Title: Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century: The Logic of Capital Between Classical Social Theory, the Early Frankfurt School Critique of Political Economy and the Prospect of Artifice
Abstract: 'Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century' maps the various theories that have illuminated the patterns of economic transformation shaping forms of political, social and cultural life in modern society. This chapter argues that the underpinnings and consequences resulting from those apparently economic transformations are not simply and broadly economic in nature, but specifically capitalist. From the outset, critical theory has scrutinized how 'the mighty cosmos of the modern economic order' (Max Weber) is fraught with compounded levels of alienation. If, according to the present argument, we situate the origins of dialectical theorizing in Hegel's and Marx's respective critiques of alienation, efforts to explicate the history of the modern age have been based on two categories. For Hegel, 'spirit' as enlightened, self-reflexive intelligence was (and was to be understood as) the driver of historical change. By contrast, for Marx, as the nineteenth century wore on, spirit came to be supplanted by 'capital' as the dominant driver, with capital denoting an artificial, non-human form of intelligence. The first generation of Frankfurt School theorists defined critical theory as the program of deconstructing how the spread of capital is mediated (and concealed) politically, socially and cultural, albeit while abandoning the need to update Marx's critique of political economy for the twentieth century. Since the onset of globalization during the latter part of the twentieth century, efforts in critical theory to highlight the problematic nature of modern society qua capitalism, especially those that have been influenced and inspired by Habermas and Honneth, de facto constitute efforts at normalizing the reign of capital and the realm of alienation. At the same time, it has become increasingly apparent that capital is no longer the driver of socio-historical change, and no longer serves as an adequate means to focus the kind of critique that is most needed and important, as human needs are interfering with the needs and operations of capital to an ever-increasing extent. Rather, similar to the historical period when capital began to replace spirit, we are currently undergoing a change in the trajectory of 'human' civilization: as capital is being supplanted by artifice, the latter is being revealed as the true specter behind the former, and proliferating indications suggest that we are in the process of entering what promises/threatens to be a posthuman civilization.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-11-30
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 7
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