brief look at concrete projects of dealing with these contradictions – to neoliberalism, liberal socialism, libertarian commonism, and authoritarian social paternalism. Seventh, this then makes it possible to look at Polanyi’s actual vision, a Great Transformation towards a society which reorganises the production of wealth of modern societies on an emancipatory-solidary basis and removes the basic goods of that society – nature and labour, money and knowledge – from their subordination to markets. Eighth, and finally, this leads to the question of paths to transformation. From the dialogue with Karl Polanyi and Nancy Fraser an ever farther-reaching polylogue with many societal movements arises. It can, I hope, help overcome the divisions of the left within the common struggles for a societal change in capitalism going beyond it to ‘another world’. Still, the conversation has to begin with the clarification of a misunderstanding.

This article examines the history of sonification in sound art, focusing on the role that data play in influencing artistic creation and aesthetic experi- ence. The author discusses sonified data artworks that go beyond the simple representa- tion of information and that offer critiques of what Horkheimer and Adorno described as the dehumanizing notion of equiva- lence at the heart of the bureau- cratic, capitalist economy. Concluding with a discussion of his installation Seismology
as Metaphor for Empathy (2012), the author suggests that representing data through sound can engender powerful affective responses to the cold abstrac- tion of information.