Azimuth (2020). Nuova ediz. 9788855292146, 9788855292153, 8855292145

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AZIMUTH

Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age

VIII (2020), nr. 16

Critical Theory Today. An Old Paradigm for New Challanges? La teoria critica oggi. Un vecchio paradigma per nuove sfide? edited by • a cura di Gianluca Cavallo – Giorgio Fazio

Publishing editor Giacomo Scarpelli Editor in chief Federica Buongiorno Advisory board Nunzio Allocca Antonello D’Angelo Paolo D’Angelo Arne De Boever Roberto Esposito Antonello La Vergata Thomas Macho Marcello Mustè Maria Teresa Pansera Fabio Polidori Lorena Preta Vallori Rasini Paola Rodano Wolfgang Rother Emanuela Scribano Francesco Saverio Trincia José Luis Villacañas Christoph Wulf Editorial board Cristina Basili Marco Carassai Simone Guidi Antonio Lucci Igor Pelgreffi Libera Pisano Alberto Romele

AZIMUTH

Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age

VIII (2020), nr. 16

Critical Theory Today An Old Paradigm for New Challenges?

La teoria critica oggi Un vecchio paradigma per nuove sfide?

edited by • a cura di

Gianluca Cavallo – Giorgio Fazio

«Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age» is a semi-­annual journal of philosophy, published by Inschibboleth Edizioni since 2019 and previously published by Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. We have chosen to combine our expertise as a publishing house with the energies, enthusiasm and competences of the Editorial Team, as to develop and improve together a project which we both believe in. Aside from being a stimulating avenue for mutual engagement, this collaboration is the path to be followed to ensure the establishment and continued existence of a high-quality publishing enterprise and scientific project. We trust that «Azimuth» will continue to grow and – as its name implies – become a point of reference for philosophical studies both in Italy and abroad.

All essays published in Azimuth are either peer- or double blind peer-reviewed. Solicited “Articles”, received by direct invitation, are subjected to peer review. Unsolicited “Contributions”, submitted in response to CfPs, are subjected to double blind peer-review.

«Azimuth», VIII (2020), nr. 16 Semi-annual review © 2020 Inschibboleth Edizioni Direttore responsabile: Giacomo Scarpelli Cover: Tycho’s Wall Quadrant. An engraving of Tycho Brahe in his Uraniborg observatory on the island of Hven, probably from the 1598 printing of his Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (detail). ISSN (paper): 2282-4863 ISBN (paper): 978-88-5529-214-6 ISBN (e-book): 978-88-5529-215-3 Editorial contact: [email protected] - www.azimuthjournal.com Administrative offices: Inschibboleth Edizioni, via G. Macchi, 94 – 00133 Roma – Italy e-mail: [email protected] - www.inschibbolethedizioni.com

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Contents Critical Theory Today An Old Paradigm for New Challenges?

Preliminary Notes....................................................................................

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1. Article Vera King, Psyche and Society in Critical Theory and Contemporary Social Research. With Special Reference to Horkheimer/Adorno and Bourdieu............................................................................................

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2. Article Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Reconstructive Critique: A Demonstration Encompassing Two Areas of Research.........................

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3. Article Katia Genel, On Some ‘Pathologies’ of Democracy: Authoritarianism, Prejudice, Populism. Towards a Critical Theory of Democracy?...............

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4. Article: Claudia Leeb, The Right Extremist Identitarian Movement in Europe: A Critical Theory Analysis.......................................................................

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5. Article: Frieder Vogelmann, Critical Theory and Political Epistemology. Six Theses on Untruth in Politics.............................................................

89

6. Article: Jean-Philipp Kruse, Reason, Religion and the Crisis of Social Semantics. Habermas’ Philosophy of Religion as a Guardrail for Derailing Modernity............................................................................. 103 7. Article: Rodrigo Duarte, Culture Industry Once Again Reconsidered. Adorno’s Critique and Thereafter............................................................ 121 8. Article: Carl Cassegård, Is Dialectics Applicable to Nature? The “Lukács Problem” and the Critical Theory of Nature....................... 143 9. Article: Emmanuel Renault, Suffering at Work as Epistemological and Political Problem...................................................................................... 155 10. Contribution: Gonçalo Marcelo, Tasks for a Critical Theory of Democracy in Europe.................................................................................................. 171 11. Contribution: Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod, Relire Adorno et Horkheimer après Axel Honneth? L’actualité de la théorie critique francfortoise.......................... 189 12. Contribution: Emmanuel Charreau, Reconnaissance, conflit et servitude. Perspectives lefortiennes sur la théorie de la reconnaissance.................... 205 13. Article: Felipe Torres, Eindimensionalität zwischen Homogenität und Heterogenität. Marcuse und Bataille........................................................ 219

CRITICAL THEORY TODAY AN OLD PARADIGM FOR NEW CHALLENGES?

edited by Gianluca Cavallo – Giorgio Fazio

PRELIMINARY NOTES

When Jürgen Habermas, twenty-five years ago, wrote about the pessimism of Dialectic of Enlightenment that «we no longer share this mood, this attitude»1, nobody could have expected the Adorno-Renaissance we are observing today. Scholars working within the tradition of Critical Theory initiated by Horkheimer and Adorno almost one century ago are nowadays going back to the source, as it were. This is clearly a consequence of mutated historical circumstances. We are no longer witnessing the spreading of democracy after decades of authoritarian regimes; quite the opposite, we are witnessing a long lasting crisis of the western liberal democratic state, and the rise of new and old forms of authoritarianism. We are no longer enjoying increasing welfare sustained by strong economic growth; instead, while we were still dealing with the consequences of the last financial and economic crisis the coronavirus pandemic hit the world economies with unprecedented brutality. What is more, we are finally forced to recognize that the planet on which we live cannot sustain our carbon economy and Western levels of energy consumption any longer. In front of all these phenomena, Adorno and Horkheimer seem to offer conceptual tools which are apt to critically reflect the present. However, going back to Adorno and Horkheimer also means to recall what Critical Theory as a research program was intended to be. It was the program of an institute in which philosophers worked side by side with social scientists and psychoanalysts, in which social theory had to go hand in hand with empirical research. Unfortunately, academic hyper-specialization and the neoliberal organization of universities make such a program more and more difficult to realize. Critical Theory risks losing its bite.   The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. F. Lawrence, Cambridge (UK), Polity Press, 1987, p. 106. 1

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PRELIMINARY NOTES

In the last decades Critical Theory, in its various declinations, has shown great vitality. On the one hand, concepts which had been marginalized from international philosophical debates (such as ideology, rei­fication, and alienation) have been reformulated and gained new critical potential. On the other hand, the very concept of Critical Theory has been reviewed and enlarged, as a result of the intersection between different traditions of thought (pragmatism, post-structuralism, post-colonial studies, feminist thought, gender and race studies, environmental humanities, etc.). This has also facilitated the acknowledgement of flaws and ideological biases affecting some theo­ retical presuppositions of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Not always, however, has this theoretical work been accompanied by multidisciplinary social research, in conformity with the original program of the Institute for Social Research. This special issue of Azimuth aims at exploring the possibilities that recent theoretical and methodological reflections can offer for the diagnosis of present social pathologies. In particular, we have collected papers which are representative of the way in which Critical Theory is trying nowadays to re-establish a link between social philosophy and empirical research on the background of an interdisciplinary approach which includes psychoanalysis, sociology, epistemology, and the natural sciences. Taken together, these different lines of research show the fertility and vitality of a tradition, as well as they point out some contradictions and some worrying signs of regression in our societies. Vera King addresses fundamental methodological (and, more indirectly, theoretical) questions regarding the relationship between psychoanalysis and sociology. She distinguishes two levels of analysis which must be integrated in a critical socio- and psychoanalysis: the biographical and the social. Only taking into account the complex interactions between these two levels – she argues – it is possible to understand the genesis of habits and the dynamics of repression which constitute both the individual and the social unconscious. King also makes reference to her own empirical studies in order to exemplify how her general considerations can find application in actual social research. The relationship between social critique and empirical research is the object of Ferdinand Sutterlüty’s paper. He argues that the normative standards of critique are inherent to social practices and discourses, and that the role of critical social science is to reconstruct and formulate the normative assumptions which underlie the revendications of social actors in conflict, in order to make them audible in the public sphere. In other words, the role of critical social research – which, according to this view, must be based on

PRELIMINARY NOTES

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empirical research – is to insist on the immanent contradictions between specific norms and practices. As a consequence, Sutterlüty rejects any form of critique which aims at the totality of society. Such an immanent approach to social critique is shared by Axel Honneth, whose work is the object of several papers collected in this volume. Katia Genel, however, confronting the different ways in which Honneth and Horkheimer/Adorno understood the risks to which a democratic social order is exposed, reminds us that the analysis of specific traits of our society is not incompatible with a critique of society as a whole. Indeed, if the particular shows symptoms of a pathology, this means that the whole is “wrong” (falsch), in Adorno’s terms. As Genel argues, it is important to keep this in mind if we are to understand how authoritarian or populist leaders can rapidly find support within democratic societies, because the potential for authoritarianism cannot be uncovered if singular phenomena are not analysed within the broader social context. As Adorno and Horkheimer teach us, authoritarianism must be understood as a pathology of liberal capitalistic societies, and not as an enemy falling on them from the outside. Genel also insists on the importance of psychoanalysis for an accurate understanding of authoritarian/ populist tendencies. Claudia Leeb’s article is a compelling example of how Adorno’s method for the analysis of authoritarianism can be applied to contemporary authoritarian movements. She analyses some of the tricks Martin Sellner (the leader of the right extremist Identitarian movement in Europe) uses in his writings in order to capture new followers. Leeb’s fine analysis is based on Adorno’s methodological insight that, «while far right extremism is primarily a socio-political and economic problem, it is necessary to study psychologically oriented tricks, because they are the only means for right extremist agitators to capture new followers, whose rational interests contradict the agitator’s destructive aims». The aim of Leeb’s article is not only to expose the “psychological root technique” used by Sellner, but also to suggest that analysing the writings of right extremist leaders is important to warn potential followers against the tricks used by authoritarian leaders to capture them. Frieder Vogelmann addresses another relevant and worrying tendency of our democracies, which is the tendency to use untruth to serve political purposes or defend specific interests. With the spread of news through new media, it has become more and more difficult to distinguish between truth and untruth. Vogelmann argues that political philosophy is ill-suited to deal with this problem, since it sticks to what he calls a sovereign conception of truth, namely to the idea that truth exists somewhere in a realm which is untouched by social conflicts. Without giving up a concept of truth, he calls for

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a critical political epistemology to analyse the social practices which produce either truth or untruth. Besides this, as he argues, it is also necessary to investigate what are the cultural and historical conditions which allow untruth to become an effective political tool. A focus on the epistemological dimension of political discourses is a much needed complement to other approaches to the study of anti-democratic tendencies within our societies, well represented by other papers in this collection. Jan-Philipp Kruse makes us reflect on an issue that has been relevant in the entire tradition of Frankfurt Critical Theory, and particularly in Habermas’s work: religion. With his incomparable sensitivity for the deep tendencies of our time, Habermas has put the question about the role of religion in post-secular societies at the centre of much of his work. This was confirmed in 2019 by the publication of his last monumental work Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. The original hypothesis of Kruse is that Habermas’ work on religion not only provides an interesting perspective on the matter, but it also complements the systematic apparatus of the Theory of Communicative Action. Following Kruse, Habermas’ work on religion can be viewed as a kind of theoretical reactualization which at the same time introduces revisionary traits. According to Habermas’ diagnosis of late modernity, Kruse notes, the problem is not that reason loses its ability to provide justifications, nor that the latter suddenly become incomprehensible. What is worrying is rather that justifications have lost some of their persuasive force: there is a crisis of normative commitment, and thus especially a crisis of social semantics. Rodrigo Duarte reconsiders in his paper the “classical” issue of the culture industry. He provides a historical contextualization of Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis, also pointing out the economic and technological circumstances of the time. The study of the culture industry allows social theory to include in its critical analysis those aspects which have the most far-reaching ideological consequences, shaping the way people see and understand their own world. This must include, as Duarte argues, a study on the aesthetic implications of the predominance of commercial products. Adorno is also Carl Cassegård’s main reference in his contribution about how to apply dialectics to nature. Adorno’s idea of constellations of conceptual elements that need not be logically connected to each other can function, according to Cassegård, as a critical tool to point out the one-sidedness of natural concepts as expressed by natural sciences, when it comes, for example, to natural catastrophes as consequences of human-induced climate change or pollution. Constellations allow us to bring out the non-identity between scientific descriptions and personal experiences of suffering. However, this also means, as Cassegård argues, that a critical theory of hu-

PRELIMINARY NOTES

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man relations to nature must include empirical knowledge from the natural sciences. Emmanuel Renault goes back to Adorno’s conception of critical sociology arguing for the critical potential of the controversial concept of “suffering at work”. Defending the use of this concept as an analytical tool against scientific, epistemological and political critiques which have been raised against it in the course of a mostly French debate, Renault embraces a non-reductionist, multidisciplinary approach to sociology in general and, in particular, to the sociology of work. The political relevance of a critical sociology is shown by a concrete example of how social scientists could help social actors articulate their revendications in the context of a judiciary process on the responsibility for a series of suicides at work, which the firm’s administration tried to underplay. The article of Gonçalo Marcelo shows how it is possible to apply the contributions of critical theorists such as Honneth, Nancy Fraser, or Rainer Forst to a critical analysis of the current state of democracy in Europe. Marcelo explains what type of critique their theories entail, what vision of democracy and rationality they are based on, and why this can be called hermeneutical. He then spells out the tasks a critical theory must fulfill in order to address our current predicament. Starting from a brief recollection of the challenges facing both European democracies and the supranational project of the EU, Marcelo tries to make sense of the complex interaction between theory, citizenship, political solutions and institutional arrangements needed to face these challenges. In the article Relire Adorno et Horkheimer après Axel Honneth, Jean-­ Baptiste Vuillerod offers a critical reconstruction of the different stages of Honneth’s philosophical development. According to Vuillerod, after Struggle for Recognition Honneth rightly abandoned his early anthropological approach in order to free his approach from the charge of essentialism. However, Vuillerod argues that Honneth’s recent work is based on a problematic historical teleology. Moreover, Honneth’s neo-hegelian approach to social theory does not allow him to address important questions related to social conflicts and to the subjective experiences of social actors. Vuillerod shows how Adorno and Horkheimer’s philosophy could help to overcome the pitfalls of the Honethian theory and address some urgent questions. Honneth’s work is also the object of Emmanuel Charreau’s paper. By promoting a German-French intellectual exchange between two different strands of the contemporary political-philosophical debate, Charreau proposes an interesting comparison between Honneth and Claude Lefort. The thesis of the article ist that the application of Lefort’s perspective to Honnet’s

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theory of recognition brings into light a blind spot of the latter, namely its difficulty in conceptualizing the phenomenon of “voluntary servitude”. On the one hand, this phenomenon reveals certain limits of the concept of “ideo­ logical recognition” elaborated by Honneth. On the other hand, reflection on the subjective side of domination opens up a more general questioning of Honneth’s conceptualization of conflict and moral consensus. Compared to Honneth’s approach, Lefort’s perspective, inspired by Machiavelli and La Boétie, seems fruitful in so far as it shows how the dynamics of recognition are based on social conflicts which can always produce new forms of voluntary servitude (totalitarian, neoliberal, etc.). Also Felipe Torres proposes a German-French comparison, suggesting an extension and a correction of Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensionality through Georges Bataille’s understanding of homogeneity (and heterogeneity). The dialectics between homogeneity and heterogeneity (which could also be expressed in Adorno’s terms as a dialectic between identity and non-identity) must be kept in mind, as Torres argues, in order not to fall into an easy praise of liberal tolerance and multiculturalism, since the recognition of the difference cannot amount to a simple acceptance, but must include concrete possibilities of realization, which, in the present capitalist order, are not yet given. Gianluca Cavallo Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany [email protected] Giorgio Fazio Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy [email protected]

PSYCHE AND SOCIETY IN CRITICAL THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL RESEARCH. WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HORKHEIMER/ADORNO AND BOURDIEU*

Abstract: The article examines the significance of a carefully considered inclusion of things psychic in sociological theory and research, with special reference to the critical theories of the ‘Frankfurt School’ and Bourdieu. The question of how the relations between psyche and society can be conceptualized is a central issue in sociology, albeit one that has frequently occasioned over-simplified responses. The author argues that for sociological inquiry the analysis of the interplay between the societal and psychic factors operative in the actions, motives, and construal patterns of social agents is in various respects enlightening, if not indispensable. Psychoanalytic perspectives promise a sophisticated approach to the investigation of the complex psychic dimensions involved in actions pursued by individuals in society. 1

*** 1. Introduction This article examines the significance of a carefully considered inclusion of things psychic in sociological theory and research, with special reference to the critical theories of the ‘Frankfurt School’ and Bourdieu. The question of how the relations between psyche and society can be conceptualized is a central issue in sociology, albeit one that has frequently occasioned over-simplified responses. It is of crucial import both for social psychology and for critical theory. The contribution spells out that for sociological inquiry the analysis of the interplay between the societal and psychic factors operative in the actions, motives, and construal patterns of social agents is in various respects enlightening, if not indispensable. Psychoanalytic perspectives

*  Trans. Andrew Jenkins.

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promise a sophisticated approach to the investigation of the complex psychic dimensions involved in actions pursued by individuals in society1. 1.1. Sociology as a “Science of the Hidden” We may legitimately regard sociology as a science dedicated to promoting self-enlightenment on the social plane. It is a form of inquiry that transcends immediately visible and directly perceptible phenomena and extends its analyses to latent structures and dynamics and the consequences they have. Taking his bearings from Bachelard2 (1965), Bourdieu refers to sociology as a «science (…) of the hidden»3, contending that its true purpose is the analysis of structures, dynamics, and mechanisms that have a demonstrable impact but are not immediately evident (i.e. they are not visible to the naked eye but call for special methods and theoretical approaches, notably a specific form of reflexivity as researchers in the social sciences are themselves part and parcel of what they are investigating). And inquiry into the psychic dynamics involved in certain areas of research (not all of them, and not always in equal measure!) can be helpful, if not crucial in (a) casting light on the mechanisms of reproduction or change operative in social structures and (b) performing reflexive analysis of the factors conditioning the growth of knowledge in the sociological sector. One particular feature of Frankfurt Critical Theory is its interest in the links between the individual subject and society4. In (simplified) heuristic terms, the following issues are central: How does society ‘get inside’ or implant itself in the individual subject? And how can we conceptualize the reciprocities existing between culture and psyche? While these questions are hardy perennials when the question of socialization is on the agenda, the

1   In parentheses, we might legitimately add that this also extends implicitly to psychoana­ lytic approaches drawn upon for purposes of societal and cultural analysis. But this is not central to the thrust of our remarks here. The present article is concerned primarily with the significance of psychic analysis from a sociological viewpoint. 2   G. Bachelard, La formation de l’ esprit scientifique, contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective, Paris, Vrin, 1965 (19381). 3   J. Bourdieu, Sociology in Question. Theory, Culture and Society. London, Sage, 1993, p. 10. 4   Institutionally, this is most clearly seen in the research pursued by the Institute of Social Research and the Sigmund Freud Institute. But notably in the fields of social psychology and socialization research, sociology at Goethe-University of Frankfurt/Main can also point to a strong tradition of academic inquiry displaying links with psychoanalysis.

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analytic perspective they imply is of major significance – in the context of studies on authoritarianism, say – for any kind of research inquiring into the reasons why individual subjects adjust to conditions and circumstances that are in fact harmful to them. 1.2. ‘Behind the Backs of the Subjects’: the Inscrutability of Social Structures and the Constitution of Subjectivity In any attempt to identify the workings of “dysfunctional adjustment” (e.g. the kind that causes suffering), it is essential to bear in mind that subjectivity is not identical with what subjects think and say about themselves. This awareness is the source from which the methodologies of re-constructive social research evolved. While this approach produced different schools of thought proceeding from different hermeneutic premises, they still had a number of important things in common, notably the realization that understanding subjectivity and the factors conditioning it is not just a question-and-answer affair. These factors have to be methodically re-constructed. The reasons why subjectivity is not identical with what individual subjects think and say about themselves can looked at differently, depending on the theory one happens to be working with. Taking the lead from Marx, we might say that the realities of society assert themselves behind the backs of individual subjects. What Durkheim refers to as the operative social facts are nothing other than the salient structures and clusters of meaning on the basis of which behavior, as Weber tells us, can be understood and hence explained in terms of socially meaningful action. They are not something that social agents are necessarily aware of. In addition, the motives of individuals may be biographically conditioned and only partly conscious, as psychoanalysis has systematically demonstrated. Thus one might say that biographically conditioned unconsciousness goes hand in hand with socially conditioned unconsciousness. And one of the most formidable challenges is to ascertain how the two things hang together 5.

5   In his articles The revised psychoanalysis (Th. W. Adorno, Die revidierte Psychoanalyse, in: GW Bd. 8, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1998 [19461], pp. 20-41: 21) and Postscriptum (Th. W. Adorno, Postscriptum, in: GW Bd. 8, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1998 [19661], pp. 86-92: 89) Adorno also opposes a sociologization of psychoanalysis, aiming in particular at a critique of the neo-Freudians, who in his view flatten both sociology and psychoanalysis (cf. Th. W. Adorno, Zum Verhältnis von Soziologie und Psychologie, in: GS 8, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1977 [19551], pp. 42-85). Bonß in turn compares how Fromm, Adorno, Marcuse

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Simplistic analogies between social and psychic phenomena are a major source of misunderstandings. We must never forget that, although individuals are indeed socially conditioned, the ‘eccentric’ species of logic operating in the psychic domain is anything but unilinear and does not proceed from the macro- to the micro-level in straightforward progressive stages. Social change, for example, cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the psychic sphere. To properly understand the connections between the two, we need both a high degree of conceptual sophistication and also empirical access to intermediary levels (familial, intergenerational, etc.) and different varieties of psychic processing. In short, we are dealing here with highly complex constellations that have to be constantly re-determined depending on the specific subject we are looking at. Once we have accepted and internalized this insight (and, as we have seen, it is an insight relevant for a whole range of theoretical positions), the conclusion must necessarily be the following: Sociological analyses, notably theories of action and the individual subject, will be both incomplete and distorted if they fail to take account, in some way or other, of those levels of human agency that for systematic reasons are non-transparent, non-conscious, or latent. At a meta-level, we then need to inquire into what ensues from this, not least in methodological terms, for the understanding of sociology either as self-enlightenment on, or as a critique of, society. 1.3. Analysis of the ‘Hidden’ as a Perspective and a Basis for Social Critique Understanding sociology as a science of the hidden implies looking at it in terms of a basis for, and a variant of, social critique6, understood here as a and Habermas understand psychoanalysis, and complains the «hidden naturalistic connotations» in Horkheimer and Adorno’s reception of Freud (W. Bonß, Psychoanalyse als Wissenschaft und Kritik. Zur Freud-Kritik der Frankfurter Schule, in: W. Bonß – A. Honneth [Hg.], Sozialforschung als Kritik, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1982, pp. 367-425: 409). Benjamin refers to blind spots which result from the difficulty of recognizing in the mastery of nature also typical mechanisms of domination over women (cf. J. Benjamin, Die Antinomien des patriarchalischen Denkens. Kritische Theorie und Psychoanalyse, in: Bonß – Honneth [Hg.], Sozialforschung als Kritik, pp. 426-456: 447). Honneth criticizes, with regard to the «Dialectic of Enlightenment», in particular «that they are not concrete enough, substantial enough, about the specific forms of anxiety» (cf. A. Honneth, Interview with Axel Honneth, conducted by I. L. Marin, «European Journal of Psychoanalysis», 2009; https://www.journal-psychoanalysis. eu/interview-with-axel-honneth/2009). 6   D. Fassin, Der lange Atem der Kritik, «WestEnd. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», 16 (2019) 1, pp. 3-32.

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species of sociological enlightenment casting light on latent mechanisms in the reproduction of power constellations or the latent effects of self-delusions, ideological constructs, and illusion formations. As noted earlier, the analysis of destructive potentials or mechanisms would be a point of reference for such a critique, notably the investigation of dysfunctional adjustment actively disadvantaging individual subjects. For example, the ongoing cooperative project The Measured Life7 concerns itself with the psychic consequences and implications of current social and cultural changes, not least with regard to shifts in the understanding and/ or definition of pathology and normality, say in the context of optimization pressure (an issue also addressed in the project Aporias of Perfectionism in Accelerated Societies, headed by King, Gerisch and Rosa). Parts of this project address the destructive consequences of adjustment to coercive optimization pressures or regressive externalizations of norms in connection with the authority of anonymous group pressure in the social media. Others home in on the extreme adjustability displayed by variations of status and shame regulation in digital worlds where social and psychic mechanisms intermesh8. With these contemporary forms of authoritarianism in mind, let us first look back on the historical connection between sociology and psychoanalysis in the context of the Frankfurt School. 2.  Social Research and Psychoanalysis in Critical Theory Horkheimer came to Frankfurt in the late 1920s to head the Institute of Social Research. At that time, one of the innovations of so-called interdisciplinary materialism – understood as the blueprint for social theory and social research aiming to encompass society as a whole – was the inclusion of socio-psychological perspectives with a view to achieving a satisfactory analysis of the multi-faceted relations existing between psyche and society. An upshot of this was Horkheimer’s decision to recruit the services of Erich Fromm and thus to ensure that the psychoanalytically oriented socio-psychological approach would be an integral part of the research work pursued at the Institute9. One initial motive was skepticism about the sociological assump-

7   V. King et al., Psychische Bedeutungen des digitalen Messens, Zählens und Vergleichens, «Psyche», 73 (2019) 9/10, pp. 744-770. 8   V. King, If You Show Your Real Face, You’ll Lose 10 000 Followers, «Communication and Media», 11 (2016) 38; doi:10.5937/comman12-11504, pp. 71-90. 9   W. Bonß, Die Einübung des Tatsachenblicks, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1982, p. 157.

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tions established in the Weimar period on the relations between economic situation and class-consciousness. Studies like Workers and Employees on the Eve of the Third Reich10 with its psychoanalytic perspectives proved how justified these doubts were. The study set out to interpret the perception of reality as an expression or «function of the psychic processing of economic and social relations»11. The study had a major political and practical impact because it revealed with unexpected clarity how widespread anti-Semitic and authoritarian structures were in sectors where they had not been anticipated, notably in “left-wing” worker milieus. Horkheimer defined the path of inquiry as follows: «What relations can we delineate between a particular social group and the role of this group in the economy, the changes in the psychical structure of its members, and the thoughts and institutions created by it which influence it as a whole through the social totality?»12. In other words, the relations between economy, culture, and psyche were now squarely on the agenda. Fromm defined psyche and culture as «“cement” (…) without which the society would not hold together»13. In the aftermath, this “cement” was interpreted both from a functionalist and from a critical perspective14. In other words, the way in which Critical Theory responded to the psychic dimension and to psychoanalysis was by no means uniform15. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, psychoanalysis was instituted (largely in methodological terms) as an essential cognitive and epistemological approach capable of analyzing the multi-faceted and unconscious meanings of social praxis and pinpointing the destructive consequences of instrumental rationalism. In this, the Dialectic was drawing upon the critical potential of

10   E. Fromm, Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Reiches. Eine sozialpsychologische Untersuchung, ed. by W. Bonß, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980 (19361). 11   Ibidem, p. 169. 12   M. Horkheimer, The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research, in: S. E. Bronner – D.M. Kellner (ed. by), Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, New York, Routledge, 1990 (19311), pp. 25-36: 34. 13   E. Fromm, The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology. Notes on Psychoanalysis and Materialism, in: A. Arato – E. Gebhardt (ed. by), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, New York, Continuum, 2005 (19321), pp. 477-496: 493. 14   And as is well known, there was frequently voiced concern that psychoanalysis bereft of its culture-critical components might lose its sting altogether (cf. B. Görlich – A. Lorenzer, Der Stachel Freud. Beiträge zur Kulturismuskritik, 2. Aufl., Lüneburg, Klampen, 1994). 15   Cf. Ch. Kirchhoff – F. Schmieder (Hg.), Freud und Adorno, Berlin, Kadmos, 2014; V. King – G. Schmid Noerr, Conceptions of the Superego in Sociological Socio-Psychology Analyses, «International Journal of Psychoanalysis», 2020 (accepted.)

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psychoanalysis for indicating alienation and fragmentation of the individual subject in unequal power relations. In empirical contexts, psychoanalytic perspectives were also incorporated as “sensitizing concepts” in the studies on The Authoritarian Personality16. A central topic in this connection was the «psychology of destructive tendencies within civilization»17. Looking back on the studies on the Authoritarian Personality, Adorno saw the «common theoretical orientation toward Freud»18 as a fruit of the insight that ultimately all opinions are surface phenomena and as such need to be analyzed for the latent and unconscious substance “hidden” in them. Accordingly, borrowings from psychoanalysis were partly conceptual and partly designed to enhance research strategies and survey design. The Authoritarian Personality still counts as the part-study most obviously and emphatically geared to the psychoanalytic approach. Schmid Noerr19 emphasizes that, at a symposium on anti-Semitism organized by Ernst Simmel in San Francisco in June 1944, Horkheimer remarked: «Psychoanalytic investigations on this subject are the only ones we can go on»20 as up to that point philosophy and sociology had had little to say on the matter. It was however essential that the psychoanalytic/socio-psychological approach thus adopted should not conform to a personalist view of the individual but should be used to illuminate the societal or cultural structures defining human life at the drive-level. This held not only for the Studies in Prejudice with their focus on the relations between the manifest and latent dimensions of attitudes, but also for the studies on group experiments21 and group discussion procedures22 carried out after the Institute and its leading researchers returned to Germany. Here there was also acute perception of the relevance of psychoanalysis for research motivated by skepticism about the degree to which the espousal of democracy

  Th. W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, New York, Verso, 1950.   F. Pollock, Letter to R. Rothschild (1943), cit. after Bonß, Die Einübung des Tatsachenblicks, p. 211. 18   Th. W. Adorno, Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America, «Perspectives in American History», 2 (1969), pp. 338-370: 358. 19   G. Schmid Noerr, Psychoanalyse im Dienst des gesellschaftlichen Neubeginns. Wie Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno die Re-Institutionalisierung der Psychoanalyse im Nachkriegs-Deutschland förderten, «Luzifer & Amor», 29 (2016) 58, pp. 92-117. 20   M. Horkheimer, Antisemitismus: Der soziologische Hintergrund des psychoanalytischen Forschungsansatzes, in: GS 5, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1987 (19461), pp. 364-372: 365. 21   F. Pollock et al. (ed. by), Group Experiment and Other Writings, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press 2011 (19551). 22   W. Mangold, Gegenstand und Methode des Gruppendiskussionsverfahrens, Frankfurt a.M., Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1960. 16 17

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by the German population after 1945 went any further than mere superficial adjustment to the prevailing circumstances. Notably with regard to the idea of re-education, Horkheimer, writing to psychiatrist Karl Menninger in 1950 after his return from exile, underlined the huge contribution «psychoanalysis could make here in the education of future teachers, politicians, writers, moulders of opinion and therefore in the fostering of peace (…)». Before the Nazis seized power, he had taken up the cudgels for the institutionalization of psychoanalysis at German universities: «It was much too late as to do some good (sic!). Today I would like to help making psychoanalysis part of the German academic education before it is again too late (sic!)»23. «Psychoanalysis should be enlisted to promote mental and cultural de-Nazification, to enlighten society by educating the educators»24. In the same context, Adorno lamented the fact «that psychoanalysis (…) is still being repressed today as much as ever. Either it is altogether absent, or it is replaced by tendencies that while boasting of overcoming the much-maligned 19th century, in truth fact fall back behind Freudian theory, even turning it into its very opposite»25. The quintessence of these references and harkings-back to psychoanalysis was the conviction that a sophisticated psychoanalytic concept of the psyche was required to achieve a genuine understanding of social bonding and societal processes in general. This conviction had much to do with the difficulties encountered in categorizing apparently irrational phenomena. Hence interest focused not only on the dynamics of destructiveness and self-destructiveness and the reproduction of distorted power constellations but also on the conceivable potential for resistance. The sometimes contrived interpretations of the links between psyche and society differed in complexity, cogency, and convincement potential depending on the topics and research constellations they sprang from.

  M. Horkheimer, Briefwechsel 1949-1973, GS 18, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1996, p. 140 f.   Th. W. Adorno, The Meaning of Working Through the Past, in Critical Models. Interventions and Catchwords. New York, Columbia University Press, 1998 (19591), pp. 89-103: 100; Cf. Schmid Noerr, Psychoanalyse im Dienst des gesellschaftlichen Neubeginns. 25   Adorno, The Meaning of Working Through the Past, p. 100 f. With support notably from Horkheimer and Georg-August Zinn, the then minister-president of Hesse, plans for the new Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt /Main made swift progress in the 1950s, and it finally opened its doors in 1960. Since 1995 it has been primarily a research institution. The first head of the Institute, Alexander Mitscherlich, was noted for his psychoanalytically oriented diagnoses of contemporary social ills, e.g. the lasting effects of Nazism and the repressions and denials of the postwar period in Germany. In his own way he thus followed in the footsteps of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s analyses of the Nazi era (cf. Th. W. Adorno, Die Freudsche Theorie und die Struktur der faschistischen Propaganda, «Psyche», 24 [1970] 7, pp. 486-509). 23

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3.  Society and the Individual Subject Of course the Frankfurt school was not the only one to concern itself with the question of how society ‘gets inside’ individual subjects and the reciprocities between cultural and individual development manifest themselves. For thinkers as different as Durkheim, Mead or Elias, one of the stock issues in sociology was the way in which individuals internalize or transform social structures, rules, and norms. Talcott Parsons, for his part, emphasized that a social theory required an advanced level of psychology for this purpose. Accordingly, in working out his structural-functional theory of society, he referred primarily to psychoanalysis: «Psychoanalysis is in my opinion the first and so far the only theoretical analysis of the human personality that as a system of comparable standard can be connected directly with the sociological theory (…) of the mode of functioning of organised models inside the system of human social relationships»26. Parsons’ functionalist approach has been widely criticized for the problems it poses27. But the point at issue here is a different one. Parsons rightly emphasized the necessity of making recourse to a sufficiently complex theory of psychic development that, unlike utilitarian sociological theories, for example, did not overestimate the rationality of behavior28. He was especially interested in the question of motivation: why and how individuals “cathect” social participation. In discussing this issue, he adopts the Freudian term “cathexis”, as did Bourdieu at a later date when he referred to the habitualization of motives and developed the concept of a biographical «genesis of the cathexis of a field»29. In terms of sociology/social psychology, the emphasis here is not primarily or solely on diagnostic aspects and the descriptions of pathologies of the kind frequently associated with psychoanalysis. Of much greater import are the psychoanalytic theories of development and what they have to say about such things as the significance of attachment and relationship experiences, intersubjective and intrapsychic dynamics and the conflicts

  T. Parsons, Der Beitrag der Psychoanalyse zu den Sozialwissenschaften, in: H. U. Wehler (ed. by), Soziologie und Psychoanalyse, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1972, pp. 96-106: 96. 27   H. Dahmer (ed. by), Analytische Sozialpsychologie, 2 vols., Gießen, Psychosozial-­Verlag, 2013. 28   J. A. Schülein, Strukturell-funktionale Theorie und Psychoanalyse. Die Pionierarbeit von Talcott Parsons, in: H. J. Niedenzu – H. Staubmann (ed. by), Kritische Theorie und Gesellschaftsanalyse, Innsbruck, Innsbruck University Press, 2016, pp. 177-188. 29   P. Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, trans. R. Nice, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 2012. 26

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and crises they involve, and the dynamics of recognition and defense, the conscious and the unconscious. 4.  The Social Unconscious and the Psychic Unconscious: Genealogical and Dynamic Perspectives As we noted at the outset, we draw unthinkingly and without reflection upon the patterns and schemas with which we are accustomed to interpret world and self. But they are unconscious in different ways. On the one hand, they are the product of social praxis, the rules of which we only partly see through because they are such an integral part of the way we feel, perceive, think, and act. On the other hand, they are the product of individual biographical experience and the processing of that experience, the specific themes of paramount importance to a person’s life and identity, the ways in which people cope or fend things off, what they phase out and repress, in short the individual unconscious. Thus praxis – as the sediment of experience in social structures expressing itself in discourses, construal patterns or action schemas – is unconscious in different ways. Explicitly or implicitly, various sociological approaches have homed in on the social dimension operating below the level of consciousness. One example is the significance of the discourse concept in Foucault or his proposal that an archaeology of knowledge should be centrally geared «to understanding the implicit systems that determine our most familiar behaviors without our noticing it». It is essential, he insists, to «clarify their origins, trace their evolution, and point up the coercions they impose on us»30. What we have here is a concept of unconsciously effective social determining factors that are at the same time subject to historical change. Foucault also points out that the analysis of the hidden is not synonymous with an «in-depth» inquiry. He rather tends to locate the hidden in the realm of the «visible»31. Similarly, albeit from various different perspectives, Bourdieu concludes that social agents «[are] the product of history, the history of the entire social field and the experiences accumulating in a specific environment in the course

  M. Foucault, Überwachen und Strafen. Die Geburt des Gefängnisses, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1981, p. 234 – as summarized by L. Gertenbach, Das kulturell Unbewusste. Zu einem gemeinsamen Forschungsinteresse von Kritischer Theorie und Poststrukturalismus, in: G. Soeffner (hrsg. v.), Unsichere Zeiten. Herausforderungen gesellschaftlicher Transformationen. Wiesbaden, Springer, 2010. 31   M. Foucault, Archäologie des Wissens, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1973, p. 158. 30

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of a lifetime»32. With reference to Durkheim, Bourdieu asserts that «it is history which is the true unconscious»33. At the same time, societal «determinism» ultimately «only comes fully into its own under the cover of unconsciousness»34. For Bourdieu, sociology, or more precisely social analysis, if and when it extends its purview to the unconscious dimensions, can contribute to a suspension of these determining factors and compulsive historical repetitions. 5.  Social Analysis à la Bourdieu Accordingly, Freud’s dictum on the individual subject – the psychic dynamics of the unconscious mean that the «ego» is «not even master in its own house»35 – is transposed by Bourdieu to unconscious determining factors imposed by society. Social determinants do not only take effect behind the backs of individual subjects, they are internalized and incorporated all the way down to plane of corpo-reality. Bourdieu’s concept of the incorporated habitus proposes that experiences of relationships and the world in general are internalized and assert themselves in the feelings, perceptions, thinking, and actions of individuals. Accordingly, both in psychoanalysis and in Bourdieu’s thinking, it is essential to distinguish between different usages of the term “unconscious” to refer either to implicit knowledge (pre-reflexive and practically effective schemas or “automatisms”) or to the dynamic unconscious (in the sense of repression). In many cases, Bourdieu’s social analysis refers to both, as implicit habitua­ lizations are just as likely as repressions to lead to systematic self-delusion on the part of social agents. As Bourdieu never tires of pointing out, it is particularly where they see themselves as autonomous subjects that they are in many ways marked and restricted in their potential for change by the class-, field-, or gender-specific genesis of those habitual patterns with which they judge and deal with the social world or set out to change it. In his study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984), Bourdieu discusses the attendant deconstruction of the idea of the self-aware,

  P. Bourdieu, Rede und Antwort, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1992, p. 170.   P. Bourdieu, Homo academicus, trans. P. Collier, Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. IX. 34   Bourdieu, Rede und Antwort, p. 170. 35   S. Freud, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, GW, Bd. 11, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1944 (1916-19171). Trans. retrieved from: https://freudianassociation.org/en/ wp-content/uploads/Sigmund Freud 1920 Introductory.pdf, p. 3361. 32 33

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autonomous subject and the way sociological (self-)enlightenment explodes the illusion of autonomous cognition. He classifies these démarches not merely as instances of “social analysis” but explicitly as «psychoanalysis of the social»36, albeit without making any systematic reference to psychoanalytic methodology. Interestingly, the way Bourdieu refers back to psychoanalytic epistemology and terminology and to concepts of the unconscious has come in for surprisingly little attention37, although it is essential to his thinking (inscribed into the DNA of his work, one might say, though certainly not in a subjectivist sense). Three lines of approach stand out: 1. One of Bourdieu’s central epistemological concerns is to use sociological analysis to identify those aspects of society that have been excluded from consciousness (and theory formation). 2. His concept of habitus as «product of the entirety of biographical experience» accentuates the presence of the past, the impact of incorporated experience as a function of its very “non-consciousness”. It is thus by way of habitualization that the largely non-conscious adaptation to existing power systems takes place. 3. In analogy to psychoanalysis, Bourdieu sees in his science-theoretical concept of reflexivity the engagement with resistance to cognition as an irreducible condition for the achievement of knowledge. Accordingly, knowledge related to the social dimension requires a scientific engagement with defense and resistance. All three lines converge in the all-pervasive epistemological motif of subjecting the individual subject, both as agent and as enlightened observer, to a process of objectification. 6.  An Example: the Social and Psychic Dynamics of Social Advancement «Sociology and psychology should combine their efforts (but this would require them to overcome their mutual suspicion) to analyse the genesis of investment in a field of social relations»38, asserts Bourdieu in his Pascalian Meditations (2003), where we also find interesting adumbrations of a concep-

  P. Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 11. 37   Cf. V. King, Pierre Bourdieu als Analytiker des Sozialen. Methodologische und konzeptionelle Bezüge zur Psychoanalyse sowie sozialpsychologische Perspektiven im Werk Bourdieus. «Sozialer Sinn», 15 (2014) 1, pp. 253-278. 38  Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, p. 166. 36

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tion of the relations between psyche, habitus, and society. The significance of habitus is considered here not only with reference to the internalization of milieu- or gender-specific experiences in the course of growing up. Discontinuities, dysfunctions, and biographical changes in habituality are also given major emphasis in the discussion. Habitus transfigurations and the psychic conflicts potentially bound up with them have a bearing on “social advancement”, not least in the migration context. Researchers on mobility and migration have frequently pointed out that even though they may be well-educated, children from poorly educated or migrant families rarely achieve established positions but, either overtly or covertly, remain outsiders in the sense of the term proposed by Elias and Scotson39 (1994). At the same time, international studies indicate the extent to which, both directly and indirectly, parents from migrant families frequently have high hopes of their children’s careers in education. Accordingly, migration and life in the host society regularly have their painful and disappointing sides. One of the desires they arouse is the hope that at least the next generation should “have it better”. From this vantage, migration can be seen as an «intergenerational expectation project»40 with complex conscious and unconscious dynamics of expectancy and disappointment in the relations between one generation and the next. This often imposes difficult conditions not only on habitus transfiguration but also on the quest for the right path to follow, particularly in adolescence. The typical coping responses range from strenuous adjustment to the vehement rejection of a bid for advancement that is felt to be doomed from the outset. One such response takes the form of habitual fluctuation between positions of success and failure. Here social and psychic factors are linked, as in the following example taken from a study on the dynamics of educational advancement41 in which biographical interviews were a central component. Bülent is a 25-year-old dentistry student. His father, whose job was physically strenuous, has a number of severe illnesses. His mother is a housewife,

  N. Elias – N. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Inquiry into Community Problems, London, Sage, 1994. 40   V. King, V., ‘Fighting for something great…’. Intergenerational Constellations and Functions of Self-Culturalization for Adolescents in Migrant Families, in: St. Krüger – K. Figlio – B. Richards (ed. by), Fomenting Political Violence, London, Springer, 2018, pp. 17-36: 22. 41   V. King, Jenseits von Herkunft und Geschlechterungleichheiten? Biographische Vermittlungen von Class, Gender, Ethnicity in Bildungs- und Identitätsbildungsprozessen, in: C. Klinger – G. A. Knapp, G. A. (hrsg. v.), ÜberKreuzungen. Ungleichheit, Fremdheit, Differenz, Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2008, pp. 87-111. 39

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the parents migrated from Turkey to Germany before his birth. Here is an excerpt from the interview indicating the extent to which Bülent has experienced his progress to adulthood as a process that has taken place at the expense of his parents: (…) They did so much in their lives, both of my parents, but they always took a back seat for the sake of the children, they never lived on their own account, and looking back, you realize that in fact they were completely done in by the time they reached their mid-fifties (…) They just never lived their own lives, and it really gets to you the way you feel badly when you’re young about indulging your ego while they’re on this self-sacrificial trip (…) Everyone has an ego, my parents just never cultivated theirs. They never had a car, they stopped going on vacation, they ate different things from us, we always had meat, my mother always pretended she didn’t like meat. You grew up normally because they were always scrimping and saving (…)

In Bülent’s subjective experience, his parents had given him and his siblings “everything”, sacrificing their zest for life and their health to enable their children to get on. Both in a literal and a figurative sense, Bülent took their share of the “meat”. Throughout the interview it is apparent that although the son rebels against the pressure exerted by the expectations his parents have of him, loyalty is obligatory and demands that he achieves educational success “for his father’s sake”. His instinctive inclinations to “kick against the pricks” are repeatedly undermined by his guilty conscience. But the prospect of leading a better life than his parents, who have suffered so much on his behalf, has also receded into the background. The very idea has been nipped in the bud, although – or because – he also sees himself as one who has “triumphed”. The fact that despite his success in the education system he repeatedly perceives himself as ‘uneducated’ may be also a response to the lack of recognition he has experienced for his achievements. As an offspring of a Turkish family, he was confronted in his youth by disparaging verdicts. In addition, he realized that, for all his efforts, he would never be able to divest himself of his otherness in the eyes of his immediate environment. Factors like these naturally exacerbated his difficulties, not least in the relationship with his parents and in response to his father’s delegations. It is thus apparent that this young man’s dilemma does not stem from his being “torn between two cultures” (still the stock response trotted out to explain the problems of children from migrant families). What we have here is a constellation typical of children from disadvantaged backgrounds who make good. More precisely, it is a concatenation of the structural inequality factors class, gender, ethnicity operating “behind his back”. In conjunction

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with the psychic conflicts they engender, they make it very difficult for this son of a Turkish working-class family to take full advantage of his educational successes on the social, habitual, and psychic plane and thus to assure his upward mobility. In his entrapment between advancement and self-abnegation there are also indications of a devaluation of his own origins and of feelings both of triumph and guilt and the anxieties they involve. Conflict potential of this kind is anything but untypical and by no means restricted to adolescents from migrant families. 7.  Bourdieu and Freud on the Socio- and Psycho-logic of ‘Going up in the World’ In a chapter of the study The Weight of the World42 titled “Contradictions of the Inheritance”, Bourdieu convincingly emphasizes the connections between the socio-analytic method he uses to cast light on the social unconscious and societal repressions and psychoanalysis as a method for delving into the dynamics of the unconscious. «A true sociogenesis of the dispositions that constitute the habitus» (must) «attempt to understand how the social order collects, channels, reinforces or counteracts social processes»43. In this case, «sociogenesis» refers primarily to the analysis of father-son conflicts in the context of social advancement. Bourdieu discusses the complexity and potential contradictions of father-son relations in terms of the handing-down of a legacy, not merely in the economic, but also in a social and psychic sense: The crucial element of the paternal inheritance is that of enabling the father – who embodies the line of descent – to live on, (…) to perpetuate his position in society. In many cases, this will mean setting oneself off from the father, outdoing him, and to some extent negating him. There are a number of problems involved here, on the one hand for the father, who both desires and fears this ousting at the hands of his descendant, and for the son, (…) who finds himself saddled with a mission that threatens to end in despair (…)44

In Bourdieu’s view: «A successful inheritance is a murder of the father accomplished at the father’s injunction»45.

  P. Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World. Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 1999. 43   Ibidem, p. 512. 44   Ibidem, p. 507 (revised A. J.). 45   Ibidem, p. 508. 42

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Bourdieu’s concern here is with the intergenerational friction and the internal conflict potential of the father-son relationship in the tussle for social positioning, tensions that are inherent in the “inheritance” itself (and in its transfiguration). He refers to a number of constellations – different milieus, ascent and descent, the significance of gender – but the central thrust of his analysis is devoted to the consequences of the dilemmas resulting from the attempt to outdo the father or, in the case of social advancement, from a success «experienced as a transgression» and hence fraught with guilt: The more you succeed (meaning the more you fulfill the paternal will to have you succeed), the more you fail, the closer you come to destroying your father and the greater the distance between him and yourself (…) It is as if the father’s position set a line that must not be crossed46.

Against the background of Bourdieu’s “Sketch for a Self-Analysis” (2004) it seems fair to assume that he is speaking here from his own experience, which presumably made him especially sensitive to the subject. But his approach is not without a degree of one-sidedness, as there are indeed other coping patterns than the ones Bourdieu focuses on. Another remarkable parallel is that, in Freud’ s self-analysis that laid the foundations for psychoanalysis and found its way above all into the Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud also homed in on the intrapsychic conflicts besetting the relationship with his father. Here too there is much discussion of shame and guilt feelings and the inner conflicts assailing the son in his bid for greater recognition as a scientist. Later, in the famous letter to Romain Rolland in which describes a symptom that he associates with the inner conflicts attendant on social advancement, Freud writes: It must be that a sense of guilt was attached to the satisfaction of having gone such a long way: there was something about it that was wrong, that from earliest times had been forbidden (…) It seems as though the essence of success was to have got further than one’s father, and as though to outdo one’s father was still something forbidden47.

Bourdieu was probably familiar with this letter and, as we have seen, his take on these connections is very similar (incidentally betraying an undeniable gift for dramatizing his subjective experience). Freud derived from   Ibidem, p. 510.   S. Freud, A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis, «International Journal of Psychoanalysis», 22 (1941) 1, pp. 93-101: 100-101. 46 47

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his observations a number of insights into the effect of repressed wishes, unconscious aggression, and anxiety on psychic development, all the way up to symptom formation. Bourdieu’s perspective is more ample. He emphasizes that the intrapsychic and generational conflicts (say in father-son relations) are embedded in the social situation the respective family happens to be in, including advancement and decline, structures of social inequality, etc. At the same time, he transcends the potentially blinkered perspective of a purely sociologistic approach, indicating that much is to be learned from an understanding of intersubjective and intrapsychic conflict constellations and the effects and defense mechanisms associated with them. One of his major concerns is to achieve a more precise grasp of the consequences and reproductive potential of social inequalities in all their range, drama, and intensity, not least in the context of social advancement. Bülent is a case in point. At the last, it was not enough for him to have good grades and the right qualifications. It takes more than that to “arrive”. Bourdieu also discusses the significance of social analysis as sociological self-enlightenment with regard to the unconscious mechanisms inherent, say, in the reproduction of inequality. He arrives at a conclusion that has much in common with a dynamic and psychoanalytic understanding of Erkenntnis (cognition) and sets out first of all to analyze the forms of systematic resistance to Erkenntnis, i.e. to analyze defense phenomena. His conviction is that we can only change our dealings «with our own dispositions» via an «analysis of the subtle determining factors affecting those dispositions». These leave a more indelible imprint precisely because they are unconscious48. «Social analysis», he insists, «is a supremely powerful instrument for self-analysis»49, thus adopting a view of self-analysis that transcends the purely individual. By scrutinizing the obstacles to cognition, i.e. the socially and psychically conditioned defense against cognition, and by bringing into the light of day the societal unconscious that has found its way both into the institutions and into our own selves, social analysis can at least to a certain degree provide a resource for overcoming operative determining factors. In methodological terms, the result is a “primacy of reflexivity” over and against established theoretical assumptions or subsumptions. In other words, neither social nor psychic analysis are primarily concerned with “application”, nor are they interested in piling up theories one on top of the other with a view to con  P. Bourdieu – L. Wacquant, Reflexive Anthropologie, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1996, p. 171. 49   Bourdieu, Rede und Antwort, p. 223. 48

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structing all-encompassing super-theories or models. The main concern is with a dynamic perspective on cognition. 8.  “Uncovering Work” The conception of the dynamic unconscious is what distinguishes psychoanalysis from psychology50. There is an analogy here with Bourdieu’s conception of social analysis. He too is at pains to show that social circumstances exert power behind the backs of individual subjects. Accordingly, specific paths of access are required to cast light on the covert mechanisms of social impregnation. This in its turn implies that the cultural or societal unconscious contains not only the historicity of the given, the organic origination of structure (as with Durkheim or Foucault) or the effects of praxis or of discourse, i.e. what Butler51 and others refer to as the performative aspect. Also of especial significance is the dimension of the systematically repressed, the dynamics of phasings-out that cannot be suspended at will by means of rationalistically restricted enlightenment. Accordingly, special meta-theoretical interest attaches to the way in which things individually fended off join forces with things socially phased out, and how both can be analyzed, not least in the way they interact. Both socio- and psychoanalytically, the first point at issue is genesis. How do patterns and schemas, unconscious systems or forms of defense become habitual? The second concern is with dynamics. What facets of the social and psychic givens, of cultural and individual processes, are phased out, and for what reasons? What are the motives for this, what internal or external pressures or compulsions are operative? Thirdly, reciprocal effects and links need to be identified. How do the unconscious schemas exerting a social or cultural influence conspire and join forces with the dynamics of the individual unconscious? Bourdieu squares up to this challenge by proposing an investigation of how the «social world» «uses» and «transfigures» the individual preconditions evolving in the course of a biography52. In our research projects, for example, we inquire into the way in which specific forms of processing and   Cf. A. Schöpf, Das Unbewußte, in: W. Mertens (ed. by), Schlüsselbegriffe der Psychoanalyse, Stuttgart, Klett, 1993, pp. 151-159. 51   J. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 1997. 52   Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World, p. 29. 50

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defense gain significance in a way of life adapted to social change53. We investigate the connections between collective and individual forms of coping with anxiety and the resulting cultural defense patterns54. These connections need to be constantly redefined in accordance with the subject in hand – a challenge on which Adorno waxes almost lyrical: «Instead of subtracting the individual from the processes going on in society and then describing their formative impact, the task of any truly analytic social psychology would be to lay bare the societal forces operative in the individual’s innermost mechanisms»55. From both a sociological/socio-psychological and a psychoanalytic vantage, such ‘uncovering work’ is an art that constantly poses new challenges. When societal forces and innermost individual mechanisms are cast into one pot and glibly classified, in some ill-defined way, as “mutually reinforcing”, this causes just as many problems as when they are arbitrarily dissociated from one another. But bearing in mind all those issues and challenges still awaiting sociological analysis, this detective work has obviously forfeited none of its actuality. Vera King Goethe University & Sigmund-Freud-Institute Frankfurt, Germany [email protected]

  King et al., Psychische Bedeutungen des digitalen Messens, Zählens und Vergleichens; V. King – B. Gerisch – H. Rosa (ed by.), Lost in Perfection. Impacts of Optimisation on Culture and Psyche, London, Routledge, 2019. 54   B. Gerisch – B. Salfeld – V. King, “Ich will’s halt allen immer recht machen” – Zur Reziprozität von erschöpften Subjekten und angegriffenen Institutionen, «Wirtschaftspsychologie», 19 (2018) 4, pp. 5-13; V. King – B. Gerisch – J. Schreiber, “… To Really Have Everything Completely Perfect”: On the Psychodynamics of Contemporary Forms of Body Optimization, «Psychoanalytic Psychology», 37 (2020) 2, pp. 148-157; doi: 10.1037/pap0000287). 55   Adorno, Die revidierte Psychoanalyse, p. 27 (trans. A. J.). 53

RECONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE: A DEMONSTRATION ENCOMPASSING TWO AREAS OF RESEARCH

Abstract: This contribution aims to show the importance of empirical research for a reconstructive social critique. “Reconstruction” can, it is argued, assume very different meanings in different areas of social research and may accordingly call for a variety of methodical and theoretical operations. There hence exists a broad spectrum of what it might mean to use social reality as the source from which critique takes its measure. The present contribution demonstrates this with reference to two areas of research, namely the waves of riotous upheavals in European cities and the application of the guiding principle of child welfare in German family law. In conclusion, it considers the scope of a social critique that is reconstructive not only in name, but is also empirically founded.

*** Social critique today tends to be connected to approaches drawn from social philosophy and political theory, but hardly ever from empirical research. This is no doubt due in large part to developments within the empirically oriented social sciences, which mostly claim a descriptive and explanatory role for themselves while shying away from normative questions. It is not by accident that critical theory – in its Frankfurt or any other variety – has no counterpart claiming the title of “critical empiricism”. Philosophical research has, on the one hand, strongly focussed on establishing the conditions of possibility of critique without lingering over the question of what might even be the appropriate subject of critique today. On the other hand, philosophy has recently begun to develop “reconstructive critique” as an approach in which the normative claims of social actors serve as the foundation on which a crucial perspective without paternalistic impositions on the part of scholarship might be built. Yet this idea of a reconstructive critique, on which the present study1 is based, has by and large remained a programme in social theory – a set of   Translated from the German by Joe Paul Kroll in cooperation with the author. The author would also like to thank Angelika Boese for her assistance. 1

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abstract instructions for what to do if one were indeed to engage in social research in such a manner. It is striking how remote from empirical concerns the programmatic statements of reconstructive critique have generally remained given its claim to take its measure from empirical realities, however they might be conceived of. If, then, this contribution is to represent an approach to the question of reconstructive critique that tacks closer to empirical concerns, this should not mislead us into ignoring the many conceptual issues that remain to be addressed alongside it – above all the question of what exactly is meant by “reconstruction”. Can the normative standards of critique take their bearings only from the explicitly stated claims of the actors studied, or can they also consider the aspirations and desires implicit in their testimony of life and suffering? Do societal institutions really embody normative principles in such a manner as to make them an appropriate critical yardstick by which the realities they have contributed to creating might be measured? Finally, an attempt will have to be made to answer the question of whether a critique that claims the epithet “reconstructive” is suitable only to provide a social critique limited to particular spheres of society or whether it can also take the shape of a critique directed at the totality of society. These questions will be revisited in due course; first of all, however, it must be established whether and how social critique by empirical means is even possible. Anyone seeking to refute the common assumption that considers social critique to be no fit subject for empirical research must rightly address the demand that any critique, including one basing itself on empirical findings, must be able to lay out its normative standards2. With that in mind, the arguments advanced here should not be taken as favouring an uncontrolled normativity in empirical research that is imposed from without – something that occurs all too often, not least in positivist and power-analytical research. Instead, I would like first of all to demonstrate that normativity comes into play at several levels within empirical research, beginning with that of the realities themselves into which research is conducted. With these normatively conditioned realities as my starting point, I shall proceed to ask how standards of an empirically grounded critique of societal relations and institutions can

  See, for example, S. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 1986; A. Honneth, Reconstructive Social Critique with a Genealogical Reservation: On the Idea of Critique in the Frankfurt School, «Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal», XX (2001) 2, pp. 3-12; R. Celikates, Critique as Social Practice: Critical Theory and Social Self-Understanding, London/New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. 2

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be arrived at by reconstructive means. By “how” I refer to the methodical and analytical operations required or, as it were, the operationalization of critique in empirical social research. By way of example, I shall pursue these questions across two very different empirical fields, in both of which I have worked in recent years. The first case is that of the French and British riots of 2005 and 2011; the second addresses the principle of the child’s best interests in German law, both in family law and the law pertaining to public child and youth services. With respect to these two fields, I shall begin by explicating the role played by normativity at the phenomenal level of the object – both, that is, with regard to explaining the phenomena under research and to reconstructing a critical framework for assessment from the perspective of actors and institutions. Thus far, I shall remain within the scope of the “sociology of critique”, which has been the subject of much discussion in recent years. Yet I shall also endeavour to go further by demonstrating what additional operations might be necessary to reach a point from which a critique might be made from the perspective of a sociological observer. This would mean crossing the threshold separating a sociology of critique from a “critical sociology” properly so-called. 1.  Riots: Critique of the Violation of Civic Equality The unrest or émeutes that took place in the banlieues of France every night for three weeks in autumn 2005 produced images – of burning cars and schools as well as of clashes between rioters and police – that went around the world. Though shorter in duration, the riots that erupted in London and other British cities in August 2011 were, if anything, even more violent. Here, too, the media was full of images and reports of massive looting of shops and of burning homes, public buildings and police stations in inner-city districts. Both the French and the British riots had erupted following incidents in which police were accused of having caused the death of young men of African descent3. I have conducted a secondary analysis of both riots, based on social-scientific studies, police and court reports and print media documentation. Throughout, I was concerned with using primary materials reproducing first-hand statements from the rioters themselves. 3   There are striking parallels to these accounts in the Swedish riots in the Stockholm suburb of Husby in May 2013, those in Ferguson near St Louis, Missouri, in August 2014 and those that erupted in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020 and which set off a wave of protests, sometimes violent, across a number of American and European cities.

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My analysis4 found that the collective uprisings in economically disadvantaged and multi-ethnic urban districts in France and Great Britain possessed a normative core and indeed could not be adequately explained without reference to it. What the available studies and data show is that normative ideas of citoyenneté or citizenship were a core motivating factor for the mostly young and male rioters. Both in France and in Great Britain, the rioters found their claims stemming from the postulates of civic equality – particularly their claim to equal treatment by public institutions – to be permanently violated in their everyday experience. This was the principal motive for participation in the riots. Such a diagnosis, however, is bound to run into a basic problem in the social-scientific analysis of riots: the many actors involved in such events tend to do so for a variety of reasons. Rioters who attack police officers are likely to have motives different from those of looters taking advantage of a state of seeming lawlessness to enjoy “free shopping”. It can nonetheless be shown that in the emergence of and the course taken by the riots, both in France in 2005 and in Great Britain in 2011, normative principles played an absolutely central part in motivating action. «Liberté, égalité, fraternité, mais pas dans les cités» is a slogan that was often heard during the unrest in France5. This rallying cry, which harks back to the motto of the first French Republic enshrined in Article 2 of the modern French constitution, is in itself far from straightforward, bringing as it does into play three extremely general normative principles – and, moreover, doing so simultaneously. One demand, however, is clear beyond any doubt: what applies to other citizens of France must also apply to us, the residents of the banlieues. The lofty ideals of the nation must not be suspended and reduced to an empty promise. Now there are two institutions through which the young rioters in the banlieues are likely to have come into close contact with the state: the police and the schools. It can thus be no accident that these two institutions were the target of the rioters’ most intense and consistent fury6. And two points   The following section contains passages previously published in my essay The Hidden Morale of the 2005 French and 2011 English Riots, «Thesis Eleven», CXXI (2014) 1, pp. 38-56. 5   R. Castel, La discrimination négative. Citoyens ou indigènes?, Paris, Seuil, 2007, p. 41. 6   According to the French Ministry of the Interior, 201 members of the police and gendarmerie as well as 26 firefighters were injured over the course of the three weeks of rioting. 233 public buildings, including many schools but also police stations, were damaged or burned down. The French Ministry of Education reported 255 attacks on schools and other educational establishments (Centre d’analyse stratégique, Enquêtes sur les violences urbaines. Comprendre les émeutes de novembre 2005. Les exemples de Saint-Denis et d’Aulnay-sous-Bois. Avec un avant-propos de Sophie Boissard, Paris, La Documentation française, 2006, pp. 71 ff.; 4

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indeed keep emerging in the available statements from the young rioters: the discriminatory and humiliating treatment at the hands of the police and the unequal treatment and marginalization by the French educational system. Some background information may be helpful in understanding these issues. In the decade leading up to 2005, the French state responded to the problems of the so-called zones urbaines sensibles primarily in terms of a policy of law and order that has even been described as «paramilitary»7. Policing in the banlieues became more repressive in character, with new laws passed in 2002 and 2003 putting an end to the police de proximité, a fairly light-handed, cooperative approach. Infractions that had previously been treated as misdemeanours were now liable for criminal prosecution, and the new laws allowed both for increased surveillance and for the publication of delinquency rates at the level of small spatial units8. This added to the impression of the banlieues as hotbeds of criminality, while direct experiences of police work by the residents of these areas undermined their trust in law enforcement and the rule of law9. This approach to public order fed directly into the French riots, as the studies conducted immediately after the riots of 2005 in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis near Paris by Laurent Mucchielli have shown10. Mucchielli interviewed young people who had participated in the riots without being arrested and who told of everyday encounters with the police, which they described as «unjust» and «humiliating»11. Though limited in quantitative scale and local scope, Mucchielli’s study kept close to the lived experience of those interviewed. The twelve participants agreed that they had wanted Centre d’analyse stratégique, Le traitement judiciaire des ‘violences urbaines’ de l’automne 2005. Le cas de la Seine-Saint-Denis. Document de travail, par Michel Mazars, Paris, La Documentation française, 2007, pp. 5 ff.; D. Lapeyronnie, Primitive Rebellion in the French Banlieues: On the Fall 2005 Riots, in: C. Tshimanga – D. Gondola – P. J. Bloom [ed. by], Frenchness and the African Diaspora: Identity and Uprising in Contemporary France, Bloomington [IN], Indiana University Press, 2009, pp. 21-46: 21 ff.; A. Bertho, Événements de novembre 2005 dans les ‘banlieues’ françaises. Dossier documentaire, Paris, Université Paris VIII Vincennes Saint-Denis, 2007, pp. 2 ff.). 7   F. Jobard, Rioting as a Political Tool: The 2005 Riots in France, «Howard Journal of Criminal Justice», XLVIII (2009) 3, pp. 235-244: 243. 8   M. Dikeç, Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics, and Urban Policy, Malden (MA)/ Oxford, Blackwell, 2007, pp. 93 ff. 9   Castel, La discrimination négative, pp. 42 ff.; Lapeyronnie, Primitive Rebellion, pp. 27 ff. 10   L. Mucchielli, Autumn 2005: A Review of the Most Important Riot in the History of French Contemporary Society, «Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies», XXXV (2009) 5, pp. 731-751. 11   Ibidem, pp. 740 f.

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to «take revenge» on the police. As one sixteen-year-old secondary school pupil remarked: «All we’re asking for is respect, if a cop comes up to me politely and asks for my papers, politely, I’d give them to him, no problem»12. Robert Castel, too, in his book La discrimination negative, underscores that «We demand respect!» was a claim often heard from the banlieues at the time13. There is ample evidence to suggest that this demand is founded on real, lived experience14. The rioters’ appeals and complaints regarding the lack of “respect” on the part of the police and other organs of the state are highly illuminating, for what they show is that the demand to be treated by the law and law enforcements in the same way as other French citizens was at the core of what mobilized young people against the police and made it the target of their aggression. The French education system was also targeted by the young banlieue residents during the riots on the grounds that it had failed to live up to its promise of equality. The school system, which has long been committed to the republican principle of equality of opportunity and theoretically provides the possibility of merit-based advancement15, was criticized and attacked on the grounds that it was depriving pupils from the banlieues of any chance of improving their situation. A vivid example is provided by a twenty-year-old unemployed small-scale cannabis dealer who left school without graduating. Interviewed by Mucchielli, he said: «So I’m telling you the truth, I burned some cars near the high school to show them that we exist and that we’re not going to let them fuck us over like fuck. We’re going to scare them, like that they’ll change their behaviour and they’ll respect us (…) we’ve got nothing to lose, since they’ve fucked our lives up»16. Others also described the bitter realization widespread in their banlieue that even those who did well at school either failed to find employment or at best ended up working in supermarkets or for security firms17. During the 2005 riots, a 24-year-old man named Nadir from a suburb north of Paris explained to the newspaper Le Monde:   Ibidem, p. 741.   Castel, La discrimination négative, p. 60. 14   Particularly impressive on this is D. Fassin, Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing, Cambridge/Malden (MA), Polity Press, 2013; see also E. Renault, Violence and Disrespect in the French Revolt of November 2005, in: C. Browne – J. McGill (ed. by), Violence in France and Australia: Disorder in the Postcolonial Welfare State, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 2010, pp. 169-180: 176 ff. 15   P. Bourdieu – J.-C. Passeron, The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture, Chicago (IL), University of Chicago Press, 1979. 16   Mucchielli, Autumn 2005, p. 742. 17   Ibidem, pp. 742 ff. 12 13

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«Out of the hundred résumés I sent out, I got three interviews. Even when people pull strings for me, I’m still turned down. Schools are useless. That’s why we burn them»18. These statements by young rioters about their experiences with the police and schools demonstrate their familiarity and identification with the universalistic principles of equality. The demand for equal treatment and participation as citizens formed the normative foundation of their indignation and destructive rage. They took the promise made by the French nation at its word and for precisely this reason saw it as a scandal when the constitutional principle of civil rights remained a mere fiction or was constantly trampled underfoot by state authorities. Analyses predating the French riots of 2005 already pointed in this direction. In the 1990s, François Dubet spoke of a “paradox of cultural assimilation” in relation to the rebellious and potentially violent youth of the banlieues: The more culturally adapted they were and the more effectively they had internalized the value system of French society, the more potent were their feelings of exclusion and injustice19. This is an important aspect of the situation from which the riots emanated. Something very similar can be observed with regard to the British riots of 2011. In Great Britain corresponding research has discerned a development among migrant populations identical to that described by Dubet in the French case. In their study Riotous Citizens, published in 2008, Paul Bagguley and Yasmin Hussain point to generational differences using the example of South Asian, above all Pakistani, immigrant communities, among whom the initiators of earlier riots in northern English working-class towns such as Oldham, Burnley and Bradford had found willing recruits. The members of their parents’ generation had still seen themselves as “denizens” – as mere residents. In their own minds they remained, like the indigenous populations of the former British colonial territories, citizens without political rights, even though they had long been accorded such rights on paper. The attitude of young Britons from the South Asian community, according to Bagguley and Hussein20, was fundamentally different. Having been for the most part born in Great Britain and, in any case, having gone to school

  Lapeyronnie, Primitive Rebellion, p. 40.   F. Dubet, Die Logik der Jugendgewalt. Das Beispiel der französischen Vorstädte, in: T. von Trotha (hrsg. v.), Soziologie der Gewalt, «Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 37», Opladen/Wiesbaden, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997, pp. 220-234: 225 ff., 232 f. 20   P. Bagguley – Y. Hussein, Riotous Citizens: Ethnic Conflict in Multicultural Britain, Aldershot/Burlington, Ashgate, 2008, pp. 143-157. 18

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there, these young people – unlike their parents – think of themselves fully as “citizens” with the same rights and entitlements as other Britons. Their social identity is primarily determined not by ethnic affiliation but by their status as British citizens21. Such findings would seem to provide important insights into the willingness of such young people to participate in the British riots of 2011. As in the French banlieues in 2005, during the 2011 riots in England the police were not only the first but also the most clearly selected and enduring target of the unrest; by contrast, schools were not as severely attacked as they were in France, though many public or municipal buildings were damaged, smashed or torched in Britain, too22. For many residents of impoverished multi-ethnic urban areas in Great Britain, the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, which sparked the riots, symbolized only the most extreme form of the way the police and the state dealt with the disadvantaged and ethnic minorities. Such attitudes were shaped above all by “stop and search policing”, a preventative strategy employed in the absence of concrete suspicions by police above all in areas with high crime rates with the aim of preventing serious crimes and terrorism23. The legal foundation of this practice is section 44 of the British Terrorism Act of 2000. According to the study Reading the Riots, conducted in 2011 by the Guardian newspaper and the London School of Economics, the policing strategies outlined here constituted the principal bone of contention in the lead-up to the riots. One 23-year-old from Liverpool who was interviewed for the study responded to the question of what the word ‘gang’ meant to him as follows: «People who try and intimidate members in the public. To me the worst gang is the police though»24. An employed 17-year-old Muslim   Ibidem, p. 154.   Across the four days of rioting in August 2011, British rioters committed 330 registered crimes against the police and police facilities, 230 acts of vandalism and breaking and entering on private residential property and over 520 attacks on other targets including public buildings and facilities (Home Office, An Overview of Recorded Crimes and Arrests Resulting from Disorder Events in August 2011, London, Great Britain Home Office, 2011, p. 14; G. Morrell et al., The August Riots in England: Understanding the Involvement of Young People, London, National Centre for Social Research, 2011, pp. 13 ff.; D. Briggs, Introduction, in: Id. [ed. by], The English Riots of 2011: A Summer of Discontent, Hook, Waterside Press, 2012, pp. 9-25: 9 ff.; Metropolitan Police Service, 4 Days in August: Strategic Review into the Disorder of August 2011. Final Report, London, Metropolitan Police Service, 2012, pp. 13 ff., 115). 23   T. Newburn, Interview: Tim Newburn. By Jamie Bennett, «Prison Service Journal», (2012) 201, pp. 59-63: 62. 24   Guardian and LSE, Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder, London, Guardian and London School of Economics and Political Science, 2011, p. 18. 21 22

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from the London district of Tottenham, where the riots began, told of how at the age of 13 he was stopped by two police officers who then proceeded to have a conversation with one another. One of them said: «Mate, why don’t you ask him where Saddam25 is. He might be able to help out». The interviewee continues: «They’re supposed to be law enforcement. I don’t hate the policing system, I hate the police on the street. I hate them from the bottom of my heart»26. Primary sources also reveal – as in the French case27 – numerous statements by young people describing their attacks on the police as acts of rebellion against the government. Such sentiments are typically linked with the idea that the state was not looking after or could not care less about them28. A common thread running through the statements of both the British and the French rioters is a perception of illegitimate, unequal treatment, which they interpret as an attack on their right to be treated as citizens. That is what my endeavour at reconstruction has found. Yet it should be noted that such a reconstruction involves far more than simply repeating the rioters’ testimony. What I was concerned with in reproducing these statements was to highlight the claims implicit in their anger, to reconstruct the normative core invoked by these young people and to understand how these normative claims explain their actions. An empirical approach must, however, be wary of making such a reconstruction appear too straightforward. After all, one might well suppose that the rioters’ reference to norms of equality was largely strategic in nature, calculated to excuse their actions. Yet my analysis instead demonstrates that this recourse to norms of equality is consistent both with the interpretation of the situation that gave rise to the riots in the first place and with the targets attacked by the rioters. I have, in other words, subjected the motives for action to a test of consistency. The next step, towards an analysis that is both critical and empirically founded, might also be described as a case-based transition from a sociology of critique to a critical sociology. To be able to formulate a critique from the perspective of the observer, it is necessary first of all to ask – building on a reconstruction of the critique from the perspective of the actors – whether it is

  I.e. the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who was in hiding at the time.   Guardian and LSE, Reading the Riots, p. 19. 27   M. Kokoreff, The Political Dimension of the 2005 Riots, in: D. Waddington – F. Jobard – M. King (ed. by), Rioting in the UK and France: A Comparative Analysis, Portland (OR), Willan Publishing, 2009, pp. 147-156: 150. 28   Guardian and LSE, Reading the Riots, pp. 24 ff.; J. Benyon, England’s Urban Disorder: The 2011 Riots, «Political Insight», III (2012) 1, pp. 12-17: 16 f. 25 26

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permissible to make the norms claimed by the rioters one’s own. My answer to this was a clear “yes”, for the norm they invoked – mostly implicitly and wrapped inside their rage, but sometimes quite explicitly – is the absolutely legitimate norm of civic equality. Of course, merely to conclude that the rioters invoked a norm that is legitimate within the normative infrastructure of their society – and of any democracy – is not yet to say that their violent actions were justified. In any case, however, their choice of normative means of complaint does not constitute a category mistake, for, as David Miller29 points out, the sphere in which we encounter one another as citizens is the domain of equality par excellence. Hence, it was precisely the internalization of a widely accepted and, for democratic institutions, constitutive norm of equality that led to an outbreak of violence and destruction. Neither the French and less still the British riots were driven by far-reaching notions of distributive egalitarianism that would have been controversial as such. What generated the rage of the rioters and inflamed it following the tragic initial incidents was rather their own immediate, physical experience of minimal democratic and constitutional standards being violated – standards on which the legitimacy of government institutions is founded: the principle at the heart of the rule of law that holds that no sanction may be applied where no law has been broken – a principle disregarded by certain forms of urban policing – and the guiding normative idea that equal access to educational opportunities and social participation must be open to all, irrespective of ethnic and social background. The social sciences are within their rights in offering analyses that support the criticism of the violation of such fundamental principles as levelled by actors and indeed – ideally – to formulate it more clearly and concisely, and with deeper perspective, than they might themselves be capable of doing. Understood thus, social science may indeed be entitled to conceive of itself as a Demokratiewissenschaft30, a science of democracy. 29   D. Miller, Principles of Social Justice, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 230-244. 30   On this concept, which originated in American pragmatism, and its use at the Institute for Social Research in the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany, see D. Braunstein – F. Link, Demokratisches Denken durch die Praxis der Soziologie. Die Reeducation-Konzepte des Instituts für Sozialforschung in den 1950er Jahren, in: K. Amos – M. Rieger-Ladich – A. Rohstock (hrsg. v.), Erinnern, Umschreiben, Vergessen. Die Stiftung des disziplinären Gedächtnisses als soziale Praxis, Weilerswist, Velbrück, 2019, pp. 187-209; for an exemplary contemporary application of empirical research as a science of democracy or democratization, see Fassin, Enforcing Order, pp. 215 ff. and Id., The Endurance of Critique, «Anthropological Theory», XVII (2017) 1, pp. 4-29: 24 ff.

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2.  Child Welfare: Critique of Paradoxical Legal Consequences and their Preconditions My remarks on the second field of enquiry, which is of an altogether different nature, are derived from a research project into the legal principle of child welfare that I conducted with Sarah Mühlbacher at the Institute for Social Research from 2015 to 201931. The material, which we subjected to hermeneutical analysis both in terms of discourse and content, consisted of German legislation referring to the principle of child welfare, documents relating to relevant legislative processes and their discussion both by specialists and in the public sphere, rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court (on Article 6 of the Basic Law [Grundgesetz, GG]), rulings of other courts – especially Higher Regional Courts (Oberlandesgerichte) – in cases of custody and visitation rights as well as endangerment of child welfare (§ 1666 of the German Civil Code [Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB]), texts of professional interest in family law and in child and youth welfare services, and – finally – empirical social science in the field under examination here. Over the course of this research project, we came to the conclusion that, in its efforts to safeguard and promote child welfare, the rule of law often produced effects that ran counter to its intentions. The state thus sometimes not only fails to attain its ends, but by its interventions inadvertently creates new dangers for children. In drawing attention to this paradox, we are not attempting a fundamental critique of child welfare as a legal principle, but rather of the manner in which it is institutionalized. On what is such a critique to be founded? In order to answer this question, it is necessary first of all to identify the normative principle underlying the legal concentration on child welfare. We argue that the normative principle that is institutionalized in the legal concept – the general proviso – of child welfare can be grasped in terms of the concept of the “autonomy” or “self-determination” of the child32. The normative principle of autonomy, as it appears in the statute books, is in itself   This was a subproject within the broader research group «Negotiating Normative Paradoxes» (Verhandlungsformen normativer Paradoxien), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. 32   A more detailed account, particularly with reference to the subsequent points, can be found in F. Sutterlüty, Normative Paradoxes of Child Welfare Systems: An Analysis with a Focus on Germany, «International Journal of Children’s Rights», XXV (2017) 1, pp. 196-230; cf. also S. Mühlbacher – F. Sutterlüty, The Principle of Child Autonomy: A Rationale for the Normative Agenda of Childhood Studies, «Global Studies of Childhood», IX (2019) 3, pp. 249-260. On the discussion in family law of the foundations of “legal parenting guidelines” geared towards children’s growing autonomy, see F. Wapler, Kinderrechte und Kindeswohl. Eine Untersuchung zum Status des Kindes im Öffentlichen Recht, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2015, pp. 254 ff. 31

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highly complex, operating as it does on two levels. First, it is concerned with the child’s development into an autonomous individual and therefore with guaranteeing the socialization conditions that facilitate this development. Second, the principle and the legislation based upon it are aimed at the recognition of the child’s existing faculty for self-determination in all matters affecting it. Accordingly, German law regards children as “human beings” and not merely as “human becomings”33 – as actors, that is, in their own right and not only as future adults. To be sure, the relevant legal texts are founded on the assumption that children are socialized into autonomous individuals and their self-determination is recognized under conditions of the child’s dependency, vulnerability and resulting need for protection. One might think of these as the “conditions of realization” of the child’s autonomy. Their elementary expression is contained in the Basic Law (art. 6, GG) and in the legal statutes on family matters contained in the German Civil Code. The Civil Code’s principles relating to parental custody reflect a consequential view of the vulnerability of children, which is seen as emanating from the children’s “ties” to their caregivers (§ 1626, par. 3, BGB). It is important to remember – for it is often forgotten – that such caregivers may refer not only to the parents, but explicitly to other individuals as well (ibidem). According to German law, such ties may be not only fragile and endangered, but also dangerous themselves. It is within this framework that the autonomy of the child figures as the telos of the child welfare concept in legal texts. For example, German law has this to say concerning the basic principles of parental care: «In the care and upbringing of the child, the parents take account of the growing ability and the growing need of the child for independent responsible action» (§ 1626, para. 2, BGB)34. It follows from this that the child’s autonomy is to be recognized by the parents from the very first steps of its realization. The law goes so far as to stipulate the manner in which the child’s autonomy is to be considered, offering as the benchmark a process of domestic communication redolent of deliberative consensus-building. Parents, it states, are to «discuss questions of parental custody with the child to the extent that, in accordance

33   A. Prout – A. James, A New Paradigm for the Sociology of Childhood? Provenance, Promise and Problems, in: Id. (ed. by), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, London, Falmer, 1997, pp. 7-33: 10 f.; N. Lee, Childhood and Society: Growing up in an Age of Uncertainty, Buckingham/Philadelphia (PA), Open University Press, 2001, pp. 7 f. 34   This formulation is not altogether new, but was inscribed in the German Civil Code in the course of the reformed custody law of 1979. At the time, the concept of elterliche Sorge (parental custody) replaced that of elterliche Gewalt (parental authority).

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with the stage of development of the child, it is advisable» and moreover to «seek agreement» (ibidem). Similar demands are expressed in the eighth book of the German Social Code, which provides an important legal foundation for the work of Germany’s child and youth services department, which is responsible for dealing with cases of endangerment of a child’s welfare and is involved in legal disputes, such as those over custody. The principle guiding any intervention by public child and youth services is the right of every young person «to support for its development and to an upbringing that enables it to become a responsible and socially competent individual» (§ 1, par. 1, SGB viii). To this end, «[c]hildren and young people are to be involved in all relevant decisions by youth services providers, in accordance with their level of development» (§ 8, par. 1)35. For all the emphasis given by relevant law to the child’s autonomy and centrality, it must nonetheless be considered that a child’s self-determination might exist in a state of tension with that of the future adult36. The child must be prevented from harming itself: that, at any rate, is how parental interventions – whether in the form of advocacy or compulsion – within the scope of the right to custody is justified. Yet we must also suppose that learning to assume responsibility for one’s own decisions in the course of socialization is necessary if the child is to develop into an autonomous adult. Depending on the child’s age, this places more or less narrow boundaries on parental rights, and these boundaries have been evoked not least in court rulings on the sexual self-determination of young people37. The question now arises whether the autonomy-based principle of child welfare constitutes a legitimate normative orientation of family law. To which one might respond by asking in turn: who but the subject herself should decide over its own fate? What, if not enabling individual self-determination, would constitute a legitimate purpose in raising a child? What should guide the advocacy of adult caregivers, where called for, if not a concern with safeguarding a child’s future autonomy? What these ripostes are meant

  Analogous provisions apply to the child and youth services department in matters relating to child endangerment (§ 8a, para. 1, SGB viii). Family law’s participatory orientation towards autonomy has a further parallel in the procedural rules laid down in the reformed Gesetz über das Verfahren in Familiensachen und in den Angelegenheiten der freiwilligen Gerichtsbarkeit (FamFG) of 2008 (see esp. §§ 156 ff.). 36   D. Archard, Children: Rights and Childhood, London/New York, Routledge, 2015, pp. 60 ff. 37   E.g. Brandenburgisches OLG, 24.03.2016, Az. 9 UF 132/15; see also Archard, pp. 144 ff. 35

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to demonstrate is that – at any rate in the West – an attitude to children has developed over time to which it is barely possible to formulate a consistent alternative. Aspects of this historical development include processes of detraditionalization and individualization, the increasing child-centeredness of families, the shift in parenting styles from authoritarian to cooperative democratic forms, and the strong trend toward equality both in gender relations and the generational order38. A good deal more might be said about this and relevant literature cited, yet these hints may suffice to show that autonomy as a principle of parenting can indeed be legitimized against the backdrop of our socio-historical development. This is all the more apparent in that it is not so much this principle as rather any limits imposed on a child’s present and future self-determination that now seem in need of legitimation39. If the preceding analysis is correct, the principle of child welfare has enshrined the autonomy of the child and its capacity for self-determination as guiding norms in family law. The legal concept of child welfare is based on the principle of autonomy while simultaneously expressing it, and as a guiding normative idea it has been given an institutionalized form in law. At this point, then, we can draw a twofold conclusion: First, there is no fundamental critique to be made of the legal principle of child welfare being centred on autonomy. Against the backdrop of our cultural horizon, there would seem to be no legitimate alternatives, and nor does any alternative normative guiding idea seem likely to emerge from the systems involved. Moreover, individual legal provisions and the outcomes of legal procedures may be judged on whether they live up to the autonomy-based principle of child welfare. From this twofold conclusion, it is possible to derive criteria for distinguishing the law’s desirable outcomes from those in need of critique. Accordingly, the critique of existing family law that Sarah Mühlbacher and I formulated is not directed against the law’s basic normative orientation. The problem, according to our diagnosis, lies in the fact that it partly rests on questionable assumptions regarding the conditions of socialization that are conducive or detrimental to children’s welfare. These assumptions are mistaken inasmuch as they undermine or invert the normative directedness of the child welfare principle40.

  See e.g. K.-H. Reuband, Aushandeln statt Gehorsam? Erziehungsziele und Erziehungspraktiken in den alten neuen Bundesländern im Wandel, in: L. Böhnisch – K. Lenz (hrsg. v.), Familien. Eine interdisziplinäre Einführung, Weinheim/München, Juventa, 1997, pp. 129-153. 39   See Mühlbacher – Sutterlüty, The Principle of Child Autonomy, pp. 254 ff. 40   Sutterlüty, Normative Paradoxes; Mühlbacher – Sutterlüty, The Principle of Child Autonomy. 38

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If we are to avoid pouring the baby out with the bathwater, it must first be noted that legislation and jurisdiction relating to child welfare can only aim to provide generalizable rules regarding a typology of possible circumstances fixed in advance. Under the rule of law, institutions are charged with protecting the welfare of all children equally and are obliged to treat them according to the same legal standards. There can be negative consequences to this: a child may be subsumed under a general legal norm without due consideration being given to the particular case and the child’s claim to self-determination. Decisions made by the courts or by youth services may result in children being exposed to unintended risks or dangers. These secondary endangerments result from the welfare of a particular child being subsumed under general legal norms. This subsumption paradox41 further exacerbates the problem, for the law is based on general, objectified assumptions about what jeopardises or harms a child’s welfare. The law no doubt holds some of these assumptions with good reason. It is surely correct that long-term ties are essential for children if they are to test their capacity for self-determination and further develop it in the course of their lives. Only ‘securely attached’ children are likely to have the mental stability required to explore their inner and outer worlds free of fear42. We may and indeed must further assume that domestic violence and sexual abuse have a negative impact on the children concerned, and not only with regard to their present welfare, but also to their future social and psychological development. The law is therefore right to assume that violence and abuse place heavy and preventable burdens on the prospect of a self-determined life. Other legal assumptions, however, are questionable. One such assumption is that it is generally best for custody of children to be held by their biological parents43. Particularly in German legal practice, this has often resulted in the right of parents being privileged over the principle of child welfare. Under this aspect, Stefan Heilmann44 has criticized some of the more recent rulings   Sutterlüty, Normative Paradoxes, pp. 214 ff.   Cf. R. Göppel, Frühe Selbständigkeit für Kinder – Zugeständnis oder Zumutung?, in: Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik 12: Das selbständige Kind, hrsg. v. W. Datler – A. EggertSchmid Noerr – L. Winterhager-Schmid, Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen, 2002, pp. 32-52. 43   A nuanced account of this can once more be found in Archard, Children, pp. 155 ff. and in the instructive study by M. Heide Ottosen, In the Name of the Father, the Child and the Holy Genes: Constructions of ‘The Child’s Best Interest’ in Legal Disputes over Contact, «Acta Sociologica», XLIX (2006) 1, pp. 29-46. 44   S. Heilmann, Schützt das Grundgesetz die Kinder nicht? Eine Betrachtung der bisherigen Kammerrechtsprechung des BVerfG im Jahr 2014, «Neue Juristische Wochenschrift», LXVII (2014) 40, pp. 2904-2909. 41 42

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of the Federal Constitutional Court, which had found decisions in which biological parents had been deprived of custody to be unconstitutional and illegitimate encroachments upon parental rights, even though the authorities and lower courts had found children’s welfare to be endangered. These rulings, according to Heilmann, had resulted in parental right becoming uncoupled from child welfare and instead entering into a state of tension with it45. Another consequential assumption that has been codified in German family law is that a child can have only two parents (see again § 1626, par. 3, BGB). Despite the fact that a child’s ties to other people are protected by the law (at least formally), proceedings in the family courts include only those possessed of strong rights, namely the children and their legal parents; third parties are largely excluded, even if they function socially as the child’s parents. At a basic level, the question arises, regarding the restriction of custody to two persons, how legislators are able to rule out with such certainty that custody being awarded to a third or fourth person might promote the child’s welfare46. A recognition of such relationships would not only serve to protect a child’s existing ties, but would also reduce its “no exit dependency”47 on a small number of people, instead giving it a choice as to whom – in the context of extended family constellations and care arrangements – to recognize as its social and legal parents48. In terms of their intention and justification, the aforementioned general assumptions in the law are all aimed at promoting the welfare of each indi-

45   Cf. by contrast the seminal 1968 ruling by the German Constitutional Court, according to which the constitutional right of parenting must be considered as conditional upon the duty to ensure the child’s welfare (BVerfGE 24, 119 ff.). 46   Cf. esp. BVerfGE, Beschluß des Ersten Senats vom 9. April 2003 – 1 BvR 1493/96, 1 BvR 1724/01. 47   F. Sutterlüty – S. Mühlbacher, Wider den Triadismus, «WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», XV (2018) 2, pp. 119-137: 132; F. Sutterlüty, Das strukturelle Gewaltpotenzial der Familie, «WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», XVII (2020) 1, pp. 93-102: 95 f. 48   Some countries have already loosened or abandoned the two-parent rule: in the Netherlands, Scotland, England and Finland, in the Canadian province of British Columbia and in the US state of California, custody may be held by more than two people at a time. Important arguments for spreading parental rights – or rather obligations – over more than two pairs of shoulders can be found in M. B. Jacobs, Why Just Two? Disaggregating Traditional Parental Rights and Responsibilities to Recognize Multiple Parents, «Journal of Law and Family Studies», IX (2007) 2, pp. 309-339; A. Gheaus, Arguments for Nonparental Care for Children, «Social Theory and Practice», XXXVII (2011) 3, pp. 483-509; S. M. Coupet, Beyond ‘Eros’: Relative Caregiving, ‘Agape’ Parentage, and the Best Interests of Children, «American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law», XX (2012) 3, pp. 611-621.

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vidual child and preserving the socialization conditions that facilitate gradual self-determination. However, many of the basic legal assumptions that have been adopted in law have the potential to subsume harmfully the circumstances of each specific child under general and arbitrary standards. Though this subsumption problem is likely to some degree to be unavoidable, it must surely be possible to prevent the law from operating on the basis of questionable and sometimes empirically refuted assumptions concerning custody arrangements – be they within or beyond the family – that are conducive to the child’s welfare. These problematic assumptions block discussion and place needless limits on the social imagination when it comes to considering alternatives to the nuclear family – a family type which children often enough experience as horrific. They stand in the way of pluriform models of custody and thus of the choices that courts – but above all children themselves – might make. This is a problem inasmuch as a not insignificant condition of the realization of autonomy generally consists in having options in the first place. Yet as it stands, the law, with its preference for the classic model of the nuclear family, precludes certain options. The existing system of elterliche Sorge (parental custody; art. 6, par. 2 GG; § 1626 ff., BGB) still expresses an asymmetrical generation order, in which parents act as the ultimate arbiters in all decisions concerning the child and decide – subject to certain legal constraints – how and where the child is to be raised. The law’s familialism further intensifies the child’s no exit dependency by placing the family under protection as the primary space in which children are socialized and moreover privileging a particular type of family. Family law rests on the conventional assumption that the triadic family, consisting of father, mother and child(ren), is always the most conducive to child welfare49. These additional triadic assumptions on the part of family law are among the structural preconditions for parental violence50, for they encourage an attitude of possessiveness regarding their children on the part of parents and promote the family’s closure against the outside, thereby ensuring that the ‘momentum of escalating conflicts’ goes unchecked by external forces51. Relevant studies have also made us understand that isolated nuclear fami-

  Sutterlüty – Mühlbacher, Wider den Triadismus, pp. 128 ff.   R. Eckert et al., Ursachen, Prävention und Kontrolle von Gewalt aus soziologischer Sicht, in: H.-D. Schwind – J. Baumann (hrsg. v.), Ursachen, Prävention und Kontrolle von Gewalt. Analysen und Vorschläge der Unabhängigen Regierungskommission zur Verhinderung und Bekämpfung von Gewalt II, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1990, pp. 293-414: 394 f. 51   Ibidem; cf. also M. A. Straus – R. J. Gelles – S. K. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, Garden City (NY), Anchor, 1980. 49 50

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lies display the highest risk of sexual abuse of and physical violence against children52. The concomitant dangers are exacerbated by the triadic model of the family that is sanctioned and supported by law. In children, we can often observe fatal adaptations, reactions and defence mechanisms that, while allowing them to come to terms with the established familial order, at the same time serve to tie them permanently to problematic socialization conditions53. It should by now have become clear that there are a number of empirically founded reasons to pit family law’s emphasis on child welfare, which is based on the principle of autonomy, critically against some of that same law’s assumptions. Such a critique is reconstructive inasmuch as it reveals children’s not immediately apparent suffering in triadic nuclear families, and it is critical to the extent that such a reconstruction confronts the normative self-justification of family law with the counterproductive consequences it yields for children, with regard to the welfare of whom that law holds dubious assumptions that run counter to its normative intent and all too often stand in the way of good solutions. Though an anti-triadic child liberation movement may not yet exist, the critique presented here ought nonetheless not to be seen as operating in nowhere land, but rather as offering stimuli for a reform of family law, if not for a broader cultural change. 3.  Range and Scope of Reconstructive Critique Neither in the discussion of the child welfare principle in German family law nor in the preceding account of the French and British riots did the purpose of the empirical element consist in allowing the analysis or its author to wear the label of “critique”. In each case, as I hope has become amply clear, the cause was a social one. The critique expressed in these reconstructions is

52   J. Garbarino – C. P. Bradshaw, Violence against Children, in: W. Heitmeyer – J. Hagan (ed. by), International Handbook of Violence Research, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003, pp. 719-735: 722 ff.; Unabhängige Kommission zur Aufarbeitung sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs, Geschichten, die zählen. Bilanzbericht, Bd. 1, Berlin, Unabhängige Kommission zur Aufarbeitung sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs, 2019, pp. 99 ff. 53   Cf. G. J. Jurkovic, Destructive Parentification in Families: Causes and Consequences, in: L’Abate (ed. by), Family Psychopathology: The Relational Roots of Dysfunctional Behavior, New York, Guilford, 1998, pp. 237-255; M. Zitelmann, Kindeswohl und Kindeswille im Spannungsfeld von Recht und Pädagogik, Münster, Votum, 2001, pp. 235 ff.; H. Dettenborn, Kindeswohl und Kindeswille. Psychologische und rechtliche Aspekte, München/Basel, Reinhardt, 2017, pp. 117 ff.; A. M. Jaffe – M. Thakkar – P. Piron, Denial of Ambivalence as a Hallmark of Parental Alienation, «Cogent Psychology», IV (2017) 1, pp. 1-14.

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not abstract, but empirically grounded with reference to specific objects as well as laying open its standards. This task, however, assumed quite a different form in each case. In the case of the riots, the object was to decipher the legitimate reasons for the rage of the young rioters – reasons that often were expressed only indirectly. What lay to be discerned behind the violent fury was an injured claim to civic equality, to equal treatment as equal citizens. The legitimate normative foundation of the riots, which it was possible to reconstruct from the actors’ implicit and explicit statements, was set against other interpretations advanced by politicians and academics that saw only the violence in the riots, thereby neutralizing all inequalities, abuses and grievances expressed therein54. The analysis of the child welfare issue was more complex to the extent that it demanded a stronger element of reconstruction. The norms underpinning child welfare were reconstructed from the institutional provisions of family law and public child and youth services, not from statements of the children concerned. The aim here was not so much an exercise in the sociology of critique as to reconstruct the suffering of children that may result from the legal fixation on the familial triad. In such a case, too, the critique that builds upon it must be supported by findings and data, even if it is not always possible to provide accounts55 – i.e. narrative representations – in which the critique might already to some degree be contained. It is, therefore, necessary to consider the deformations wrought by the reaction formations and other defence mechanisms that children develop as well as their experiences of suffering and loss – though the present study could do so only by referring to the relevant literature. A social movement of children formulating an explicit critique of triadism does not yet exist, and this is no doubt due in large part to the fact that triadic thought is too deeply embedded, not only legally, but also culturally. Amid such a constellation, the task of social research is to make visible and audible children’s suffering that goes unexpressed but is nonetheless manifest. This requires reconstruction in a very broad sense indeed, to provide which is the chief task of any critical research seeking to offer more than a

  Sutterlüty, The Hidden Morale, pp. 43 ff. How to explain that protest led to the destructive use of force rather than being translated into political demands pursued in the institutionalized forums of democratic contestation and public opinion formation is another question (ibidem, pp. 49 ff.). 55   T. L. Orbuch, People’s Accounts Count: The Sociology of Accounts, «Annual Review of Sociology», XXIII (1997), pp. 455-478. 54

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conceptually streamlined version of the patterns of critique already extant in the social environment. In the case of child welfare under consideration here, the need for familial and legal alternatives to the traditional nuclear family can be seen against the background of the general norm – already partially institutionalized in law – of children’s self-determination. Through its prejudice in favour of the triadic family and other problematic assumptions concerning child welfare, the law precludes options and custody arrangements that might otherwise be conducive both to the child’s welfare and to its development as an autonomous individual. To reach such conclusions in a manner that was both methodically controlled and empirically founded would most likely accord with Theodor W. Adorno’s idea of an empirical approach to social research, one that «perceives in the facts themselves the tendency which reaches out beyond them»56. That, however, according to Adorno, was rather «the function of philosophy in empirical social research»57. The ideas developed here for the hermeneutical operations of a reconstructive social critique, one that would always refer not least to the unredeemed claims of actors and institutions, may have performed some of that philosophical work. No doubt a critique that is introduced as reconstructive and as it has been demonstrated here in two exemplary instances is limited in its scope. In the first case, the critique that came up with the analysis of the subject under scrutiny was addressed at politics of inequality that run counter to and undermine the ideas of civic equality and the rule of law. In the other case, the subject of critique was a culturally established generational order and the absolutization, detrimental to child welfare, of a legally sanctioned model of the family. In neither case could the scope of the critique really be called small, but it should nonetheless not be mistaken for a social critique that is truly concerned with totality. Rather, it is a critique of specific social conditions or, put in another way, middle-range in scope. If such a critique is developed, as I have attempted to do here, by means of reconstruction, it cannot declare the whole to be false or consider subjects to exist in a state of total delusion if it is not to fall prey to self-contradiction. It depends on being able to reach back to and mobilize the normative potentials in social reality which, though they are often buried, are capable of empirical reconstruction, if sometimes only according to the logic of ex malo bonum. Such a model of critique is

56   Th. W. Adorno, Sociology and Empirical Research, in: Id., The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, trans. G. Adey – D. Frisby, London, Heinemann, 1976, pp. 68-86: 86. 57   Ibidem.

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closer to a mode of interpretation on the basis of lived, practised norms58 than it is to a totalizing critique that regards sociation (Vergesellschaftung) as a functional nexus that is dominated throughout by a single and consistent guiding pattern, that of the capitalist exchange relationship59. The advantage of referring back to norms that enjoy wide social acceptance lies not least in that the critique built upon them may expect a certain responsiveness on the part of the institutions concerned, assuming that these institutions have an interest in maintaining the foundation of their own legitimacy. Ferdinand Sutterlüty Goethe University and Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt, Germany [email protected]

58   M. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1987. 59   Th. W. Adorno, Introduction to Sociology, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 2000.

ON SOME ‘PATHOLOGIES’ OF DEMOCRACY: AUTHORITARIANISM, PREJUDICE, POPULISM. TOWARDS A CRITICAL THEORY OF DEMOCRACY?

Abstract: This article aims to interrogate the way in which the study of the ‘pathologies’ of democracy can lead to the development of a theory of democracy, or rather, of two different models for a critical theory of democracy. This is done by studying two examples: authoritarianism and prejudice, as analyzed by Adorno and Horkheimer, and nationalist tendencies, as discussed by Honneth. Particular attention is devoted to the language in which these political evils are analyzed (as social ills and pathologies) by the first generation of the Frankfurt School and recently by Honneth, thereby sketching out two ways of analyzing anti-democratic tendencies. Our aim is twofold: First, to show that the political question is not absent from the writing of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, as it is often described, and moreover, that their engagement with this question indeed leads to a theory of democracy. Second, it is an attempt to develop, with the aid of Adorno and Horkheimer as well as Honneth, an analysis of the phenomena that we now call populism, from the perspective of a critical theory of democracy.

*** A number of phenomena are analyzed by the theorists of the first generation of the Frankfurt School as revealing aspects of the way society as a whole dysfunctions. They recurrently mention symptoms of ‘social diseases’. Thus the objects of the major sociological research projects of the Institute for Social Research in the 1930s and 1940s – anti-Semitic prejudice, authoritarianism, but also fascist agitators, mass movements, occultism – are all seen as diseases affecting the social organism. If the disease came into full fruition in the German context, in the American context it remained somewhat dormant. Since it does not «manifest itself with the full and violent destructiveness of which we know it to be capable», it is all the more urgent that it be studied so as to find «more effective ways to prevent or reduce the virulence of the next outbreak»1;   L. Lowenthal – N. Gutermann, Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1949, p. V. 1

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the evil is deeply rooted, and «our assumed enlightenment» leaves «cancerous tissues» in the life of modern societies, remnants of the irrationality of ancient hatreds in a culture of reason. These ‘pathological’ elements were analyzed in the 1930s through the relationship to authority – Horkheimer studied with Fromm and Marcuse the practices of workers and employees subjected to authority, through their conception of education or their political ideas; or again in the 1940s through the study of the receptivity of certain personalities to manifestations of anti-Semitism (susceptibility to ‘prejudice’) and fascist propaganda, all of which have a ‘diagnostic’ value in grasping the threat to democracy. These can be considered ‘pathologies’ of democracy, as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth have studied them, albeit from a different angle. By focusing in particular on the two examples of authoritarianism and prejudice, as analyzed by Adorno and Horkheimer, as well as on the ambivalence of the public space and its nationalist tendencies, as discussed by Honneth, we intend to question the way in which the study of political evils can lead to the development of a theory of democracy, or rather, of two different models for a critical theory of democracy. Our aim is twofold: First, to show that the political question is not absent from the writings of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, as it is often claimed; and second, to develop, with the aid of Adorno and Horkheimer as well as Honneth, an analysis of the phenomena that we now call populism, and which refer to the deviations of the democratic form and its turning against itself. 1.  Authoritarianism, Anti-Semitism, Fascism: Pathologies of Democracy? 1.1. Authoritarianism and Anti-Semitism: Platforms Towards Fascism The phenomena of authoritarianism and ‘prejudice’ – which refers specifi­ cally to anti-Semitism – are analyzed as fundamental threats to democracy. Forged during the surveys on authority among German workers and employees2, the category of the authoritarian character, which designates the psychological structure that predisposes one to political ideas that can contradict one’s economic interests, and that of authoritarianism are then used to analyze the situation in the United States: they can be found in a new form in the notion of «authoritarian personality». It is not only a question 2   E. Fromm, Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Reiches. Eine sozialpsychologische Untersuchung, hrsg. v. W. Bonß, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980.

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of submission to a figure of authority or a leader; in fact, the dissolution of traditional forms of authority also causes a ‘horizontal’ conformism to emerge in mass societies in which antagonisms remain masked. The study of the authoritarian personality is one of the volumes of studies on prejudice – the Studies in Prejudice published in 19503 – and is articulated with an analysis on anti-Semitism carried out since the early 1940s by Horkheimer, Adorno, and others. These two themes are very close, and the texts that deal with them4 can be seen as successive transformations of the same project. As Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun notes5, the analysis of anti-Semitism by Horkheimer and Adorno shows a two-fold tendency: an initial historical analysis, which highlights the specificity of Jews as victims, which then tends towards a more ahistorical study of prejudice that emphasizes stereotypes and ‘ticket thinking’. The term ‘prejudice’ may seem surprising as it appears euphemistic. But it is ultimately consistent with the Adornian critique of the identifying logic at work in society, a homogenizing logic that liquidates particularity and non-identity, along with judgment. If «Anti-Semitic views always reflected stereotyped thinking», today «only that thinking is left»6. Antisemitism becomes a «platform towards fascism»7 (Horkheimer will speak of the «spearhead» of fascism, an anti-democratic tendency that challenges «what is left of Western civilization»8). Anti-Semitism has become an element of a regression to the stage of acritical judgment (to «judgment without judging») that is accompanied by a loss of experience and is not essentially a question of private hostility against Jews. It is a mentality that does not presuppose a move to action or violence, but points towards the potential adherence to fascism if it is made possible politically,   M. Horkheimer – S. Flowerman (dir.), Studies in Prejudice, New York, Harper & Bros, 1949. 4   The Research Project on Anti-Semitism of 1943 led to the 1944 conference at the Socie­ ty for Psychoanalysis published by E. Simmel, Antisemitism: A Social Disease (New York, International Universities Press, 1946), and partly continued with the Studies in Prejudice. 5   S. Dayan-Herzbrun, L’antisémitisme ou la société comme problème, «Tumultes», 17-18 (2002), pp. 375-395. 6   M. Horkheimer – Th. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Philosophical Fragments, ed. by G. Schmid-Noerr, Stanford University Press (CA), Stanford, 2002, p. 166. 7   The expression comes from S. Dayan-Herzbrun. «Anti-Semitism has practically ceased to be an independent impulse and has become a plank in the platform: anyone who gives fascism its chance subscribes to the settlement of the Jewish question along with the breaking of the unions and the crusade against Bolshevism». (Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 166.)  8   M. Horkheimer, Sociological Background of the Psychoanalytic Approach, in: Simmel, Antisemitism: A Social Disease, p. 1. 3

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and therefore the analysis shifts to the structure of this personality for which the relationship to authority is decisive. The disintegration of the self compels the individual to submit to collective norms and to project his or her aggressiveness onto a group considered as external. These phenomena escape a purely sociological approach, and psychoanalysis is needed to define, within the types of personalities at issue, the elements of fascist potentiality that the social context could activate. The method used in these investigations (from the Studien über Autorität und Familie to the Studies in Prejudice and the Gruppenexperiment investigations, through the project on anti-Semitism and the studies on fascist agitators and occultism) attempts to grasp the danger posed by fascism by studying the warning signs of its deployment. Because of their diagnostic purpose and their attention to even details that seem insignificant but are symptomatic of an overall social situation, the investigations have an affinity with the ‘micro­ logical’9 method carried out by Adorno in Minima moralia, for example, where the analysis of specific features of our societies informs us about the falsity of the social totality. Minima moralia grasps the impossibility of living a right life in a wrong context [im Falschen]10 by describing significant details: how we open doors, how we give gifts, or how we relate to animals or to sex. It is a negativist method that diagnoses ills without referring directly to what the normal state might be: social ills refer instead to what I would call a ‘disease affecting the whole’. First-generation theorists often refer to a global disease, affecting society as a whole (anti-Semitism is considered as a « social disease ») or even reason (originally sick according to Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason). What is pathological in both authoritarianism and anti-Semitism is that society becomes a totality crushing individuals. The sickness of the whole is a presupposition of social philosophy whose formulation recalls the Adornian reversal of the Hegelian formula, namely that the whole is the untrue11; it is also a methodological principle governing the sociological investigations. For example, Adorno defends the hypothesis that anti-Semitism is caused by the «total structure of our society » or by the structure of « every basically   A Benjaminian method, but one that has affinities with the way Freud, in Moses of Michelangelo (1914), invites us to study psychic symptoms with concern for the particular, the «refuse», as did Morelli, an art connoisseur who distinguished copies from originals on the basis of the meaning of these details. 10   Th. W. Adorno, Minima Moralia. Reflections on Damaged Life, London, Verso, 2005, p. 39. 11   The formula closes § 29 of Minima Moralia, and overturns the Hegelian idea that «the truth is the whole» (G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, Mineola/New York, Dover Publications, p. 11). 9

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coercive society»12. The pathological dimension comes into play when the whole proceeds to integrate individuals by denying them all autonomy. The vector of this integration is culture. 1.2. A Model of Democracy? The Question of a Democratic Culture The concepts of authoritarianism and prejudice target precisely what is anti-democratic. Democracy is grasped through the fascist tendencies that it can harbor, that survive in it, and that threaten it. In What does it mean to rethink the past?, Adorno views fascist conditions as something like a ghost of a monstrous past that has persisted. His goal is to capture «the survival of National Socialism within democracy» rather than the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy13. Contrary to a widespread idea in the reception of the Frankfurt School, it cannot be said simply that the first generation underwrites the «death of politics». There is an original, indirect reflection on what democracy is – a diagnostic theory that starts from the symptoms of the disease that affects it. There is indeed a mistrust of Western democracies by Adorno and Horkheimer: while they criticized Russia, this did not mean that they supported American democracy, or stop criticizing democracy14. But one can note a constant reflection on what Horkheimer calls «the chances of democracy»: the content of his reflection is precisely the relationship between culture and modern barbarism, the capacity of culture to oppose reality despite its connivance with barbarism15. By democracy, the Frankfurt theorists do not so much mean a regime as a type of collective, considered in its psychological and cultural dimensions, that is able to preserve individualities. Paragraph 66 of Minima Moralia provides us with a formula that encapsulates an idea developed in other texts: «An emancipated

12   Th. W. Adorno, Remarks on “The Authoritarian Personality” by Adorno, Frenkel-­ Brunswik, Levinson, Sanford (1948), «Platypus Review», 91 (2016); https://platypus1917. org/2016/11/08/remarks-authoritarian-personality-adorno-frenkel-brunswik-levinson-sanford/. 13   Th. W. Adorno, The Meaning of Working Through the Past, in: Id., Critical Models. Interventions and Catchwords, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 90. 14   M. Horkheimer – Th. W. Adorno, Rettung der Aufklärung. Diskussionen über eine geplante Schrift zur Dialektik (1946), in: M. Horkheimer, GS 12, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1987; Diskussion über Theorie und Praxis (1956), GS 19, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1987. 15   The Project “The Chances of Democracy in Germany” is translated into German: M. Horkheimer, Deutschlands Erneuerung nach dem Krieg und die Funktion der Kultur (1943?), in: Id., GS 12, pp. 184-194.

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society would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences»16. Elsewhere, Adorno questions how an integration might be possible that is not based on a disintegration of the self, given that today’s culture integrates forms of life on the alienating model of the cultural industry. In this sense, the question of democracy is necessarily linked to that of culture. The inseparably ethical, social and political context is a determining factor in Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis. Adorno measures in the surveys the «potential reactions which can be expected to occur should the situation change because of severe economic disorders or the growing ‘respectability’ of anti-Semitism»17. What the Studies on the Authoritarian Personality call the «cultural climate» plays a central role, since Adorno is interested in the potential adherence of individuals to anti-Semitic ideas (what Adorno calls the readiness to exhibit anti-democratic tendencies), rather than in the nature or existence of these ideas: it is a question of circumscribing the type of personality that fosters an individual’s receptivity to the ideology18. Adherence to ideas, and even more overt action, depends on the cultural climate, the climate of opinion, and the social situation. The «high scoring subjects» in the study on the authoritarian personality are those who conform «to values implicitly promoted by the ‘objective spirit’ of today’s American society»19. Adorno and Horkheimer question in other texts the importance of the public expression of prejudice and group dynamics in the development of fascist tendencies in democracy, in order to examine the ‘resistance’ of culture and democracy as well as that of the individual. In order to give a methodological translation of this collective factor, Horkheimer elaborates a model of investigation based on the train compartment, so as to first grasp group dynamics while remaining close to the conditions of daily life, in order to then analyze the mechanisms in individuals. In the Schuld und Abwehr study, led by Adorno, which is part of the Gruppenexperiment on German political consciousness, the aim was to get people to express themselves openly on specific political themes. The survey is not based on the model of the train compartment, which lacks the common elements between groups (professions,

 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 103.  Adorno, Remarks on “The Authoritarian Personality”, cit. 18  Adorno, Studies on the “Authoritarian Personality”, p. 4. «The major concern was with the potentially fascistic individual, one whose structure is such as to render him particularly susceptible to antidemocratic propaganda» (p. 1). 19  Adorno, Remarks on “The Authoritarian Personality”, cit. 16 17

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interests, etc.). It complements the survey focusing on personality structure by studying how group dynamics transform exchanges between people: the aim is to measure what people have absorbed from the dominant thought process. These analyses also lead to a reflection on ‘democratic culture’, to use a term more likely to be found in Dewey’s writings than in Adorno’s, in other words on the way in which the objective spirit of a society implicitly promotes values to which individuals conform. This objective spirit is the only guarantor of a democratic culture at the individual level, but when it is reified, it can also foster authoritarian personalities and anti-democratic attitudes. The survival of fascism within democracy is pursued through the ways in which culture or «pseudo-culture» [Halbbildung]20 operates to enable or prevent judgment. Pseudo-culture is a culture emptied of meaning, a distorted objective spirit. The mechanism by which the individual relates to it is collective narcissism, which refers to a failed (an «abortive») identification with a culture that is no longer experienced. Through collective narcissism, people «compensate for the social powerlessness, which goes to the root of individual drives and conscious motives» by «turning themselves either in fact or imagination into members of something higher and more encompassing, to which they attribute qualities which they themselves lack and from which they profit by vicarious participation»21. This mechanism is at the heart of the analysis of fascism: the weakness of the self compels individuals to give themself to a collective power. Habermas and then Honneth largely emphasized the importance of the ‘ethical life’ in their analyses of democratic societies. When Habermas elaborated a discourse ethics, he completed his procedural approach by taking into account the ethical context, thus taking into consideration Hegelian objections to Kantian morality (or rather correcting the premises of Kant’s moral philosophy by shifting the emphasis from the individual will to the collective will-formation through the search for an intersubjective agreement of all participants on a universal norm)22. In Honneth’s last book, we find a reflection on the foundations of the «democratic life» – which translates demokratische Sittlichkeit23 – and an analysis of the functioning of the political sphere among the different social spheres. But both Habermas and Honneth are deviating from the conceptions of the first generation: they give a different   Th. W. Adorno, Theory of Pseudo-Culture (1959), «Telos», 1993, pp. 15-38.   Ibidem, pp. 32-33. 22   J. Habermas, Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1991. 23   A. Honneth, Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, New York, Polity, 2014. 20 21

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status to National Socialism conceived as a radical rupture; and they discard any explanation of the masses on the basis of a drive theory. We will ask how Honneth in particular (who can be said to try, more than Habermas, to endorse the Hegelian legacy) analyzes the existence of a ‘democratic culture’ and its dysfunctions, and how it can guarantee the exercise of democracy. 2.  Honneth and the Immanent Critique of Democracy: Another Face of Pathology 2.1. Democratic Ethical Life Honneth views democracy in terms of democratic culture or what he calls «democratic ethical life». He takes up the Hegelian idea of ethical life or ethicity [Sittlichkeit]24, which he understands as the set of conditions for the realization of social freedom. To understand what ‘democratic’ ethical life is, we must emphasize that the ‘right’ of freedom is not only for Honneth positive law, but a set of modes of behavior, of social habits: we owe most of our individual freedoms to «the existence of a web of routine and often only weakly institutionalized practices and customs that give us social confirmation or allow us to express ourselves freely»25. All this forms the material of an experience of freedom made possible by existing institutions in which individuals can «experience recognition in normatively regulated interaction with others»26. Honneth thus implements a specific method of «normative reconstruction»: he intends to reconstruct the social order understood as «an institutionalized structure of systems of action in which culturally acknowledged values are realized in their respective functional manner»27. According to Honneth, social reproduction is not only material reproduction, but it is the reproduction of values – this is the Parsonian aspect of his endeavor, against all forms of reductionism and economism. The method consists in taking «immanently justified values» as a criterion applied to empirical material: it evaluates institutions and practices in terms of their normative achievements. This already poses a typical problem of Hegel’s concept of Sittlichkeit, namely   G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 1991. 25  Honneth, Freedom’s Right, p. 67. 26   Ibidem, p. 65. 27   Ibidem, p. 64. 24

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that it assumes a normative superiority of prevailing values over previous ones and criticizes social practices and institutions on the basis of these prevailing values. Honneth identifies, from the very first lines of his work, the difficulty presented by this concept of ethical life and its tendency «to affirm the existing order». But he assumes, following Hegel, that Sittlichkeit is not only a descriptive but also a normative concept, because it contains only those forms of ethical life «that could be proven to contribute to the realization of universal values and ideals of modern societies»28. In addition to the immanent dimension of the criteria of criticism, the second aspect of the concept of democratic ethical life is the interdependency of the different social spheres. For Honneth, democratic processes depend «on at least rudimentary conditions of freedom in the surrounding social spheres» (the spheres of personal relationships and the economic market). Citizens are all the more likely to be included in these processes if the principles of social freedom institutionalized in these other spheres are realized. The idea of ‘democratic ethical life’ leads him to identify democracy «only where the principles of freedom institutionalized in the various spheres of action have been realized and embodied in corresponding practices and habits»29. It is precisely this dependency of the Honnethian theory of social freedom (as well as of its theory of recognition) on the norms at work in the ethical context that constitutes its strength for conceiving democracy and its transformations, since it is based on intramundane or immanent instances that are vectors of social transformation. At the same time, however, this exposes such theories to a form of incompleteness or limitation: as it is based on norms valid in that ethical context, the criticism cannot go fully to the root of the evil. Hence, the problem of the pathology of democracy is posed by Honneth in a different way from the first generation of the Frankfurt School. On the one hand, the question of social illness in a broad sense is not primarily posed from the point of view of totalitarianism: Honneth insists rather on the dimension of rupture and specifies that «the period of National Socialist tyranny remains an ‘Other’ that cannot be integrated into this reconstruction»30. He represents here a continuation of Habermas’ discourse ethics (and even Rawls’ theory of justice) which take on their full meaning in the framework of contemporary liberal democracies. In focusing on the social realization of individual freedom, Honneth draws on a history of progress that he knows is fragile and thin. On the other hand, the pathology par excellence of democ  Ibidem, p. 8.   Ibidem, p. 330. 30   Ibidem, p. 321. 28 29

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racies is for Honneth, rather than a totalitarian risk, an internal pathology to the institutional functioning of democratic societies: it is anomie, or any phenomenon that prevents the integration of individuals into society. The negative social developments (the ‘misdevelopments’) that threaten freedom are the absence of common and inclusive norms. Thus Honneth’s critique of democracy emphasizes the lack of integration, rather than the distinction between an integration that would realize differences and a false integration, a distinction which is central to Adorno and Horkheimer. 2.2. The Ambivalence of Ethical Life How does Honneth deal with the problem posed by Adorno and Horkheimer, that of anchoring relations between citizens in a democratic culture, in an ethical context, while thinking at the same time that this context can become the vector of fascist ideologies and nationalist tendencies? While Adorno and Horkheimer question the concept of objective spirit, Honneth founds the democratic practices on this ethical life. How does he deal with phenomena that could be called ‘populist’ – phenomena that, according to Pierre Rosanvallon, are to democracy in the 21st century what totalitarian phenomena are to 20th century democracy, in the sense that they are not an «external parasitic contamination» but a question that which «lies within (…) democracy»31? Honneth approaches this problem of the way democracy turns against itself when he reconstructs the history of the «‘We’ of the democratic will-formation» by insisting on the conversion of the newly emerging political public sphere (associations and political organizations representative of the general opinion), which overnight «turned into xenophobic patrols armed with a naturalistic conception of national belonging»32. The fundamental ambivalence of the political public sphere is connected, according to Honneth’s diagnostic,

  P. Rosanvallon, A Reflection on Populism, published in booksandideas.net, 10 November 2011. «In both cases, there is indeed a perverse apprehension of the representative ideal and democratic forms, as well as the tendency to simplify the question of the division of social issues into an exaltation of the One and of homogeneity, whether that be in reference to the people as-a-class or the people as-a-nation, both constructed a rejections of the ‘other’. To be sure, there is a considerable difference: totalitarianism defined a form of power and constructed state institutions, whereas populism structures – in a vaguer and not as coercive manner – a political culture of democratic disintegration». 32  Honneth, Freedom’s Right, p. 265. 31

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«to a deep-seated misunderstanding about the type of political unity within which members of society, through processes of mutual recognition, began to form a many-voiced ‘We’ of public will-formation»: the ambivalence between a formal belonging to the nation-state and a belonging to the national community marks the very foundation of the liberal nation-state. It «was to be at once the condition for a unified political public sphere and the source of a dangerous form of nationalism»33. The tension between nationalism and the constitutional state (characteristic of the debates during the Weimar Republic) persists today. With the increasing decoupling of the political system from the democratic will-formation diagnosed by Honneth (state measures being removed from public debate or justified by objective constraints), the national-state form of political integration is being exhausted, without an alternative source of citizen solidarity emerging. The Honnethian democratic ideal has similarities with the one outlined by the first generation – a mutual respect for each other’s individual differences; and his model is sketched in a more precise way. But it is also necessary to be able to analyze the forms of internal threat to democracy, like the inversion of democratic ideals into watchwords stemming from a misguided desire to become part of a community (“Wir sind das Volk”). When analyzing the relationship to the leader and to the State, Honneth rejects a perspective that understands it exclusively on the model of affective attachments. Reconstructing Kelsen’s critique of Freud34, Honneth maintains a bias ‘for Kelsen’ and favors a normative idea of the rule of law. For Kelsen, the second type of mass distinguished by Freud, which is not spontaneously arisen and short-lived but stably organized and normatively bounded, is no longer a truly psychological phenomenon. Purely legal relationships replace the formation of a community which has libidinous sources: «subjects can only identify with each other if they commonly and rationally relate to the state as a ‘guiding idea’». The sublimation of social attachments prevents the regression characteristic of mass formation according to Freud and the «lowering of the reflexive capacities of the ego»35. This is the specificity of the legal relations generated by state authority: the state is to be understood as an ego-ideal and not as an internalized object of love. Thus, for Kelsen, the «critical reflection of normal adults remains intact». What matters to Honneth in this critique of Freud by Kelsen is the «categorial distinction between nor  Ibidem.   H. Kelsen, The Conception of the State and Social Psychology – With Special Reference to Freud’s Group Theory, «International Journal of Psycho-Analysis», 5 (1924), pp. 1-38. 35  Honneth, Freedom’s Right, p. 317. 33 34

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matively regulated and affective social relationships»36. Freud is said to have blurred this difference between state authority and affective attachment to a leader. In order to define the contours of European culture that could allow a public will-formation, in the absence of a national culture – the dangers and erosions of which he diagnoses – Honneth is not satisfied either with the idea of constitutional patriotism defended by Habermas, «too closely attached to the medium of law alone». He contrasts it with the «patriotism inherent in the European archive of collective struggles for freedom [that] aims to realize all the promises of freedom institutionalized in the various social spheres»37. Even if he considers the ambivalence of the public space and the threat of nationalist tendencies, Honneth does not want to abandon the Kelsenian distinction between the affective order and the juridico-political order. This is the strength of his normative conception of democracy, but it is perhaps the limit of his critique of the evils of democracy, especially those evils that can be called ‘populist’, considering that they result from a «perverse apprehension of the representative ideal and democratic forms» (Rosanvallon), and therefore that they are collectively ‘wanted’. Following Etienne Balibar’s reading of this same confrontation of Freud’s and Kelsen’s positions38, we can qualify the opposition between legal and psychological constraint. Dealing with the question of political psychology, in other words that of the ‘subjection’ of the will or the desire to obey the leader, Balibar shows that a psychoanalytical perspective not only takes into account the affect, but also gives itself the means to think not only the ambivalence of the superego but also the ambivalent functioning of the juridico-­ political order. It thus makes it possible to grasp the tension between the rule of law and the nationalist tendencies of a community. The Freudian equation according to which the sense of guilt is a need for punishment and a call to transgression sheds a different light on the Kelsenian equation according to which the order of law is the order of constraint. Motives other than the threat of punishment come into play in the legal order: religious, moral, social, and ideological, which «associate the representation of a “bad” to be feared with that of a “good”, a desirable social state»39. But psychoanalysis also reveals that «the relationship of an unconscious subject or ‘I’ to a universe of constraint and obligation, without exteriority or escape, is   Ibidem, p. 316.   Ibidem, p. 335. 38   É. Balibar, L’invention du surmoi : Freud et Kelsen 1922, in : Id., Citoyen sujet et autres essais d’anthropologie philosophique, Paris, PUF, 2011, pp. 383-434. 39   Ibidem, p. 431. 36 37

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not only a world of negation and prohibitions, but a source of insoluble contradictions»40. Psychic interiority is not a simple psychological ‘copy’ or ‘reflection’ of the juridical order; psychoanalysis explains the mechanisms of defense and repression that shed light on the possible reversal of the juridical ‘We’ into the affective ‘We’. Balibar thus makes it possible, with Freud, to draw a thread already begun by Adorno: the accomplished integration masks disintegration, and the inversion is always possible from within. We have followed two ways of grasping the evils intrinsic to democracies; in one case, the evil is mainly authoritarianism conceived as a bridge to fascism; in the other case, it is the tendency towards a ‘bad’ or ‘false’ ‘We’, when the community becomes national and emotional rather than formal and legal. What these approaches have in common is that they are based on a conception of democracy as something not only legal but fundamentally ethical and cultural. The whole difficulty comes from the schema by which the ‘pathology’ of democracy is thought through – and strictly speaking the idea of the pathology of democracy is deeply Honnethian, the pathology here being a deviation, nationalist for example, from a normal functioning of the ‘We’. For the first generation of the Frankfurt School, the two modalities intersect more deeply: an authoritarian ethical life can crystallize anti-democratic tendencies. Thus the theories are differently equipped to grasp what anti-democratic evils are: not attacks from outside, but internal degenerations, moments when, on the basis of disintegration, homogeneity is reconstituted. It seems to us that it is precisely on this point that a critical theory of democracy cannot totally avoid psychoanalytical reflection: in fact, it is the recourse to the drive theory that makes it possible to grasp the disintegration of the ‘We’ and to rethink the relationship between human beings in an ethical context that no longer guarantees the constitution of a collective, and to prevent the threat of an inversion of the “We” such as for example the nationalistic reversal of the formula “We are the people”. Katia Genel University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris (France)/ Deputy Director of the Marc Bloch Zentrum, Berlin (Germany) [email protected]

  Ibidem, p. 433.

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THE RIGHT EXTREMIST IDENTITARIAN MOVEMENT IN EUROPE: A CRITICAL THEORY ANALYSIS

Abstract: In this article I draw on Theodor W. Adorno’s psychoanalytically inspired writings on fascist agitators and their followers and the emergence of a new extremist right in Europe to expose psychologically oriented techniques a leader of the right extremist Identitarian Movement in Europe, Martin Sellner, uses to capture new followers. Such techniques offer the prospective followers irrational gratifications and a release of their feelings of failure and frustration of not being able to live up to capitalist values, and thereby distract them from the leader’s destructive aims.

*** Introduction Adorno held the talk Aspekte des Neuen Rechtsradikalismus, which counts as one of Adorno’s public interventions, on the 6th of April 1967, following an invitation of the association of socialist students in Austria in the Neue Institutsgebäude (NIG), at the University of Vienna1. The Vienna talk took place after he had returned in 1949 from his exile in the United States from National Socialist Germany to rebuild the Institut für Sozialforschung at the University of Frankfurt, which was closed with the rise of the NS regime. In the Vienna talk to students, Adorno explains the growing successes of the right-extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NDP) in Germany in the 1960’s to an Austrian audience. At the same time, Adorno makes repeated references to the continuing threat of far-right extremism in Austria. Today, about 60 years after Adorno’s talk, this threat has become ever more salient with the continuing electoral successes of Austria’s far right Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ Freedom Party Austria,), as well as the recent growth of the extremist right youth “movement” Identitäre Bewegung Österreich (IBÖ, Identitarian Movement   Th. W. Adorno, Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2019; all translations from the German into English are the author’s of this article. 1

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Austria), which contributed to the rise and growth of the Identitarian movement in Germany. The leader of the IBÖ is the Austrian Martin Sellner, a philosophy and former law student at the University of Vienna, who frequents today the same university building (NIG) in Vienna, in which Adorno gave his talk. In this paper, I expose some of the core tricks Sellner uses in his book Identitär: Geschichte eines Aufbruchs2 to reveal his psychologically oriented techniques that enable him to win new followers3. While there is some analyses of the Identitäre Bewegung (IB) in Europe4, there is so far no in depth theoretical analyses that focuses on Sellner’s writings. While far right extremism is primarily a socio-political and economic problem, it is necessary to study psychologically oriented tricks, because they are the only means for right extremist agitators5 to capture new followers, whose rational interests contradict the agitator’s destructive aims. Such tricks aim at the followers deeper, often unconscious, desires and impulses and thereby distract from the agitator’s destructive aims. Far right extremism, particularly as it expresses itself in youth movements, such as the Identitarian Bewegung in Europe, is connected to the suffering that capitalism has brought onto the world stage, such as alienation, isolation, and exploitation. Furthermore, capitalism has established the chief value that trumps all other values, namely “economic success”, which generates frustrations and feelings of failure in young adults, who find it more difficult to live up to that value in current economic times. Psychologically oriented devices allow them an emotional release from such feelings and provide them with irrational gratifications, which allow them to feel satisfied with themselves again. Since Adorno, in his Aspekte des Neuen Rechtsradikalismus, names only a few of the tricks used by the NDP, I also draw on his The Psychological

2   M. Sellner, Identitär: Geschichte eines Aufbruchs, Stegira, Verlag Antaios, 2019. The press Antaios publishes right-extremist books in Germany. All translations from German to English are mine. 3   I only describe some of his techniques as describing all of them would go beyond the boundaries of this article. 4   See for example J. Bruns – K. Glösel – N. Strobl, Die Identitären: Handbuch zur Jugendbewegung der Neuen Rechten in Europa, Münster, Unrast Verlag, 2018. 5   I am, like Adorno, referring to the fascist agitator with the male pronoun. Although there are a female agitators in the Identitarian movement, they are mostly excluded from leadership roles. For further analyses on the role of women in the IB see Bruns – Glösel – Strobl, Die Identitären, p. 221.

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Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, which is an analysis of the propaganda techniques used by the US American Christian fascist agitator Martin Luther Thomas in the 1930’s. Adorno analyzed Thomas’ radio addresses during his exile and his work with Paul Lazersfeld on the social significance of radio. This work is particularly important as it shows us that the tricks fascist agitators are using are similar to advertising techniques that aim to sell a product. I will also draw on The Authoritarian Personality, which is a study of the potential for fascism in the United States, to which Adorno contributed with a team of psychoanalysts and psychologists, and which focuses on the potential followers whom fascist propaganda aims to capture6. This paper is composed of four sections excluding the introduction and the conclusion. The first section, “The Movement Fetish” outlines the “movement trick”, where the movement itself becomes the aim, which promises the follower pleasure to distract from its destructive aims. The movement fetish corresponds with the agitator’s anti-theoretical attitude. The second section, “Fully Awake While Sleeping”, outlines the functioning of the “indefatigabili­ ty trick”, which hypnotizes the follower, so she experiences herself as “fully awake”, while it promotes her being asleep so she subordinates herself to the destructive will of the leader. The last two sections each deal with techniques that terrorize the followers while offering them gratifications. The third section, “Not Knowing a Terrible Future” outlines the ways in which Sellner uses the “if you only knew trick”, which uses the technique of innuendo, that points at a terrible future only he knows about, to capture the reader for his movement. This section also outlines the “tingling backbone device”, which draws on fear and promises gratifications to win new followers. The fourth and last section, “The Victim’s Last Hour” outlines the ways in which Sellner creates a scenario of immediate catastrophe to promote un-democratic means to get rid of his chosen foes. The Conclusion offers some hints about how to counter right extremism. 1.  The Movement Fetish Since the fascist agitator does not want the followers to know that his main aims are violence, oppression of the weak and the exhibition of power, he uses the “movement trick”, which means that he remains vague on what policies

  Th. W. Adorno – E. Frenkel-Brunswik – D. J. Levinson – R. N. Senford, The Authoritarian Personality, London, Verso, 2019. 6

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he is for, and instead focuses on what he is against. Furthermore, as Adorno points out, «(s)ince the goal is finally the enslavement of one’s followers, they should be distracted from such goal, and their ambition should be centered around the pleasure which the movement itself may yield, not around the ideas which it might possibly materialize»7. Akin to the Nazis, who made a fetish of the term Bewegung (movement) without explaining in more detail where the Bewegung was going, also the Identitarian Bewegung makes a fetish out of the movement8. Sellner, throughout the book remains vague what his aims are. Rather, the movement itself becomes the aim, which is salient in the main focus of his book, a detailed description of different forms of “actions” the movement engages in, which stretches over several “chapters”. Here the movement trick surfaces, which implies «the glorification of action, of something going on, (which) both obliterates and replaces the purpose of movement»9. Also, instead of any sensible political aim, we learn mainly what the IB is against, namely anybody it classifies as “foreign”, mainly immigrants and refugees from non-European nations, particularly (bot not exclusively) those from Middle Eastern nations. Its destructive aim is to get rid of such foreigners in Europe, if necessary with violent means. To accomplish such aim, the actions the IB engages in are mainly violent public disturbances of events that support refugees or immigrants in a general, political climate that is hostile to them, such as performances in theaters and talks at universities. Furthermore, Sellner also aims to distract the reader of his final aim, the domination of his followers themselves, which he accomplishes by repeatedly pointing at the pleasure which the movement itself will yield. An example is what he calls their first “great action”, when the IB aggressively disturbed a Caritas sit-in of refugees at the Votivkirche in Vienna, in February 2013, which aimed to make the public aware of the tightening asylum right measures in Austria. Sellner tells us that a group of “activists”, all young Austrian, white men, were before the action tense, but once they entered the church they found themselves in “action-modus”: «Also this feeling is hard to describe in words. All the tension leaves and gives way to focused clarity, dynamic and spontaneity. It is as always a drug: just wonderful, and the effect remains throughout the entire action»10.

7  Th.W. Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 32. 8  Such fetish is already salient in its name. 9   Ibidem, p. 31. 10  Sellner, Identitär, p. 45, my emphasis.

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In this example the movement as fetish, where the action turns into a means to an end becomes salient. Here the message to the potential follower is: «Who cares what you’re doing, because you’ll enjoy doing it so much. If what you’re doing creates such a euphoria, whatever outcome is produced is justified». Such message allows the follower who engages in a destructive action to say to herself: «If it felt this good to do it, it can’t be wrong», and as a result any doubts to engage in the destructive action are silenced. Sellner’s assertion that the action gives way to “focused clarity” suggests to the follower that the action itself provides the follower with insights she did not have before, although the reality is that the movement’s focus on action eradicates any insight into the destructiveness of the action itself.11 Furthermore, his assertion that the action generates spontaneity, appeals to young people in capitalist societies, where spontaneity is largely erased. What Sellner does not mention, however, is that the destructive actions of the IB are rationally planned in every detail, and that at the end, he demands complete subjection of his followers to his will, which eradicates any traces of spontaneity. The pleasure generated by the action itself, Sellner tells us, is further prolonged by what happens after the action, where the movement celebrates its “success” with beer and electro-punk. «Until today I remember the amazing unbound atmosphere after the first great action, which justifies every excitement, every effort and every blood-sweat. (…) Also this feeling of success and the harvest is hard to describe and one only can experience it firsthand. Rightly: One need to earn it in the fire of action»12. Here Sellner again sells the movement to the potential follower as a means to the end of experiencing these “great feelings” of euphoria. Such “advertisement” appeals particularly to those who feel frustrated and like failures. The movement “drug” is so effective, because it promises the potential follower to feel good about herself, instead of being plagued by feelings of failure and worthlessness, say as a result of not being “economically successful”. The euphoria generated by the drug “action” allows the follower, for a period of time at least, to feel satisfied with herself again. Although one does not have success in real life, one can feel oneself “successful” in the movement. The fetish of action corresponds to the lack of theory provided by the fascist agitator. As Adorno points out, the fascist agitator’s attitude is thoroughly a-theoretical, and in his focus on the movement the agitator’s contempt for intellectual capacities in his audience surfaces. Today’s fascist agitators,   I will discuss this further in the next section.  Sellner, Identitär, p. 45.

11 12

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Adorno further points out, are «essentially guided by a keen sense of imitation of the famous and successful models of modern authoritarianism, rather than by political or sociological reflections»13. Also Sellner does not provide any political or sociological reflections. Instead, he aims to imitate the famous models of authoritarianism today, particularly the Hungarian authoritarian leader, Victor Orbán, who, he tells us, has allowed him to “make serious” and establish the Identitarian Movement in Austria14. Furthermore, the pursuit of autonomous logical processes is taboo for the agitator, because it allows those at whom the fascist agitator aims to strike to be heard. Instead, the agitator chooses those few political topics that are most laden with affect to draw attention15. Sellner explains that he dispenses with theory in his movement, because «actions must deliver little text for many». To reach the masses, they use provocative pictures with «reasonable slogans», which are «in one second readable and understandable»16. He further suggests that his method creates a «mental roller coaster» in his audience, which «invites the receiver of our messages to be elevated to a higher level of understanding without having to exert herself too much»17. Sellner’s anti-theoretical attitude exposes that he is on some level aware that his actions are nothing else but easy advertising slogans, with whom he aims to capture his audience. While he expresses here his contempt for the intellectual capacities of his audience, which is a salient topic throughout the book, he also promises those that are excluded from the privilege of education that they will be “elevated” to the realm of ideas, without having to engage in any exertion, which any theoretical analyses must engage with to yield results. He also provides us with examples for slogans the IB uses in its actions that supposedly elevate his audience into «a higher level of understanding», including «Immigration kills Europe, and emigration kills Africa», and «Secure Future – Secure Borders»18. In these slogans Sellner uses the technique of “association transitions”, which implies that different ideas are not connected through logical processes, but a common moment that connect iso-

13   Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, pp. 104, 453. 14  Sellner, Identitär, pp. 91-92. 15   Cf. Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 105. 16  Sellner, Identitär, p. 78. 17   Ibidem. 18   Ibidem, pp. 58-59.

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lated, logically unconnected statements, such as “killing” and “security” in these examples. The main aim of this technique is, besides selling a false idea, «the complete breakdown of a logical sense within the listeners. (…) They are to give up the element of resistance that is implied in any act of responsible thinking as such. They are to follow the leader first intellectually, and finally in person through thick and thin»19. In the above IB advertising slogans, such complete breakdown in thinking aims to establish the conviction in the follower that immigrants from Africa kill the Europeans, and that it is the aim of the IB to secure the borders against immigration. 2.  Fully Awake While Sleeping The “indefatigability device”, which has it roots in bourgeois, capitalist society, and demands from people that they “constantly work”, is a technique that implants in the follower the idea that she is “fully awake” in the sense that she understands things clearly, while it promotes her being asleep so she subordinates herself to the destructive will of the leader. The fascist agitator puts an emphasis upon his being indefatigable himself, foregrounding that he constantly works and sacrifices his life for the movement, to set an example for his followers. As Adorno puts it, «(i)ndefatigability is a psychological expression of totalitarianism. No rest should be given, unless everything is seized, grasped, organized. And since this aim will never be reached, the ceaseless efforts of every follower are needed»20. However, the agitator’s demand of indefatigability in his followers does not aim to generate a fully awake and conscious attitude in them as it might seem. Although he wants them to be ready for the actions of the movement, «but only under a kind of spell. There is an element of truth in the reference to “mass hypnotism” in fascism. (…) It is the activity of the hypnotized which is expected by fascist propaganda rather than that of responsible and conscious individuals. Thus, the insistence upon indefatigability works as a kind of Narkotikum (dope)»21. Sellner repeatedly points the ways he sacrifices his professional and private life for the movement22, and that he expects the same sacrifices from  Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 36.   Ibidem, pp. 13-14. 21   Ibidem, 372. 22  Sellner, Identitär, p. 158. 19 20

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his followers. While the IB prescribes “rest days” for new members, so the contrast between their new lives and their prior lives, is not too vast, the committed members may never rest. As he puts it, the movement is like a «jealous female lover»23, who is «reluctant to tolerate a career or a determined studying and especially no real, time consuming relationship. Every free time every free thought, every financial and bodily resource is spent on activism, if it is done seriously»24. However, Sellner expects the activism of hypnotized followers rather than the action of responsible and conscious individuals. The indefatigability trick, with which the leader demands of the followers to sacrifice «every free thought, every financial and bodily resource» on activism, assists in creating such hypnotized individuals, who carry out his orders, while they are asleep, and as a result, show little resistance to the destructive actions they are called to engage in. Sellner utilizes here the ambivalent relationship between sleeping and indefatigability, which Adorno further explains, «(j)ust because the follower is expected, in a way, to fall asleep and to act while he is asleep, he is told innumerable times that he has to be awake and that he must not sleep... He who is asleep while he is told that he has to be indefatigable and that he is indefatigable, may offer much less resistance to the will of his leader than he otherwise would. He is made to believe himself vaccinated against the very contagion that threatens him»25. Sellner repeatedly tells his followers that they are the only ones who are awake while those who have not yet joined the movement are asleep. For example, he asserts that the activists of the IB are the avant-garde «who understood precisely, what it is all about»26, which he also supports with a reference to the movie The Matrix. The followers of the Identitarian Bewegung are the ones who are «already woken up», and who float «between the sleeping batteries of the Eingelullten (lulled in ones)». The main task of the followers is to wake up «(t)he ones who do not want to wake up»27. Here he suggests that the followers of the movement are awake and see things clearly, while those who have not yet joined are asleep and have no in-

23   This is one of the few times where women enter the text, usually, as here, in connection with negative stereotypes. 24  Sellner, Identitär, pp. 157-158. 25   Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, pp. 14-15. 26  Sellner, Identitär, p. 231. 27   Ibidem, p. 248.

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sight into reality. However, the reality is the other way around: the followers are the ones that are “lulled” in by the drug of indefatigability, which makes them more prone to follow the destructive will of the leader. Furthermore, the hypnotic element in the indefatigability device «helps to overcome the bad conscience. The fascist stops thinking, not because he is stupid and does not see his own interest, but he does not want to acknowledge the conflict between his particular interest and that of the whole. (…) He has to switch it on himself, again and again, in order not to lose his spurious faith. Fascist hypnotism may be characterized as being essentially self-hypnotism»28. Such self-hypnotism not only assists one to cover over one’s bad conscience in engaging in a destructive movement, it also assists, akin to the “drug” of the movement fetish, to create an euphoria, which allows one to get rid of feelings of failure and frustration. It is therefore no co-incidence that Adorno suggests that the indefatigability device functions «as a kind of Narkotikum (dope)»29. As Sellner points out, while the initial “euphoric phase” in the movement always ends, «but with some (and the author of these lines and for sure many readers counts himself to that) it never ends»30. It seems that Sellner himself needs this drug of indefatigability to keep on having faith in his destructive program and to cover over his feelings that he does not live up to the idea of economic success, which he laments at a certain point: «One gets older oneself and sees how the former school colleagues in their studies and in the professional life walk past oneself. It is impossible to do justice to everything. Activism is an unthinkable and unpaid “job” which ruins every resume»31. Sellner’s demands the same sacrifices from his followers, to work every free minute for the movement, which will also ruin their resumes. However, what they will get instead of being able to survive economically, is a high via the indefatigability device. It seems that Sellner, on some dim level, is also aware that it is the indefati­ gability device that creates hypnotized followers that bend to his destructive will. For him, the “strength of leadership” lies in «the ability to keep a structure of discipline and order, and to keep a spirit of community and excitement alive, which carries the newlings after the finishing of the first euphoria further»32. In other words, the main task of the fascist leader is to keep the  Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 15.   Ibidem, p. 372. 30  Sellner, Identitär, p. 159. 31   Ibidem, p. 158. 32   Ibidem, p. 159. 28 29

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followers in an euphoric state, which makes them escape the reality of their suffering, while at the same time, keeps them from offering any resistance to the destructive will of their leader. In Sellner’s focus on “discipline and order” in the previous citation, the fetish of everything connected to the military, which is salient throughout his book, surfaces. Here it is rather intriguing that Adorno, in his talk in Vienna, pointed out, that today’s youth «needs to be warned from the drill in any shape, from the suppression of their private sphere and their style of life. And one needs to warn them from the culture of the so-called order, which is not supported by reason, especially from the term ‘discipline’, which is presented as a Selbstzweck (an end it itself) without asking the question “discipline for what?”»33. In Sellner’s writings discipline becomes a Selbstzweck, which has no other aim but to keep the followers in a hypnotic state of euphoria, which allows them to reconcile the conflict between the irrationality of the destructive goals of the Identitarian movement (the whole) and the particular, namely their rational interests. 3.  Not Knowing a Terrible Future Adorno groups together some tricks that he terms the “terror strategy”, which are also central in Sellner’s writings. The terror strategy utilizes fear and ambivalence by pointing at the threat of an impending catastrophe. It is composed of quasi-rational surface stimuli with which it sets in motion irrational psychological mechanisms. While the emotions this strategy calls forth are of a distinctly negative nature, it at the same time promises «certain unconscious gratifications as supplementary effects of the negative statements»34. The first one is the “if you only knew” trick, which implies «the suggestion of mysterious dangers only known to the speaker»35. The fascist agitator points at the future when he will make clear what he now merely hints at. This arouses curiosity in the listeners who are made to join the organization or at least read his “publications” in the hope to be “let in” on his knowledge at a future date when they simply follow what the agitator says and writes. The mere interest in what one will hear later creates an emotional tie between speaker and listener. This trick is also used in advertising, and the

 Adorno et alii, The Authoritarian Personality, p. 29.  Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 54. 35   Ibidem. 33 34

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curiosity is based on, and profits from, the neurotic curiosity prevailing in mass culture. Adorno points out that «(t)he lure of Andeutung (innuendo) grows with its vagueness. It allows for an unchecked play of the imagination and invites all sorts of speculation, enhanced by the fact that masses today, because they feel themselves to be objects of social processes, are anxious to learn what is going on behind the scene. At the same time they are prone psychologically to transform the anonymous processes to which they are subject into personalistic terms of conspiracies, plots by evil powers, secret international organizations, etc.»36. Sellner repeatedly points out that «the task of identitarian action is akin a visual message in the bottle from the future, which makes much worse scenes from the future visible in there here and now. The effect must be a healing shock that changes the whole consciousness»37. Throughout the book he uses grand sounding terms such as the “Great Exchange”, and “Islamization”, to insinuate these “worse scenes from the future”, but he does not explain their meaning. As a result, our curiosity is aroused, and we are inclined to read the book until we find out what the “message in the bottle from the future” implies. People today, perhaps even more so than in Adorno’s time, feel themselves to be objects of anonymous social processes in global capitalism and are thus anxious to learn “what goes on behind the scene”. When Sellner finally reveals what the message in the bottle from the future implies, at the end of the book, his readers are invited to “explain” anonymous social processes they are subjected to via personalistic terms of conspiracies where foreign populations “wipe out” Europeans. The most dangerous aspect of this device is that it advances an irrational increase of the agitators prestige and authority. The agitator knows what the others do not know and he points at this difference by never saying what it is exactly that he knows and how much he knows. «He always reserves for himself a surplus of knowledge which inspires awe and at the same time makes the public wish to participate in it»38. This aspect of Sellner’s “if you only knew” trick is salient in his assertion that «(o)ur downfall is a not yet comprehended secret. We do not yet know what happens with us (…) in the knowing of the “not-knowing” there is a hope. As

  Ibidem.  Sellner, Identitär, p. 48. 38  Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 55. 36 37

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singular and new as this crazy self-destruction that came over us is, it could also be the possibilities (sic!) of a spontaneous regeneration and a turn»39. Since he is the only one who knows about this secret of impeding self-destruction, and furthermore the hope of keeping it at bay, his authority is increased in the view of the reader. The reader, in awe about such surplus knowledge of the leader, wishes to be let on such secret to be able contribute to a “spontaneous regeneration and a turn”, which in turn promises to enhance the status of the follower. Furthermore, it promises her spontaneity, which has largely been eradicated in capitalist society. One of the main stimuli of the “if you only knew” trick is the deeper wish to belong and to become part of a closed group, which, I suggest, is the result of the growing anonymization and isolation people experience in neo-liberal capitalist societies. «Innuendo is a psychological means of making people feel that they already are members of that closed group which strives to catch them. The assumption that one understands something which is not plainly said, presupposes a kind of esoteric ‘intelligence’, which tends to make accomplices of speaker and listener»40. Furthermore, the device implies a threat for all those who do not know “what I mean”. Such threat tells the potential follower that it is safer to join the movement, rather than remain outside of it. Adorno, in his talk in Vienna, further details the ways in which the “if you only knew” trick draws on guilt feelings around the Holocaust in new right-extremist movements in Germany. The taboo established around the Holocaust through official laws turns into a means of anti-Semitic agitation by saying with a wink of the eye: «we are not allowed to say anything, but we understand ourselves amongst us. We all know, what we mean»41. It is perhaps no-coincidence that Adorno starts out his talk in Vienna, Austria, with a reference to his Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit from 1959, which exposes that a failure to work through the past leaves the conditions of National Socialism intact. Since Austrians have largely failed to work through their guilt as a perpetrator nation in its recent National Socialist past42, Sellner has ample opportunity to utilize repressed guilt feelings for his technique of innuendo.

 Sellner, Identitär, p. 276.   Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, pp. 55-56. 41   Adorno, Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus, p. 35. 42   C. Leeb, The Politics of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018. 39

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Sellner never mentions Jews or the Holocaust, mainly because there is a law against neo-Nazism in Austria. While Anti-Muslim rhetoric is used and thus legitimized in right wing official politics, overt anti-Semitism appears in a more disguised form in official politics, due to a taboo erected around it through anti-Nazi laws in Austria. Sellner uses the taboo around anti-Semitic statements in his innuendo technique. For example, he asserts that guilt feelings push the “indigenous youth” into a neurotic identity crisis43; and that the radical left sees in immigrants a new revolutionary potential with whom they aim to replace what they view as the German perpetrator Volk44. His insinuations around guilt provide the reader with the feeling that she knows what he is talking about (the Jews and the Holocaust), which allows her to feel that she is already part of the movement. Such insinuations also tell her that there is “no need to feel guilty”, which comes in handy to to keep guilt feelings around Austria as a perpetrator nation repressed, and which is an added stimulus for joining the IB. Here it also becomes obvious that although the IB is overtly Anti-Muslim, it is at the same time deeply anti-Semitic. It is perhaps no co-incidence that Sellner, whenever he refers to guilt, does not mention Austria, but chiefly refers to them as “German guilt”, which exposes how deep seated such feelings of guilt must be in Sellner himself, who can keep them only repressed by displacing them onto Germany. Sellner also uses the “tingling backbone device”, which is another terror strategy. Here the fascist agitator «terrorizes his audience by constantly pointing out all sorts of threats to them. He does not rely so much on their desire for happiness as on their fear that things may become even worse, while ceaselessly stressing that they are desperate even now»45. Such constant terror makes people give up thinking and they react in the “Rette-sich wer kann (save yourself who can)” pattern, which is an attitude favorable to obedience to a leader who promises to think and act for them if only they join the movement46. Sellner, repeatedly uses the Schauder device, by pointing out that «things will get worse in the future»47, and that the negative effects of the “Great Exchange”, can be already felt now, but that «it will come much worse» in the future48.

 Sellner, Identitär, p. 238.   Ibidem, p. 186. 45  Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 62. 46   Ibidem, pp. 63-64. 47  Sellner, Identitär, p. 48. 48   Ibidem, my emphasis. 43 44

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While the surface effect is for people to organize themselves to combat the danger or join a movement that promises to do so, Adorno points at a more unconscious effect, namely that «they enjoy the description of atrocities because they themselves want to commit them some day»49. Also, a future threat is being used to justify pre-emptive “self-defense”, which implies both a promise and justification of destructive acts. That is, if they are going to wipe us out in the future, then we’re justified in wiping them out now to prevent that in the name of self-defense. 4.  The Victim’s Last Hour Another terror strategy Sellner uses is the “last hour device”, which «consists of the direct or indirect assertion that a catastrophe is imminent, that the situation is desperate and has reached a peak of crisis, that some change must be made immediately»50. This trick reminds one of the advertising slogan: «This offer holds good only for a few days». Here the audience is ermahnt (admonished) to act fast, to join the movement immediately, behind which he detects the simple consideration that people tend to forget what they do not carry out right now. As Adorno puts it, «(t)erroristic propaganda works only “on the spot”»51. The last hour device is central in Sellner’s writings: «Unending problems are piling up in front of us, and my generation has already grown up in the shadow of the coming catastrophes. (…) Islamization and the Great Exchange. We live, so it seems, in the contractions of a great downfall»52. Sellner alerts his audience that the situation is desperate and has reached a peak of crisis, because indigenous (which means for him white) Europeans are “wiped out” by a growing immigrant population from Islamic countries in the “Great Exchange”, through which also an “Islamization” takes place, which eradicates European “civilized culture”. Only if one joins the movement now and acts immediately and without any delay, he exclaims, do we «have a realistic chance to bring this heavy crisis behind to maintain our heritage, the European civilization and the people of Europe»53. However, he makes clear that «(w)e are the last generation» of  Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 61.   Ibidem, p. 64. 51   Ibidem, p. 65. 52  Sellner, Identitär, p. 270, my emphasis. 53   Ibidem, p. 239. 49 50

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youth to stop the great downfall54, because «(t)he descendants of the indigenous Europeans are already so marginalized,” that they will lack in numbers and strength to do so»55. Here Sellner sells the reader a dream, where she gets to save European civilization and European (white) people, if she joins the movement and acts now. The lure of such fantasy world should not be under-estimated, as it allows the reader and potential follower to feel heroic and important, as she is the “last generation” to save the world, rather than as she feels at present, downtrodden and unimportant. Such a dream allows the follower to continue sleeping, instead of being woken up from her dream to face her own rather unheroic reality and the destructive aims of the IB. Furthermore, with that much at stake, saving European civilization, no action is too extreme for such a worthy cause, and at such a desperate hour. As Adorno points out, «there is an easy transition from warning of the danger of catastrophe to advertising it. If the situation is desperate, desperate means are necessary: The answer to the “imminent danger of Communism” is the eradication of Communists, radicals, and “those evil forces”, that is, the pogrom»56. Sellner’s constructed dream also utilizes the “persecuted innocence” device. It was developed by the fascists, who called its highly aggressive eliteguard the SS (Schutzstaffel, protective corps), to «rationalize aggressiveness under the guise of self-defense»57. In this device “projection”, which unconsciously makes events appear real which exist only in the agitator’s imagination, is central, and allows him to blame the prospective victim for the very same crime he wants to commit himself58. Throughout the book Sellner’s insists that he and the IB are innocent and non-violent (supported by repeated references to Gandhi), while everybody (the press, the police, the left, etc.) is out to violently destroy him and his movement. Also Sellner’s imagination of the “Great Exchange”, where a declining white European population is marginalized and threatened with extinction by a growing Moslem immigrant population, serves to rationalize aggression in the guise of self-defense. Such image is nothing else but

  Ibidem, p. 237, my emphasis.   Ibidem, p. 242. 56   Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, pp. 66-67, my emphasis. 57   Ibidem, p. 11. 58   Ibidem, p. 12. 54 55

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a projection of his own destructive desires, and the prospective victim is blamed for the same crime he wants to commit himself. In the fantasy of the “Great Exchange”, we also encounter the ways in which Sellner draws on and further solidifies stereotypes. As Adorno points out in the The Authoritarian Personality, «(t)he disproportion between the relative social weakness of the object and its supposed sinister omnipotence is by itself evidence that the projective mechanism is at work» and underlines that the stereotype has nothing to do with reality59. The unrealistic imagery of the immigrants and refugees who are an omnipotent threat to white Europeans and their status of being the socially and economically weakest part of the population, exposes also the centrality of projection in Sellner’s writings. Here omnipresence, his repeated references to demography and the “growing strength in numbers” of his chosen foes, replaces the idea of omnipotence, perhaps because he can’t pretend that actual “immigrant or refugee” rule actually exists. Given the assertion of threatening over-all domination by his foes, «it is easy to guess that the countermeasures which such subjects have in mind are no less totalitarian than their persecution ideas, even if they do not dare to say so in so many words»60. Such totalitarian countermeasures are salient in the final scenario of a near future, in which the IB has succeeded to “bring the heavy crises” behind us, and as a result has managed to firmly establish itself. Here the IB idea of “Remigration” (another term coined by the IB) has been taken up and turned into laws by extremist-right parties who are now ruling European countries: Sellner imagines that in mid 2020 these laws will lead to a “European Hidschra”, which is «a state promoted mass emigration», advanced by «ministries of remigration». These masses of emigrants are brought to Aufnahmezentren outside Europe, and 98 percent of their asylum applications are denied61. It does not take too much imagination to read Sellner’s future as a new pogrom, akin to the Nazi regime, where with the assistance of special “laws” and ministries and without any mercy Jews and other groups were exterminated in concentration camps. He supports such imagery with a drawing towards the end of the book, where a mass of people, denoted as “foreigners” in backpacks, are lined up in front of the Euro sign, waiting to leave Europe62. This drawing, rather ee Adorno et alii, The Authoritarian Personality, p. 613.   Ibidem. 61  Sellner, Identitär, p. 264. 62   Ibidem, p. 245. 59 60

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rily, reminds of pictures of Jews and other groups lined up before they were brought to concentration camps to be murdered. It exposes that what Sellner «psychologically promises by his total approach is, in the last analyses, the pogrom rather than the achievement of any aim apart from such an outbreak»63. Conclusion Adorno, in this Vienna talk, points out that new right extremists groups use a small number of standardized tricks, which are in themselves very poor and thin, but through their constant repetition, win a propagandistic value for these movements64. Furthermore, he asserts that we need to make these tricks «real, give them a drastic name, describe them in detail, describe their implications, because ultimately nobody wants to be the stupid one or, as one would say in Vienna, to be the ‘Wurzen (root)’. And that the whole is based on a gigantic psychological root technique, a gigantic psychological rip-off, that is definitely to be shown»65. The main aim of this paper was to expose the “psychological root technique” used by the leader of the Identitarian movement in the German speaking context, Martin Sellner, which exposed the ways in which Sellner himself is a Wurzen, albeit one that should be carefully studied to counter the Europe-wide growth of the Identitarian movement. I suggest that looking carefully at the writings of right extremist leaders, as I did in this paper, and carefully describing the tricks they are using are important to establish a counter-propaganda, which explains the means to potential followers by which they are captured. However, successful counter-propaganda needs to also point out the irrational and fetishistic characteristics of all the “sacrifices” demanded by right extremist leaders, such as Sellner. Furthermore, it needs to point out everything connected to the military fetish, and here especially the agitator’s focus on focus on drill and discipline. Furthermore, counter-propaganda needs to make explicit the many ways in which the agitator offers a “drug” to potential followers, be it through the movement fetish or no rest, which allows the followers to feel better about themselves, and how its terror strategies offer irrational gratifications for the potential follower.

 Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, p. 32.   Adorno, Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus, pp. 43-44. 65   Ibidem, p. 54. 63 64

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However, ultimately counter-propaganda can only be successful, if it also dismantles the values implied in capitalism, such as “economic success” and “constant work”, and provides an alternative economic system, which allows the youth to thrive, so they do not need to seek escapes from their suffering in right extremist movements. Claudia Leeb Washington State University, USA [email protected]

CRITICAL THEORY AND POLITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY. SIX THESES ON UNTRUTH IN POLITICS

Abstract: The rise of untruth in politics has mostly been met by a stout defense of a robust notion of truth and an equally robust notion of the sciences. Yet all too often, this answer sacrifices the results of critically examinations of actual practices in the sciences and humanities. This article outlines a response for critical theories that enables them to defend truth and objectivity against organized climate change denialists or political propagandists without embracing a naïve positivism about «the scientific method» or objectivity.

*** On March 23, 2018, Karsten Hilse, member of the German Parliament for the AfD1, was the first to respond to a speech by the Federal Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Svenja Schulze. He proclaimed that anthropogenic climate change is a fraud: Although vamped up with many billions, there is not a single proof for the hypothesis that more CO2 generates more temperature (…), not even in any of the IPCC reports published so far. What has been «proven» in the last 30 years are results of computer simulations, yet they even fail in computing the climate’s past (…). Here and now, the AfD takes on the false doctrine of anthropogenic climate change. We demand that Germany withdraws from all related national and international treaties and committees. (…) We demand to stop financing pseudo-science. (…) We will begin the fight against the limit values for fine particles and nitrogen oxide. Their justification is pure ideology and their sole function is to expropriate millions of car owners. (…) For all these goals, real science free of ideology is firmly on our side2.

  «AfD» is short for «Alternative für Deutschland», a German party of the radical right.   Hilse in Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/24, Berlin, Bundestag, 2018, p. 2200 f. All translations from German sources by F.V. 1

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We are uncannily familiar with false statements like these3. What has – wrongly and problematically – been called «the era of post-truth»4 offers many such examples. Here is a second one: On January 16, 2016, the German news channel of Russia Today (RT) ran a feature on Lisa, a 13-year old girl in Berlin that had been reported missing by her parents. After one day, Lisa returned, claiming to have been raped for 30 hours by a group of refugees from the Middle East. Over the next days, RT also showed pictures from a ‘spontaneous rally’ of concerned citizens, an interview with Lisa’s sobbing ‘cousin’ and a video of a man boasting to have raped a virgin together with five other men. Demonstrations in many German towns followed; in Berlin, a speaker accused chancellor Merkel: «What has Merkel done in the last ten years? She has killed more people than this Hitler!»5. Almost nothing in this story happened as reported by RT. Although Lisa was away from her parents for one night, she was at the home of a friend and his mother, fearing she might get in trouble with her parents because of school problems. Lisa was not raped, as a medical examination confirmed, but had injured herself in order to sustain her story. Furthermore, the ‘spontaneous rally’ was orchestrated by the NPD (a German neo-Nazi party), Lisa’s ‘cousin’ was not her cousin and the video was an unrelated fake video circulating the web since 2009. What did happen, however, were the subsequent demonstrations and racist speeches. Lest we think from an «one-sided diet» of examples6, here is a third: the official police report about New Year’s Eve 2020 in Leipzig. A group of violent offenders tried to push a burning shopping cart in the middle of a police riot unit and fired on it massively with pyrotechnics. One police officer (male/38) was so severely injured that he lost consciousness and had to undergo emergency surgery in hospital7.   Hilse’s claims have been proven wrong repeatedly. On why CO2 is the most important forcing of climate change and on the reliability of computer models of climate change see H. Washington – J. Cook, Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand, London/New York, Earthscan, 2011, pp. 20-25, 47-50. 4   See e.g. L. McIntyre, Post-Truth, Cambridge (MA)/London, MIT Press, 2018; M. D’Ancona, Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back, London, Ebury Press, 2017 and my critique in F. Vogelmann, The Problem of Post-Truth: Rethinking the Relationship between Truth and Politics, «Behemoth. A Journal on Civilisation», 11 (2018) 2, pp. 18-37. 5   For the quote and the facts, see M. Wehner, Unser Mädchen Lisa: Russlands Informationskrieg, «Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung», 31 January 2016. 6   L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986, § 593. 7   Polizeidirektion Sachsen, Mehrere verletzte Polizeibeamte bei Silvestereinsatz, 2020. 3

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Again, most of the report is false, as the journalist Sascha Lobo pointed out a week later: Nothing is left of the claims made with lightning speed by the police, that emergency surgery was necessary because a police officer had been severely injured and was more or less fighting for his life. Literally nothing, and the world knows this not because the police corrected its report but because «taz» [a daily national newspaper; F.V.] inquired at the hospital and «Kreuzer» [a local newspaper in Leipzig; F.V.] followed up on the story8.

Importantly, neither Russian propaganda media nor the organized climate change denialist movement was spreading false news, but a part of the German state apparatus. We could easily multiply these stories, each of which is rich enough to provide an opportunity for investigating deep-seated political and social tensions in our self-attested liberal democracies. Yet I want to stick to the surface, namely to the fact that they all coalesce around forms of untruth in politics, whether we categorize them as ‘post-truth’, propaganda, ideology or political lies. The most frequent reply – from public intellectuals and scientists – has been a stout defense of a robust notion of truth and an equally robust notion of realism9. Specifically, «the scientific method» (note the singular!) has been leveled against the disrespect and even the outright denial of scientific results, along with the idea of hard facts unmoored by human interpretations or political perspectives. Against all propaganda, lies and ideology, reality as discovered by scientists and journalists, joint in honoring the norms of truth and objectivity, will prevail. Yet this answer sacrifices the results of critical examinations of actual practices in the sciences and humanities, as pursued by critical theory, science and technology studies, feminist epistemology or even mainstream philosophy of science10. The political as well as theoretical urgency for critical theories to

  S. Lobo, Diagnose: Vorzeitiger Nachrichtenerguss, «Der Spiegel»; https://www.spiegel. de/netzwelt/diagnose-vorzeitiger-nachrichtenerguss-kolumne-a-30018b2e-5b97-49c4-8af0ce­7ec08db5c6. 9   See F. Vogelmann, Should Critique be Tamed by Realism? A Defense of Radical Critiques of Reason, «Le foucaldien», 5 (2019) 1, pp. 1-34. 10   See respectively M. Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory, in: Critical Theory: Selected Essays, New York, The Continuum Publishing Company, 2002, pp. 188-243; B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1987; D. J. Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, «Feminist Studies», 14 (1988) 3, 8

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address what I suggest to call ‘untruth in politics’ stems from this tension. Torn between a deeply felt necessity to defend truth and objectivity against organized climate change denialists or political propagandists on the one hand, and an equally deeply felt necessity to avoid turning «the scientific method» and objectivity into a naïve positivism on the other hand, how can we hold on to the critical insights into the actual practices of the natural and the social sciences, the humanities and the life sciences, and criticize the use of ‘untruths in politics’ as exemplified in the three stories above? My six theses address this question because it is one of the most important contemporary challenges to critical theories. The theses are programmatic: they are painted with broad strokes, they outline propositions rather than full answers, and they raise new questions. They come in pairs: The first two delineate the problem of ‘untruth in politics’, the second pair states methodological and conceptual requirements, and the final two theses sketch first results. Thesis 1: Untruth in Politics is an Autonomous Problem The notion ‘untruth in politics’ that I have casually introduced above serves as an umbrella term for all kinds of false statements in politics. It presupposes that in order to analyze their different functions and in order to fight them, we must attend to the epistemic dimension of untruth in politics. Yet liberal critics of our ‘post-truth era’ as well as critical theorists instead often analyze untruth in politics as a by-product of unhinged emotions or mere power. Untruth in politics is seen as a lack of interest in truth caused by cognitive mechanisms that further tribal thinking, by deep-seated feelings finally expressed by rhetorically skilled politicians or by a nihilistic rage against society and its political system, experienced as machines of degradation11. Untruth in politics becomes collateral damage in these analyses, a worrying result of social and political structures and practices that have no intrinsic connection to epistemic questions. Alternatively, untruth in politics is understood as a sheer demonstration of power that replaces facts with its own fabricated reality. Popular amongst the diagnosticians of ‘our post-truth

pp. 575-599; T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd, enlarged ed., Chicago (IL), University of Chicago Press, 1970. 11   See e.g. McIntyre, Post-Truth, chapter 3; A. Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, New York/London, The New Press, 2016, chapter 15; W. Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, New York, Columbia University Press, 2019, chapter 5.

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era’ is a quote attributed to Karl Rove, dismissing critics of George W. Bush as old-timers belonging to a «reality-based community», when in fact «we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality»12. Untruth in politics here becomes a symptom of excessive power; again, it is a reason for concern but the epistemic dimension does not figure in its explanation. Taking untruth in politics to be an autonomous problem does not deny that these analyses offer important insights but warns against believing that they fully explain it. If untruth in politics is a mere lack of truth resulting from social and political processes, truth and politics are split – implicitly if not explicitly. Truth is taken as something that is not intrinsically linked to emotions or power, whose only epistemic quality is reduced to suppressing truth. Furthermore, understanding untruth in politics as a mere lack of truth involves the expectation that truth be easily attained. Yet we should heed Raymond Geuss’ warning that «to see and recognize the truth requires the exercise of a certain kind of systematic violence on the inchoate and formless mass of undifferentiated appearance, wishful thinking, fantasy, and half truth in which we live most of our lives»13. We should not presuppose that truth is easy in order to deal with untruth in politics. Thesis 2: Untruth in Politics is a Contemporary Problem A second temptation to resist is to declare either that we entered an unprecedented ‘era of post-truth’ or that there is nothing new under the sun14. On the one hand, liberal critics of ‘post-truth’ have failed (so far) to provide convincing criteria to distinguish our ‘era of post-truth’ from whatever came before. Cynicism, the most frequent contender, will not do, as any history of politics in the long 20th century confirms. On the other hand, dismissing the rising concern about untruth in politics by arguing that lies and deception have always been an important part of politics underestimates the change in our public spheres. Both reactions avoid a careful consideration of our present. Whereas the detached historian overwrites the present with the past, the excited pundit erases the present’s ties to the past. Critical theories, bound to

  See e.g. McIntyre, Post-Truth, p. 113 f; D’Ancona, Post-Truth, p. 54 f.   R. Geuss, A Note on Lying, in A World without Why, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 135-144: 141. 14   For the first reaction see the literature cited in footnote 12; the second is suggested e.g. by J. Habgood-Coote, Stop Talking about Fake News!, «Inquiry», 62 (2018) 9/10, pp. 10331065. 12 13

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the task of diagnosing our present15, must instead lay bare the genealogy of untruth in politics: they must analyze how our present problematization of untruth in politics arises from a past that does not determine it16. A concrete implication is that while we have good reasons to presume that our accelerated news cycles and the new public spheres created by social media contribute to the problem of untruth in politics, we should neither reduce the origins of untruth in politics to new media formats nor analyze untruth in politics as a mere repetition of familiar phenomena like propaganda or ideology. Thesis 3: Untruth in Politics Requires a New Vocabulary Hence, we need new concepts. Yet while ‘post-truth’ is arguably new17, it is particularly unhelpful to address the problem of untruth in politics because the diagnosis of a ‘post-truth era’ fails historically (there was no ‘era of truth’ before), conceptually (the distinction between ‘post-truth’ and lies, propaganda or ideology remains utterly unclear18) and epistemologically19. The epistemological failure leads us back to the importance of not taking truth for granted. Critics of our ‘post-truth era’, instead of justifying the privileged standpoint from which they adjudicate who cares for truth and who does not, appeal to an idealized and homogenized «scientific method» (or simply ‘science’ in the singular) that we should trust again20. Furthermore, they presuppose a neat separation between truth and politics, as if truth, although found in our social practices and thus contingent on the politics that   The phrase is Foucault’s (e.g. Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, in M. Foucault, Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, ed. by J. Faubion, New York, The New Press, 1998, pp. 433-458: 449 f.) yet it captures nicely the task almost all critical theories set for themselves. See M. Saar, Philosophie in ihrer (und gegen ihre) Zeit, «Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie», 67 (2019) 1, pp. 1-22. 16   See Vogelmann, The Problem of Post-Truth. 17   Used for the first time, apparently, by S. Tesich, A Government of Lies, «Nation», 254 (1992) 1, pp. 12-14. 18   For the same conclusion via a different argument, see Habgood-Coote, Stop Talking about Fake News! 19   See Vogelmann, The Problem of Post-Truth, pp. 19-22. 20   «One reason why it is important to dispose of the myth of scientific unity is that one might, in principle, judge that macroeconomics or mathematical population genetics, say, has claims to credibility on a par with palmistry or tarot reading, without being committed to making the same claim about mechanics or immunology» (J. Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science, Cambridge [MA], Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 11). 15

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shapes them, would be unrelated to these practices: as if truth and politics were completely independent entities, related only externally. If ‘post-truth’ is a failed concept, should we return to more traditional concepts for analyzing untruth in politics, e.g. ‘propaganda’ or ‘ideology’? Indeed, we might, but not without carefully reworking them, as they, too, often assume an external relationship between politics and truth. Take ‘ideolo­gy’: Any account of this concept must combine Marx’s two insights that ideologies are epistemically flawed («in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura») and that they are in the service of domination («the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas»21). Thus, ideology critique inevitably introduces two interrelated epistemic differences: the ‘epistemic break’ between the critics and their addressees, founded on the distinction between truth and ideology. A lot of creative theorizing demonstrates that we can soften the ‘epistemic break’ to a fleeting moment in the social practice called critique and thereby disentangle it from the asymmetric power relations to which it was traditionally fused22. Without denying that these re-conceptualizations of ideology and ideology critique are important advances, they still preserve the foundational opposition between truth and ideology that often leads them to elevate truth above social practices or to evade exploring its epistemic consequences23. Jason Stanley’s recent attempt to revive the concept of propaganda in analytic philosophy demonstrates what happens if we unabashedly opt for the stark opposition between truth and ideology. Although he rightfully argues that propaganda need not be untrue or delivered insincerely, he retains a moment of untruth in his definition of the form of propaganda that is the most dangerous for liberal democracy: undermining demagoguery, which is a «contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of a worthy political, economic, or rational ideal, but is in the service of a goal that tends to undermine that very ideal»24. In order to explain the contradiction that is concealed inside, Stanley postulates a close link between undermining demagoguery and what he calls «flawed ideology»: beliefs that   K. Marx – F. Engels, The German Ideology, Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, pp. 36, 59. 22   As a representative of the ‘new ideology critique’, see e.g. R. Celikates, Critique as Social Practice: Critical Theory and Social Self-Understanding, trans. N. van Steenbergen, London, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018, Part III. 23   Celikates’ talks admirably honest yet admittedly vague of «bearing out the tension» in: ibidem, p. 169. 24   J. Stanley, How Propaganda Works, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 69. 21

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are epistemologically deficient because they are resistant to rational revision (a feature of all ideological beliefs, according to Stanley) and because they «prevent us from gaining knowledge about features of reality including social reality»25. Such flawed ideologies mask the moment of untruth in undermining demagoguery. With these stipulations, Stanley presupposes complete independence between truth and politics and thus ends up with neutral concepts of propaganda and ideology that heavily rely on imports from moral philosophy to specify what is wrong with certain types of propaganda and ideology26. Divorcing the political or moral problems of propaganda and ideology from their epistemological flaws is not just a step back within the history of ideology critique (way back behind Marx and Engels), it also obscures the central idea of ideology: that domination is intrinsically political and epistemological27. At this point, a puzzled reader might ask: Why not turn to Foucault’s concept of «discourses» (or similar theories) instead of trying to fit notions like ideology and propaganda into a framework that is arguably oriented by a central insight of Foucault, namely the internal relationship of truth and politics? For two reasons: First, while Foucault’s conception of truth regimes accounts for the internal relationship between truth and politics in the long durée, it is less helpful to conceptualize contemporary rival truths. My three examples of organized climate change denial, the Russian right-winged propaganda or the routine lies of the German police force are hardly examples of different truth regimes28. The epistemological dimension of untruth in politics requires that we conceptualize the details of the internal relationship between truth and politics (which Foucault neglected). Second, Foucault’s hostility towards the concept of ideology was perhaps understandable in his time but is no longer an appropriate theoretical intervention today. Instead, we need to integrate Foucault’s account of the intertwinement of truth and politics with concepts that allow us to capture pernicious instances of un-

  Ibidem, p. 198.   See ibidem, chapter 3. 27   For further problems in Stanley’s account, see K. Dotson, Distinguishing Knowledge Possession and Knowledge Attribution: The Difference Metaphilosophy Makes, «Philosophy and Phenomenological Research», 96 (2018) 2, pp. 475-482; R. Celikates, Epistemische Ungerechtigkeit, Loopingeffekte und Ideologiekritik: Eine sozialphilosophische Perspektive, «WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», 14 (2017) 2, pp. 53-72: 62. 28   Cf. S. Krasmann, Secrecy and the Force of Truth: Countering Post-Truth Regimes, «Cultural Studies», 33 (2019) 4, pp. 690-710. 25 26

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truth in politics within a given truth regime. This is precisely the project I engage in. Thesis 4: Untruth in Politics Requires a Non-sovereign Political Epistemology Let me summarize the argument so far: In the first two theses, I have claimed that untruth in politics (as illustrated by my three examples) is an autonomous and contemporary problem that critical theory must address without reducing its epistemological dimension to a mere by-product of political and social processes. In the third thesis, I have argued that the new concept of ‘post-truth’ is not well suited for this task. Neither are the older concepts of propaganda and ideology, at least not as long as they presuppose an external relationship between truth and politics. Hence, critical theories must either re-conceptualize them or forge new concepts. My fourth thesis is that therefore they must engage in non-sovereign political epistemology. Political epistemology is a field of interdisciplinary research in which epistemology, political philosophy and social sciences interrogate the intertwinement of truth and politics and transform their basic concepts, for neither the political or social presuppositions in epistemological concepts (e.g. the anti-social individualism in the standard definitions of knowledge) nor the epistemological presuppositions in concepts from political philosophy (e.g. the absence of ‘truth’ in Rawls’ conception of justice as fairness) can be left untouched in order to re-conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics29. As political epistemology today is often narrowly conceived as the discussion about «epistemic injustice» in analytic philosophy30, let us recall that critical theories of all stripes have engaged in political epistemology from their very beginnings: Frankfurt School Critical Theory declares that epistemology without social theory is idealism while social theory without epistemology is dogmatism and therefore tries to integrate philosophy and social sciences; feminism criticizes androcentric scientific practices and develops feminist epistemologies to account for the surprising success of femi­ nist science; French poststructuralism builds upon the French tradition in

  On epistemology’s individualism see H. E. Grasswick, Individuals-in-Communities: The Search for a Feminist Model of Epistemic Subjects, «Hypatia», 19 (2004) 3, pp. 85-120; on Rawls’ abstinence from the concept of truth, see J. Cohen, Truth and Public Reason, «Philosophy & Public Affairs», 37 (2009) 1, pp. 2-42. 30   Following M. Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010. 29

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historical epistemology to place knowledge at the center of political struggles; and postcolonial theory interrogates colonial practices of (scientific) knowledge production to decolonize our conceptual frameworks31. Non-sovereign political epistemology picks up the political epistemology at the core of critical theories and emphasizes their materialist insight that truth is a force in our social practices, not a force that rules them from beyond. Using the political concept of sovereignty is apt because it captures precisely how ‘truth’ is commonly understood: as a supreme authority removed from the petty conflicts in our social practices which it impartially rules without thereby becoming implicated. The imagination of sovereign truth, namely that truth must occupy a sovereign epistemic standpoint has been repeatedly denounced as a powerful fiction: an instance of «Absolutism» (Adorno), a «god trick» (Haraway), a ruse of power (Foucault) or an aspect of the coloniality of power in epistemology (Mignolo). Yet it strangely lives on: in political epistemology, the king is yet to be beheaded. In order to revolutionize political epistemology – and what is the abandonment of sovereignty if not a revolution? – we must re-conceptualize ‘truth’, not give up on it. We need a non-sovereign conception of truth as material epistemic force in our social practices. This claim is contested even within critical theories, and a non-sovereign concept of truth is hardly available. Frankfurt School Critical Theory in its early incarnations offers no reformulations of ‘truth’ that match the strength of its critique of traditional concepts of truth; in its later stages, it has softened this critique and consoled itself with traditional concepts of fallible knowledge. Foucault was unsatisfied with his own account of power-knowledge, yet while he successfully revised his concept of power, his attempt to also revise his concept of knowledge (savoir) failed32. Feminist epistemology and postcolonial theory have been more   For a small sample, see Th. W. Adorno, Erkenntnistheorie (1957/58), ed. by K. Markus, Nachgelassene Schriften, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2018; Haraway, Situated Knowledges; M. Foucault, Truth and Juridical Forms, in: Power: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, ed. by J. Faubion, New York, The New Press, 1998, pp. 1-89; and W. Mignolo, Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom, «Theory, Culture & Society», 26 (2009) 7/8, pp. 1-23. It seems fair to say that while critical theories have developed concepts and arguments that hint at a political epistemology, they have not fully conceptualized the epistemic consequences and problems. Yet they are ignored by the analytical fraction of political epistemology to its own detriment, in the form of excessive rationalism and political naivety. 32   See M. Foucault, On the Government of the Living: Lectures at the College de France, 1979-1980, ed. by M. Senellart, trans. Gr. Burchell, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 11-17, and my argument in: F. Vogelmann, Kraft, Widerständigkeit, Historizität. Überlegungen zu einer Genealogie der Wahrheit, «Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie», 62 (2014) 6, 31

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successful in this regard; prime examples include Linda Martín Alcoff’s materialist conception of a «coherentist ontology of truth» or Walter Mignolo’s successor project to epistemology, «gnoseology»33. Yet I seek a more general conception for a non-sovereign political epistemology. Minimally, a non-sovereign concept of truth that allows us to understand its relationship to politics as internal must meet two conditions: Truth must be plural, and it must be agonistic. Whereas the plurality of truth is recognized under many names in political philosophy (e.g. the fact of reasonable pluralism in analytic political theory or post-foundationalism in radical democracy)34, it is less commonly acknowledged in epistemology because it inevitably conjures up the specter of relativism. Hence, the second condition of truth being agonistic is necessary, for relativism only follows if the many truths are docile claims of ‘true for X”, indifferent to each other. Yet non-sovereign political epistemology holds on to a second, surprisingly common idea in political philosophy: that truth is a compelling force35. Granted, the conception of truth as an epistemic force in social practices, which as ‘force’ we can indeed understand as plural and agonistic at the same time, is in dire need of a more detailed explanation than I give here36. Two remarks might help to illuminate it: First, understanding truth as some kind of force is less exotic as it might seem. After all, truth as assertoric force is a standard idea in the philosophy of language from Frege to Habermas and Brandom. All we need to do is take the metaphor seriously. Second, the idea that truths force us to act and think the way we do (or differently once we discover new truths) is a rather traditional conviction in philosophy. Non-sovereign political epistemology merely insists that truths as epistemic forces must be explained materialistically within the social practices in which they emerge. Scientific practices are the most obvious example (although not pp. 1062-1086; F. Vogelmann, Zu Michel Foucaults Vorlesungen am Collège de France, 19701984, in: F. Vogelmann (hrsg. v.), «Fragmente eines Willens zum Wissen»: Michel Foucaults Vorlesungen, 1970-1984, Stuttgart, Metzler, in print. 33   L. Martín Alcoff, Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory, Ithaca (NY), Cornell University Press, 1996, pp. 201-235; W. D. Mignolo, Local Histories, Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 9-16. 34   Vogelmann, The Problem of Post-Truth, pp. 22-24. 35   «Domineering», says H. Arendt, Truth and Politics, in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, New York, Penguin, 2006, pp. 223-259: 241. See Vogelmann, The Problem of Post-Truth, pp. 24-28. 36   See Vogelmann, Kraft, Widerständigkeit, Historizität, and F. Vogelmann, Wahr und wirksam: Ein Wissensbegriff für die politische Epistemologie (unpublished manuscript), Frankfurt a.M./Bremen/Stuttgart, 2019, chapter 7.

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the only one: think of judicial practices), and we can understand their detailed description by feminist epistemology, science and technology studies or philosophy and history of science as a way of analyzing truth as an epistemic force without having to idealize and homogenize scientific practices. Neither do we need to set truth as epistemic force on a sovereign epistemic standpoint: just as science does not run on consensus and verification but on conflict and dissent, truth emerges from its practices as plural and agonistic. Thesis 5: Understanding Untruth in Politics Must Focus on its Enabling Conditions Conceptualizing truth as epistemic force in social practices does not explain untruth in politics. It lays the foundations for a non-sovereign epistemology within which we can reformulate concepts like propaganda and ideology or forge new ones to explain untruth in politics without assuming an external relationship between truth and politics. The aim is to explicate and correct the implicit epistemological assumptions of critical theories, resulting not in completely new but refined diagnoses of untruth in politics, as we can see with respect to the three examples with which I began. First, conceptualizing truth as epistemic force and hence as plural and agonistic does not imply that climate change denial or the Russian and German propaganda are rival truths. They are untruths. In order to distinguish the force exerted by claims of organized climate change denialists from the force of truth, we must analyze the social practices of organized climate change denial and contrast them with the social practices of climate sciences. In the latter, truth emerges as an irreducible force from the careful configuration of things and people. Like other truth-practices, scientific practices align us with parts of the world in such a way that truth can emerge, transmitted and made reliable37. Detailed accounts of the practices of organized climate change denial instead demonstrate how they systematically disguise social and economic power as truths38. Power is of course not absent from scientific practices – but crucially, truth as a different epistemic force is present there as well. The practices of climate sciences are no less densely populated by rivalling forces, but something more happens if truth as epistemic force   This is my translation of Latour’s idiom in Latour, Science in Action.   See N. Oreskes – E. M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, New York/Berlin/ London, Bloomsbury, 2011; Washington – Cook, Climate Change Denial. 37

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emerges in them. Hence, the distinction between truth (in the practices of climate sciences) and ideology (in organized climate change denial) need not separate truth from politics and put it in a sovereign epistemic standpoint. It may be hard to ascertain, and certainly no appeal to a singular scientific method will suffice, but scrutiny of the actual practices in question can redeem the distinction. Second, history becomes important when analyzing untruth in politics. We should understand the case of Russian propaganda within the long history of disinformation techniques developed by the Russian secret service specifi­ cally during the Cold War39. Yet because it is important not to overestimate the effectiveness of propaganda and revert to a crude ‘stimulus-response model’ of political manipulation, we must analyze the genealogy of the epistemic conditions under which propaganda becomes effective. In Germany (but not just there), an obvious factor is the systematic erosion of standards of justification in political discourse during the last two decades: e.g. the active avoidance of explaining and justifying political measures in order to stifle political debate and transform political into «technical» questions, so that they have only one answer to which there is no alternative. These wellknown elements of neoliberalism’s attack on democracy have an epistemic dimension: they foster untruth in politics, allowing it to bloom and bear its strange fruits. Third, the importance of a genealogy of the conditions that enable untruth in politics is reinforced by the example of the false police report. Although it is a textbook case about the new public spheres in social media and their acceleration of the news cycle, they matter only because we have paved the way for untruth in politics in our political discourse. Without journalists uncritically transmitting it, the report would not have defined how the event in Leipzig was perceived in the first days after New Year’s Eve40. Without being able to count on those journalists, the German police might not have deemed it worthwhile to rewrite history in that way. Finally, without the authority acquired by the police due to the kind of politics characteristic of our «cultures of control»41, we would not understand the willingness of publics to believe reports like this one.

  See C. Nehring, Russische (Des-)Informationspolitik: Bruch oder Kontinuität?, «Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik», 10 (2017) 4, pp. 441-451. 40   See Lobo, Diagnose: Vorzeitiger Nachrichtenerguss. 41   See D. Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, Chicago (IL), University of Chicago Press, 2001. 39

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Thesis 6: It is not Enough to Understand Untruth in Politics-critical Theories Must Fight It As we have seen, distinguishing truth from untruth without a sovereign epistemic standpoint and investigating the genealogy of the enabling conditions of untruth in politics are the twin operations called for from a non-­ sovereign political epistemology. Critical theories often do this already, if only implicitly. Yet today, it is crucial to explicate their epistemic assumptions – without reverting to a sovereign epistemology. Hence my last thesis needs one important qualification: The conviction that our present demands an explicit endorsement of truth, objectivity and the sciences and humanities against those who spread untruths in politics must not be permitted to reinstate the false idea of a sovereign conception of truth. Instead, we need a non-sovereign political epistemology, a conception of truth as epistemic force in social practices and a clear distinction of the plural and agonistic force of truth from other forces systemically disguised as truth. Nothing less demanding will help critical theories fight untruth in politics without ceasing to be critical theories42. Frieder Vogelmann Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany [email protected]

  I would like to thank Thomas Biebricher and Javier Burdman for their helpful comments and criti­cisms. 42

REASON, RELIGION AND THE CRISIS OF SOCIAL SEMANTICS. HABERMAS’ PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AS A GUARDRAIL FOR DERAILING MODERNITY*

Abstract: It has seldom been noticed that not only does Habermas’ work on religion give an interesting perspective on a possibly surprising matter, but also complements the systematic apparatus of the Theory of Communicative Action. The approach can be described as a kind of theoretical reactualization while at the same time introducing revisionary traits. It is this tension that gives Habermas’ philosophy of religion greatest relevance beyond philosophical debates on religion. At the same time, it has a certain vagueness to it, which is most clearly expressed when asking whether the contributions of religion to the public discourse should be seen as a supplement or as a substantial addition to secular reason. According to Habermas, the problem isn’t reason losing its ability to give reasons nor them suddenly being incomprehensible. What is much more worrying is that justifications have lost some of their persuasiveness: there is a crisis of normative commitment (Verbindlichkeit), and thus especially a crisis of social semantics. While a narrow (domain-specific) conception of reason will tend to conceive difficulties with semantics as some sort of input problem, a broader, enriched understanding of reason may classify these as a proprietary crisis.

*** Introduction Habermas’ late work on the philosophy of religion1, which received much attention, provoked a wide variety of reactions. Yet, it has seldom been noticed that not only does his work give an interesting perspective on a possibly surprising matter, but also complements the systematic apparatus of the Theory of Communicative Action (TCA)2. *  Translation proofreading by Th. Cannaday. 1   This article is focusing on Habermas’ systematic considerations that preceded (and led to) J. Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie [This Too A History of Philosophy], Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2019. 2   J. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society and Habermas [TCA I], Boston (MA), Beacon Press, 1984 [19811]; Id., Theory of

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His approach turns out to be a kind of theoretical reactualization while at the same time introducing revisionary traits: revisionary insofar as the TCA’s methodological overhaul of the first-generation of the Frankfurt School was itself modified again to a degree. The reactualization it undertakes concerns a gap within the project of modernity Habermas had observed. He seems to understand this vulnerability both methodically and, to a certain extent, “ad rem”: The classical theory of modernity is not just in danger because it has been in one regard or the other construed incorrectly. Rather, it is the object, that is, modernity itself, that has become fragile. Habermas’ philosophy of religion contains in nuce a discussion about the nature and effect of reason in unreasonable times. On the one hand, there are striking parallels to Walter Benjamin’s ideas, which Habermas had already discussed decades ago. On the other hand, Habermas cannot fully utilize older Critical Theory without denying the revisionary starting point of the TCA. It is this tension that gives his philosophy of religion its greatest relevance beyond philosophical debates on religion. At the same time, it has a certain vagueness to it, which is most clearly expressed when asking whether the contributions of religion to the public discourse should be seen as a supplement or as a substantial addition to secular reason. Or to put it another way: Can reason bootstrap itself out of every shemozzle? According to Habermas, the problem isn’t reason losing its ability to give reasons nor them suddenly being incomprehensible. What is much more worrying is that justifications have lost some of their persuasiveness: there is a crisis of normative commitment, and thus especially a crisis of social semantics. What exactly such semantic contents are about – whether they exist, for example, in the form of a “reserve” or are produced within the framework of interactions – is a question in which it becomes apparent what actually is at stake. This leads us back to the point of departure, i.e. the theory of reason. While a narrow (domain-specific) conception of reason will tend to conceive difficulties with semantics as some sort of input problem, a broader, enriched understanding of reason may classify these as a proprietary crisis. This article begins with a summarization to what extent Habermas seeks to set himself apart from his predecessors by relying on a different concept of methodical standards (paragraph 1). His considerations can be traced back

Communicative Action, Volume Two: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason [TCA II], Boston (MA), Beacon Press, 1987 (19811).

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to his social-theoretical masterpiece, the Theory of Communicative Action. In more recent works, Habermas observes «a modernization threatening to spin out of control»3. Paragraph 2 follows the subsequent theoretical operations that see in this development a threat. With the intention of averting this development, Habermas has recently turned to religion. The compensatory forces he tries to invoke are supposed to support his methodical apparatus. Yet, these transgress beyond their supplementary role (paragraph 3). 1.  Methodical Distinction via Standards (Maßstäbe) Jürgen Habermas presents his Theory of Communicative Action, widely regarded as a modern classic4, as «an alternative to the (…) earlier critical theory (…) which is no longer tenable», as well as a new «framework within which interdisciplinary research (…) of capitalist modernization can be taken up once again»5. Habermas therefore does not abandon the project of the older Critical Theory, but rather intends to «remedy the deficit of the earlier Critical Theory»6 in order to «return» to the original aim of establishing an interdisciplinary materialism7. The key aspects of Habermas’ critique of Critical Theory: objections towards a mentalist paradigm as well as against rich historico-philosophical premises, are discussed as methodological weaknesses whose consequences can be summarized by three overlapping aspects. Firstly, Habermas diagnoses a methodological inconsistency in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s writings8. Secondly, theories of this kind – measured at

3   J. Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, in: Id., An Awareness of What is Missing. Faith and Reason in a Post-secular Age, Boston (MA), Polity, 2010, pp. 15-25: 24. 4   Cf. D. Strecker, The Theory of Society: The Theory of Communicative Action (1981): A Classic of Social Theory, in: H. Brunkhorst – R. Kreide – Chr. Lafont (ed. by), The Habermas Handbook, New York, Columbia University Press, 2017, Part III.35, p. 361. 5   Habermas, TCA II, p. 397. 6   D. Horster – J. Habermas – N. Luhmann, Ein Gespräch unter Abwesenden. Zwei Philosophen, die sich dreißig Jahre lang aneinander rieben. Detlef Horster führt Jürgen Habermas und Niklas Luhmann zu einem virtuellen Gespräch zusammen, «Frankfurter Rundschau», Nr. 271 vom 21. November 1998, p. 21 (trans. T.C.). 7   Cf. M. Horkheimer, The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research, in: Id., Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, trans. G. Hunter – M. Kramer – J. Torpey, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 1993, pp. 1-14. 8   Cf. Habermas, TCA I, p. 382.

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least by their own standards9 – are not powerful enough and therefore tend to be uncritical10. Thirdly, they also tend to be unscientifically11. «The earlier Critical Theory of Adorno and Horkheimer had coped with the difficulty of accounting for its own normative standard from the very beginning»12. While Habermas certainly seems to follow their lead in taking up the concept of a Maßstab, he believes, however, his take on the matter superior13 and strives to distance himself from them. This sets the bar for the according theory of rationality: By reconstructing invariable social structures (…) he aims to show how one can identify a multidimensional conception of reason that goes beyond its purely instrumental moments. Habermas finds such a potential for reason (Vernunftpotential) in the structure of human language (…) where it is already socially operative (and implicitly recognized) inasmuch as everyday interactions presume its existence and efficacy14.

Corresponding to its double approach, the pathology interpretations within the TCA are focused mainly on border transgressions15. In this respect, Habermas fears the notorious “colonization of the lifeworld” by systems16. Colonization has a twofold pathogenic effect: for one, the autonomy of the actors could successively be restricted by bureaucratization and monetarization. And for another, Habermas reaffirms Max Weber’s thesis that rationalization processes would culturally impoverish societies and therefore would lead to a loss of meaning17. As a successive professionalization is taking hold within societal spheres it becomes harder to fully interpret, categorize, as well as being able to compare these. This eventually leads to a fragmentation of everyday consciousness and in this sense, it is indeed a «phenomenon of

  Cf. M. Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory, in: Id. (ed. by), Critical Theory: Selected Essays, London, A&C Black, 1972, pp. 188-243. 10   Cf. Habermas, TCA I, p. 366. 11   Cf. J. Habermas, The Dialectics of Rationalization, in: Id., Autonomy and Solidarity. Interviews with Jürgen Habermas, ed. by P. Dews, London/New York, Verso, 1992, pp. 95-130: 101. 12   Horster – Habermas – Luhmann, Ein Gespräch unter Abwesenden. 13   Cf. Habermas, TCA II, p. 397. 14  Strecker, The Theory of Society, p. 362. 15   Cf. Habermas, TCA II, p. 185. 16   Cf. Habermas, TCA II, p. 355. 17  Cf. ibidem, p. 327. 9

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crisis that finds its causes not so much systemically induced, but within the internal, genuine lifeworld»18. However, this «peculiar self-devaluation of the lifeworld»19 is confronted by the concept of a lively public sphere whose aim is to compensate this tendency. In this case, it would try to reconnect centrifugal forces with forms of lifeworldly communication20. According to this, elements of the lifeworld would «somehow collapse»21 with theoretical necessity only where endogenous burdens further converge with exogenous22. These factors can therefore be described in a logic of extrinsic colonization. 2.  Modernization Spinning out of Control and Religious Guard Rails The term «postsecular», which is much used in Habermas’ late work, expresses a sociological predicate (…) to describe modern societies that have to reckon with the continuing existence of religious groups and the continuing relevance of the different religious traditions, even if the societies themselves are largely secularized23.

In addition to «empirical indications that religion has remained a contemporary configuration of spirit», there are also «internal reasons»: We could not know whether the long process of translating essential, religious contents into the language of philosophy (…) concepts like person and individuality, freedom and justice, solidar-

  R. Celikates – A. Pollmann, Baustellen der Vernunft. 25 Jahre Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns – Zur Gegenwart eines Paradigmenwechsels, «WestEnd, Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», 3 (2006) 2, pp. 97-113: 109. 19   Ibidem. 20   Cf. P. Nanz, Public Sphere, in: H. Brunkhorst – Kreide – Lafont (ed. by), The Habermas Handbook, Part IV.69. 21  Habermas, The Dialectics of Rationalization, p. 113. 22   Cf. Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte, II, in particular p. 766. 23   J. Habermas, Postsecular World Society? On the Philosophical Significance of Postsecular Consciousness and the Multi-cultural World Society. An Interview by Eduardo Mendieta, «The Immanent Frame», 2 (2010); https://mronline.org/2010/03/21/a-postsecular-world-societyon-the-philosophical-significance-of-postsecular-consciousness-and-the-multicultural-worldsociety/. 18

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ity and community, emancipation, history, and crisis (…) whether this process of appropriating semantic potentials from a discourse that in its core remains inaccessible has exhausted itself, or if it can be continued24.

The somewhat agnostic undertone refers to the method but not to the need of translation processes as Habermas makes systematic use of these potentials25. The flipside to the positive aspects of philosophy of religion, the threat to which it responds, lies in the danger of a modernization spinning out of control: at the moment, tendencies are emerging that would rather «counteract» the «precepts» of reason than promote them – «addressing the issue of faith and knowledge» is meant to «mobilize» against that, in order to arm «modern reason against the defeatism lurking within it»26. With this Habermas finally turns towards religion as a complementary resource for philosophy27. 2.1. Dialectics of Secularization Habermas systematically elaborates in the «dialectic of secularization»28 what is in danger of spinning out of control in modern societies or, in other words, how to prevent reason of becoming defeatist. He approaches the subject by utilizing a well-known phrase from Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. According to the latter, the «liberal, secular state is built on conditions it can-

  Ibidem.   Since 1988 Habermas has regarded religion as being without an alternative (cf. J. Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge [MA], MIT Press, 1992, in particular p. 51). Religious contents can be translated «if and when philosophy carries on its work on its religious heritage with more sensitivity than it has so far» (J. Habermas, A conversation about God and the World, in: Id., Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God and Modernity, ed. by E. Mendieta, Cambridge [MA], MIT Press, 2002: pp. 147-167: 163). With his Friedenspreis speech from 2001, Habermas starts to focus on «religious tradition whose normative substance we nevertheless feed on» (J. Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, in: Id. [ed. by], The Future of the Human Nature, Cambridge [MA], Polity, 2002, pp. 101-115: 108). 26  Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 18. 27   Klaus Thomalla differentiates convincingly five phases of Habermas’ relation to religion (see: K. Thomalla, Habermas und die Religion. Über die Entwicklung eines Verhältnisses, 2009, «Jürgen Habermas zum 80. Geburtstag am 18. Juni 2009»; http://www.informationphilosophie.de/?a=1&t=2540&n=2&y=4&c=75#). 28   J. Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, in: J. Habermas – J. Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, San Francisco (CA), Ignatius Press, 2006, pp. 19-47. 24 25

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not guarantee itself»29. Habermas consults it in order to «specify the problem in two respects. From a cognitive point of view, the doubt expressed concerns whether political authority still even admits of a secular – i.e. a nonreligious or postmetaphysical – justification once law has been completely positivi­ zed»30. Habermas argues that by understanding a democratic process «as a method by which legitimacy is generated from legality», the doubt would de dispelled31. In motivational respect, Böckenförde’s theorem is questioned as to «whether a pluralistic political community can stabilize itself normatively – i.e. in a way that goes beyond a mere modus vivendi – on the supposition of an at best formal background consensus limited to procedures and principles»32. Habermas also contradicts this interpretation: «The ‘unifying bond’ sought for is a democratic process in which the correct understanding of the constitution is ultimately under discussion»33. He adds: In light of the foregoing reflections, the secular character of the constitutional state does not exhibit any internal weakness inherent in the political system as such that jeopardizes its ability to stabilize itself in a cognitive or motivational sense. This does not exclude external reasons. An uncontrolled modernization of society as a whole could certainly corrode democratic bonds and undermine the form of solidarity on which the democratic state depends even though it cannot enforce it. Then the very constellation that Böckenförde has in mind would transpire (…) the transformation of the citizens of prosperous and peaceful liberal societies into isolated, self-interested monads who use their individual liberties exclusively against one another like weapons34.

In contrast to the internal factors mentioned above, such external factors could therefore actually jeopardize the project of modernity: My motive for addressing the issue of faith and knowledge is to mobilize modern reason against the defeatism lurking within it. Postmetaphysical thinking cannot

  E. W. Böckenförde, State, Society, and Liberty: Studies in Political Theory and Constitutional Law, New York, Berg, 1991, p. 112. 30   J. Habermas, Pre-Political Conditions of the Constitutional State?, in: Id., Between Naturalism and Religion, Cambridge (MA), Polity, 2008, pp. 101-113: 101. 31   «(T)hen the issue of a deficit of validity that must be compensated for by ‘ethical life’ never arises» (Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 104). 32   Ibidem, p. 101 f. 33   Ibidem, p. 105. 34   Ibidem, p. 107. 29

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cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘Dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naive faith in science. It is different with a practical reason that despairs of the motivating power of its good reasons without the backing of the history of philosophy, because a modernization threatening to spin out of control tends to counteract rather than to complement the precepts of its morality of justice35.

The idea of an existential exogenous threat corresponds again with the outline of the theory of rationality, which was laid out in the TCA and developed further at a later time. Habermas believes it would be a mistake to radicalize the question of whether an ambivalent modernity will achieve stability on the basis of the secular resources of communicative reason alone into a critique of reason as such; instead, we should treat it less dramatically as an open empirical question36.

The indication that discursive democracies were endangered can therefore be recognized as a recapitulation of the earlier colonization thesis. However, the present diagnosis, which prompts the thesis’ application, emphasizes that a noteworthy discrepancy between the systems and the lifeworld has already occurred and thus aggravates it: The division of labor between the integrative mechanisms of the market, bureaucracy, and social solidarity is out of kilter and has shifted in favor of economic imperatives that reward forms of social interaction oriented to individual success37.

2.2. Semantic Potentials of Complementary Forms of Life From the antonyms – «complement» and «counteract» – it is the concept of «complementary forms of life» (entgegenkommende Lebensformen) that seems to have lost relevance. Its most intuitive elaboration so far can be found in Habermas’ discussion whether «Hegel’s Critique of Kant» also applies

 Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 18.  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 108. 37   J. Habermas, The Boundary between Faith and Knowledge: On the Reception and Contemporary Importance of Kant’s Philosophy of Religion, in: Id., Between Naturalism and Religion, pp. 209-247: 238 f. [italicization JPK]. 35 36

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to «Discourse Ethics?»38. Hegel had pointed out, among other things, the conditionality of Kant’s moral ideas: Kant is vulnerable to the objection that his ethics lacks practical impact because it dichotomizes duty and inclination, reason and sense experience. The same cannot be said of discourse ethics, for it discards the Kantian theory of the two realms39.

As long as normative demands were imposed without regard to the world to which they refer, they merely reflect what ought to be (bloßes Sollen), an appeal whose validity and implementation seems at least questionable. «The same cannot be said of discourse ethics, for it discards the Kantian theory of the two realms»40, that is, in practical terms: the separation of being and ought. Nevertheless, Habermas, who rather tends to agree with Kant’s notion of invariant, quasi-transcendental structures, admits that in «another respect Hegel is right»: For unless discourse ethics is undergirded by the thrust of motives and by socially accepted institutions, the moral insights it offers remain ineffective in practice (…). This much is true: Any universalistic morality is dependent upon a form of life that meets it halfway [entgegenkommt]41.

Therefore, every universalistic and thus also discursive morality is dependent on complementary forms of life: There has to be a modicum of congruence between morality and the practices of socialization and education. (…) a modicum of fit between morality and socio-political institutions. Not just any institution will do. Morality thrives only in an environment in which post-conventional ideas about law and morality have already been institutionalized to a certain context42.

In the TCA there may be no “two realms”, but one can definitely find a divisio regnorum. It presupposes – to put it in the terms of the Böckenförde-­ theorem – conditions it cannot deliver itself. These conditions are nevertheless not necessarily irrational. This explains Habermas’, as he puts it himself,

  J. Habermas, Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel’s Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?, «Northwestern University Law Review», LXXXIII (1989) 1-2, pp. 38-53. 39   Ibidem, p. 49. 40   Ibidem. 41   Ibidem, p. 49 f. 42   Ibidem, p. 50. 38

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deepened interest in «religious musicality». With it he wants to elucidate a ‘flanking’ boundary condition. What «to complement» and «to counteract» exactly mean is explicated from three directions: a) from what religion is meant to contribute, its semantic potentials; b) from the functional void, which is outlined by the metaphor, i.e. a condition of theoretical validity and applicability; c) from the context of diagnosing a crisis of meaning, which has already been a topic in the TCA and thus links the main and later works. In sum, then, it is a matter of semantics, understood as a boundary condition for theoretical validity – whether assertions resonate and can therefore offer meaning. Furthermore, it is also about the success of society, the project of modernity as such (insofar the TCA tries to anchor this validity within the fundamental communication structure of society). Now, according to Habermas, we could «lend an unproblematic meaning to Böckenförde’s theorem» in «view of this experience of the secularizing recovery of religious meanings»43. That is in order «to conserve all cultural sources that nurture citizens’ solidarity and their normative awareness»44. This quantifies the systematic significance of the attribute «postsecular», for this «conservative turn finds expression in talk of the ‘postsecular society’»45. The aforementioned «disruption of normative consciousness also manifests itself in the dwindling sensitivity to social pathologies, indeed, to social deprivation and suffering in general. A sober postmetaphysical philosophy cannot compensate for this lack»46. But what would it actually mean to fail because of semantic deficits? Those who do not see themselves as belonging to a context of ethical life will, according to the theory, misuse institutional instruments as means for their own, monadic interests. For example, if the meaningful patterns of social contexts eroded, rights would only serve as «weapons». Critical Theory and public discourse must be equally open to «normatively charged networks of concepts»47. Practical reason provides justifications for the universalistic and egalitarian concepts of morality and law which shape the freedom of the individual and interpersonal relations in a normatively plausible way. However, the decision to engage in

 Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 110.   Ibidem, p. 111. 45   Ibidem. 46   Habermas, The Boundary between Faith and Knowledge, p. 239. 47  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 110. 43 44

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action based on solidarity when faced with threats which can be averted only by collective efforts calls for more than insight into good reasons48.

This is why Habermas recommends drawing on «all sources» of semantic potentials: besides those which a republican community produces by itself and which would supposedly suffice under other conditions, the religious heritage offers as well meaningful potentials. 2.3. Translation More esoteric sources obviously require some kind of translation, if they are to be compatible with: a secular public debate49, a secular state50, and a Critical Theory defining itself through the explicability of its standards. Borrowing from religious tradition must remain «harmless» (unverfänglich). With this vocabulary Habermas sums up his use of the «Böckenförde-­theorem» and in almost the exact wording51 he rejects political theologies à la Schmitt. Methodologically, a theory of translation is required in order to fulfill the intention of being able to guarantee the rationality of what is translated all the while handling the religious appropriately. To put it simply: When religion is called upon to «save the day», but first has to be translated, Habermas’ social theory rests upon the shoulders of his theory of translation. The Dialectic of Secularization thus describes this precarious act of translation as a process of assimilation which «transformed the original religious meanings» of tradition, but «did not deflate them and exhaust their meaning»52. It immediately follows that «Walter Benjamin was among the thinkers who at times succeeded in making such translations». Though, for Habermas, translations are not just something individual intellectuals happen to stumble upon. In addition, he drafts a genealogy that seeks to prove the continuing spiritual-historical entanglement of philosophy and religion: One route by which a multidimensional reason that is not exclusively fixated on its reference to the objective world can achieve a self-critical awareness of its  Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 18 f.   Cf. Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, in particular p. 16. 50   Cf. Habermas, Postsecular World Society?. 51   Cf. J. Habermas, The Political: The Rational Sense of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology, in: E. Mendieta – J. van Antwerpen (ed. by), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011, pp. 15-33, in particular p. 19. 52  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 110. 48 49

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boundaries is through a reconstruction of its own genesis that enables it to catch up with itself (…) and to overcome fixations53.

Thirdly, it is reconstructed in what way both the «philosophical discourse of modernity» as well as public debates feed on «motives and impulses of biblical origin»54. With this last aspect an understanding is reached where believing and unbelieving (or agnostic) citizens can meet eye to eye55. The «public use of reason by religious and nonreligious citizens alike may well spur deliberative politics in a pluralist civil society» and «lead to the recovery of semantic potentials from religious traditions for the wider political culture»56 (cf. the German edition: «bilden Widerlager zur Hegemonie einer auf Nutzenmaximierung eingeschworenen Zweckrationalität»). By salvaging such potentials, the «self-reflexive overcoming of a rigid and exclusive secularist self-understanding of modernity»57 would be thus directly promoted. A look at more recent writings gives insight what the translation process, which has remained comparatively dark so far, should be able to achieve. According to Habermas, the function of religion encompasses the development of semantic potentials for the formation of concepts, a responsory of good reasons58, «sufficiently differentiated expressions of and sensitivity to squandered lives, social pathologies, failed existences, and deformed and distorted social relations»59, the guarantee of relevance60, and finally an «awareness of what is missing». Considering the context of problematization in which they are situated, all aspects of this spectrum can be summarized as the semantics of complementary forms of life. The semantic yields that Habermas sees induced by translations thus illuminate indirectly the translation model 53   J. Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the “Public Use of Reason” by Religious and Secular Citizens, in: Id., Between Naturalism and Religion, pp. 114-147: 141; concerning the status, Habermas asks: «Could an altered perspective on the genealogy of reason rescue postmetaphysical thinking from this dilemma? At any rate, it throws a different light on that reciprocal learning process in which the political reason of the liberal state and religion are already involved» (Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 19). Cf. also Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte. 54   J. Habermas, Die Revitalisierung der Weltreligionen – Herausforderung für ein säkulares Selbstverständnis der Moderne?, in: Id., Philosophische Texte. Studienausgabe in fünf Bänden, Band. 5, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 2009, pp. 387-406: 405 (trans. T.C.). 55   Cf. Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, in particular p. 109. 56  Habermas, The Political, p. 28. 57  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 138. 58   Cf. Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 18. 59  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 110. 60   Cf. Habermas, The Political, p. 25.

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itself – the model which is of such central importance for the conclusiveness of the project and that yet remains methodologically underdetermined. «Faith remains opaque for knowledge in a way which may neither be denied nor simply accepted»61. Nevertheless, the translation of its contents is intended to produce arguments «which in principle can make sense to anyone, regardless of their metaphysical or religious convictions»62. This constellation – «to assert that there is a truth content that can be salvaged while at the same time seeking to get rid of the revelatory moment (…) which precisely constitutes the truth content as such»63 – is at least in need of further explanation. In any case, with the recent opus magnum on religion, the accents seem to be shifting here. With Blumenberg, Habermas refers to intrinsically convincing learning processes64. That is the «springboard»65 to the project of a genealogy of post-metaphysical thought66. According to this, a genetic explanation could be condensed into a reconstruction of historical learning steps that is plausible both ex post and for those involved. From the perspective of the preceding texts on religion it is a trait that is already there in its approach, which is now further developed and moves into the center of the methodological self-understanding. Nevertheless, the religious content, which the engagement with religion in a socio-critical intention must (at least also) aim at, is still characterized as opaque. So, it can be asked how this account (even in its readjustment) does relate to the methodological self-understanding that started from the TCA? This is not a purely philological matter. It leads us to the systematic question of a concept of rationality that is both diagnostically appropriate and methodologically consistent. Officially, the religious legacies should support the TCA and not undermine it. In this respect, Habermas had suggested not to portray a modernity that had become ambivalent in terms of «a critique of reason as such». Whether «an ambivalent modernity will achieve stability on the basis of the secular resources of communicative reason» would be an «open empirical question»67. Thus, there seems to be at least the possibility that the extensively discussed postsecular adjuvants might not be needed at all.

 Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 18.   Habermas, Die Revitalisierung der Weltreligionen, p. 398 f. 63   B. Arfi, Habermas and the Aporia of Translating Religion in Democracy, «European Journal of Social Theory», 18 (2015) 4, pp. 489-506: 494 f. 64   Cf. Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte, I, p. 67. 65   Ibidem, p. 38. 66   Ibidem, p. 69. 67  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 108. 61 62

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3.  Revision of the Revision From this point of view, the efforts of religious as well as religiously «unmusical» citizens to achieve a cooperative translation of traditions would add reasons and motives aimed for public reasoning in order to compensate for system-induced distortions and disturbances. In times of crisis it may therefore be beneficial to make use of them. In principle, however, neither the theory nor the project of modernity would depend on it. According to this, the methodology of the TCA would only be slightly modified. In emergencies, endogenous semantics could be supplemented by exogenous semantics. A quantitative understanding can be drawn from this as long as a) the categorical distinction between lifeworld and that which is translated is left aside and b) they can be summed up, so to speak. However, not less than three aspects of this weak, quantitative reading can’t grasp the complexity of the multifaceted argumentation. To adequately capture these a qualitative reconstruction of the contributions religion offers needs to be made. For one, the hidden religious potentials Habermas wants translated are obviously not just plainly cognitive or motivational68. The examples occasionally introduced with a recourse to Walter Benjamin already suggest that they go beyond additional reasons and argumentative support. Secondly, it seems inappropriate to define the role of the religious derivative as a mere quantitative addition to secular semantics. After all, this is based on the assumption that there is no essential difference between a) what has been achieved directly in the discourse or democratic process and b) what has been inherited from tradition, apart from the respective source. This leads to the impression that both can be replaced by the other. Then again, a motivation would only be effective «when the principles of justice become woven into the more finely spun web of cultural values»69. In this respect, the cultural thicket of the lifeworld differs structurally from the orientations that a society is able to reproduce directly. This circumstance calls for a more fundamental reading that acknowledges the «conservative turn» (v.s.). The fact that reproductions have to «become woven» into those sources implies a categorical difference between the two. Sources can therefore only be regenerated slowly or perhaps not at all. In both cases, there is a kind of ‘reservoir’ logic which in turn astonishingly coincides with the description of semantic potentials that Habermas derived from Benjamin’s late work.   Cf. Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 19.  Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?, p. 106.

68 69

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From today’s perspective, Habermas’ explication of the Theses on the Philosophy of History already seems to work towards a theory of post-secularity70. Thus, it speculates on whether there is a supply of prehistoric, subhuman meaning, which at best could be passed on, but not reproduced71. Following this premise, religions would have only temporarily granted harbor to potentials of meaning in the course of an asymmetrical geistesgeschichtliches development72, while those potentials would be part of a much older tradition «which points beyond the merely human»73. Only societies «who can bring essential elements of their religious traditions (…) into the spheres of the profane will be able to save the substance of the human as well»74. Either way, culturally intertwined insights are given a special status through which they qualitatively exceed anything communicative reason can spontaneously conceive. Precisely for this reason a postsecular society is striving «to counteract the insidious entropy of the scarce resource of meaning in its own realm»75. Thirdly, a quantitative interpretation conceals which contents of tradition are worth to be translated and for what reason. Why should, as already mentioned, human dignity be derived from the theologumenon of God’s image, when the human rights grafted upon it constitute a realistic utopia insofar as they no longer paint deceptive images of a social utopia which guarantees collective happiness but anchor the ideal of a just society in the institutions of constitutional states themselves76?

Assuming, firstly, that many functions of religious references go beyond the affirmation of secular semantics and, secondly, that there is a categorical difference between the two vocabularies, it becomes apparent that postsecular reason does not simply repeat the postulates of the TCA. Complementary

  Unlike Benjamin, Habermas focuses more on substance than on the production of meaning. 71   Cf. J. Habermas, Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism: The Contemporaneity of Walter Benjamin, «New German Critique», 17 (1979), pp. 30-59: 49. 72   Cf. Habermas, Pre-Political Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State?. 73   J. Habermas, Gershom Scholem: The Torah in Disguise, in: Id., Philosophical-Political Profiles, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 1983, pp. 199-211: 210. 74   Ibidem. 75  Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, p. 114. 76   J. Habermas, On the Concept of Human Dignity and the Realist Utopia of Human Rights (trans. en. rev. C. Cronin), in: Id., The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, Cambridge (MA), Polity, 2012, pp. 71-100: 95. 70

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forms of (ethical) life would then not be needed because convictions and motives could not be formally justified or generated; yet, these depend on a certain surplus in the form of a cultural embedding. Thus, what a narrow concept of rationality cannot produce itself would have to be added by translating, i.e. to devise good reasons in a persuasive way that would be more than a mere act of informing. There are two last things to note: first of all, it should be emphasized that this is a consideration that stands at the very beginning of the reception of Habermas’ great monograph on the constellation of faith and knowledge. While in any case, it can be said that for Habermas religion «is an appeal that» at least partly «originates from within his own critical reflections rather than being forced from without by extraneous theological ambitions», it remains to be seen whether «Habermas’ religious interest (…) exhibits the breach of a split conviction», as Lalonde puts it77. But these reservations aside, it secondly seems worth to focus again on the theoretical design of reason and truth. Habermas’ conception leads us to understand semantic contents as something that reason needs but cannot produce itself. From within the debate, Maeve Cooke, for example, has proposed to grasp truth less formally than as something that appears (multimodally). Habermas’ language-immanent, epistemic-constructivist account of practical validity cannot accommodate the possibility that moral truth is disclosed, in the sense that a space opens up in which truth appears, giving rise to experiences that cause us to see ourselves, our relationships to others and our relations to the world in new, morally relevant, ways78.

I understand Cooke here in such a way that a «critique of experience» would be the key to an expanded concept of truth and thus of reason. However, it should also be possible to bring together a concept of reason based on demanding experience theory with comprehensible truth criteria. Not only would one otherwise fall behind Habermas’ critique of the first generation. Our time is – and this is the salient point – characterized by the very instability of instances of communicability (Mitteilbarkeit). Even what used to be taken for granted turns out be (allegedly) controversial: think of “Post-

77   M. P. Lalonde, Theology and the Challenge of Jürgen Habermas: Toward a Critical Theory of Religious Insight, New York, Peter Lang, 1999, p. 83. 78   M. Cooke, The Limits of Learning: Habermas’ Social Theory and Religion, «European Journal of Philosophy», 24 (2014) 3, pp. 694-711: 707.

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Truth”, “Postfacticity”, etc. It is precisely for this reason that the renaissance of political judgment theory has also reached a dead end for now: However we may share Arendt’s optimism, her valorization of opinion as the sole coinage of politics and refusal to regard political judgment as making cognitive validity claims that can be adjucated according to shared truth criteria (…) leaves her unable to answer what is arguably the most pressing question for a contemporary democratic theory of judgment (…) how can we decide which judgment is correct?79 Cooke, nevertheless, recognizes Habermas’ model of translation as also inspired by Kant’s Third Critique: «Translation of this kind is an aesthetic activity in the Kantian sense of the term: it involves opening up new spaces of the imagination in which truth can appear in a new time»80. Her hunch is that an adequate account would show that a successful translation does at least three things. It re-presents the truth of the original, it resonates with the subjectivity of its addressees and it opens their eyes to new ways of seeing themselves, the world, and perhaps also that which is transcendent of self and world81.

While Cooke’s approach seems convincing both with respect to a more aesthetic notion of translation and its sources in Kant’s later writings, her own way of framing truth is another story. Conceived as “disclosure”, we would have to imagine it as a more or less successful, and thus more or less meaningful, access to an “original”. Now, an alternative to those alternatives would be to conceive ‘meaning’ more dynamically – for example as a quantity that either may or may not result from a judgmental reconstruction of given interpretations. This differentiation does not affect the time-diagnostic aspect as such, but it changes the way in which semantic crises can be located. Semantic crises would not be a problem exterior to reason but completely within, whereby the term ‘reason’ would then address the relation of socially offered interpretations and their subjective appropriation. In his Third Critique, Kant had already discussed how successful judgements and their corresponding opportunities

  L. Zerilli, A Democratic Theory of Judgment, Chicago (IL), The University of Chicago Press, 2016, p. 2. 80   M. Cooke, Translating Truth, «Philosophy and Social Criticism», 37 (2011) 4, pp. 479491: 487. 81   Ibidem. 79

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are interwoven when it comes to the relation between beauty and morality. Reason would need suitable (beautiful) objects in order to assure itself. Already for early Kant, beauty indicates that reason and reality match («daß der Mensch in die Welt passe»82). So, the counter-question, informed by time diagnosis, must be what might happen if this reason were to encounter too few suitable opportunities for successful judgment?83 In this sense, one could still follow Habermas’ persuasive assessment of a social semantics crisis – but it would be without having to necessarily engage in the substantial interpretation of religious adjuvants. For if the problem is rational, yet in a wide sense, possible solutions are likely to be as well. Jan-Philipp Kruse TU Dresden, Germany [email protected]

  Cf. I. Kant, Logik, HN, AA 16, p. 127.   Cf. J.-P. Kruse, Strukturprobleme politischer Öffentlichkeit am Vorabend der digitalen Revolution, in: J.-P. Kruse – S. Müller-Mall (hrsg.v.), Digitale Transformationen der Öffentlichkeit, Weilerswist, Velbrück, 2020. 82

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Abstract: Adorno’s critique of the culture industry, whose beginning occurred in the decade of 1940’ in the book – written together with Max Horkheimer – Dialectic of Enlightenment, is displayed throughout his entire philosophical career and responded to the distinct moments of development of the mass culture itself, from the predominance of movies and radio at its starting point to the subsequent appearing and growing of the commercial television system. Since after Adorno’s death the technological as well as the geopolitical situation have strongly changed, inheritors of Adorno’s critique of the culture industry have the task to re-evaluate continuously its adequacy to the always renewed situation of the contemporary capitalism – since the beginning of the nineties not only monopoly oriented but also globalizes. This article intends to be a contribution to the mentioned evaluation.

*** An account of Adorno’s critique of the culture industry shall be taken here under several aspects, such as the historical context in which it appeared, the economic circumstances, the specific technological development at that moment, its social and psychological consequences, and last but not least the aesthetic implications of the predominance of its products. As for the historical context of the «classical» culture industry’s critique, as materialized in the chapter of the Dialectic of Enlightenment entitled “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, it must be remembered that Adorno and Horkheimer, after a couple of years living in the United States of America as refugees from the Nazi regime, moved from New York to South California at the beginning of the 1940’s, planning to fulfill Horkheimer’s project of writing a book on dialectics. The remarkable facts associated to the relentless military success of the Nazis, the news about the genocide in concentration camps and the huge development of mass culture in the USA caused a change in Horkheimer’s project of a more «classical» book about dialectics towards one deep reflection on the reasons that led human rationality to become quite irrational – to the point that

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many technological achievements served from a certain moment on rather to destroy human and nature than help the maintenance and development of life on earth. It must be also remembered that in his first years in USA, Adorno had participated actively in the “Princeton Radio Research Project”, under the direction of Paul Lazarsfeld, through which he learned a great deal about the functioning of the North-American system of commercial radio and this constituted an important part of the factual basis used by him to develop, together with Horkheimer, a critique of culture industry. The fact that since the beginning of the decade of 1940 they were living not far from Hollywood also helped significantly to acquire knowledge about the back channels of the film industry, which was indeed quite relevant to the development of their critique. Another important fact that constituted the historical context in which Adorno and Horkheimer formulated, for the first time, their critique of the culture industry is that when they finished the first version of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, in 1944, the defeat of the Axis powers was almost certain, the end of World War II was quite near and the geopolitical situation, known afterwards as «cold war», was beginning to be delineated, being likely to be predominant in the post-war scenario, as it in fact turned out to be. In spite of the mutual efforts of both the communist block, led by Soviet Russia, and the capitalist one, led by the USA, in order to appear to the rest of the world as superior over their competitors, it is possible to find, in the chapter on the culture industry, an almost prophetic insight of Adorno and Horkheimer, according to which the differences between those blocks were less important than their similarities, which could be already noticed in the architecture of big cities in the most industrialized countries of the world: «The decorative industrial management buildings and exhibition centers in authoritarian countries are much the same as anywhere else»1. This kind of perception of the urban scene in the forties prefigured the conception of the contemporary world as a “verwaltete Welt” (administered world), that would fuel Adorno’s critique of culture industry as well as of the general social and political circumstances in developed countries for the rest of his life. One of the most emphatic references to this state of things appears in his essay The Stars down to Earth, written originally in English, in 1952-1953, following a research Adorno did previously in

  M. Horkheimer – Th. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming, New York, Continuum, 1996, p. 120. 1

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USA on the ideological aspects of astrology. In the conclusion of this essay Adorno states: The system thus characterized, the “verwaltete Welt”, has a threatening aspect per se. In order to do full justice to such needs as the one satisfied by astrology, one has to be aware of the ever-threatening impact of society. The feeling of being “caught”, the impossibility for most people to regard themselves by any stretch of imagination as the masters of their own fate, is only one of the elements of this threat. Another one, more deep-lying both psychologically and sociologically, is that our social system, in spite of its closedness and the ingenuity of its technological functioning, seems actually to move towards self-destruction. The sense of an underlying crisis has never disappeared since the first World War and most people realize, at least dimly, that the continuity of the social process and somehow of their own capacity of reproducing their life, is no longer due to supposedly “normal” economic processes but to factors such as universal rearmament, which by themselves breed destruction while they are apparently the only means of self-perpetuation2.

This passage is very enlightening, under many viewpoints, of the world’s situation during the ‘cold war’. It points out to its opacity in social, political and economic scenarios, which led many ordinary people to adopt astrology – strongly linked to the system of culture industry – as a guide to their lives in personal and professional matters. Furthermore, it refers to the arms race between the Russian and the North-American blocks of influence, which lasted until the end of the 1980’s when, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet-Russian block collapsed, opening the way to a process of globalization, under the unquestionable leadership of the United States of America. It is important to remember that the former existence of two powerful blocks, suggested by Adorno’s mention of a «universal rearmament», imposed during the cold war strongly limits to the influence of US-American type of culture industry, which meanwhile had become the predominant model in western countries; but, despite the efforts of its main agencies, this model did not penetrate the areas of Russian or Chinese ascendancy. The breakdown of the so-called “real socialism” allowed for the first time the North American way of mass culture to be predominant in the whole world, which allied to the rise of the then new digital media, gave birth to

  Th. Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture, London/New York, Routledge, 1994, pp. 115-116. 2

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what could be called the “Global culture industry”3, whose specific traits will be summarized below. As for the above mentioned perception of the urban environment by Adorno and Horkheimer at the time they wrote the Dialectic of Enlightenment, one should not be mistaken if one predominantly sees in big cities a symptom of what happened (and happens) also in contemporary cultural life as a whole, what the authors – referring to the previously mentioned expression “administered world” – recurrently term a «false identity between the universal and the particular». Concerning the relationship between culture and the aforementioned situation, they declare: «The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm presents men with a model of their culture: the false unity of the general and the particular»4. The topic of the false reconciliation between the universal and the particular points out the economic background, in face of which occurs the critique of culture industry, namely the consolidation of monopoly capitalism in the most industrialized countries of the world between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The dismantling of the formerly existing liberal capitalist economy, in which individual enterprisers had the chance to compete among them for the best opportunities to sell and buy commodities in a market dominated by smaller economic agents, generated a huge mass of economically and psychologically vulnerable people facing gigantic concerns – unwilling to share their position with any potential competitor and ready to defend it up to the last consequences. It would be interesting to consider that this “classic” monopoly capitalism could not cover, for reasons suggested above, the whole world after the Russian Revolution and particularly during the years of the cold war, when also in terms of economic orientation two blocks were built – the capitalist and the socialist one, associated, respectively, with the aforementioned US-American and Soviet influence. Once again, after the fall of the Berlin Wall it was possible for monopoly capitalism to be economically not only monopolist but also globalized and this has a relationship with the mode of being of the contemporary culture industry – a topic that is going to be briefly discussed below. But taking into account the rise of the “classic” culture industry, in the aforementioned scene of an insurmountable «gap between chorus and leaders»5, and of political and social lack of transparency, in which «the objective 3   Cf. S. Lasch - C. Lury, Global Culture Industry, Cambridge (UK)/Malden (USA), Polity Press, 2008. 4   Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 120-121. 5   Ibidem, p. 132.

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social tendency is incarnate in the hidden subjective purpose of company directors»6 the mass culture appeared, taking advantage, on the one hand, of the demand for entertainment by the new – and quite numerous – class of urban employees, and, on the other, of the technological availability and the potential for ideological manipulation of the recently devised media like movies, radio and audio records. The use of these then new media by the rising mass culture points out, however, to its dependency on the leading branches of monopolized capitalist industry; and, although the culture industry tried from its very beginning to organize itself as a set of cultural concerns, created after the model of «the most powerful sectors of industry – steel, petroleum, electricity, and chemicals»7, the predominance and utmost power of decision of these branches were unquestionable. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, «culture monopolies are weak and dependent in comparison»8 to them. But in spite of the mistrust devoted at first to it on the part of the previously mentioned established monopolies, the culture industry since its beginning played an important ideological role in the society of late capitalism, namely, the one of generating the appearance of economic concurrence and freedom of enterprising in a situation in which the power of the very big players in business rules absolutely. In the words of Adorno and Horkheimer: «Whereas today in material production the mechanism of supply and demand is disintegrating, in the superstructure it still operates as a check in the ruler’s favor»9. Being more specific about this state of things, they state also: «The triumph of the gigantic concern over the initiative of the entrepreneur is praised by the culture industry as the persistence of entrepreneurial initiative»10. As a matter of fact, the concerns themselves try to keep the semblance of concurrency among them by producing commodities that are quite similar, except for some details, which encourage their customers to take time to compare them, as if they were very different products. Taking that into account, Adorno and Horkheimer affirm ironically that the dependence of the culture industry on the more traditional monopolies expresses itself also in the fact that the cultural commodities differ one from another just by some small features: «What connoisseurs discuss as good or bad points serve only to perpetuate the semblance of competition and range of choice.   Ibidem, p. 122.   Ibidem, p. 122. 8   Ibidem. 9   Ibidem, p. 133. 10   Ibidem, p. 149. 6 7

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The same applies to the Warner Brother and Metro Goldwyn Mayer productions»11. Concerning the social aspects of the culture industry, one could say that the aforementioned «false identity of universal and the particular» is displayed also in the specific manipulation carried out by the culture industry, based on a kind of retroaction, according to which the latent needs of its customers are scrutinized by its agencies and the products offered by mass culture take it into account, so that the audience has the impression that it gets exactly what it wants, whereas the ideological interests of the capitalist system prevail over those of the audience. About this the authors state: «it is claimed that standards are based in the first place on consumer’s needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger»12. This viewpoint remained in Adorno’s thought until his death, and in the important essay – which inspired the title of this paper – Culture Industry Reconsidered, he summarizes this procedure of hidden manipulation in another, precise and very eloquent, way: «The masses are not the measure but the ideology of the culture industry, even though the culture industry itself could scarcely exist without adapting to the masses»13. Associated to this process, Adorno and Horkheimer develop a deeply critical analysis of the role advertising plays in the scene of monopoly capitalism, whose threshold coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the culture industry itself. In connection to the evident authoritarian trait displayed by media such as commercial movies and radio, and connected to some of their technical features, the authors posit that in this phase of capitalist economy it would not be necessary that sellers explicitly advertise, since they have at their disposal more powerful means of orienting the behavior of the consumers: every cultural commodity advertises both single

  Ibidem, p. 123.   Ibidem, p. 121. In another very elucidating passage on this typical way of manipulation by the culture industry, Adorno and Horkheimer state: «As is well known, the major reorganization of the film industry shortly before World War I, the material prerequisite of its expansion, was precisely its deliberate acceptance of the public’s need as recorded at the box-office – a procedure which was hardly thought necessary in the pioneering days of the screen» (ibidem, p. 136). 13   Th. W. Adorno, Culture Industry Reconsidered, in: Id., The Culture Industry. Selected Essays on Mass Culture, edited and with an introduction by J.M. Bernstein, London/New York, Routledge Classics, 2001, p. 99. 11 12

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products and the economic system as a whole. Comparing the role played by advertisement in liberal capitalism with the one played in monopoly, Adorno and Horkheimer state that In a competitive society, advertising performed the social service of informing the buyer about the market; it made choice easier and helped the unknown but more efficient supplier dispose of his good. Far from costing time, it saved it. Today when the free market is coming to an end, those who control the system are entrenching themselves in it. It strengths the firm bond between the consumers and the big combines. Only those who can pay the exorbitant rates charged by the advertises agencies, chief of which are the radio networks themselves; that is, only those who are already in a position to do so, or are co-opted by the decision of the banks and industrial capital, can enter the pseudo-market as sellers14.

Some psychological aspects of the culture industry’s method of imposing itself, to a greater or lesser degree of subtlety, are connected to the overwhelming power of the concerns over both society and individuals. The masses, which are supposed to build its audience, in spite of seeking pleasure, should never be completely satisfied by the cultural commodities they acquire, so that manipulation occurs by virtue of a quite subtle psychologic mechanism. This is the reason why the culture industry only suggests the pleasure supposedly given by the possession of its products, but never delivers exactly what is insinuated: «the promise, this is actually all the spectacle consists to, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu»15. Taking into account the contributions of Freudian psychoanalysis, Adorno and Horkheimer point to a kind of violence cultural commodities perpetrate on the libido of their consumers, asserting also the relevant differences, which will be discussed below, between the effect of authentic artworks and that of cultural commercial products: «The secret of aesthetic sublimation is its representation of fulfillment as broken promise. The culture industry does not sublimate; it represses»16. The repression of the libido adopted by the culture industry once again is normally not felt by its consumers as a direct act of violence, since it works silently and continuously over their minds, leading their desiring life to oscillate between the two opposite poles of, on the one hand, an allegedly true

  Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 162.   Ibidem, p. 139. 16   Ibidem, p. 140. 14 15

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love, that in cultural commodities «is downgraded to romance»17 and, on the other, the explicit desire, whose completion in a sexual act is always hidden, when not eternally postponed: «Precisely because it must never take place, everything centers upon copulation»18. It is true that since then audiovisual products of the culture industry became progressively more “daring”, under the aspect of showing scenes of explicit sex, but this does not mean that its strategies to co-opt the customers through the colonization of their libido have become less threatening. This procedure of the culture industry is not gratuitous: as paradoxical as it can seem, it is connected with an illusory felling of freedom that its consumer may supposedly enjoy: since they are already under the spell produced by the repression of their libido, they can afford even to curse capitalist exploitation without constituting a threat to the economic system itself: «In contrast to the liberal era, industrialized as well as popular culture may wax indignant to capitalism, but it cannot renounce the threat of castration»19. It occurs as if the victim’s lack of reflection regarding the impotence induced by the culture industry turns what could be a critique of the capitalist system into an inoffensive phrase, devoid of willingness to act against the capitalist exploitation and its ideological manipulation. Adorno and Horkheimer consider the work of self-confident subjectivity, understood as «inwardness, the subjectively restricted form of truth»20, as vital to overcoming the political minority imposed by the culture industry on its audience and also as an efficient antidote against its subterfuges. One of the most common of these tricks consists on the practice of contests in its main media, in which one individual wins something supposedly desired by everyone, so that the mere partaking in the event, and the possibility of being contemplated promote an identification with the system as a whole: «Only one girl can draw the lucky ticket, only one man can win the prize, and if, mathematically, all have the same chance, yet this is so infinitesimal for each one that he or she will do best to write it off and rejoice in the other’s success, which might just as well have been his or hers, and somehow never is»21. Adorno and Horkheimer associate this typical attitude of the average culture industry’s customer with the idea of a “generic being” (Gattungswesen), namely a kind of behavior of an individual which reflects the mode of being   Ibidem.   Ibidem, p. 141. 19   Ibidem. 20   Ibidem, p. 144. 21   Ibidem, p. 145. 17 18

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of her/his species. However, according to its origin in the thought of Ludwig Feuerbach, this expression has a critical connotation, since it allows the comparison of the actual status of an individual with the possible complete realization of her/his species, pointing out therefore to a certain – bigger or smaller – degree of alienation. For this reason, the authors state that the fulfilling of the generic being of the mass culture’s audience is reverse: it happens after the least common denominator, pointing not to the best, but to the worst of what the species can achieve. Connected to this leveling down, Adorno and Horkheimer posit that culture industry abolishes the former existing opposition between randomness and planning: «Chance itself is planned, not because it is believed to play a vital part. It serves the planners as an alibi, and makes it seem that the complex of transactions and measures into which life has been transformed leaves scope for spontaneous and direct relations between men»22. Besides the previously mentioned historical, economic, social and psychological features of culture industry, it is very important to also consider its aesthetic aspects, which point out both to their connection with the previously existing “bourgeois” artworks and to the topics through which the newness of cultural commodities becomes most evident. Adorno and Horkheimer state ironically, several times in the chapter on culture industry of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, that the most radical examples of autonomous artwork are sometimes similar to the products of mass culture for the establishment of a proper idiom and also for the strictness of the rules both ought – for opposite reasons – to obey: «Like its counterpart, avant-garde art, the entertainment industry determines its own language, down to its very syntax and vocabulary, by the use of anathema»23. But this does not prevent the authors from noticing that not only does the complete transformation of cultural goods in commodities characterize the culture industry, but mainly it enables the declaration that its products are nothing more than commodities: «What is new is not that it [the cultural good/rd] is a commodity, but that it deliberately admits it is one (…)»24. If the word «aesthetic» is taken in a wider sense – also connected with the role perceptions play in the building of human knowledge –, one of the most typical procedures of the culture industry is what could be termed “confiscation of the schematism”, which consists in the fulfilling by its agencies of a task that, according to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, should be   Ibidem, p. 146.   Ibidem, p. 128. 24   Ibidem, p. 157. 22 23

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the responsibility of an act carried out by the cognizing subject, namely the junction of perceptions and pure concepts of understanding through its self-reflection25. According to Adorno and Horkheimer: Kant said that there was a secret mechanism in the soul which prepared direct intuitions in such a way that they could be fitted into the system of pure reason. But today that secret has been deciphered. While the mechanism is to all appearances planned by those who serve up the data of experience that is, by the culture industry, it is in fact forced upon the latter by the power of society, which remains irrational, however we may try to rationalize it (…)26.

Although this procedure of the culture industry is based on a very abstract concept, its effect is quite perceptible, since the standards on which the cultural commodities are based – the objective counterpart of the confiscation of schematism – are very similar one another and everything happens as if the films, instead of being seen by a spectator, would be seen by themselves; a song, in lieu of being heard by a listener, would be listened to by itself. It is linked also to an enormous predictability of the products of cultural industry and the authors state that, «as soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished, or forgotten. In light music, once the trained ear has heard the first notes of the hit song, it can guess what is coming and feel flattered when it does come»27. Adorno and Horkheimer point out that this does not happen with works of the autonomous art, which, for reasons that shall be made clear below, they are not so completely submitted to the standardization as the products of the culture industry and therefore they are unable to trigger the mechanism of confiscation of the schematism. Some contenders of this critique of the culture industry allege that, since the historical origin of autonomous art is linked with the power of ruling classes, from the Renaissance to the present, this kind of art would be therefore subordinate to their class interests. Adorno and Horkheimer’s answer would be that the aesthetic complexity of autonomous art, due to the intricate formal elaboration inscribed in its works, encapsulates a message directed to all humankind, in spite of its class origin, since it postulates a world free from the dictatorship of utility: «The purity of bourgeois art, which hypostasized itself as world of freedom in

  Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag, 1976, pp. 196-

25

205.   Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 124-125.   Ibidem, p. 125.

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contrast to what was happening in the material world, was from the beginning bought with the exclusion of the lower classes – with whose cause, the real universality, art keeps faith precisely by its freedom from the end of the false universality»28. Under the viewpoint of the psychoanalytical concepts employed by Adorno and Horkheimer, one could say that the aesthetic sublimation, which does not – or only barely – exist in cultural commodities, is co-responsible for this process of potential universalizing of the scope of the autonomous art. Furthermore, the aforementioned formal elaboration of autonomous art expresses itself as a dialectical relation between the whole and the parts, according to which – differently from cultural commodities that reflect the false identity of the universal and the particular, typical of the administered world – the details in a composition acquire the right to reverberate in the very structure of the work, also prefiguring a world in which the individuals not only would not be menaced by the social whole but could also influence determinately in its shape. This feature of the autonomous art leads to the consideration of the concept of style, as it appears in the chapter on the culture industry of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. According to it, before the advent of mass culture, the style of a work consisted of a confluence of objective elements, given by a previously established shape, and subjective moments, furnished by the imagination of a creative artist. After the rise of the culture industry, style came to mean the subordination of a producer’s skills to very strict templates, that leaves to the producer little space to practice any freedom of artistic creation, molding what Adorno and Horkheimer term «artificial style», «which is imposed from without on the refractory impulses of a form»29. For that reason the authors call the culture industry, «the most rigid of all styles»30, in whose realm there is no opportunity for dialectic interaction between subjective and objective elements inside a cultural good. The comparison of artwork and cultural commodity leads to another very important aesthetic topic connected to the critique of culture industry, namely, the role played in the past by what the authors term “light art” and what happened to it after mass culture arose. According to them, there was light art as a form of craftlike entertainment previous to the birth of mass culture, which thereafter had its spontaneous and authentic elements expropriated in order to subordinate them to commercial and ideological purposes: «Amuse-

  Ibidem, p. 135.   Ibidem, p. 129. 30   Ibidem, p. 131. 28 29

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ment and all the elements of culture industry existed long before the latter came into existence. Now they are taken over from above and brought up to date»31. To be more specific, Adorno and Horkheimer refer to varieté, circus, fair, etc. and give an account of how they were appropriated by culture industry. But adds nothing to the more complex art forms, when this is forced to get into the field of entertainment. To the authors, the limits of each sphere of cultural praxis must be respected, but the culture industry does not take this into account: «Least of all can the antithesis be reconciled by absorbing light into serious art, or vice versa. But that is what the culture industry attempts»32. Like other important topics of the critique of culture industry from the Dialectic of Enlightenment, the dialectical relation between erudite and popular art is also regarded by Adorno in the aforementioned essay from the sixties Culture Industry Reconsidered, however with different terms: The culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above. To the detriment of both it forces together the spheres of high and low art, separated for thousands of years. The seriousness of high art is destroyed in speculation about its efficacy; the seriousness of the lower perishes with the civilizational constraints imposed on the rebellious resistance inherent within it as long as social control was not yet total33.

The mention of a “lower art” points to a discussion that exists since the moment in which Adorno and Horkheimer wrote the Dialectic of Enlightenment and remains a topic of dispute up to today among theoreticians of mass culture. Many of them accuse Adorno (alone or together with Horkheimer) of being elitist for postulating a superiority of “erudite” culture over the “popular” one. Besides the fact that, differently from what many North-American authors do, it is not correct to equate popular culture with the products of the culture industry, it is possible that there are some issues on Adorno’s viewpoint that could be discussed under the light of events that, during his time, either did not exist or were not so evident and now are quite obvious. The most important of these events is the rise of a model of urban youth culture, normally connected with peripheral areas of big cities – locally carried out but globally conceived –, that in certain cases link elements of “erudite” and authentic “popular” art, attempting to remain in the margins of the mainstream of the culture industry (although appropriating some of

  Ibidem, p. 135.   Ibidem, p. 135. 33   Adorno, Culture Industry Reconsidered, pp. 98-99. 31 32

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its techniques) and thus giving birth to a virtual new kind of – alternative – cultural phenomenon34. Looking back once again to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of the culture industry, it is interesting to focus on their discussion regarding the destiny of tragedy in the realm of mass culture. They recognized that, although in ancient Greece there was no conception of subjectivity like the one developed in the Western World after the Renaissance, the tragic substance was about the confrontation between an individual – the tragic hero – and general forces that could annihilate him or her, which mutatis mutandis was still valid to the age of liberal capitalism, in which individuals that bore features of genuine subjects supposedly existed, capable of facing to seemingly insurmountable powers. But since the advent of monopoly capitalism, when «everybody became an employee»35, there would no longer be people bearing the qualities of a tragic hero and therefore able to confront universal and impersonal powers like the ones of big capital, authentic tragic substance is no longer possible: «Hence tragedy is discarded. Once the opposition of the individual to society was its substance. (…) Today tragedy has melted away into the nothingness of that false identity of society and individual, whose terror still shows for a moment in the empty semblance of the tragic»36. But in its practice of appropriating both popular and erudite contents as an attempt to make its products more attractive to customers, the culture industry reduces the tragic element to the formula «getting into trouble and out again»37. Besides this weakening of genres that in the past were very relevant, such as tragedy, there is also the phenomenon of the fetichism that adheres cultural goods. Presupposing that the cultural product possesses – as other commodities – use value and exchange value, being the former connected to the aesthetic enjoyment and the latter being an expression of the price the good displays in the market. The pleasure, however, experienced by a subject concerning something beautiful, according to a formula of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, is uninterested and related to a «purposefulness without purpose»38, which made the term “use value” problematic from the beginning, when applied to aesthetic objects. But Adorno and Horkheimer assure that,

34   Cf. R. Duarte, Social-Aesthetic Constructs Peripheral Cultural Phenomena in a New Key, in: Z. Somhegyi – M. Ryynänen, Aesthetics in Dialogue: Applying Philosophy of Art in a Global World, Berlin, Peter Lang Verlag, 2020, pp. 107-118. 35   Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 153. 36   Ibidem, p. 153-154. 37   Ibidem, p. 152. 38   Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1988, pp. 116 ff.

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under the auspices of the culture industry, a reversion occurs, according to which the use value of a cultural good turns fully dependent on its exchange value, becoming thus weakened. This happens because what in the use value would be an element of potential universality of artworks – connected with the uninterested pleasure they yield, and according to the scheme explained above, with its resistance against the general prevalence of utility – is rendered powerless: The principle of idealistic aesthetics – purposefulness without a purpose – reverses the scheme of things to which bourgeois art conforms socially: purposelessness for the purposes declared by the market. (…) The use value of art, its mode of being, is treated as a fetish; and the fetish, the work’s social rating (misinterpreted as its artistic status) becomes its use value – the only quality which is enjoyed39.

As for the technological aspects of the culture industry, its medium that firstly appeared as a revolution in the aesthetic expression was the movies, and therefore it plays a very important role in the respective chapter of the Dialectic of Enlightenment; although other powerful audiovisual media appeared in the subsequent decades, such as television and video-devices, even in the sixties Adorno considered film «the central factor of the culture industry»40. Among the several topics related to Adorno and Horkheimer’s approach, such as the delivery of social models of behavior and the optical and psychological effects of the photomechanical exhibition of films, their discussion about the passage from silent to sound film is particularly interesting, in which the combination of image in movement, dialogues, sound track and special effects yielded for the first time a possibility of reproducing with fidelity the empirical reality, causing a translation in ideology, which could put aside discourse as its main practice and adopt the simple exhibition of moving images as a much more effective means of establishing patterns of behavior, economically (influence over consumers) as well as politically (appeasing of potential rage against capitalism exploitation). The authors summarize it this way: «Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound film, far surpassing the theater of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviate from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality»41.

  Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 158.   Adorno, Culture Industry Reconsidered, p. 100. 41   Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 126. 39 40

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And this technological potential to emulate the world perceived by our senses has drastic consequences on the willingness of the masses to subscribe to the most absurd demands of the powers to be, such as authoritarian regimes or totally precarious conditions of material life, since the realism of the audiovisual products is overwhelming: «to demonstrate its divine nature, reality is always repeated in a purely cynical way. Such a photological proof is of course not stringent, but it is overpowering»42. The reflection on the effects of the fidelity of sounds and images produced by the apparatuses of the culture industry went on being a topic to Adorno also in the sixties, when he summarized this process of transforming cultural commodities in surrogates of external reality and its subjective effects on the audience this way: «The result for the physiognomy of the culture industry is essentially a mixture of streamlining, photographic hardness and precision on the one hand, and individualistic residues, sentimentality and an already rationally disposed and adapted romanticism on the other»43. This topic of the realism of the audiovisual products became very relevant after the rise of digital media since the last three decades and it is a very important task for researchers of the contemporary mass culture to understand its insertion in the economic and political globalization, yielding what could be called a «global culture industry»44, in which the potential of the new technologies is not only to reproduce precisely a given reality, but also to simulate new “realities”, has increased exponentially, establishing totally artificial environments and producing, therefore, a quite new kind of ideologic framework to the globalized monopoly capitalism. The expression “photological proof” of what reality could be has acquired since then a whole new meaning. It would be interesting to add that these new possibilities of the “global culture industry” brought about the overcoming of the aforementioned situation of dependence of the media concerns on the once most powerful sectors of monopoly capitalism, since they are now closely linked to them and no longer target of their mistrust45. Returning, however, to the critique of the previously existing culture industry: its other medium that drew strongly Adorno and Horkheimer’s

  Ibidem, pp. 147-148.   Adorno, Culture Industry Reconsidered, p. 101. 44   Cf. R. Duarte, Zurürck in die Zukunft. Die kritische Theorie der Kulturindustrie und die»Globalisierung«, «Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie», 10 (2000), pp. 61-71. 45   Cf. D. Prokop, 1985-1995: Globales Medienoligopol und Konkurrent um Software, in: Id., Medien-Macht und Massen-Wirkung. Ein geschichtlicher Überblick, Freiburg im Breisgau, Rombach, 1995, pp. 337-384. 42 43

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attention was the radio. Its position among other media is very special, for it could not compete with sound film in matters of complete realism, since it refers only to the sense of hearing, while, as above said, that type of movie – fully developed when the commercial radio system began to work in the USA – emulated reality to an extent unknown until then. But, on the other hand, radio conformed ideologically to the infra-structure of monopoly capitalism, according to which a very numerous audience should receive at the same time the same message of a single sender, without the possibility of an immediate reply to it and, therefore, getting ready to obey the commands of the economic system. The authors give a very precise account of this, when they compare the radio with the telephone – a previously invented device that then represented the liberal model of capitalism, that was at the time almost completely surpassed: «The step from the telephone to the radio has clearly distinguished the roles. The former still allowed the subscriber to play the role of subject, and was liberal. The latter is democratic: it turns all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same»46. As a matter of fact, when Adorno and Horkheimer declare that the radio is «democratic», they do not mean democracy in a substantive sense, but as an expression of a mass society, that is typical of what they termed – the aforementioned – “administered world”. It means that the commercial radio system established what was then a new degree of manipulation of the masses, since its technological structure allows the overcoming of liberal leftovers, active in the very first phase of the culture industry, dominated mainly by motion pictures and still bearing the need to exhale liberalism in the ideological super-structure of society, whereas monopoly already ruled in its economic infra-structure. Adorno and Horkheimer were quite aware of this fact when they declared: «Radio, the progressive latecomer of mass culture, draws all the consequences at present denied the film by its pseudo-market. The technical structure of the commercial radio system makes it immune from liberal deviations such as those the movie industrialists can still permit themselves in their own sphere»47. To be sure, the mentioned «technical structure of the commercial radio system», precisely for its authoritative feature, served as a means not only to establish the conformity of the masses to a monopolistic capitalist society – still displaying some liberal traits –, but also to maintain the public order in an

  Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 121-122.   Ibidem, p. 159.

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openly totalitarian regime, as the Nazi dictatorship in Germany after 1933: «The National Socialists knew that the wireless gave shape to their cause just as the printing press did to the Reformation»48. Another remarkable trait of the commercial radio system in the midst of the culture industry’s realm – and probably helping to keep alive the appearance of liberalism – is its allowance of the free offering of cultural products, without getting fees from the listeners, since the sponsors are in charge of the costs, which seems to be a truly public service, such as parks, museums and other facilities open freely (other for low prices) to the public. These circumstances point to the aforementioned fetishism of cultural goods, through which their use value is fully absorbed by their exchange-value, but now in the sense that the gratuity of a certain cultural commodity causes the audience to be willing to subscribe to the system as whole. Adorno and Horkheimer believe that this phenomenon, seemingly positive to art and artists, is in fact harmful to them, since it causes a kind of general devaluation of the cultural goods: «Even in the early, prosperous days of business, exchange-value did carry use value as mere appendix but had developed it as a prerequisite for its own existence; this was socially helpful for works of art»49. Thereafter the practice that became predominant in commercial radio is the apparently free offer of cultural products, even of a supposedly higher artistic value like symphonies, for instance – a practice that was extensively and deeply analyzed by Adorno during his aforementioned partaking in the Princeton Radio Research Project, in his first years as an émigré in the USA50. About this supposedly public service offered by the commercial radio system Adorno and Horkheimer state: Ultimately, the culture industry no longer even needs to directly pursue everywhere the profit interests from which it originated. These interests have become objectified in its ideology and have even made themselves independent of the compulsion to sell the cultural commodities. Which must be swallowed anyway. The culture industry turns into public relations, the manufacturing of ‘goodwill’ per se, without regard for particular firms or sellable objects. Brought to bear is a general uncritical consensus, advertisements produced for the world, so that each product of the culture industry becomes its own advertisement51.

  Ibidem.   Ibidem, p. 160. 50   See, among others, Radio Physiognomics, A Social Critique of Radio Music and The Radio Symphony: an Experiment in Music, in: TH. Adorno, Currents of Music, Malden, Polity, 2009, pp. 41-162. 51   Adorno, Culture Industry Reconsidered, p. 100. 48 49

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A mention of this practice of broadcasting symphonies in North American commercial radio stations in the decade of 1930 occurs in the chapter on culture industry of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, introducing the discussion about how a still non existent commercial system of television could look like, that would be analogous to the commercial radio in its basic structures, adding, however, moving images to the sonorous messages and enclosing new, then unsuspected potentialities to mass culture: The symphony becomes a reward for listening to the radio, and – if technology had its way – the film would be delivered to people’s homes as happens with the radio. It is moving toward the commercial system. Television points the way to a development which might easily enough force the Warner Brothers into what would certainly be the unwelcome position of serious musicians and cultural conservatives52.

The mentioning of the possibility of delivering films at home refers to the commercial system of television as a possible future development of the culture industry and it is almost prophetic of a development which in that time was wholly unforeseen and today is very common, namely the streaming through the Internet of audiovisual products like series and feature films. This development was then unpredictable also because the discussion on television, already introduced at the beginning of the chapter devoted to the mass culture in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, points out the fact that this medium was up to that time a mere technological possibility, still not properly inserted in the culture industry considered as a system, whose future as a part of this system was also uncertain. But at that time the consideration of television under an aesthetic viewpoint was already possible and the authors refer to it as a concretization, in a quite debatable taste, of Richard Wagner’s project of the total artwork: Television aims at a synthesis of radio and film, and is held up only because the interest parties have not yet reached agreement, but its consequences will be quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of aesthetic matter so drastically, that by tomorrow the thinly veiled identity of all industrial culture products can come triumphantly out into the open, derisively fulfilling the Wagnerian dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk – the fusion of all the arts in one work53.

  Horkheimer – Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 161.   Ibidem, p. 124.

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The approach to television, similarly to that concerning sound film, retakes the aforementioned discussion on the realism of the main media of the culture industry, since both refer to technical devices that allow an increasing fidelity of reproduction of sounds as well as of images and this points to the previously alluded possibilities of ideological mystification until then unexpected. These have to do with the generation of conformity on the part of the audience in a quite surreptitious way, through which it is very difficult to point to the individuals that they are under a kind of “spell”, that they act as if they were really guided by forces that do not have anything to do with their own will and whose interests are almost always opposed to theirs, although they believe that they do just what they want to do. To Adorno this is connected to the rise of an authoritarian social state of things: All this interaction of various levels, however, points in some definite direction: the tendency to channelize audience reaction. This falls in line with the suspicion widely shared, though hard to corroborate by exact data, that the majority of television shows today aim at producing, or at least reproducing, the very smugness, intellectual passivity and gullibility that seem to fit in with totalitarian creeds even when the explicit surface message of the shows may be anti-totalitarian54.

The effects of this until then unsuspected way of imposing a viewpoint as the reality tout court produce a social milieu, where every deviation is seen as pure subversion of the established order, which does not prescribe to people attempting to construct their identity by a critical insertion in society and culture, by means of a precise reflection about their origin and their destination, having the illusion of being free, being in fact points of convergence of brands of fashionable dress, accessories and objects of personal use: All are free to dance and enjoy themselves, just as they have been free, since the historical neutralization of religion, to join any of the innumerable sects. But freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to freedom to choose what is always the same. (…) Personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions. The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though see through them55.

  Adorno, How to Look at Television, in: Id., The Culture Industry, pp. 165-166.   Ibidem, p. 167.

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To conclude this exposition it must be taken into account that it is impossible to speak of democracy in a substantial sense, if the majority of the people is incapable of understanding the strategies of agencies of monopoly globalized capitalism, among which the culture industry stands out as the main ideological support to the hyper-exploitation of the workforce of billions around the globe – and, in a particularly cruel way, in the so-called third world. In his essay Culture Industry Reconsidered – Adorno’s last text dedicated to this topic – he blames the culture industry for being an obstacle to the emancipation of the people from the tutelage of the aforementioned agents of the economic and political dominant system. According to him, the culture industry «impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves. These, however, would be the precondition for a democratic society which needs adults who have come of age in order to sustain itself and develop»56. In this same essay Adorno shows his concern about the fact that, at that time, since the culture industry as a system had already imposed itself strongly at least in the Western world, even some intellectuals expressed themselves about mass culture in an apologetic way, tending to totally reject the position of its critics as supposedly elitist and even ‘anti-democratic’. About this fact Adorno declared: The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation of reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic. On the contrary: such reflection becomes necessary precisely for this reason. To take the culture industry as seriously as its unquestionable role demands, means to take it seriously critically, and not to cower in the face of its monopolistic character57.

Before concluding this article, it is important to say that, if in the decade of 1960 the position of the culture industry seemed to be unbeatable to the point of discouraging well thinking persons to undertake its radical critique, today the situation seems to be even worse, since the neo-liberal ideology attempts an alliance with neofascist politics58, being the culture industry an indispensable support to provide the ideological framework, so that the masses may conform to the loss of work benefits, reduction of human rights

  Adorno, Culture Industry Reconsidered, p. 106.   Ibidem, p. 102. 58   Cf. R. Duarte, Brasiliens Kalter Putsch. Oder: Wie aus dem Neoliberalismus ein eigenartiger Neofaschismus entstanden ist, «Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie», 46-47 (2018), pp. 262-266. 56 57

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and the introjection of the culpability of being under- or unemployed, as if it were their fault and not a structural feature of the globalized monopoly capitalism. In this context, the radical critique of the ‘administered world’ and particularly of one of its main agents – the culture industry itself – is more relevant than ever and, despite the aforementioned geopolitical and technological changes since the forties, the model provided by the Critical Theory of Society, particularly by Adorno’s cultural critique remains insuperable. Rodrigo Duarte Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil [email protected]

IS DIALECTICS APPLICABLE TO NATURE? THE “LUKÁCS PROBLEM” AND THE CRITICAL THEORY OF NATURE

Abstract: The article argues for the fruitfulness of a critical theory of nature, understood as an approach criticizing the reified forms regulating capitalist society’s interaction with nature. This approach is based on what I call critical materialism, which I distinguish from causal and practical materialism. To demonstrate the strength of this approach, I turn to the criticism – voiced by e.g. John Bellamy Foster – that criti­ cal theory operates with a conception of dialectics that is inapplicable to nature (the so-called “Lukács problem”). According to this criticism, the rejection of Engels’ objectivistic dialectics of nature left the Frankfurt School with a subject-centered dialectics undermining the idea of a possible dereification of nature and handling over the study of nature to positivism. In this article I show how Frankfurt School critical theory possesses the theoretical resources for overcoming this problem. In particular, I point to Adorno’s idea of constellations as crucial in rebutting Foster’s criticism and suggesting how the Lukács problem might be solved.

*** Runaway climate change, the increasing exhaustion of natural resources and the relentless destruction of natural habitats are but a few examples of the catastrophes unfolding today. The fear and anxiety inspired by the notion of the Anthropocene, the age in which humankind is said to affect the earth in the manner of a geological force, can only be understood when viewed from the point of the reification that gives society the appearance of a second nature, described by Georg Lukács as a realm of lawlike and objective regularities seemingly beyond human control1. What may appear as a tremendous increase in human power over nature inspires fear precisely because humankind, under the shadow of reification, has turned into its own murderous double, a lethal force threatening humankind itself along with the rest of nature with extinction.

  G. Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, London, Merlin Press, 1971. 1

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This demonstrates the need for a critical theory of nature, understood as a theoretical approach for criticizing the reified social forms that regulate our interaction with nature. Rather than offering a scientific theory of nature or society along positivist lines, the aim of a critical theory of nature is an immanent critique of the dominant categories used for structuring the relations to nature with the aim of de-reifying them, i.e. to show them to be historical creations rather than referring to timeless essences. A model of this procedure was Marx’s own critique of political economy. Rather than providing a new, improved version of bourgeois economics, his aim in Capital was to critically scrutinize its assumptions, showing how it hides or obscures its origins in class conflict. While the critical theory of nature can broadly be understood as a theoretical tradition working with the legacy of the nature conceptualizations in the Frankfurt School and the roots of these conceptualizations in Marx, Lukács and other thinkers, in this article I will stress Theodor W. Adorno’s development of this critique into negative dialectics a crucial step towards a critique adequate to the condition of the Anthropocene2. To bring out the strength and usefulness of this approach in a clear and economical fashion, I will delimit myself to a particular problem, which has often been argued to constitute an Achilles’ heel for Western Marxism, including the Frankfurt School, when it comes to theorizing nature, namely its relation to natural science. The eco-Marxist John Bellamy Foster has referred to this as the “Lukács problem” since it comes forward in acute form in the writings of Lukács, but he also sees it as characteristic of the Frankfurt School3. In his view, the latter failed to come to terms with natural science because of its socio-historical conception of dialectics that cannot be applied to nature. Its conception of dialectics, he claims, was a legacy of the rejection of Engels’ objectivistic dialectics of nature and led critical theory to turn in an idealist direction and to hand over the study of nature to positivism, something that in turn has prevented it from contributing anything of value in the debate on ecology and environmental destruction4. Steven Vogel similarly claims that Western Marxism, including the Frankfurt

2   For a fuller presentation of what I see as the main ideas of the critical theory of nature, see C. Cassegård, Towards a Critical Theory of Nature: Capital, Ecology and Dialectics, London, Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2021. 3   J. B. Foster – B. Clark – R. York, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2010, p. 224. 4   J. B. Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2000, pp. vii, 245.

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School, always vacillated in regard to natural science, sometimes criticizing it but more often accepting it as unobjectionable when limited to the sphere of nature. Its failure to explain how a knowledge of nature could be obtained that might substitute for natural science, he claims, led it to oscillate between treating nature as an ineffable other and as a social construct5. These criticisms are wrong in suggesting that critical theory lacks the theoretical resources for engaging fruitfully with natural science. In this article, I will argue that the Frankfurt School possesses ample theoretical resources for coming to terms with natural science. To show this, I start by going back to Marx. I do this to elucidate in what sense the critical theory of nature is materialist – namely in the sense of a critical materialism that should be distinguished from the causal materialism and practical materialism that has dominated Marxism for much of the 20th century. To answer the question how a critical materialism – associated with the immanent critique of the system’s own categories – can relate to nature and other parts of the system’s outside I turn to Adorno’s idea of constellations and show how it can be developed into a fruitful model for relating to natural science. The result is a theoretical approach capable of conjoining experience, science and a Marxist theory of capital, which shows how a critique aiming at counteracting the reification of nature is possible. 1.  Marx’s Three Materialisms Approaching the problem of environmental destruction demands an approach that is materialist, at least in the minimal sense that it needs to appreciate the dependency of human society on a material substratum, nature. But in what sense is critical theory materialist? My answer is that it is primarily characterized by a brand of materialism that I call critical materialism. This shouldn’t be confused with two other influential varieties of Marxist materialism, namely causal materialism and practical materialism6. Causal materialism is associated with so-called scientific Marxism. Here, the materialism consists in assigning a central role to matter as a causal determining factor, as in the famous base-superstructure metaphor. Matter  S. Vogel, Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory, Albany (NY), State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 3. 6   For an extensive discussion of these three materialisms, see Cassegård, Towards a Critical Theory of Nature, chapter 1. Cook also uses the term critical materialism for Adorno’s materialism in her excellent account (D. Cook, Adorno on Nature, Durham, Acumen, 2011). 5

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is viewed as an area of ​​inquiry where scientific methods are applicable, enabling historical predictions and the discovery of historical laws. The model for this form of materialism is implicitly or explicitly natural science rather than Hegelian dialectics. Since the causal link between base and superstructure must ultimately be seen as one-way if the term materialism is to carry any sense, and as existing between fixed, reified entities (such as nature, economy, ideology, and the like), this leaves little room for addressing this relationship dialectically, as constituted by mutually determining elements. When dialectics is applied it is in objectivistic form, as in Engels’ dialectics of nature. The typical weaknesses of this materialism are, on the one hand, that it tends to turn into an ersatz natural science, making it hard to see what it might contribute to the existing natural science, while on the other hand it fails to account for the role of praxis. This causal form of materialism was rejected by Lukács, Gramsci and other so-called Western Marxists, but critical materialism also differs from the practical materialism associated with such thinkers. In practical materialism, it is not the economy that constitutes the material element, but rather human praxis mediated through meaningful contexts reconstructed as totalities. Causal necessity is replaced by conceptual necessity, since the whole is simply a retrospective reconstruction of the meaning (or what Hegel would call the Concept or Notion) of life contexts. The core idea is that all moments are mediated through a totality in which they are part and which can only be grasped dialectically. Since the subject too is part of the totality, the latter must be understood as a unity of theory and praxis. The weakness of this form of materialism is glaring in relation to nature, a realm of objectivity that is hard or impossible to reduce to subjective horizons of meaning. Since this conception of dialectics is tied to society, the realm of acting and knowing subjects, the question of how to relate dialectically to nature is left hanging. This also concerns natural science: how can natural science be accommodated within a dialectical approach, if such science is the very prototype of reifying bourgeois thinking? Critical materialism differs from the above variants of materialism since it does not primarily aim to present its own positive account. Instead, materialism is used as a tool for criticism, which takes as its model Marx’s critique of political economy. Instead of transhistorically attempting to understand the entirety of history or humanity’s relation to nature, the dialectic of Capital confines itself to a critique of the constitutive relations of capitalism’s system. Far from being a ‘base’, the capitalist economy is seen as an idealist system that imposes its forms on an external reality consisting of human as well as non-human nature, a reality which it disavows even as it remains dependent

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on it. Since the system does not express the truth about its parasitical relation to this outside, it is a false or negative totality. The material element of this materialism is not the economy but the system’s outside on which the system depends. From the viewpoint of the system this outside can only appear as mere exteriority or as what Adorno called the non-identical. Despite this, the outside is capable of undermining and subverting the system’s forms, as can be experienced in the series of ecological or environmental disasters that are growing in severity today. To paraphrase Fredric Jameson, nature needs no particular grounding since it «is what hurts»7. Nature is not an objective body of facts, but what destroys our expectations and will make itself known to us whether we acknowledge it or not. If it hurts, it is real, or as Adorno would say: the true is what does not fit in8. From the viewpoint of critical materialism, the succession of environmental crises and catastrophes is a language by which changes on the material level are communicated to the subject. They are the non-identical write large. For someone aiming at a materialist investigation, the rupture that they effect in the self-understanding of capitalism is both politically and methodologically important. Under modern conditions of reified thinking, they are the voice of matter, the negative impact of reality on ideas, and they are therefore appropriate objects par excellence for the critical theory of nature. Critical materialism was developed in the Frankfurt School, above all by Adorno, into a model of immanent critique of the dominant categories of capitalism that takes its point of departure in the experience of non-identity. Unlike in Hegel or Lukács, it stands out by its negative notion of totality, which is not a totality with which to identify but to criticize. Rather than being constitutive of truth, «the whole is the false», as Adorno put it9. In its focus on the constituent forms of the system, it can take the form of a value-form approach to capitalism – as happened among Adorno’s disciples who later went on to develop the so-called new Marx-reading. However, against a pure focus on forms, it should be pointed out that the experience of non-identity always had priority to Adorno. It was this experience that was the motor of negative dialectics. The very will to do justice to the non-identical and to the suffering, pain and shock that arises from the contradiction created when forms are imposed on matter simultaneously becomes a cri-

 F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, Ithaca (NY), Cornell University Press, 1981, p 102. 8   Th. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 59. 9   Th. W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, London, Verso, 1978, p. 50. 7

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tique of the system, since the experience of non-identity has the potential to undermine then conceptual whole. 2.  The “Lukács Problem” However, the delimitation of critique to an immanent critique of negative totality raises the methodological problem of how to think the relation between this totality and its outside, which of course includes nature – for instance all the flows of nutrition, energy and other resources required to keep the industrial machine running. Can a critical materialism theorize nature, given that nature is external to the negative totality on which it focuses attention and aspires to criticize immanently? If the dialectic in Capital is limited to capitalism, can the relation to what lies outside capitalism be dialectically conceived?10 This issue comes to a head in relation to the so-called Lukács problem of how to conceive of the relation between dialectics and nature. This problem reaches an acute form in Lukács since his praxis-centred conception of dialectics requires a restriction of dialectics to human praxis while his general program of criticizing reification implies that the critique should be extended to natural science, the prototype of reifying bourgeois thinking. If dialectics is restricted to society, nature becomes a domain where dialectics is powerless to criticize reification and where positivistic methods are legitimate. Despite his intentions, Lukács therefore appears to land in a dualism according to which history and nature require different methods. As pointed out by Vogel and Foster this problem has haunted the entire tradition of Western Marxism11. A variety of responses to it have been proposed, including defending Lukács’s dualism of methods12, extending the subject-category to

10   This problem also relates to how an immanent approach can illuminate contradictions. If this outside cannot be brough into view there is a risk that the critique will merely map the internal logic of capital, neglecting contradictions and antagonisms that arise in relation to labour, nature, and other parts of the system’s system – a criticism that has frequently been raised against value-form theory. See e.g. W. Bonefeld, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason, New York, Bloomsbury, 2014, pp. 6, 10 f, 79; K. Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2017, pp. 15 f, 100, 113-119. 11  Vogel, Against Nature; Foster, Marx’s Ecology. 12  A. Feenberg, The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukács and the Frankfurt School, London, Verso, 2014; M. Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to

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nature13, pushing for a thoroughgoing social constructivism14, reconstructing a dialectics of nature in a less deterministic form15, and deconstructing the dichotomy between nature and society from the standpoint of assemblage theory16. Objections can be raised against all these proposed solutions17, but that doesn’t mean that no solution exists. Below, I will argue that the Frankfurt School does provide a solution to the dilemma. This solution, however, only becomes visible if we shift perspective from Lukács’s practical materialism to a critical materialism. A fully satisfactory solution, I suggest, must preserve the possibility of a dereifying critique regarding nature18. The solution can therefore neither be to rein in dialectics to society, nor to follow Engels and other causal materialists in attempting to discover an objectivistic dialectics in nature. At the same time, if the idea of a contradiction or non-identity between the system’s dominant categories and objects is to carry any meaning, then we must also avoid reducing the object to the subject or to society. That nature possesses an irreducible objectivity or independence from those categories is a premise of critical materialism19. That means that radical variants of social constructivism and the recourse to the idea of a nature-subject must also be ruled out. Below I will argue that the best way forward – and the only one that is consonant with a critical materialism – is to build on a usage of concept that Adorno referred to as constellations.

Habermas, Berkeley (CA), University of California Press, 1984, pp. 115 f; A. Arato, Lukacs’ Theory of Reification, «Telos», IV (1972) 11, pp. 25-66. 13   E. Bloch, The Principle of Hope, Vol. 2, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press, 1995, pp. 672 f. 14  Vogel, Against Nature. 15  Foster, Marx’s Ecology. 16   A. Loftus, Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology, Minneapo­ lis (MN), University of Minnesota Press, 2012, pp. 62-66. 17   Cassegård, Towards a Critical Theory of Nature. Regarding Foster’s solution, see also C. Cassegård, Eco-Marxism and the Critical Theory of Nature: Two Perspectives on Ecology and Dialectics, «Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory», XVIII (2017) 3, pp. 314-332. 18   Reification doesn’t necessarily have to mean that the ‘human’ content of a product of relation comes forward as a ‘thing’. Rather it stands for the ahistorical appearance created when dominant forms are imposed on objects (whether human or non-human). As a result the object appears to possess an essence or substance independently of the process of its historical mediation. Reification in this sense is clearly applicable to both society and nature. 19   This point is stressed in e.g. A. Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx, London, Verso, 2014.

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3.  Constellations and Natural Science Against Foster’s and Vogel’s criticism that the Frankfurt School’s conception of dialectics forced it to pull back from the study of nature, it should be pointed out that the Frankfurt School is not per se hostile to natural science20. What it is hostile to, is the mutual compartmentalization of thought and experience which lets each remain in abstract isolation from each other. This is what Horkheimer argues when he states that natural science has a legitimate place within a dialectical consideration of totality that weaves together different disciplines21. The problem, however, is how to think the totality’s outside from the vantage point of an immanent critique of the totality. A solution becomes visible when we recall that to Adorno, an immanent critique is never wholly internal to the categories of the criticized system; instead it always confronts those categories with the experienced non-identity between them and the object they aspire to cover22. The centrality of experience may seem like an anomaly for those accustomed to thinking of Adorno as a wholly ‘negative’ thinker, but it follows from his notion of the primacy of the object, which expresses a core premise of critical materialism, namely that the subject and its conceptual constructs are always secondary in relation to the objects that they attempt to master and control. As Adorno phrases it in Negative Dialectics, the primacy of the object means that the relation between subject and object is asymmetric in the sense that the subject depends on the object. Just as nature can subsist without humans but not humans without nature, so the object can persist without thought but not thought without object23. The object’s primacy is something that we ascertain experientially when we sense that our concepts do not fully grasp their objects, or, as he puts it, that «objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder»24. The crucial question then becomes how thinking can do justice to this experience of non-identity. Here we should recall that to Adorno, objects are not simply physical things of mere sense impressions or facts in a positivist sense. A childhood memory can be an object, as can the subject matter

20   See e.g. Th. W. Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, New York, Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 14, 251. 21  M. Horkheimer, The Latest Attack on Metaphysics, in: Id., Critical Theory: Selected Essays, New York, Continuum, 2002, pp. 132-187: 183. 22   Th. W. Adorno, Prisms, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press, 1981, pp. 17-34. 23   Th. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 183 f. 24   Ibidem, p. 5.

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of an artwork, a pollution incident, or the gaze of a suffering animal. The meaning of these objects is mediated by concepts. Phenomena like climate change, mercury poisoning or a pandemic are mediated through conceptual chains that include not only biology and chemistry but also things like, for instance, economic charts, court proceedings, the experiences of victims and much more. In other words, the meaning of objects is determined by concepts that dialectically determine each other’s meaning. At the same time, objects are contradictory since the concepts refer to experiences that can destabilize them. Let us take mercury poisoning as an example. Due to the history of Minamata Disease in post-war Japan – the single worst incident of mercury poisoning in the world so far – my understanding of such poisoning is coloured not only by medical or scientific accounts but also by things like dancing cats and dead fish, decade-long struggles in court, the ostracization of impoverished fishermen from their communities, the disruption of shareholder meetings by desperate protesters impersonating ghosts, and mourning survivors carving Buddha statues out of stone, among other things.25 Since these historical experiences have become parts of my concept of mercury poisoning, I must seek to do them justice when I describe the phenomenon. I will also need to make references to local history, to the overall context of Japan’s rapid industrialization, to other comparable pollution incidents, and so on. Importantly, this juxtaposition of elements does not produce a unified picture but rather highlight their contradictory character. For instance, the categories through which dominant institutions such as courts or corporations handle mercury poisoning are often glaringly at odds with how it is experienced by the less powerful. What is the spectacle of a dancing cat, not to speak of W. Eugene Smith’s harrowing photos of Minamata victims, if not a glaring image of the non-identity between the experience of a catastrophe and its official renditions? Often it is precisely such discrepancies that become the starting point for critique. This juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements in which I need to engage in order to account for the meaning of a phenomenon is what Adorno refers to as a constellation. As explained in Negative Dialectics, constellations differ from identity-thinking by bringing out non-identity. Rather than subsuming the object, they encircle it by a plurality of conceptual elements that need not be logically connected to each other. «As a constellation, theoretical thought circles the concept it would like to unseal, hoping that it may fly

  See e.g. T. S. George, Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. 25

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open like the lock of a well-guarded safe-deposit box: in response, not to a single key or single number, but to a combination of numbers»26. The most significant trait of a constellation is that it prioritizes the capacity to illuminate the object over the internal logical structure of the system. Rather than logical consistency, it is held together by its ability to illuminate the contradictory character of its object. The fact that it is the imperative to be true to experience that compels me to add the conflicting conceptual elements prevents constellations from leading to relativism, despite the fact that these elements mutually relativize each other. Springing from experience, these elements must do justice to the pain that belongs to that experience and which would be rendered invisible if viewed merely from the standpoint of the system. Although Adorno seldom refers to natural science, his idea of constellations indicates how critical theory can relate to such science. Nothing prevents bits and chunks of scientific knowledge from being included in a constellation. Thinking dialectically isn’t to do the work of natural science but to insert these bits and chunks into the constellation in a useful and illuminating way, without letting them take on the status of absolutes. This way of thinking in constellations is not only preferable to the rigid, dualistic separation between nature and society, with each realm possessing its own proper method. It also shows why the rejection of an objectivistic dialectics of nature doesn’t have to mean relinquishing dialectical thinking about nature. This differs from causal materialism, which either tends to rely on the existing natural sciences when discussing nature or to develop an objectivistic dialectics of nature that would need to challenge the existing forms of natural science on their own turf by imitating and competing with them. This is true of Engels’ dialectics of nature as well as of recent attempts to revive such a dialectics among eco-Marxists such as Foster27. By contrast, constellations do not imitate natural science by searching for impersonal laws operative in nature or society, but function as critical tools that illuminate contradictions in our experiences of nature. Such tools are indispensable for a critical theory that seeks to be practical and emancipatory. Constellations also differ from how practical materialism relates to nature. As we have seen, Lukács seemed to land in a dualist position that forced him to abandon the goal of dereifying nature and, at least tentatively, accept

 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 163.   Foster, Marx’s Ecology.

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positivism as valid in natural science. Constellations avoid that dualism since their elements relativize each other regardless of whether they are natural or social. That means that constellations can help dereify nature. Even if constellations include reified pieces of knowledge, in the form of science or official statistics, the overall effect is dereifying since no element asserts itself as absolute. There is therefore no reason to restrict dereifying critique to human affairs. The usefulness of constellations for environmental thinking should be obvious. As instances of environmental destruction from Minamata to contemporary climate change show, we are driven to use constellations whenever we try to account for this destruction concretely, in a way that avoids one-sidedness and prepares us for taking a stance and possibly act in relation to them. Scientific reports, charts, models and concepts have to be mobilized along with glimpses of utopian imagination, history, testimonies, personal memories or journalistic reportage. Without such a wide variety of elements, we would likely feel that we had ended up with a one-sided account. At the same time, not even constellations can achieve full reconciliation with the object. They build, however, on a recognition of misrecognition. Unlike in identity-thinking, the non-identical is not dismissed or covered up, but highlighted. No matter how many perspectives I juxtapose in order to bring out the truth of, say, the pollution of Minamata Bay, I can never pretend that my knowledge is sufficient to grasp the suffering of a single fisherman or dancing cat. Conclusion In this article I have tried to show how critical materialism can contribute to a solution to the question of how to combine dialectics and natural science. To present my argument in a succinct way, I have focused on the so-called Lukács problem. Engels’ objectivistic dialectics – long embraced as a mainstay in established variants of causal materialism – was rejected by Lukács and other practical materialists as deterministic and reifying of history. Lukács’s subject-object dialectics remedied this in relation to history, but at the price of a dualism between nature and society that seemed incongruous with his critical stance towards reified thought. Reining in dialectics to the social realm has handicapped Marxism when it comes to addressing the ongoing ecological crisis and the critical situation of the so-called Anthropocene. The way out of this dilemma, however, is not to return to a dialectics of nature along Engels’ lines. Instead, there is another solution

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to how to think nature dialectically that becomes visible by turning to the critical materialism developed by the Frankfurt School, above all by Adorno. Critical materialism offers the advantage of clearly bringing the forms that constitute the logic of capital into view. The Achilles heel of a narrow value-form analysis, however, is how to theorize the outside of the system, or in other words the objects, including nature, to which the forms are applied. The answer to how we can know what lies outside our conceptual systems is that we ourselves already belong to this outside through our experience. The outside is a world in which we are already part, by virtue of being alive, and to which there is therefore no need to reach out. Since immanent critique takes experience as its point of departure, it relates to the outside from the start. The problem can therefore be reformulated as a problem of how to deploy concepts in such a way that they do justice to the experience of this outside and of its contradictory quality. I have argued that Adorno’s idea of constellations helps us accomplish this. Constellations show how a critical materialism focused on the critique of negative totality can think the outside of this totality. The movement between the heterogeneous elements in a constellation aims at doing justice to the experience of the object in a way that doesn’t relinquish conceptual thinking, but from the standpoint of the criticized system this very movement of thought comes forward as destructive, as a purely negative dialectics. Constellations help solve the Lukács problem since they are applicable wherever a relation of non-identity exists between concepts and objects, regardless of whether those objects are classified as social or natural. Nothing says that they must confine themselves to the social realm. They can be applied to any object, whether social or natural, and natural science can very well form part of them. Rejecting the objectivistic dialectics associated with Engels therefore does not mean handing over the study of nature to positivism, as Foster claims. Nor does it mean forfeiting any ground for a knowledge of nature, as Vogel argues. Since constellations help us solve the Lukács problem, there is no need for a Marxist analysis to shun the subject of nature, nor to reduce it to a mere social construct or reify it by identifying it with natural laws. Carl Cassegård University of Gothenburg, Sweden [email protected]

SUFFERING AT WORK AS EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL PROBLEM

Abstract: This paper deals with epistemological and political controversies about suffering at work, with a special focus on debates about suicide at work. These controversies and debates shed an interesting light on the variety of methodological options critical sociology can choose, as well as on the specificities of critical sociology, by contrast with un-critical sociology. These controversies also show that political philosophy and critical theory should take more seriously into consideration the cognitive dimensions of ordinary practices of social critique. In a first step, this paper describes the meanings and functions of the concept of suffering at work. In a second step, it analyzes scientific critiques, epistemological critiques and political critiques of this concept. In a third step, it analyses the ways in which a critical theory of suffering at work can intervene in some debates raised by suicides at work.

*** In France, the notion of suffering at work is used in various forms of ordinary social critique of work organization and working conditions. In academic debates, it is mainly associated with one research project in critical social psychology of work (that of a «psychodynamics of work»1), but it is also used by some critical sociologists of work. This notion and its uses, as we will see, are quite controversial. These controversies shed an interesting light on the variety of methodological options critical sociology can choose, as well as on the specificities of critical sociology, by contrast with un-critical sociology. In this introductory section, I will propose a general definition of critical sociology, in order to disclose, in the rest of this paper, the distinctive characteristics of the type of critical sociology that is associated with a use of the notion of suffering at work. If one tries to define critical social sciences, or critical sociology, in the broadest meaning of the term, one would probably have to say that critical   For a presentation of this research project, see J. P. Deranty, What is work? Key insights from the psychodynamics of work, «Thesis Eleven», XVIIIC (2009) 1, pp. 69-87. 1

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sociology is specified by the fact that is tries to produce sociological knowledge not only in order to produce knowledge, but also in order to produce critical effects. Now, sociological knowledge can produce three types of critical effects, the first of which relates to a model of ideology critique, the second to a model of disclosing critique, and the third to a model of explanatory critique. Social sciences contribute to a critique of ideology when they provide empirical evidences that are incompatible with the normative justification of an institution or of a society, or when they show that some institutions that are often depicted as natural (for instance marriage, or private property) or necessary (for instance because they would be in conformity with economical laws) are only the transitory products of the historical evolution and of a series of social conflicts that could have had other results 2. It is worth noting that here, the critical effects of the knowledge elaborated by social sciences are only indirect. The fact that a particular institution or society is not justified by a particular normative justification, or by an alleged naturality or necessity, doesn’t mean that this particular institution or society doesn’t have any justification anymore. Here, the knowledge elaborated by social sciences gives room for social critique, but doesn’t amount to social critique. Social sciences can also contribute to a disclosing critique when their field work deals with social phenomena that should deserve more political attention and that are not enough taken into consideration in political debates3.

2   There are indeed various forms of ideology critique. What is meant by ideology critique here is not a social critique grounded on the normative content of ideological justifications of a particular society or institution, but a deconstruction of the ideological justifications of a particular society or institution. K. Marx’s critique of political economy provides an illustration of such a critical sociology aiming at producing such a critical effect, even it is also aims at producing a disclosing critique and an explanatory critique; see E. Renault, Marx and Critical Theory, Dordrecht, Brill, 2018. 3   On the notion of disclosing critique, see A. Honneth, The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The «Dialectic of Enlightenment» in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism, «Constellations», VII (2000) 1, pp. 116-127. The best illustration of a critical sociology aiming at producing such critical effect is probably to be found in the anthropological research program on social suffering. See notably: A. Kleinman – V. Das – M. Lock (ed. by), Social Suffering, Berkeley/Los Angeles (CA), University of California Press, 1997; V. Das – A. Kleinman – M. Ramphele – P. Reynolds (ed. by), Violence and Subjectivity, Berkeley (CA), University of California Press, 2000; V. Das – A. Kleinman – M. Lock – M. Ramphele – P. Reynolds (ed. by), Remaking the World. Violence, Social Suffering and Recovery, Berkeley/ Los Angeles (CA), University of California Press, 2001; I. Wilkinson, Suffering. A Sociological Introduction, Cambridge (UK), Polity, 2005; I. Wilkinson – A. Kleinman, A Passion for Society: How We Think about Human Suffering, Oakland (CA), University of California Press, 2016.

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Here again, the critical effects of the knowledge elaborated by social sciences are only indirect. It is one thing to draw attention to social phenomena deserving more political consideration, and it is quite another thing to elaborate a social critique of the causes of these phenomena. Social sciences can contribute to an explanatory critique when they show that there is a causal link between a phenomenon that is usually recognized as an ill (for instance suffering), and its social causes4. The critical effect results from the fact that if one wants to get rid of this ill, one should also criticize its social causes. Here, the critical effects of the knowledge are direct: knowledge doesn’t simply give room for social critique, it produces social critique. Explaining an ill by a social cause and criticizing these causes are one and the same thing. It is worth noting that in most of the contemporary programs in critical sociology, the search for knowledge is only associated with the first two types of critical effects. Constructivist sociologies want to show that what has been made can be unmade, while ethnographic approaches are often motivated by the desire to struggle against the social invisibility of the living conditions and practices of the subaltern groups. As we will see, in some cases, there is a need not only of ideology critique and disclosing critique but also of explanatory critique. And we will also see that this need can be felt within the ordinary practices of social critique5. If the critique of suffering at work provides an interesting illustration of what a critical sociology could be, it is notably because the very notion of suffering at work is intended to produce not only the first two, but each of the three critical effects, as we will see. The general definition of critical sociology, namely that it doesn’t consider that knowledge qua knowledge is an end in itself, but that knowledge should be a means for social critique, has many implications. One of them is that critical sociology gives a decisive role to critical concepts, that is to concepts that have not only descriptive, interpretive and explanatory functions, but also evaluative or normative dimensions. One of the trademarks of critical theory is the structuring role it has given to concepts such as exploitation, domination, patriarchy or institutional racism – denial of recognition, notably, can be added to this list. These notions are not only

  On the notion of «explanatory critique», see R. Bhaskar – A. Collier, Introduction: Explanatory Critiques, in: M. Archer et al. (ed by), Critical Realism. Essential Readings, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 385-394. For a critique of social suffering conceived of as explanatory critique, see E. Renault, Social Suffering, New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 5   E. Renault, Critical Theory, Social Critique and Knowledge, «Critical Horizons», 2020; https://doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2020.1790750. 4

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supposed to describe and make sense of particular social experiences or social interactions, but also to provide accurate explanation of their causes, and moreover, they are normatively loaded in so far as the very reference to exploitation, domination, patriarchy or racism entails a criticism of exploitation, domination, patriarchy or racism. As we will see, the notion of suffering at work has a similar conceptual structure: its function is not only to describe and make sense of negative social experiences at work, but also to spell out their social and psychic causes, and indeed, the very notion of suffering is normatively loaded. Another implication of the fact that critical sociology is elaborating its knowledge with a critical intention is that its knowledge can be subjected to three types of criticism: scientific critique, epistemological critique and political critique. Firstly, as all contributions to social science, critical sociology can be subjected to scientific critique6. The questions at stake are then the following: are the descriptions, interpretations and explanations relevant from both an empirical and theoretical point of view. Secondly, critical sociology can be subjected to epistemological critique. It can be argued, for instance, that social sciences should only work toward descriptive, interpretive and explanatory relevance, and that any attempt to work also toward another goal, namely critical accuracy, is incompatible with the claim to scientificity7. Thirdly, critical sociology can also be subjected to political critique. It can be argued that the critical effects that a contribution to critical sociology tries to produce are not politically relevant, for instance because the very project of a critical sociology would result in an undemocratic superiority of scientific knowledge over ordinary knowledge of ordinary citizens8. Of this diversity of criticisms also, the debates about suffering at work provide illustration, as we will see in what follows. In a first step, I will describe the meanings and functions of the concept of suffering at work. In a second step, I will analyze scientific critiques, epistemological critiques and political critiques of this concept. And in a 6   More generally, it can be argued that «scientific critique» is essential to science. This point is made in Marmontel’s article Critique, and especially in its section «Critique dans les sciences», in Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia (https://fr.wikisource.org/ wiki/L%E2%80%99Encyclop%C3%A9die/1re_%C3%A9dition/CRITIQUE). 7   The relevance of this epistemological critique is the subject matter of the debate between Adorno and Popper in T.W. Adorno (ed. by), The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, London, Heinemann, 1976. 8   This type of critique has been raised notably by J. Rancière, The Philosopher and His Poor, Durham, Duke University Press, 2004, and by L. Boltanski – L. Thévenot, On Justification, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 2006.

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third step, I will describe the ways in which a theory of suffering at work can intervene in some debates raised by ordinary social critique. 1.  On the Nature and Functions of the Concept of Suffering at Work I have already mentioned that in France, the notion of suffering at work is both a notion used in an interdisciplinary program, the «psychodynamics of work», and a notion used in ordinary practices of social critique. These two uses are not mutually independent. Psychodynamics of work, as a research program combining ergonomic approaches with psychoanalytic and sociologic approaches of suffering at work has been elaborated mainly by Christophe Dejours. His first book, Travail usure mentale (Work: Mental Wear) published in 19809, is the starting point of this research program. Now, one of his books, with the title Souffrances en France (Suffering in France)10, dated 1998, has been widely read and has contributed to the transformation of the notion of suffering at work into a notion belonging to the vocabulary of ordinary social critique. What is at stake for Dejours, as a social scientist, is to give due description, interpretation and explanation of various forms of negative social experiences at work and of their various implications for the mental health of workers: from musculoskeletal disorders to suicide at work, passing by burn out, depression and episodes of decompensation. The core hypotheses are the following: on the one hand, the psychic stakes of work are as important as the psychic stakes of our affective life and these psychic stakes concern work as a productive activity more than work as a social status; on the other hand, due to these psychic stakes of work, our experience of working can either structure and support one’s psychic balance, or undermine it. In order to study the various forms of negative experience at work and their implications on mental health, Dejours and his team follow a clinical methodology: they ground the knowledge they produce in psycho-social inquiries conducted in workplaces where the number of psychological problems related to work has been considered as alarming by the unions and the management. The method of inquiry consists in interviewing workers about their working conditions and the work organization, in order to help them spelling out the social causes of the development of psychological problems among them. The purpose is a co-construction of the knowledge of what is going wrong,   C. Dejours, Travail, usure mentale, Paris, Bayard, 1980.   C. Dejours, Souffrance en France, Paris, Seuil, 1998.

9

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a knowledge that could be useful for these workers and the management in future attempts to make things better. I have already indicated that in the psychodynamics of work, the concept of suffering at work is associated with a type of disclosing critique, a type of critique of ideology, and a type of explanatory critique. Firstly, the concept of suffering at work participates in a critique of the ideology of the neoliberal overcoming of the fordist-taylorian working conditions. Dejours highlights that the transformation of the taylorian work organization into the neoliberal work organization, apparently offering more room for individual autonomy and self-realization, is actually giving rise to new social pathologies of work, such as new forms of trivialization of social injustice and new forms of voluntary servitude. Secondly, the concept of suffering at work participates in an attempt to show that the main features of the contemporary social question are not only unemployment on the one hand, income and wage inequalities on the other, but also the neoliberal work organization. In other words, Dejours struggles against the social invisibility of some of the main problematic dimensions of the work experience. The political implication, highlighted especially in the 1990s, is that unions and the left should not only focus on unemployment and wages, but also on the impact of the new organization of work and the new managerial techniques on the very experience of working. Thirdly, the critical intention of the psychodynamics of work concerns explanatory critique. This explanatory critique consists in showing that suffering at work has specific social causes and that the seriousness of the effects of suffering at work fully justifies a social critique of these causes. Dejours shows that phenomena, such as for instance suicides, that are usually considered as having individual biographic causes can be caused by these social factors. Now, it is clear that if it can be proved that a particular type of work organization tend to produce damaging psychic disorders, and risk leading workers to psychiatric decompensation or even to suicide, then, a social criticism of this particular type of work organization is required11. 2.  Epistemological and Political Critique of the Concept of Suffering at Work This project of a scientific study of suffering at work has been subjected to a wide range of criticisms, and it is simply a fact that the notion of suffering at work is not often used by French sociologists of work, be they critical 11   On these various issues, see C. Dejours – J.-P. Deranty – E. Renault – N. Smith, The Return of Work in Critical Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 2018.

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sociologists or not. I will now consider briefly a series of epistemological, scientific and political objections against the notion of suffering at work in general, and more precisely against its use in the psychodynamics of work. The epistemological critique of this concept usually targets the fact that the notion of suffering at work has too much critical connotations, and that the notion of suffering is too vague. Economists of work will then prefer the notion of «mental load», and epidemiologist will prefer the notion of «stress». According to them, these notions should be preferred to the notion of suffering because they are both axiologically neutral and refer to measurable phenomena12. Since this type of rejection of the notion of suffering at work is based on the claims that scientificity depends on axiologic neutrality and quantitative methods, it can be called a positivist rejection of the notion of social suffering. The main shortcoming of such a rejection of the issue of suffering at work is that the notion of suffering can capture the qualitative dimension of some negative experiences at work that notions such as «stress» or «mental load» can hardly capture. The very notion of suffering is associated with the idea of a threshold of the unbearable; it is not the case with the notions of «stress», or of a burden, that are associated with the idea of that, although unpleasant, a higher level of stress or «mental load» can be endured. Now it is simply a fact that our working experiences can become unbearable. The purpose of the psychodynamics of work is precisely to investigate the variety of psychological and social factors that can explain why the work experience can become unbearable. Such an investigation cannot be based solely on quantitative indicators of stress or mental load. The second type of objections against the project of a study of social suffering at work concerns the scientific discussion of the best ways of explaining phenomena. The discussion doesn’t concern anymore the descriptive and interpretative relevance of the concept of suffering at work, but its explanatory dimensions in Dejours’ theory. In this theory, the concept of suffering at work has a twofold explanatory function. In the first of these two functions, suffering at work is the explanandum. As already noted, suffering at work is explained notably by the psychic stakes of work. It is because of this very explanation that this concept has a specific psychological conceptual content, and means more than simply a critical account of stress, mental load, or other unpleasant emotion. Because of its causal link with the idea of psychic stakes of work, the notion of suffering at work refers to suffering 12   See for instance P. Aszkenazy, Les désordres du travail – Enquête sur le nouveau productivisme, Paris, Seuil, 2004.

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as affect than simply as an unpleasant emotion, and this notion is associated with a theory of the dynamic relations between suffering and individual or collective defenses against suffering. In its second explanatory dimension, suffering at work is the explanans. Suffering at work is depicted as one of the explanatory factors a set of phenomena (such as psychic disorders, trivialization of social injustice or voluntary servitude). Each of these explanatory dimensions of the concept of suffering at work has been subjected to empirical and theoretical objections. For instance, the French sociologist of work Christian Baudelot and the statistician Michel Gollac have published a book, with the title Travailler pour être heureux (Work in Order to be Happy)13, where they contend that it is only for highly qualified workers that work is the subject-matter of a significant psychological investment. For workers located in the lowest ranks of the industrial hierarchy, work is rather a material necessity. As a result, it would be wrong to consider that a theory of the psychic stakes of work is general enough to provide an explanation of the fact that there is suffering at work at all levels of the industrial hierarchy. Suffering at work, here deprived of its very psychological dimension and reduced to some kind of unpleasant emotion, would have to be explained by a degradation of the working conditions. The explanatory power of suffering at work also has been disputed. For instance, the sociologist of work François Vatin has written an article with the title La question des suicides au travail (The Issue of Suicide at Work)14 where he has argued that the sociological truth is that work, by contrast with unemployment, protects from suicide, and that there are no empirical evidences that the suicides occurring at the workplace, for instance, should be explained by the work organization and the working conditions rather than by other types of factors, such as biographical factors, or difficulty to adapt to institutional transformations. It is interesting to note that in these two scientific criticisms, it is assumed that the sociological methods (qualitative and quantitative analysis of a questionnaire in the first case, analysis of the statistical data in the second case) are the best methods to study suffering at work and its implications. In Baudelot and Gollac, it is assumed that something more than a questionnaire, such as a biographical interview or a clinical investigation, is not necessary in order to decide whether or not there are psychic stakes 13   C. Baudelot – M. Gollac, Travailler pour être heureux? Le Bonheur et le travail en France, Paris, Fayard, 2003. 14   F. Vatin, La question des suicides au travail, «Commentaire», CXXXIV (2011), pp. 405416.

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of work for the less qualified workers. The sociological orthodoxy is even clearer in Vatin’s criticism of the explanation of suicide at work by suffering at work. At the beginning of his article, he highlights that the only sociological explanation of suicide is based on statistical attribution of its social causes, as in Durkheim, and he charges Halbwachs of having wrongly believed that a sociological explanation of suicide could also be compatible with an analyzis of its psychological factors. Let’s note in passing that Vatin’s argument is self-contradicting: hopefully, suicides at work are not regular enough to be subjected to relevant statistical analysis. These objections are interesting because they show that a methodological defense of academic boundaries, just as a positivist epistemology, could constitute strong obstacles to the project of a critical sociology. Adorno was right when he considered that the positivist epistemology and the academic boundaries had to be criticized in order to make the very project of a critical sociology epistemologically legitimate. He was also right when he highlighted that a critical sociology shouldn’t focus only on social regularities but also on particular negative social experiences that help to make sense and explain what is going wrong in our societies. Just as relevant for our discussion is the fact that he contended that in order to make sense and explain these negative social experiences, it is required to bridge the gap between sociology and psychology15. These Adornian arguments are still relevant and they help articulating the justifications of the project of a critical social psychology of suffering at work16. The third type of critique that has been raised against such a project amounts no longer to epistemological or scientific criticism, but to political criticism. One finds this criticism in the book of Baudelot and Gollac, and in Vatin’s article, and it is elaborated by many other sociologists of work. One of the first versions of this type of critique is to be found in the contribution of Jean-Pierre Durand to a symposium devoted by the prestigious journal «Sociology du travail» to Dejours’ Souffrance and France. In his article, Combien y a-t-il de souffrance au travail? (How Much Suffering at Work?)17, Durand explains that a theory of suffering at work runs two types

15   See, on these issues, his contributions to The Positivist Dispute and his article (19671968) Sociology and psychology, «New Left Review», XVIL; XVIIL (1967; 1968), pp. 67-80; pp. 79-97. 16   E. Renault, A Critical Theory of Social Suffering, «Critical Horizons», 11 (2010) 2, pp. 221-241. 17   J.-P. Durand, Combien y a-t-il de souffrance au travail?, «Sociologie du travail», XIIL (2000) 2, pp. 313-322.

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of political risks: that of the psychologisation, and that of the victimization. The first risk is to give explanatory power to a subjective experience, that of suffering, rather than to the social relations of domination and exploitation at work18. The other objection is that in stressing the fact that workers can be made powerless by their suffering at work, and that they can be led to voluntary servitude, the study of suffering at work makes it impossible to understand how they could struggle against the injustices and domination they experience at work. They would be reduced to some kind of powerless victims that could be emancipated either by a psychoanalyst or by a set of emancipatory managers. Here again, it seems that these objections miss their target. In fact, the notion of suffering at work doesn’t so much psychologize domination at work than describe the psychological processes that could lead individuals either to feel responsible of the injustices they experience at work, or to think that they have no choice but to consent to domination. Moreover, domination is not forgotten by the psychodynamics of work. It rather stresses that the wage contract is a contract of subordination that subjects the worker to a particular type of social domination. Moreover, Dejours highlights that this social domination intersects with other types of social domination, such as gender domination. The victimization argument is not more convincing. There is empirical evidence that there is no risk that by itself, a social psychology of social suffering would reduce workers to powerless victims. It is simply a fact that this social psychology has been used as a weapon in some struggles of the workers against the work organization, the working conditions and

  This argument finds interesting modulations in Baudelot, Gollac, and Vatin. Baudelot and Gollac suggest that it is because workers have lost their class consciousness and don’t conceive themselves anymore as exploited workers that they can think of themselves as individuals experiencing suffering at work. Here again, psychologisation goes with depolitization, but the causal order is reversed: depolitization produces psychologisation. Vatin takes another route. He suggests that the issue of suffering at work should be associated with a shift in the strategies of unions that no longer struggle for social transformations but only for compensations for unemployment and precariousness. Suffering at work would be one of the concepts that call for compensation rather than for social transformation. Now, it is simply a fact that the claims against suffering at work haven’t been raised only in struggles for compensation (as it is always the case after a suicide at work, as well as in other type of work accidents), but also in struggles against the type of work organization, working conditions, and power relations that where prevailing in a firm. It is also a fact that the issue of suffering at work far from being reducible to a new strategy of unions, is deeply rooted in the history of the labor movement and closely associated with the critique of capitalist exploitation; see Renault, Social Suffering, ch. 2. 18

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the power relations prevailing in their firm. One of them will be considered in the next section of this paper. Two conclusions concerning critical sociology can be drawn from the brief discussion of these political objections. The first one is that the political relevance of the concepts and explanatory models of a critical sociology cannot be decided only in abstracto, or a priori, as in general discussions about psychologisation or victimization. Such a relevance also depends of the use of these concepts and explanatory models in ordinary practices of social critique. This leads to a second conclusion: there are good reasons to think that a critical sociology that tries to make sense not only of the structural relations of domination and inequality, but also of the experience of domination of injustice, will probably have more political relevance, because it will help individuals and groups to make sense of their negative social experiences, such as suffering at work, and to frame their claims and strategies. This also gives relevance to Adorno’s claim that critical sociology should give primacy to social experience and focus especially on negative social experiences, although Adorno’s defense of this primacy and focus is not justified by the political argument I have just elaborated. 3.  The Role of a Critical Sociology in the Debates Raised by Suicides at Work In the last step of this paper, I will analyze the ways in which the idea of a twofold explanatory power of the notion of suffering at work has played a role in the dynamics of a social movement criticizing the types of work organization, working conditions, and power relations that were prevailing in a firm. It is simply a fact that the issue of “suffering at work” has framed the collective mobilization that has taken place during the series of suicide at work in France-Télécom/Orange, in 2009 (19 suicides) and 2010 (27 suicides), at a time just following the transformation of this firm from a state owned company, where the workers were civil servant, into a private company, hiring waged workers according to the rules of the private sector. The unions of the firm argued that the suicide where caused by the management policy that was intended to produce as much resignation as possible, 20.000 over 95.000 employees, through organized work overload and forced mobility, in order to replace the older civil servants into new waged workers and hence to reduce costs. They claimed that this new management has to be stopped, and in order to make their claim more convincing, they created an «Observatory of stress and forced mobility at France Télécom

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Orange», which was composed of unionists and specialists in sociology and psychology of work. The defense of the top management was that the resignations were not caused by organized work overload and forced mobility but by an inability of some employees to cope with the deep technological transformations that were going on the communications industries. The top managers added that the suicides were not caused by the work organization and the work conditions but by two other factors: biographical factors on the one hand, and on the other hand, the fact that these suicides had been widely commented in the TV and radio programs, as well as in newspapers. The CEO of the firm stated that the media were responsible of what he termed a «suicide epidemy», with implicit reference to what is termed in the psychological and sociological literature on suicide, the Werther effect19. It is interesting to note that here, the debate was not opposing competing definition of social justice or of legitimate use of the power within a firm – the debate was not about the normative justification of social critique. The debate was directly concerning an explanatory issue: what was the correct explanation of the suicides? It is also worth noting that in these debates, the workers and their union had to elaborate a convincing argument about the causes of the suicide, whereas for the top management, it was enough to fulfill a less demanding objective: raising doubts about the causes of these suicides. Now, the workers and their unions were not able to elaborate by themselves a convincing argument about what was the best explanatory model for these suicides. These two facts show that the cognitive dimension of ordinary social critique could be decisive, and that ordinary individuals don’t always have enough cognitive skills to elaborate the type of social critique they would like to elaborate. Social scientists could participate in these debates in two different and diverging ways: either as behaving as «merchants of doubt»20, or as providing argument to support the explanation of the series of suicides by the work organization, the work conditions, and the power relations in the firm. In the second option, it was also necessary to elaborate arguments in order to undermine the scientific arguments of the merchants of doubts. Hence a scientific debate took place between merchants of doubts on the   http://www.slate.fr/story/177432/proces-france-telecom-vagues-suicides-didier-lombard-effet-werther-responsabilite-medias. 20   N. Oreskes – E. M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, New York, Bloomsbury Press, 2010. 19

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one side, who were also un-critical sociologists, and critical sociologists on the other. This debate has started just in the middle of the suicide series. In 2009, a statistician, René Padieu, has given an interview in the newspaper La Croix21. He contended that the suicide rate in France Télécom Orange was just the same as the suicide rate of the overall population22. From that, he concluded that the idea of suicide epidemics in France Télécom/Orange should be considered as a «collective hallucination». In the paper quoted above, Vatin tried to show, combining statistical and sociological arguments, that René Padieu was right, and that the idea of a series of work related suicides in France Télécom Orange was the symptom of a «collective hysteria». But Padieu’s interview has also been criticized from different points of view. In their article Que peuvent dire les suicides au travail? («What Could be the Meaning of Suicides at Work?)23, Baudelot and Gollac replied from a sociological and statistical point of view, and provided convincing arguments against the points made by Padieu and Vatin. From the beginning of the debate about the meaning and explanation of this series of suicide, Dejours also has participated to public discussions through papers and interviews in the media. In 2009, he published a whole book devoted to work related suicides and to ways to prevent them24. This was offering strong counter arguments, from a clinical point of view, against the claim that these suicides had to be explained either by biographical causes or by what the “Werther effect”, namely a spike of emulation suicides after a widely publicized suicide. Baudelot and Gollac also have elaborated arguments against an explanation by the “Werther effect”. They have used sociological arguments to show that the fact that the work related suicides have so often taken the form of suicide at work is to be explained by the fact that suicide at work has become a mode of political protestation. They also have recalled that the fact that suicide can be a mode of political or moral protestation had already been highlighted by Malinowski who coined the term «revenge suicide» in his Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise

  R. Padieu, Sur une vague de suicide, «La Croix», 20/01/2009.   This argument was far from being convincing notably because the suicide rate depends on age, gender and qualification, while the average age, gender and qualification was not the same in France Télécom/Orange than the average age, gender and qualification of the overall population. 23   C. Baudelot – M. Gollac, Que peuvent dire les suicides au travail?, «Sociologie», VI (2015) 2, pp. 195-206. 24   C. Dejours – F. Bègue, Suicide et travail: que faire?, Paris, Puf, 2009. 21 22

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and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922). Many other types of «revenge suicide» have been documented since then by other anthropologists. The debate has been going on until the end of the year 2019. In May, the trial of the top management, charged of being responsible of this series of suicides, has started. The trial hearings lasted two month and they have been very well reported by the press. The top managers have reiterated their doubt spreading arguments. Dejours, Baudelot and Gollac have been heard as witnesses. Defense counsel tried to undermine their arguments, without being successful25. Other social scientists have also been heard and many other reported and commented the debates26. The public prosecutor has required the highest penalty compatible with the law against moral harassment: one year jail and 15.000 Euros. The final judgment made the 20th of December 2019 followed this requirement. The scientific debates associated with the series of suicides in France Télécom/Orange provides a good illustration of the fact that critical sociology should be more than simply a «sociology of critique»27, studying the capacity of social actors to produce normative arguments28, or their capacity to react to the arguments made by the opposite camp29. Critical sociology could also be a means to meet the need of explanatory critique that is felt within the ordinary practices of social critique, when social actors experience the fact that they are not cognitively skilled enough to produce the critical effects they would like to produce. The trial is a fascinating empirical illustration of the ways in which the knowledge produced by critical social sciences can become an effective tool in a social struggle concerning work organization, working conditions, and power asymmetry in a firm. It also shows that when they want to provide theoretical weapons to actual social struggles, critical sociologists can overcome their academic hostility and become political allies. It has been the case with Dejours, Baudelot and Gollac who were all engaged in a common struggle against producers of doubt. The debates   Dejours’s intervention has been published: C. Dejours, France Télecom Orange – Déposition. Le 10 mai 2019, «Travailler», XIIL (2019), pp. 193-213. 26   For a report of these hearings by a series of sociologists and psychologists of work, each of them having been asked to report a day: http://la-petite-boite-a-outils.org/chantiers/ suicides-a-france-telecom-le-proces/. 27   L. Bolstansky – L. Thévenot, On Justification. Economies of Worth, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 2006. 28   F. Dubet, Injustices. L’expérience des inégalités au travail, Paris, Seuil, 2006. 29   F. Chateaurayraud, Argumenter dans un champ de forces: essai de balistique sociologique, Paris, Petra, 2011. 25

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opposing critical sociologies to each other are often motivating by some kind of narcissism of small differences and by an overpoliticization of disciplinary, methodological or theoretical differences. When these debates ceased to be articulated only in the academic field, but are transposed in the field of real politics, it often appears that the differences are not so irreducible. Emmanuel Renault Université Paris Nanterre/IUF, France [email protected]

TASKS FOR A CRITICAL THEORY OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE*

Abstract: This paper addresses the current challenges to European democracies. It argues for the need to devise a critical theory of democracy in Europe and spells out some of the tasks it must bring to fruition. In a first section, a methodological issue is addressed, as it is argued that this specific strand of critical theory must be hermeneutical, in order to address actually existing societies and aim to understand the motives of social actors themselves. Then, it makes a diagnosis on the current state of affairs of the challenges facing democracy in Europe, from the social problems caused by decades of neoliberalism to the current authoritarian menaces. Against that backdrop, it puts forward seven tasks at the levels of theory, and of the political and social arrangements that are needed in order to be up to these challenges and renew European democracies.

*** Introduction1 One longstanding trait of critical social theory in the Frankfurt tradition is that of attempting to put forward a Zeitdiagnose, that is, a critical “diagnosis” of the current predicament of certain societies at a given moment in time. The medical metaphor indicates that in this process two intertwined dimensions are involved, the descriptive and the evaluative. This means that rather than looking at societies from an ‘ideal’ standpoint, critical theorists tend to look to real societies from the perspective of their historical unfolding, and to factually describe the ailments affecting them – even though this does not presuppose a position of naïve realism or positivism; and it also means that

*  My research benefited from the postdoctoral scholarship granted by the Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT, I.P., (SFRH/BPD/102949/2014) and the contract signed under the D.L. 57/2016 “norma transitória”. This research is also financed by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT, I.P., in the framework of the CECH-UC project: UIDB/00196/2020. I thank the anonymous reviewers who made meaningful suggestions that helped to enrich the paper and clarify some of its aspects.

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in this assessment the critical outlook (the act of judging) implicitly puts forward an evaluative yardstick, in light of its specific rationality (sometimes appealing to a notion of ‘moral progress’), measures each situation according to specific values such as those of emancipation. Furthermore, and in a decisive third step, as is clear from Horkheimer’s 1937 programmatic text1, this is an endeavor that seeks to influence society itself, i.e., by addressing this set of problems, to push for social change. It should be recalled that from the beginning of the Institute for Social Research this goal of criticizing the misdevelopments – or social pathologies – of present times and, in virtue of that critique, both understanding social reality and trying to change it, was ambitious and called for an interdisciplinary research program. That much was evident already in 1929 in the study led by Erich Fromm on the workers’ consciousness2, and also, against the backdrop of the rise of Nazism, in the Studien über Autorität und Familie3, published in 1936, as well as, later, in the study on The Authoritarian Personality4 or in Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man5. Another striking aspect of these kind of studies is the way in which, in their broad social assessments, multiple perspectives are intertwined: economic, insofar as the structural misdevelopments brought about by capitalism are a focus of constant attention; political, given that it is always the negative aspect of power structures leading to domination, and the looming shadow of the possibility of authoritarianism, that are in the backdrop; and sometimes also psychological and cultural, when the sources of alienation or manipulation of the masses are at stake. In this paper I want to emphasize a core political aspect of the critical theory tradition, and which has not been given much attention until recently6, which is its relevance for democratic theory. Indeed, of the main thinkers

  M. Horkheimer, Traditional Theory and Critical Theory, in: Id., Critical Theory. Selected Essays, New York, Continuum, 2002. 2   E. Fromm, The Working Class in Weimar Germany, Leamington Spa, Berg, 1984. 3   Institut für Sozialforschung, Studien über Autorität und Familie, Paris, Alcan, 1936. 4   Th. W. Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality, New York, Harper and Row, 1950. 5   H. Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, Boston (MA), Beacon Press, 1964. 6   C. Barnett, The Priority of Injustice. Locating Democracy in Critical Theory, Athens (GE), The University of Georgia Press, 2017; W. Outhwaite, Critical Theory and Contemporary Europe, London, Bloomsbury, 2012; E. Peruzzotti – M. Plot (ed. by), Critical Theory and Democracy. Civil society, Dictatorship and Constitutionalism in Andrew Arato’s Democratic Theory, London/New York, Routledge, 2013; S. Klein, The Power of Money: Critical Theory, Capitalism and the Politics of Debt, «Constellations», 27 (2020), pp. 19-35. 1

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in the Frankfurt critical theory tradition, only Habermas7 developed a full fledged theory of democracy – in his case, a discourse theory of deliberative democracy – but in more recent times, third (or now fourth) generation of critical theorists8 such as Honneth9, Nancy Fraser10 or Rainer Forst11 have also made important contributions to a critical theory approach to democracy, often as developments of their discussions on justice and the various forms of injustice. There are of course a plethora of theories of democracy, ranging from theories of liberal democracy and pluralism, to theories of radical, direct/participatory democracy, and today they are pitted against a newfound theoretical interest in epistocracy12. I would like to argue that critical theory provides an adequate vantage point not only to grasp what is going on in actually existing democracies, but also to make sense of the attempts to renew and revitalize democratic processes amid the recurring threats to democracy. Thus the theory of democracy I allude to here is a critical theory of democracy and, for reasons explained below, a critical hermeneutical theory of democracy. However, the goal is not to spell out a theory of democracy in general, and it goes without saying that such an endeavor would prove impossible in a short paper such as this one. Rather, what is intended, after recalling some

7   J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 1998. 8   I am here using the expressions ‘critical theory’ and ‘critical theorist’ in a broad way. Even though I am explicitly connecting critical theory to the Frankfurt tradition, whose main exponents have traditionally been identified as Horkheimer and Adorno (1st generation), Habermas (2nd generation) and Honneth (3rd generation) my understanding of this qualification also includes those critical theorists who, without having developed their careers mainly based in Frankfurt or working at the Institut für Sozialforschung, have nevertheless advanced their own critical theories in explicit dialogue with that tradition – hence the inclusion of Nancy Fraser in this label as a major contemporary critical theorist. Some accounts of early critical theory even distinguished between its ‘center’ and its ‘periphery’ but perhaps today the picture is more of a multipolar network with several critical theorists making meaningful work within that tradition and based in multiple places around Germany, the US and elsewhere in Europe and the global South. 9   A. Honneth, Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, Cambridge (UK), Polity Press, 2014. 10   N. Fraser, Scales of Justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world, Cambridge (UK), Polity Press, 2010. 11   R. Forst, Justice, Democracy and the Right to Justification. Rainer Forst in Dialogue, London, Bloomsbury, 2014. 12   J. Brenann, Against Democracy, Princeton (NJ)/Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2016.

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of the traits that such a theory must possess, is to unpack a few tasks that this theory should be able to bring to fruition when assessing the current state of democracy in the specific context of contemporary Europe. It should be noted that this is not reminiscent of any kind of Eurocentrism. I do not wish to imply that democracy is a universal ideal rooted in Europe or better grasped through a ‘European’ vantage point. There are many definitions of democracy, and even assuming there would be only one, I would not wish to argue for its ‘authentic’ form allegedly pertaining to Europe. Rather, really existing democracies have legal, cultural, institutional and historical peculiarities that differentiate them. But democracy is of course a fundamental – albeit contested – European tradition from ancient Greece onwards and in light of the newfound resurgence of problems such as authoritarianism and exclusionary populism in many places of the world, including in Europe, I believe that a non-ideal theory such as the one alluded to here should be put to work to rise to the specific challenges of our region today. As such, in the first part of this paper I present a few notes on method: what type of critique does this theory entail, what vision of democracy and rationality forms its background assumptions, and why it should be hermeneutical. In so doing, I draw mainly from critical theorists such as Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and Rainer Forst13. Then, in the second part of the paper, I spell out a few of the tasks this theory must fulfill in order to address our current predicament. Starting from a brief recollection of the challenges facing European democracies and also the supranational project of the EU, I draw on some key insights from theories of radical democracy, such as the one put forward by Chantal Mouffe, and try to make sense of the complex interaction between theory, citizenship, political solutions and institutional arrangements needed to face these challenges.

  Even though I am arguing, for the reasons explained in the next section, for the development of a critical theory of democracy and drawing on these authors, I do not wish to imply that the work of each of them could equally fall under the rubric of hermeneutical social criticism. I believe that Honneth’s critical theory is to a large extent indeed hermeneutical insofar as it puts forward a ‘reconstructive’ social criticism but the same does not apply in such a great extent to Fraser or Forst (the latter ultimately adopting a transcendental standpoint in the context of his assessment of normative orders of justification). But I do believe that there all hermeneutical elements in all of these theories, be it the adoption of an action-­theoretical standpoint to interpret the motives of social actors, or the insistence of democratic dialogue). 13

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1.  Why a Critical Hermeneutical Theory of Democracy? Allow me to explain why the strand of critical theory I espouse here is also a critical hermeneutics14. The term ‘critical hermeneutics’ stems from the work of Paul Ricœur15, was adopted by John B. Thompson16 and inspires today a whole strand of research in different topics17. In its original formulation, ‘critical hermeneutics’ meant a philosophical standpoint aiming to acknowledge the importance of meaningful traditions in a given society and the need to constantly reinterpret them anew, while keeping the practical goal of striving for emancipation through a critique of (pathological) ideologies. And while this following aspect has often been overlooked, the truth is that such a methodology finds a meaningful echo in a specific strand of social theory, not only in the works of Paul Ricœur but also of Michael Walzer18 and

  There are of course many types of philosophical (e.g. aesthetic) or social criticism as there are many different (sometimes called “regional” or “applied”) domains of hermeneutics, and one might rightfully wonder exactly what kind of critique is entailed here, and how does it differ from other types of critique involved in critical theory (sometimes divided into ‘internal’, ‘external’ or ‘immanent’ critique, but one could extend the list and speak of critiques that are normative, or utopian, etc.). It goes beyond the scope of this paper to delve in the discussion of how each of these critiques works, but suffice it to say that any critique that wants to take as its starting point existing (rather than ideal, or imagined) social reality, and to interpret the developments of that social reality in the light of tendencies already contained within itself in order to aim for further changes (rather than merely describing it), like immanent criticism does, is already partially hermeneutical. So, to be clear, I am not arguing that critical hermeneutics fundamentally changes the tradition of critical theory; but I am making clear why we should emphasize the hermeneutical aspect of a critical theory endeavor, precisely because it is that which allows us to escape essentialism and detached ideal analyses (such as those that are exclusively normative, in much contemporary political philosophy). I also believe that deepening the hermeneutical take on social reality can be useful to reconstruct the first-person perspective on the motives behind actions, and eventually to help contextualizing them or debunking false beliefs, as explained in the last section of this paper. On the several types of social critique see for instance Was ist Kritik?, ed. by R. Jaeggi – T. Wesche, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009; R. Jaeggi – R. Celikates, Sozialphilosophie. Eine Einführung, Munich, Beck, 2017; N. Fraser – R. Jaeggi, Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, Cambridge (UK), Polity Press, 2018. 15   P. Ricœur, Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology, in: J. B. Thompson (ed. by) Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 63-100. 16   J. B. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricœur and Jürgen Habermas, Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 1981. 17   See the journal Critical Hermeneutics, available at https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch. 18   M. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1987. 14

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of critical theorists such as Axel Honneth, who puts forward what he calls a ‘reconstructive critique’, and which is to be understood as a method that is interpretative through and through. And why should this hermeneutical, interpretative method be considered as being appropriate to devise a social theory? Precisely because, in its attention to concrete social reality, it tends to avoid the pitfalls of an excessive idealization. This being said, allow me to note that every theory – including social theory – has some ‘ideal’ or ‘imagined’ aspects; this happens, precisely, because it is ‘theory’, not mere empirical description, and one should not downplay completely the role of moral or social imagination when venturing into social theory. Thought experiments, for instance, can have an important epistemic power and utopias, in their role of an imagined ‘exploration of the possible’ can be an important source of normativity and have concrete effects in social reality. However, a different thing is a moral, political or social theory that stays at a purely normative or imagined level, and fails to grasp the concrete, historical character of social realities. A key hermeneutical lesson is that language, history and tradition precede and condition us; every new venture in the domain of thought – including in philosophy, political or social theory – is an insertion in those long chains and so, as Walzer points out, we actually need to ‘invent’ very little, given that the concepts, intuitions and theoretical takes we arrive at usually turn out to be very similar to the ones that are already to be found in social reality itself. To be sure, this is not to say that nothing new ever comes about in either thought or social reality – it does, for sure, and revolutions apply to both domains. However, the role played by interpretation, and the creative and innovative character that this operation involves and even necessitates, is actually much bigger than what is usually acknowledged. As such, a social theorist paying attention to social reality is actually an interpreter of that same reality. And this, in turn, allows us to depict the role of the theorist in a deflationary way that seems more appropriate today than the rather pompous depictions of the past. Indeed, as Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth emphasize, there is little room for ‘monological theory’, as there is also little hope for a project in which the critical theorist would come about to lead and enlighten the ‘masses’. Instead, what one needs, and which can actually be found in philosophical anthropologies such as those put forward by Axel Honneth and Paul Ricœur is a picture of rationality and agency which is more democratically shared. If subjectivity and identity are to be understood against their dialogical constitutive backdrop, then the possible exercise of resistance against domination and an emancipatory interpretation of social reality need not necessarily be the sole work of the

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theorist – they can, at least partly, stem directly from social actors themselves. And this last trait helps us understand the starting point of a critical theory of democracy. As Clive Barnett has recently emphasized19, one key aspect of the approach of recent critical theorists, such as Honneth, Fraser or Forst, when developing their reflections on justice, is to take subjective claims of injustice on the part of social actors (stemming from their lived experiences) as their starting point. Rather than first devising an ideal theory of justice, and trying to see whether or not actually existing societies fit or deviate from that ideal standard and treating injustice as a lack when compared to that picture of justice, the path is the opposite. This feature is perhaps more developed in Honneth’s critical theory of society than elsewhere, insofar as the several forms of lack of recognition – disrespect20, invisibility21, reification22, and so forth – can be read as so many forms of injustice, even though, in Honneth’s framework, they are also much more than that, given that the lack of due recognition (for which subjects have a legitimate claim) can, in severe cases (e.g. extreme denigration or misrecognition of someone as a legitimate partner of interaction, or as a fellow sharing a common humanity) lead to the psychological dissolution of one’s own subjectivity23. In Honneth’s case, thus, the ‘reconstructive’ social criticism24, i.e., the interpretative method proper to a critical theory of society can therefore be applied to the experiences of injustice themselves. Honneth, and Emmanuel Renault in his wake25 have drawn attention to experiences of social suffering, whether or not social actors have the capacity to articulate them – therefore, the ‘hidden injuries’ that need to be spelled out become a focus of critical enquiry.

  See Barnett, The Priority of Injustice.   A. Honneth, Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Cambridge (UK), Polity Press, 2007. 21   A. Honneth, Invisibility: On the Epistemology of Recognition, «The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume», 75 (2011) 1, pp. 111-126. 22   A. Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007. 23   A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 1995. 24   A. Honneth, Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of “Critique” in the Frankfurt School, in: Id., Pathologies of Reason. On the Legacy of Critical Theory, trans. James Ingram, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009, pp. 43-53. 25   E. Renault, Souffrances sociales. Philosophie, psychologie, et politique, Paris, La Découverte, 2008. 19

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At the same time, it must also be stressed that this is evidently not a value-free endeavor. Again, assessing social reality is not tantamount to just describing it. If, as Forst claims, a critical theory of justice is preoccupied with the fact of multiple domination26, and if the perspective is often, as Honneth suggests, a Left-Hegelian tendency towards a specific rationalization, that of ‘moral progress’, this means that the values involved here are what we would today call ‘progressive’. What is ‘emancipation’ if not a push towards the realization of already-existing – and largely accepted – values, such as freedom and equality? And here again hermeneutics plays an interesting role. Some authors, such as Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala go so far as to claim that hermeneutics being a post-foundational, ‘weak’ type of thought – in that it does not buy into the perspective of naïve, objectivistic realism and is instead open to the plurality of interpretations – it is thus a perspective well suited to become a ‘thought of the weak’27, i.e., a type of theory more interested in changing social reality in favor of the dispossessed than in maintaining the status quo of power structures. Moreover, if freedom and equality are what we are striving for, and in the next section I will discuss the extent to which a contingent political articulation such as ‘liberal democracy’ can or cannot account for them, it still remains that what is needed is a sound interpretation of those values coupled with an evaluation of the institutional and intersubjective practices that will better instantiate them. And this brings us to the theory of democracy in this context. It seems to me that much like the way in which these critical theories of justice start with a hermeneutical reconstruction of the experiences of injustice, a critical theory of democracy must start from the assessment of the threats and risks that weigh on actually existing democracies. Certainly, such a theory will at some point have to spell out in positive terms the role it envisions for citizenship and democratic practices, institutions and the formation of a public space as well as delve on the intricacies of the processes of representation and collective will formation from the domestic polity to supranational and transnational spaces such as the European Union and beyond. However, tackling existing threats as a starting point means that the diagnosis is, more than a denunciation, some sort of what we could call a restorative critique: if successful, the critique helps removing the obstacles to a more fully realized

  R. Forst, Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice, «Metaphilosophy», 32 (2001) 1-2, pp. 160-179. 27   G. Vattimo – S. Zabala, Hermeneutic Communism, From Heidegger to Marx, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011. 26

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democracy and towards the values in the name of which it should be sought for. In the next section we shall see what this entails for the European context. Starting with a brief diagnosis of the main problems facing European democracies today, I will then move to outline a few possible tasks for the critical theory of democracy when facing these challenges. 2.  The EU Between Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism: Tasks for an Escape Route The history of democracy is a complicated one, permanently facing theoretical contestations and practical setbacks. In Europe, it became customary to speak of the several ‘waves of democratization’ in the second half of the 20th Century, first in Southern Europe following the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal and then with the Fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union and the spread of that ‘democratization wave’ to the East. And it is undeniable that one cannot understand this process without taking stock of the democratic supranational collaborative process brought about by the utopia of the European Union, in spite of the neoliberal economic policies that also came along with it and their fundamental undemocratic (or, if you prefer, ‘post-political’ or ‘post-democratic’) nature. Be that as it may, it seems that the first two decades of the 21st Century brought with them not only the stalling of the EU’s integration process, but also a fundamental fatigue, or perhaps ‘disillusionment’ with democracy28 with some authors, such as Rancière, going so far as to speak of a general ‘hatred’ towards democracy29. Now, for better or worse, in Europe these feelings have been directed towards what came to be known as ‘liberal democracy’ and which, as Chantal Mouffe emphasizes30, is a historically contingent political articulation marked by the association of two different, yet convergent, political traditions: political liberalism (rule of law, separation of powers, defense of individual freedoms) and the democratic ideals of equality, popular sovereignty and self-rule. Now, being contingent, this articulation can of course also be threatened and eventually squashed – which is precisely what happened with the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe.

  M. R. d’Allonnes, Pourquoi nous n’aimons pas la démocratie, Paris, Seuil, 2010.   J. Rancière, La haine de la démocratie, Paris, La Fabrique, 2005. 30   C. Mouffe, For a Left Populism, London/New York, Verso, 2018, p. 32. 28 29

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To be sure, attacks on liberal democracy are varied and widespread. They also come, and for solid reasons, from radical democrats themselves, who frequently point to the sham of a thin, merely formal notion of democracy often reduced to voting but in which the real decision-making processes are in fact taking place behind closed doors by non-elected officials and with a significant, and illegitimate, influence of economic interests. But pushes for a deepening of the democratic processes and appealing to the expansion and transnationalization of the public sphere31 or to a broadening of the mechanisms for participatory/direct democracy, while being objections to the concrete instantiation of (European) liberal democracy, are of course not ‘threats’ to democracy itself. Precisely the opposite is true, insofar as they seek to tackle the legitimation deficit and renew and revitalize ailing democracies. However, there are of course real threats to democracy in Europe today, and they come from elsewhere. To restate a diagnosis that is not uncommon, I would draw attention to two main problems: a decades-old technocratic tendency, closely linked to neoliberalism and today revamped by epistocracy; and right-wing exclusionary populism with its mix of authoritarianism and intolerance. These are separate problems but they can of course appear together in certain political forms: for instance, Brazil’s Bolsonaro government is a case in point, in which neoliberal policies and a quasi-authoritarian (and erratic) government go in tandem; but this is not everywhere the case, and we can for instance find discourses critical of neoliberalism in extreme-right parties in Europe. In France, Le Pen’s Front National has historically been an example of such an approach. And in Europe it is not uncommon to see, in certain polities, a shift to the extreme right which, in turn, was fueled both by the social problems stemming from neoliberal policies and from a crisis of representation caused by a fundamental shift in leftwing parties, notably with the so-called ‘third way’. These are problems that have been diagnosed time and again, but it is not futile to recall them here one more time for context. Diagnoses of the ‘post-political’ or ‘post-democratic’ turn, by authors such as Colin Crouch32, Rancière or Mouffe33 tend to emphasize the manner in which technocracy is fundamentally undemocratic. Forms of rule based on knowledge or expertise are of course elitist, and the naturalization of ne-

  N. Fraser, Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World, «Theory, Culture and Society», 24 (2007) 4, pp. 7-30. 32   C. Crouch, Postdemocracy, Cambridge (UK), Polity, 2004. 33  Mouffe, For a Left Populism. 31

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oliberal practices under the guise of the T.I.N.A. type of discourses have of course, ever since Margaret Thatcher, been put forward to help carry through policies whose contingency, if duly exposed, could have led, from the start, to greater levels of contestation. As hinted at before, in many regional contexts the rise of the extreme-right fed on the social problems caused by decades of neoliberal hegemony and the social problems it fosters; and this partly because third-way leftwing politics since the 1990s by an large abandoned a project of critique of capitalism and defense of the Welfare state, leaving large segments of the electorate feeling not only unprotected but also underrepresented, and created a void that was preyed upon by the extreme-right. This economic and political motif, in turn, helps to understand, first, the rise of right-wing exclusionary populism and then, when power is seized, the turn towards authoritarianism – even though this is not the whole story. In what concerns the causes for this ascent, one should also not overlook the cultural aspect, and which is a significant backlash against the progressive changes of recent decades, whether it is progress in women’s rights or the inclusion of minorities; this cultural backlash and the myriad of absurd conceptual creations it fosters – from ‘political correctness’ to ‘cultural Marxism’ or ‘gender ideology’ – create the counternarratives that, in the mind of their proponents, are meant to fight off the dominant liberal narratives; the fact that the narratives promoted by this backlash are, many times, wildly delusional, voluntarily spreading ‘fake news’ and so-called ‘alternative facts’ or conspiracy theories is of course source of no worry for their proponents. Ultimately, this is no more than a revamped propaganda mechanism and here (counter)information is just conveyed to reinforce the system of (false) beliefs that underpins this whole strategy – whoever controls the narrative secures power and adhesion to belief. This recent history is well known but the traits here recalled help explain why, after the ‘democratization waves’ one can speak of an ‘authoritarian wave’ that saw the rise of so-called ‘strongmen’, and which had early warning signs in Putin, Erdogan or Orban but that was decisively accelerated with the rise of Trump in 2016. At the same time, one thing is to secure power, another is to be able to maintain the willing adhesion of the people; this hinges on the levels of popularity attained as a consequence of given decisions made and policies enforced – and in this the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the utter levels of sheer incompetence by leaders the likes of Trump and Bolsonaro; whether or not this is sufficient to serve as a warning to other constituencies of the effects of electing these kinds of populist leaders, it remains to be seen. In the context of the EU these processes only accelerated the distrust of democracy alluded to above. First, the crisis of political legitimation hit the

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EU early, lest we forget that Tony Blair was the quintessential representative of third-way politics, and the way Thatcher considered New Labor as one of her greatest legacies. Second, the tendency of the European elites to treat the EU as a mere economic project, and the lack of intraeuropean solidarity displayed in the 2010 sovereign debt crisis coupled with the shady nature of preponderant decision making bodies such as the Eurogroup put the EU at odds with domestic-level democratic processes, and also fueled, especially during that economic crisis, distrust of the EU and a bitter divide between north/south and center/periphery member countries, with the hegemonic center/north turning against the so-called PIGS. In the wake of that crisis, and when economic recovery was already bettering the prospects of EU citizens, the 2015 refugee crisis again fueled right-wing populist manipulation of public opinions, with the scapegoating of migrants leading to a securitary, sometimes nationalistic discourse paving the way for the abandonment of asylum seekers in camps, when not utterly letting them drown in the Mediterranean – and providing yet another excuse to enforce security and sometimes authoritarian measures, with Hungary being a case in point. And in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, in Hungary the ruling party also took up the chance to weaken the separation of powers and the upholding of basic liberties, thus dealing another blow to liberal democracies within the EU. Against the backdrop of the disastrous results brought about by many of these populist leaders worldwide one answer has been, as mentioned, a post-democratic push to epistocracy. If, the reasoning goes, ignorant people can be easily manipulated into electing ignorant leaders whose values any civilized person cannot accept, why not leave voting rights only with the knowers? But this line of reasoning is another significant threat to democracy. And thus we get to the point in which democracies in Europe, and the EU project as such, face the dire prospects of a nationalist dissolution, not to mention the suspicion that the EU itself is somehow also an imperialist project, not only to its outside, but also inside, as some weaker member states can suffer of some sort of internal colonization by the stronger states. And this is the complex picture which, in 2020, a critical theory of democracy34 in Europe must face.

  Other than in the contributions of the critical theorists already cited, my proposal of course also builds on previous attempts to spell out a critical theory of democracy (such as Barnett’s The Priority of Injustice, or C. F. Rostbøll, Deliberative Freedom. Deliberative Democracy as Critical Theory, Albany [NY], State University of New York, 2008) as well as in attempts that without having as its goal to spell out such a theory, do indeed have very important insights for its tasks. This is the case of critical theories dealing with the 34

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Against that backdrop, which tasks are there for this critical theory of democracy in Europe? How can such a theory contribute to respond to the threats here mentioned? In the remainder of this section I will spell out seven of these tasks. This list does not pretend to be exhaustive, and there is no specific order of priority among them. I am just arguing that if a critical theory of democracy is to provide a diagnosis of our current predicament, it needs to cover all this ground. Some of the tasks are there to help understand what we are at odds with (including from the perspective of social actors themselves) while others involve dealing with the causes of the challenges to democracy and to search for ways to tackle them. Now, in order to understand what we are faced with, I think we should do well to turn back the clock one century. I am not suggesting that our current predicament mirrors that of the 1930s; ever since the 2008 crisis these parallelisms have been suggested and they seem to be an exaggeration. Nevertheless, there seems to be now, like in the 1920s-1930s, a growing predisposition in many places to accept authoritarian solutions. This is nowhere more evident than in Brazil, where a nostalgia of dictatorship is blatant in some segments of the extreme-right supporting Bolsonaro. But it is felt in the Visegrad 4 countries too, and it could soon spread elsewhere in Europe. I would thus like to propose that a first task could be a newfound study of the tendency towards authoritarian beliefs in Europe, renewing the effort of the early days of the Frankfurt school. To understand why people can be drawn to these solutions one has to apply some sort of ‘depth hermeneneutics’. Cultural, economic and political causes are of course important. But the questioning must go to the root of the system of beliefs guiding behavior, and perhaps probe into some deeper psychological drivers behind this acceptance. At the same time, this first task is only a part of a second one, whose scope must be more comprehensive. We need to understand why the once dominant and sometimes arrogant discourse tied to scientific rationality

relation between the economic and the political spheres within capitalist societies, and putting the finger on the need to democratize the economy, such as the neo- (or quasi-) Polanyian approaches of Fraser and Jaeggi in Capitalism: a conversation in critical theory, or of Klein in The power of Money; and also equally important are those critical theories which, one way or another, directly tackle several aspects of the crisis within the EU, such as Habermas, The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, Cambridge (UK), Polity Press, 2012. However, it seems to me that none of the above theories or, to my knowledge, any other critical theory of democracy, covers all the ground that I believe needs to be covered when spelling out such a theory. Hence my tentative spelling out of the seven tasks below.

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seems now to be faltering. That is, in an age in which ‘post-truth’, ‘echo chambers’ and ‘fake news’ compromise the possibility of a rational public sphere in which participants can be persuaded by the ‘force of the better argument’ and instead are led by self-confirmation biases, a world in which ‘flat earthers’ and ‘anti vaxxers’ are on the rise, what we really need to understand are the systems of beliefs that make this possible, and the kinds of heuristics at play in these processes. Here, and without falling back into some kind of naïve realism or positivism, it must be stressed that insights from the neurosciences and cognitive psychology could be of use; and this is of course is also tied to a critical theory of democracy because these systems of beliefs are in turn connected to the more obscurantist and reactionary forces threatening democracies today. A third task, following from the second one, is more closely connected with participatory democracy and citizenship. It is crucial to understand how the digital transnationalization of the public sphere can overcome bubbles and echo chambers fostering manipulation and confirmation bias. And it goes without saying that the digital public sphere can also serve for emancipatory purposes, and even to foster democracy, as was the case in the early movements of the Arab spring, the Indignados and Occupy protests following the 2008 economic crisis or, more recently, and to name just a few examples, Black Lives Matter or the Global Climate Strike. Be that as it may, there is a growing tendency to use social media to reach out only to those with similar interests, opinions and political beliefs thus making it possible to isolate oneself from different opinions and worldviews or to any claim to scientific validity or journalistic independence, and this is a problem that needs to be addressed. A part of this task might need to be addressed technically, as the algorithms behind social networks need to be changed to face this problem; but perhaps the most important part still has to do with the dialogical fostering of democratic practices – it needs to be geared towards dialogue and agonistic35 (but not antagonistic) discussion as a civic virtue. This is itself a hermeneutic act because it aims at bridging divides and fostering mutual understanding. Perhaps what we need is some sort of mix between a conflict of interpretations and a fusion of horizons36. In institutional terms, public education towards fostering these dialogic and democratic practices has an essential role to play.   See Mouffe, For a Left Populism.   For an example of the use of the fusion of horizons to underpin mutual understanding and evaluation, see C. Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. by A. Gutmann, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 1994. 35 36

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Fourth, and as Nancy Fraser suggests, a politics of framing needs to be put forward, so that we avoid not only misrepresentation (especially in the case of those who have no formal access to political representation, such as refugees) but also misframing. False, demeaning and exclusionary narratives put forward by right-wing populism need to be counteracted, and the populist proposals must be held accountable for the values and discourses they put forward. A critical hermeneutics, and one that takes stock of the phenomena of populism, can also serve to prevent the social symbolic order from being captured by these exclusionary narratives. At the level of the social arrangements and political solutions needed to address the aforementioned problems, I would stress, as the fifth task, the fundamental need to prioritize care for what we could call ‘the commons’ but also to the shared world that we inhabit. First, caring for the environment itself and preventing climate change from making life on Earth impossible. This is also a political task that necessitates democratic involvement, insofar as climate change deniers need to be proven wrong, and (often rightwing populist) governments that refuse to adopt climate protection measures need to feel the pressure of the transnational public sphere in order to face this matter urgently. Second, this also involves preserving the multifarious cultural heritage that makes up Europe’s diversity, and making sure that political pluralism and cultural diversity are cherished – and this is one more reason to resist authoritarianism. Linguistic and cultural diversity are a fundamental European heritage, and this can only be protected if, ultimately, domestic polities are more – not less – welcoming. The sixth task has to do with tackling the economic and political causes37 fueling this surge of right-wing populism. A European strong welfare state can of course be a way of preventing discontentment with the EU project as such. Finding new ways to implement European wide social safety nets could be a strong sign given to European citizens of the advantages of adhering to such a project – and it can also be a task of theory to help designing such solutions, which are clearly political as well as economic. Lastly, the seventh task is rather obvious but also needs to be emphasized. Europe needs to strengthen the mechanisms of democratic accountability: it needs more transparency in its decision-making processes, to provide citizens with new and better ways to exercise power-in-common, and more escape routes to the exercise of power as domination: less economic conditioning

  On this see Mouffe, For a Left Populism, and Fraser and Jaeggi, Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory. 37

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and bureaucratic oppression. There are myriad ways in which this could happen – from reformulating the criteria for European Citizens’ Initiatives to make them more feasible, promoting a greater degree of citizens’ partici­ pation in decisions that affect their lives38, to economic measures such as unconditional basic income39 or others – and in order to assess them both a critical theory of democracy and democratic dialogue are needed. Concluding Remarks In this short paper I briefly tried to spell out the tasks that a critical theory of democracy in Europe must be able to bring to fruition, if it is to be up to the challenges facing us today. I argued that only a critical theory can be able to do this, and also that an important part of its methodology should be hermeneutical, and that its aims must be transformative. This is not a feature that is absent from previous critical theories, and Axel Honneth’s is a good example of such a critical theory40 but I find it useful to emphasize its merits, over against some sort of detached normativism that is often practiced by most Anglophone political philosophy, and other critiques that mainly emphasize functional aspects of capitalism and do not sufficiently take stock of the standpoint of social actors themselves. I refrained from fully spelling out the vision of European democracy at stake here, and this must be left for a later work, but suffice it to say that in the attempt to both curb neoliberalism and steer clear of the descent into authoritarianism a sound strategy will contain both defensive (namely safeguarding the liberal separation of powers and trying to strengthen social safety nets) and offensive moves (e.g. pushing for a further democratization in the economic and public spheres). This can partially be done by already-existing liberal and representative democratic institutions, which must be protected,

38   This also entails finding a way to apply the ‘all-affected principle’ according to which everyone affected by a given policy should be able to have a say on it. And so it shouldn’t only apply to citizens as it involves rethinking the democratic mechanisms of European polities in order to fill the gaps separating denizens from citizens and finding ways to give a voice, that is, political representation, to the former. See Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice. 39   P. v. Parijs – Y. Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 2017; G. Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen, London, Pelican, 2017. 40   Insofar as it is both interpretative and aiming for ‘moral progress’ from a Left-Hegelian standpoint.

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while the critical approach must also find mechanisms, including some that might be deemed ‘radical’ to better instantiate the democratic aim that is constitutive of our societies. Gonçalo Marcelo CECH – Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal Católica Porto Business School, Portugal [email protected]

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Abstract: This article aims to discuss Honneth’s theory of recognition from its first formulation in The Struggle for Recognition to its last reorganization in Freedom’s Right. Trying to understand the evolution of Honneth’s work, we emphasize the substitution of a universal anthropology by a theory of institution and we point out the philosophy of historical progress in Honneth’s thought. After questioning the limits of such a philosophy of progress to think some contemporary issues (postcolonial issues, ecological problems), we propose to come back to the first generation of the Frankfurt School and in particular to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment to correct this limits.

*** La philosophie de la reconnaissance d’Axel Honneth marque la dernière grande tentative d’envergure de l’École de Francfort pour élaborer une théorie critique de la société. Elle a formulé une grammaire qui donne une véritable intelligibilité à un ensemble d’enjeux et de revendications contemporaines1. De l’ouvrage de 1992, La lutte pour la reconnaissance, au Droit de la liberté en 2011, la pensée de Honneth a elle-même connu des évolutions notables. À certains égards, cette évolution a consisté à toujours plus s’éloigner de la première génération de l’École de Francfort, dans le sillage de laquelle Honneth inscrivait ses premiers travaux2. En particulier, si l’insistance sur les expériences négatives et le conflit social dans La lutte pour la reconnaissance pouvait rappeler l’accent qu’Adorno et Horkheimer mettaient sur la négativité, le non-identique, la contradiction, ainsi que sur la critique sans concession des sociétés existantes, les derniers écrits semblent témoigner d’une forme de rupture avec cette influence première3. En un sens, Axel Honneth n’a cessé   A. Caillé – C. Lazzeri (dir.), La reconnaissance aujourd’hui, Paris, CNRS éditions, 2009.   A. Honneth, Critique du pouvoir (1986), tr. fr. M. Dautrey et O. Voirol, Paris, La Découverte, 2016. 3   Voir l’introduction d’Emmanuel Renault à Reconnaissance, confit, domination, Paris, CNRS éditions, 2017. 1

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de se rapprocher de la pensée de Jürgen Habermas, qui lui-même n’a cessé de prendre ses distances avec les auteurs de la Dialectique de la raison, en faisant de la mise au jour du potentiel normatif de l’intersubjectivité et des normes institutionnalisées de la modernité le cœur du projet de la Théorie critique4. Nous voudrions ici interroger la pertinence de cette trajectoire et évaluer les acquis décisifs de l’évolution de l’œuvre honnethienne, tout en pointant certaines limites de celle-ci. Pour ce faire, nous commencerons par le passage, chez Honneth, d’une perspective anthropologique à une perspective historique, puis nous aborderons la question d’un certain abandon des expériences négatives vécues par les acteurs sociaux au profit d’une insistance toujours plus marquée sur les institutions de la modernité. Il conviendra alors, dans une troisième partie conclusive, de voir dans quelle mesure le dépassement des philosophies d’Adorno et de Horkheimer admet certaines limites au vu des enjeux contemporains, et de réfléchir à la manière dont une relecture des auteurs de la Dialectique de la raison pourrait contribuer à l’actualité de la Théorie critique francfortoise aujourd’hui. 1.  De l’anthropologie à la philosophie de l’histoire Le livre de 1992 mettait en évidence trois niveaux d’attente de reconnaissance, que les individus devaient satisfaire pour réaliser une «vie bonne» ou une «vie réussie5»: l’amour rendait possible la confiance en soi, la reconnaissance juridique permettait le respect de soi, et la solidarité sociale favorisait l’estime de soi. Ces attentes se faisaient jour à travers des expériences négatives de mépris et de déni de reconnaissance, qui pouvaient éventuellement donner lieu à des conflits6. Il s’agissait de relire la philosophie de la reconnaissance du jeune Hegel, en corrigeant ses tendances idéalistes grâce à l’apport pragmatiste de G. H. Mead7, de façon à refonder la théorie critique sur de 4   Cf. A. Allen, The End of Progress. Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 2016, chapitres 2 et 3. Si, comme l’a montré Isabelle Aubert, le jeune Habermas se maintenait dans l’héritage d’Adorno et de Horkheimer (Habermas. Une théorie critique de la société, Paris, CNRS éditions, 2015), il s’en distingue radicalement à partir de sa Théorie de l’agir communicationnel. Cf. J. Habermas, Le discours philosophique de la modernité (1985), tr. fr. C. Bouchindhomme – R. Rochlitz, Paris, Gallimard, 1988. 5   A. Honneth, La lutte pour la reconnaissance (1992), tr. fr. P. Rusch, Paris, Cerf, 2010, pp. 208-209. 6   Voir en particulier le chapitre VIII sur «La logique morale des conflits sociaux». 7   Ibidem, p. 7.

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nouvelles bases et répondre ainsi à certaines insuffisances de la théorie de l’agir communicationnel de Habermas. S’ouvrait alors la possibilité de compléter le recentrement habermassien sur l’entente communicationnelle par une «théorie du conflit» ainsi que par une prise en compte des «interactions prélangagières» ancrées dans l’expérience vécue des individus8. Le prix de cette avancée décisive a été de développer une anthropologie universaliste, fondée sur une essence de l’homme quasi anhistorique, comme Axel Honneth l’a lui-même reconnu9. Les difficultés d’une telle approche, qui laissait en partie dans l’ombre le caractère historiquement médiatisé des relations de reconnaissance, l’ont conduit à prendre une «direction historique» dans ses travaux ultérieurs, et à inscrire les attentes de reconnaissance dans des processus historiquement constitués. Dans Le droit de la liberté, les exigences normatives de la «reconnaissance mutuelle» sont ressaisies sous le vocable de la «liberté sociale10» et se trouvent désormais inscrites dans les institutions de la modernité. Ce que Honneth pense comme «une conquête irréversible de la modernité11» n’est pas sans rappeler l’éloge habermassien de la période moderne, dans laquelle les exigences morales fondamentales des individus se seraient vues incorporées à travers un certain nombre d’institutions dont le but est de garantir, au moins à titre normatif, leur satisfaction. L’idée du socialisme est parfaitement clair sur cette réinscription historique de la reconnaissance dans les normes de la modernité. Le livre montre l’importance fondamentale de la Révolution française pour un projet socialiste fondé sur la liberté sociale12. Selon Honneth, le socialisme consiste dans «l’intention de rendre enfin la société moderne “sociale” au sens plein du terme, en libérant des forces ou des potentiels déjà présents en elle13», c’està-dire qu’il désigne la tendance à rendre adéquats les idéaux normatifs de

  A. Honneth – O. Voirol, La Théorie critique de l’École de Francfort et la théorie de la reconnaissance, in: A. Honneth, La société du mépris, Paris, La Découverte, 2008, pp. 159-161. 9   A. Honneth, dans M. Hunyadi (dir.), Axel Honneth. De la reconnaissance à la liberté, Lormont, Le Bord de l’eau, 2014, p. 28, où Honneth distingue l’approche «historique» du Droit de la liberté d’une tendance «anthropologique» à l’œuvre dans La lutte pour la reconnaissance, où les types de reconnaissance pouvaient encore être interprétés «comme si, dans tous les types de sociétés et sous toutes les conditions, nous trouvions normalement ces trois types de reconnaissance». 10   A. Honneth, Le droit de la liberté. Esquisse d’une éthicité démocratique (2011), tr. fr. F. Joly et P. Rusch, Paris, Gallimard, 2015, pp. 194-195. 11   Ibidem, p. 37. 12   A. Honneth, L’idée du socialisme (2015), tr. fr. P. Rusch, Paris, Gallimard, 2017, pp. 27-28. 13   Ibidem, p. 76. 8

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la modernité avec la pratique effective des agents sociaux. C’est bel et bien l’histoire qui, dans ce schéma, prend la première place dans l’élaboration des attentes normatives des individus et des sociétés. Cette première évolution notable de la théorie honnethienne de la reconnaissance a le grand avantage de débarrasser cette dernière des restes de présupposés métaphysiques qui grevaient encore sa première formulation. À l’essence de l’homme quasi immuable et presque imperméable au cours de l’histoire, se substitue une véritable productivité historique des normes, une naissance historiquement située des attentes morales fondamentales susceptibles d’orienter axiologiquement les pratiques sociales. Cette idée d’une production normative liée à un contexte social et historique précis constitue une avancée décisive par rapport à La lutte pour la reconnaissance. Le lien nouveau opéré par Honneth entre des problèmes historiques particuliers et l’émergence d’attentes normatives – un lien soutenu par les références à Hegel et à Dewey14 – dessine un horizon stimulant pour la théorie critique et accentue encore davantage son orientation non métaphysique. Il faut cependant réfléchir plus avant ce que signifie, chez l’auteur du Droit de la liberté, cette insistance nouvelle sur l’histoire. L’éloge de la modernité qui l’accompagne ne pose-t-il pas un certain nombre de difficultés, qui tendraient en particulier à nous faire retomber dans une philosophie de l’histoire orientée téléologiquement vers l’idée de progrès? Il convient en effet d’interroger les présupposés liés à la valorisation de la modernité dans les derniers travaux d’Axel Honneth. Dans L’idée du socialisme, la philosophie de l’histoire des premiers penseurs socialistes est vivement critiquée. La thèse selon laquelle l’histoire serait marquée par «des étapes nécessaires dans un progrès continu du genre humain, obéissant à des lois objectives15», est stigmatisée comme une illusion positiviste et scientiste. Ce qui dérange cependant Honneth dans cette philosophie de l’histoire, c’est avant tout l’idée de nécessité objective du cours historique, fondée sur une «loi de l’Histoire16», et non l’idée de progrès en tant que telle. La référence à Dewey lui permet de légitimer une certaine pensée de l’histoire en termes de progrès, à condition de penser celui-ci en lien avec des «expériences sociales», ancrées dans des «conditions historiques données17». Lié à une «conception expérimentale de l’agir historique», le progrès n’est plus un concept condamnable et devient pensable indépendamment d’un quelconque déterminisme   Ibidem, pp. 85-90.   Ibidem, p. 65. 16   Ibidem, p. 68. 17   Ibidem, p. 69. 14 15

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historique, doté de lois fixées à l’avance18. C’est pourquoi Honneth ne refuse pas d’emblée toute «perspective téléologique19» de l’histoire, affirmant qu’elle constitue «un élément indissociable de l’image que se fait d’elle-même la modernité». Cette téléologie historique n’a certes plus chez lui le statut ontologique qu’elle pouvait avoir dans les philosophies de l’histoire traditionnelles, et semble être conçue dans une perspective purement épistémologique, voire narrativiste, au sens où elle renvoie au récit que la modernité se raconte à elle-même. Aux yeux de Honneth, la modernité ne paraît pas pouvoir se passer d’un tel récit et de cette résurgence de la téléologie historique. C’est pourquoi, mise à distance et réfléchie quant à ses limites, la philosophie de l’histoire fait retour dans le dispositif honnethien. Amy Allen a néanmoins souligné avec pertinence que cette philosophie de l’histoire ne pouvait être soutenue que si elle présupposait en retour «une anthropologie philosophique métanormative, qui n’est pas contextuelle mais universelle20». La philosophie de l’histoire orientée vers la modernité, dans Le droit de la liberté, nous amène en effet à douter de l’abandon véritable de toute dimension anthropologique chez le dernier Honneth. La condition pour penser la «conquête irréversible de la modernité», et pour hypostasier les normes modernes en horizon indépassable des attentes de reconnaissance et de liberté sociale, semble être de maintenir l’idée d’une certaine essence de l’homme que la modernité aurait enfin découverte et réalisée, au moins à titre normatif et au niveau des institutions. Ou, pour le dire autrement, l’anthropologie de La lutte pour la reconnaissance apparaît comme le présupposé requis de la philosophie de l’histoire du Droit de la liberté, malgré l’abandon revendiqué par Honneth. Un passage de L’idée du socialisme semble en effet faire revenir cet ancrage anthropologique que l’analyse historique de la Révolution française paraissait pourtant chasser. Il s’agit du moment où, après avoir rendu raison de l’émergence historique de la normativité liée à la liberté sociale, Honneth fait référence à Philip Pettit pour développer une «position ontologique» liant le «développement de certaines facultés de l’homme» avec leur existence   L’objectif d’Axel Honneth est de dissocier les acquis normatifs de la Révolution française du contexte particulier de la révolution industrielle, à travers laquelle les premiers socialistes ont compris unilatéralement la liberté sociale et ont développé un «fondamentalisme économique», qui les a fait manquer les problèmes extra-économiques liés aux institutions familiales et aux institutions juridico-politiques (ibidem, p. 104). 19   Honneth, Le droit de la liberté, p. 37. Voir aussi L’idée du socialisme, pp. 90-91, qui mentionne la projection rétrospective des enjeux du socialisme moderne sur l’ensemble du processus historique. 20   Allen, The End of Progress, p. 118. 18

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communautaire, sans pour autant que cet ancrage communautaire ne détruise la réalisation de la liberté individuelle21. L’approche en termes d’ontologie sociale de l’auteur de The Common Mind, et non en termes historiques, semble conforter l’idée que, selon Honneth, et conformément au projet de La lutte pour la reconnaissance, il est possible de penser les attentes normatives de reconnaissance indépendamment de leur émergence historique – ce qui entre en tension avec le projet du Droit de la liberté, mais explique néanmoins la philosophie téléologique de l’histoire qui le sous-tend. La raison en est que seule la considération selon laquelle la modernité aurait réalisé au niveau normatif et institutionnel une certaine essence anhistorique de l’homme, c’està-dire certaines attentes transhistoriques de reconnaissance, permet au final de valoriser cette période historique particulière par rapport aux autres. C’est en ce sens que, à bien des égards, l’anthropologie de la Lutte pour la reconnaissance constitue le fondement ontologique de la démarche plus historique du Droit de la liberté. Force est d’admettre, par conséquent, que l’apparition stimulante du thème de l’histoire dans les écrits de Honneth se double d’une philosophie de l’histoire destinée à valoriser les acquis de la modernité, et que cela conduit à se demander dans quelle mesure quelques présupposés métaphysiques ne font pas retour dans cette vision téléologique, alors même que l’histoire était censée nous défaire de l’anthropologie universaliste des premiers travaux. La consécration peu nuancée du progrès moderne semble en effet faire revenir dans le discours de Honneth, au moins pour une part, les métaphysiques de l’histoire qu’il rejette chez les socialistes scientistes, quand bien même sa philosophie de l’histoire n’aurait plus pour base des lois objectives et nécessaires. Cette orientation, que l’on peut qualifier de «habermassienne», n’est en outre pas sans incidence sur l’autre déplacement important opéré par Le droit de la liberté: le passage du point de vue de l’expérience négative des individus au point de vue des institutions. 2.  Des expériences négatives aux institutions La lutte pour la reconnaissance cherchait dans les écrits du jeune Hegel la théorie d’une «intersubjectivité pratique dans laquelle le lien de complémentarité et donc de nécessaire solidarité des sujets opposés entre eux se trouve garanti par un mouvement de reconnaissance mutuelle22». Honneth   Honneth, L’idée du socialisme, p. 48.   Honneth, La lutte pour la reconnaissance, p. 26.

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montrait que cette exigence morale était atteinte chez Hegel à travers un processus à «caractère négatif, conflictuel23», de sorte que l’expérience négative du déni de reconnaissance donne lieu à une «lutte comme moyen moral permettant de passer d’un stade primitif à un stade plus avancé de rapports éthiques24». L’approche de Mead en termes de «psychologie sociale» permettait d’adapter Hegel «dans un langage théorique post-métaphysique25». La perspective psychologique des acteurs sociaux, solidaire d’une mise en avant des expériences négatives, permettait de faire droit à la conflictualité sociale et à ses enjeux éthiques et politiques en la pensant comme une lutte pour la reconnaissance. Le droit de la liberté, annoncé sur ce point par Les pathologies de la liberté 26, s’est déplacé vers les travaux du Hegel de la maturité, celui des Principes de la philosophie du droit, pour mettre l’accent, non plus sur l’expérience négative des individus, mais sur les institutions dans lesquelles sont incorporées les attentes normatives. La disparition de «l’élément psychologique27» au profit d’une analyse institutionnelle permet à Honneth de rapporter la reconnaissance mutuelle à sa «précondition sociale28». La liberté sociale n’est dès lors possible que si «des pratiques établies de longue date peuvent garantir que les sujets impliqués se reconnaîtront mutuellement29». La réflexion se déplace de la relation morale interpersonnelle au niveau proprement politique des institutions. Alors que la fragilité des rapports interindividuels était soumise à une contingence fondamentale et faisait dépendre, de manière problématique, le fondement normatif de la reconnaissance de l’expérience psychologique des acteurs, l’analyse institutionnelle évite ces écueils en se concentrant sur un objet tangible et durable. Ce déplacement est essentiel et contribue à renforcer la théorie de la reconnaissance en intégrant la question éminemment importante des structures sociales et institutionnelles, qui médiatisent les relations interindividuelles. L’apport de ce nouveau point de vue pour une théorie critique est décisif, en ce qu’il rend possible une évaluation et une remise en cause des institutions et des structures fondamentales de la société. C’est le fonctionnement même de

  Ibidem, p. 24.   Ibidem, p. 27. 25   Ibidem, p. 85. 26   A. Honneth, Les pathologies de la liberté (2001), tr. fr. F. Fischbach, Paris, La Découverte, 2008. 27   A. Honneth, dans Hunyadi (dir.), Axel Honneth. De la reconnaissance à la liberté, p. 29. 28   Honneth, Le droit de la liberté, p. 75. 29   Ibidem, p. 76. 23 24

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l’ordre social qui est ainsi atteint par l’analyse institutionnelle, ce qui constitue un gain considérable par rapport à La lutte pour la reconnaissance, qui se contentait de fournir la grammaire «morale» des conflits sociaux. Ce que perd en revanche Le droit de la liberté est la prise en compte des expériences négatives et des conflits sociaux sur lesquels mettait l’accent le point de vue psychologique. Tout se passe comme si, pour Honneth, l’exigence de l’analyse institutionnelle devait en passer par un abandon du primat de la négativité, des expériences de mépris et des luttes sociales. Outre la critique de certains mouvements sociaux dans Le droit de la liberté30, cette nouvelle perspective est présentée très clairement par L’idée du socialisme, qui refuse désormais de lier les exigences normatives à quelque conflictualité sociale que ce soit: Ce ne sont donc pas des subjectivités insurgées, mais des améliorations objectives, non des mouvements collectifs, mais des conquêtes institutionnelles, qui constitueront les vecteurs sociaux des revendications normatives que le socialisme cherche à faire valoir dans les sociétés modernes31.

Alors que les mouvements sociaux sont, selon Honneth, trop pris dans les «fluctuations de l’histoire» et dans des «conjonctures difficilement déchiffrables», voire dépendent de «l’attention médiatique32», seules les normes institutionnalisées semblent pouvoir définir un point d’ancrage solide pour la théorie critique. Il semble donc, contre le projet de La lutte pour la reconnaissance, que la théorie doive maintenant abandonner tout «référent collectif», tout ancrage concret dans des luttes réelles, pour se focaliser davantage sur les normes instituées au sein des sociétés modernes. On comprend ici à quelle point la philosophie de l’histoire de Honneth, sa valorisation de la modernité, oriente son analyse des institutions. Car ce qui permet, en réalité, de coupler la perspective institutionnelle avec le rejet de toute attention portée aux expériences négatives et aux conflits sociaux, n’est autre que la croyance dans les conquêtes normatives du monde moderne. L’histoire moderne n’apparaît plus que comme un processus qui doit réaliser dans les faits les idéaux normatifs de la Révolution française33. Dans ce schéma, les luttes sociales ne disparaissent pas complètement, mais elles sont perçues selon ce que Honneth nomme lui-même «une tournure qua-

  Ibidem, p. 139.   Honneth, L’idée du socialisme, p. 99. 32   Ibidem, p. 98. 33   Honneth, Le droit de la liberté, p. 35. 30 31

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si idéaliste34», puisqu’elles désignent l’ensemble des efforts par lesquels les normes obtiennent une «validité factuelle35». Grâce à elles, «les idées normatives sont capables de modifier la réalité sociale et de l’imprégner», mais là où La lutte pour la reconnaissance pensait pouvoir fonder la normativité sur les expériences négatives dont ces luttes résultent, Le droit de la liberté prétend pouvoir s’en passer au profit d’une pure «reconstruction normative» des institutions modernes. Cette évolution de la théorie honnethienne transforme le sens même de ce qu’il faut entendre par «pathologie sociale». Quand le premier Honneth la définissait en référence aux expériences négatives des acteurs sociaux et la pensait depuis le «désir de se libérer de la souffrance», dont résultait des possibilités de transformation du monde social36, Le droit de la liberté nomme «pathologie sociale» les phénomènes de mécompréhension des normes rationnelles instituées de la part des individus37. Les cas de pathologie sociale désignent dès lors ces moments où les acteurs sociaux «mécomprennent systématiquement la signification rationnelle d’une forme de pratique institutionnalisée dans leur société38». Leur résolution vise par conséquent à la compréhension et à la réalisation, par les individus atteints de «déficits de rationalité», des normes institutionnalisées. Paradoxalement, l’insistance du Droit de la liberté sur les institutions dédouane celles-ci de toute responsabilité et tend à reporter sur les acteurs sociaux eux-mêmes, sur leur incompréhension et leur déficit en rationalité, les traits pathologiques de nos sociétés. On saisit ainsi comment la philosophie honnethienne de l’histoire vient affaiblir considérablement la portée critique de l’analyse institutionnelle du Droit de la liberté, puisque celle-ci ne vise plus qu’à légitimer les structures institutionnelles modernes, afin de faire dépendre la réalisation de la liberté sociale de la mise en pratique, par les individus, des normes dont elles sont porteuses. Un tel cadre théorique aboutit à une défense peu nuancée des normes et des institutions modernes, là où l’on aurait pu espérer de l’analyse institutionnelle qu’elle parvienne à remettre en cause les structures profondes du monde social. De plus, là où la mise au premier plan des expériences négatives des individus aurait permis à la philosophie de Honneth de se rendre attentive à des nouveaux problèmes propres aux sociétés contemporaines, la focalisation sur les normes institutionnalisées héritées de la Révolution   A. Honneth, dans Hunyadi (dir.), Axel Honneth. De la reconnaissance à la liberté, p. 114.   Ibidem, p. 115. 36   A. Honneth, Une pathologie sociale de la raison, in: Id., La société du mépris, p. 128. 37   Honneth, Le droit de la liberté, p. 137. 38   Ibidem, p. 178. 34

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française produit une forme d’aveuglement théorique face à l’actualité et à la spécificité du contemporain. Dans The End of Progress, c’est à partir des questions décoloniales et postcoloniales que Amy Allen met l’accent sur cette difficulté dans la théorie honnethienne. Elle insiste à juste titre sur le fait que la défense des institutions modernes chez Honneth consiste en une apologie de la modernité occidentale qui, sans le vouloir, reconduit une forme de violence épistémologique à l’égard des sociétés non modernes et non occidentales, puisqu’elle tend à minorer, voire à exclure de sa théorie normative les valeurs et les expériences de ces sociétés, et qu’elle aboutit également à accorder peu d’importance au versant négatif de la modernité occidentale, qui s’est construite sur l’expansion coloniale39. Ce que dit Amy Allen au sujet des enjeux décoloniaux nous semble également valoir pour la question écologique, sur laquelle nous insisterons davantage ici. À situer sa reconstruction normative dans des idéaux de la modernité qui datent de la fin du xviiie siècle, la théorie honnethienne de la reconnaissance se montre incapable de thématiser véritablement le problème écologique actuel, dont on peut estimer que le développement économique et technique des sociétés occidentales modernes est, sinon la cause unique, du moins l’une des causes majeures, et que cela doit a minima nous conduire à nuancer l’éloge de la modernité occidentale. Sans doute la théorie de la reconnaissance a-t-elle suivi la voie habermassienne d’un recentrement de la théorie critique sur les rapports intersubjectifs, plutôt que sur le rapport des hommes à la nature40. Ces théories, centrées sur les rapports interhumains, n’ont à l’évidence pas été élaborées pour penser les questions environnementales et l’ensemble des problèmes liés aux êtres non humains (animaux, écosystèmes, ressources, pollution…), comme l’a remarqué E. S. Nelson41. Néanmoins, l’ancrage de La lutte pour la reconnaissance dans les expériences négatives rendait en-

  Cf. le chapitre 3 de The End of Progress, tout entier consacré à A. Honneth.   Voir la critique que Habermas adresse à la place accordée à la nature chez Marcuse dans La technique et la science comme «idéologie» (1968), tr. fr. J.-R. Ladmiral, Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Tel», 1990, pp. 14-15. Honneth critique aussi le thème de la domination de la nature chez Adorno et Horkheimer dans Critique du pouvoir, chapitres 1 et 2. Stéphane Haber a nuancé ce verdict concernant Habermas dans son texte Éthique de la discussion et réconciliation avec la nature, in E. Renault – Y. Sintomer, Où en est la théorie critique?, Paris, La Découverte, 2003, pp. 219-233. De même, on pourrait nuancer cela chez Honneth à partir du passage consacré aux relations avec les êtres naturels dans La réification (2005), tr. fr. S. Haber, Paris, Gallimard, 2007, pp. 84-88. 41   E. S. Nelson, Revisiting the Dialectic of Environment: Nature as Ideology and Ethics in Adorno and the Frankfurt School, «Telos», n. 155, 2011, pp. 105-126. 39 40

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core possible deux solutions face à ce déficit initial. D’une part, la théorie de la reconnaissance aurait pu devenir une théorie sectorielle au sein d’une théorie plus large englobant l’ensemble des relations que les êtres humains entretiennent avec l’altérité, qu’il s’agisse d’une altérité humaine (prise en charge par la théorie de la reconnaissance) ou d’une altérité non humaine. D’autre part, il aurait également été possible de prendre en compte les luttes de reconnaissance liées spécifiquement aux questions écologiques – ce que n’esquisse en rien Le droit de la liberté. Quelle que soit la voie choisie, l’attention aux expériences négatives qui, dans le monde contemporain, sont liées aux enjeux écologiques, et aux nombreux conflits sociaux qui mettent en jeu cette question, aurait permis de ressourcer de manière féconde la théorie de la reconnaissance. Il est certain que la méditation sur les normes instituées de la modernité ne favorise nullement une telle approche et participe à un certain décalage entre la théorie critique de Honneth et les problèmes actuels. 3.  Relire la Dialectique de la raison Nous voudrions conclure cette réflexion en montrant ce que la relecture des auteurs de la Dialectique de la raison pourrait apporter à certaines difficultés qui se sont faites jour dans l’évolution du modèle honnethien. Nous avons montré, premièrement, que l’abandon légitime de l’anthropologie essentialiste avait donné lieu à une philosophie de l’histoire tout entière orientée vers la valorisation de la modernité, et que cette pensée du progrès, bien qu’elle se présente sous un jour non métaphysique, n’en est pas moins dépendante d’une téléologie historique qui, à certains égards, fait revenir l’essentialisme anthropologique de La lutte pour la reconnaissance. Nous avons souligné, deuxièmement, que la philosophie de l’histoire du Droit de la liberté rendait problématique l’important déplacement de Honneth vers une analyse des institutions, en le faisant se détourner des thèmes du conflit social et des expériences négatives, qui auraient pourtant pu le rendre attentif à certains enjeux contemporains, en particulier l’enjeu écologique. Nous voudrions suggérer brièvement, pour finir, que la philosophie de Theodor W. Adorno et de Max Horkheimer pourrait contribuer à pallier certains écueils de la théorie honnethienne. Pour ce faire, nous ne rentrerons pas dans le détail de l’œuvre de chacun de ces auteurs, mais insisterons sur quelques éléments de la Dialectique de la raison. En ce qui concerne la question anthropologique d’une quelconque essence de l’homme, la Dialectique de la raison répond sans ambages qu’une telle essence n’existe pas, et que rien n’est immuable en l’homme si ce n’est

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le fait que, de tout temps, il a été déterminé par l’ensemble des médiations sociales et historiques dans lesquelles il s’est inscrit. Il y a certes des éléments anthropologiques dans la Dialectique de la raison (par exemple la thèse selon laquelle l’animal humain recherche la conservation de soi), ainsi que l’a souligné J. M. Bernstein, mais ceux-ci n’ont de sens qu’à être ressaisis dans une société historique donnée, et visent à mener une critique de la modernité42. En particulier, la réflexion qu’Adorno et Horkheimer proposent sur l’industrie culturelle dénonce la constitution sociale de l’homme au xxe siècle. L’industrie culturelle permet notamment que le principe marchand, propre à la sphère économique bourgeoise, pénètre les individus jusque dans leur temps libre, de sorte que, dans son loisir, «ce qui s’imprime dans l’esprit de l’homme, c’est la succession automatique d’opérations standardisées43». Et s’il est encore possible de penser une unité de l’espèce humaine, cette unité est produite par la société elle-même, qui impose à tous une même conformité: «Paradoxalement, l’homme comme membre d’une espèce est devenu une réalité grâce à l’industrie culturelle. Chacun n’est plus que ce par quoi il peut se substituer à un autre: il est interchangeable, un exemplaire44». C’est ainsi à une historicisation radicale que se livre la Dialectique de la raison, au sein de laquelle l’universalité humaine est elle-même produite par un processus social. Cette historicisation n’abolit certes pas toute forme de naturalité en l’homme. Aux yeux d’Adorno et de Horkheimer, l’histoire est «le destin des instincts et des passions humaines refoulées, dénaturées par la civilisation45». Cependant, il faut être vigilant sur ce que signifie cette référence aux instincts et aux pulsions naturelles. D’une part, parce que cette naturalité est toujours médiatisée par la société, parce qu’elle est toujours réinscrite dans un monde social qui s’en saisit, alors cela signifie que cette naturalité n’est jamais appréhendable pour elle-même, mais qu’elle prend sens uniquement au sein du fonctionnement social. D’autre part, cette naturalité n’est pas spécifiquement humaine; elle réinsère bien plutôt l’humanité dans l’animalité et inscrit l’homme dans une histoire du vivant qui le dépasse. C’est pourquoi la Dialectique de la raison peut reprendre le thème rousseauiste

42   J. M. Bernstein, Adorno. Disenchantments and Ethics, Cambridge (UK), Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 192-193, et p. 235 sq. 43   Th. W. Adorno – M. Horkheimer, La dialectique de la raison (1944), tr. fr. É. Kaufholz, Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Tel», 2011, p. 146. 44   Ibidem, p. 154. Voir aussi p. 163: «La particularité du moi est un produit breveté déterminé par la société, et que l’on fait passer pour naturel». 45   Ibidem, p. 251.

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d’une «voix46» de la nature en l’homme et le lier aux pulsions animales: la raison en est que la «nature» dont il est question ici ne renvoie pas à une anthropologie universaliste, elle ne se lie en aucun cas à l’idée d’une essence de l’homme. Si anthropologie il y a, c’est une «anthropologie dialectique47», qui interroge la manière dont, en l’homme, la société et les instincts animaux s’articulent de manière indissociable. On comprend que le projet d’Adorno et de Horkheimer prenne la forme d’une analyse institutionnelle. Parce qu’il s’agit de comprendre comment l’homme est médiatisé socialement, ce sont les institutions (religieuses, économiques, politiques, familiales, scientifiques…) qui concentrent l’attention de la Dialectique de la raison. L’analyse de l’industrie culturelle, par exemple, n’a pas d’autre sens que de resituer le sujet soi-disant autonome dans les structures institutionnelles qui le constituent et qui, dans les sociétés contemporaines, assujettissent son comportement et ses pensées. Il ne fait pas de doute que, comme chez le dernier Honneth, c’est ce point de vue institutionnel, et non celui des relations morales interhumaines, qui permet à Adorno et Horkheimer d’appréhender les structures profondes de la société. Seulement, à la différence de Honneth, on ne trouvera pas dans la Dialectique de la raison un retour masqué de prémisses anthropologiques, elles-mêmes dépendantes d’une philosophie téléologique de l’histoire. Cela aboutit très certainement, comme l’a reproché Honneth lui-même48, à la suite de Habermas49, à une absence de fondement normatif dans l’ouvrage de 1944. Il n’y a pas, dans la Dialectique de la raison, de norme stable et positivement définie de la critique sociale, à la manière dont La lutte pour la reconnaissance définit trois niveaux d’attente de reconnaissance qui valent comme autant d’exigences normatives. Le seul point d’appui de la critique se situe dans les expériences négatives des individus, dans l’expérience de la «souffrance50» qui, lorsqu’elle se fait jour et devient consciente, révèle toute l’injustice de la domination et l’irrationalité d’une société rationalisée à l’extrême. S’agit-il pour autant de nier le rôle de normes positivement établies dans la critique sociale? Pas nécessairement. Du style artistique, les auteurs de la Dialectique de la raison affirment qu’il est une «promesse» capable de transcender la réalité pour indiquer, en creux, les possibilités d’une société plus   Ibidem, p. 277.   Ibidem, p. 20. 48   Honneth, Critique du pouvoir. 49   Habermas, Le discours philosophique de la modernité. 50   Adorno – Horkheimer, La dialectique de la raison, p. 153. 46 47

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juste. De même, la «voix» des pulsions en nous, lorsqu’elle résiste à l’ordre existant, peut devenir «aspiration de l’existence à la paix51». Le négativisme d’Adorno et de Horkheimer n’est donc pas unilatéral: il admet une part de normativité positive, mais celle-ci est tout entière produite historiquement, elle renvoie à une production historique des normes qui, en elles-mêmes, sont indissociables des expériences négatives des individus et ne peuvent pas être déterminées indépendamment de ces expériences – programme auquel La lutte pour la reconnaissance restait pour une part fidèle, avant de se dédire dans Le droit de la liberté. On comprend que la critique des philosophies de l’histoire n’ait pas le même sens dans La dialectique de la raison et dans L’idée du socialisme: alors que, pour Honneth, il s’agit de sauver l’idée de progrès du déterminisme historique dans lequel l’enfermait les premiers penseurs socialistes, Adorno et Horkheimer revendiquent pour leur part un abandon sans concession de l’idée de progrès. La persistance de la domination dans l’histoire, jusqu’à – et peut-être surtout à – l’époque moderne, empêche de sacraliser les conquêtes normatives de la modernité. Pour autant, comme chez Honneth, la Dialectique de la raison tient bon sur la possibilité de reconstruire, à titre de construction épistémique et non à titre ontologique, une totalisation historique qui nous permette de donner une signification à l’histoire. À la différence de Honneth, cependant, ce sens devient celui du triomphe de la domination dans l’histoire: «Du fait que l’histoire en corrélation avec une théorie unifiée, comme quelque chose pouvant être construit, n’est pas le bien, mais l’horreur, le penser est en fait un élément négatif52». Adorno et Horkheimer mettent notamment l’accent sur le fait que l’histoire est traversée par une domination croissante sur la nature, qu’il s’agisse de la nature interne des hommes ou de la nature extérieure. La Dialectique de la raison se livre ainsi à une reconstruction généalogique de l’histoire humaine, dialoguant avec les mythes fondateurs et avec les récits des origines, pour développer ce que Honneth lui-même a appelé la «critique comme “mise au jour”»53. Si Amy Allen a montré le potentiel critique de cette reconstruction dans une perspective décoloniale qui cherche à battre en brèche l’idée de progrès, nous voudrions insister ici, à l’instar de Deborah Cook54, sur sa capacité à entrer en résonnance avec les réflexions écologiques contemporaines. L’idée d’une humanité qui, dès les commen  Ibidem, p. 277.   Ibidem, p. 240. 53   Honneth, La société du mépris, p. 131. 54   D. Cook, Adorno on Nature, London/New York, Routledge, 2011. 51 52

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cements de notre civilisation, s’est pensée maîtresse de la nature, et dont l’histoire a consisté à toujours davantage dominer les êtres naturels, jusqu’à aboutir aux catastrophes du monde contemporain, n’est assurément pas sans écho avec les thématiques actuelles en écologie politique. L’insistance d’Adorno et de Horkheimer sur la domination de la nature, qui trouve son apogée dans les sociétés capitalistes contemporaines, a pour mérite de problématiser le fonctionnement de nos institutions et notre rapport moderne à la nature. La Dialectique de la raison propose ainsi une alternative aux théories de Habermas et de Honneth, centrées sur les relations intersubjectives et sur une valorisation peu nuancée de la modernité occidentale. Gageons qu’il y ait là, dans cette importance accordée à la domination de la nature, que ne sont pas parvenus à penser Habermas et Honneth, une voie pour ressourcer la Théorie critique francfortoise aujourd’hui. La Théorie critique s’orienterait alors vers une analyse institutionnelle des différentes structures de domination des naturalités, qu’il s’agisse des corps laborants, du corps des femmes, des animaux, des écosystèmes ou des ressources; elle réinvestirait sur un mode critique une philosophie de l’histoire, en se passant de toute croyance dans l’essence de l’homme et dans les progrès de la modernité, pour retrouver une force de résistance à la hauteur des enjeux du monde contemporain. Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod Sophiapol, Université Paris Nanterre, France [email protected]

RECONNAISSANCE, CONFLIT ET SERVITUDE. PERSPECTIVES LEFORTIENNES SUR LA THÉORIE DE LA RECONNAISSANCE*

Abstract: In this article, we would like to address some problems regarding Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition through a reappraisal of the political philosophy of Claude Lefort. While those authors differ in many ways, they share a common interest for the entanglement of domination and recognition that makes political struggles possible and fruitful. However, we will argue that, contrary to Honneth, Lefort’s reading of Machiavelli and La Boétie allowed him to build a theory of recognition grounded in an infinite conflict that can never fully eliminate the threat of voluntary servitude.

*** La théorie critique de la reconnaissance de Axel Honneth a récemment été contestée à partir du concept de servitude volontaire1. Ce concept laboétien2 pose en effet un défi à Honneth dans la mesure où il attire l’attention sur des phénomènes d’assujettissement du sujet produits par le processus de reconnaissance lui-même. Le défi posé à Honneth serait double. D’une part, les phénomènes d’acceptation de la domination révèleraient certaines limites de son concept de reconnaissance idéologique3. D’autre part, la réflexion sur le versant subjectif de la domination ouvrirait un débat plus général sur la conceptualisation honnethienne du conflit et sur sa recherche du consensus moral. Nous aborderons ces deux problèmes à partir d’une perspective inhabituelle: celle de la philosophie politique de Claude Lefort (1924-2010).

*  Nous tenons à remercier les relecteurs de cet article pour leurs corrections et leurs conseils. 1   K. Genel, Les théories de la reconnaissance face au problème de l’assujettissement, in: Id., Donner, reconnaître, dominer. Trois modèles en philosophie sociale, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2016. 2   É. La Boétie, Le discours de la servitude volontaire, Paris, Payot, 2016. 3   A. Honneth, La Société du mépris. Vers une nouvelle Théorie critique, Paris, La Découverte, 2006, p. 245.

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Comparée à la démarche de Honneth, la perspective de Lefort, inspirée par Machiavel et La Boétie, paraît féconde dans la mesure où elle vise à penser les dynamiques de reconnaissance comme fondées sur un conflit social qui risque toujours de produire de nouvelles formes de servitude volontaire (totalitaire, néolibérale, etc.). Nous souhaitons ici faire dialoguer deux grandes pensées critiques qui, malgré la proximité de leurs objets, sont rarement mises en rapport. La disparité des styles et méthodes n’empêche pourtant pas, à notre sens, de trouver chez Lefort et Honneth deux approches «reconstructives»4 de la justice – pour employer une terminologie honnethienne. Nous avons choisi d’aborder les problèmes posés par la théorie de Honneth en nous situant du côté de Lefort. Ce choix se justifie notamment par le fait que la théorie lefortienne de la reconnaissance est souvent méconnue. Nous tenterons donc de mettre au jour cette théorie et de comprendre son rôle dans la pensée et le parcours de Lefort. Cela nous permettra finalement de préciser les termes du débat avec Honneth sur l’articulation entre reconnaissance, conflit et servitude. 1.  La pensée et le parcours de Lefort Lefort a construit une pensée originale du politique comme expérience immaitrisable de l’altérité et du conflit. Cette pensée repose sur une exigence de refus de toute position de surplomb théorique (scientifique, marxiste ou structuraliste, par exemple), inspirée par Merleau-Ponty. Cette exigence constitue l’un des fils rouge de la vie et de l’œuvre de Lefort, depuis ses années de militantisme à Socialisme ou Barbarie dans les années 1950 jusqu’à sa consécration académique des années 1970-1980. Afin de penser à l’épreuve des évènements et de l’altérité, Lefort s’appuye sur la multiplicité des expériences individuelles et collectives, telles qu’elles se trouvent réfléchies dans les différentes sphères de la société. Ainsi, cette pensée politique aux prises avec l’histoire en train de se faire entretient un lien intime à la littérature, à l’anthropologie ou encore à la psychanalyse car ces pratiques tentent de rendre compte des ambiguïtés de l’expérience moderne. Une telle démarche d’ouverture à la multiplicité des expériences interdit à Lefort de développer un système de thèses à prétention universelle ou de 4   La critique reconstructive, qui saisit la normativité depuis les pratiques, s’oppose à la critique constructive des théories de la justice, qui partent de l’idéal pour l’appliquer au réel (ibidem, p. 207).

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s’engager dans une recherche des normes idéales de justice. L’inachèvement et la dispersion qui caractérisent cette œuvre singulière témoignent donc d’une forme de respect à l’égard d’une expérience politique jugée immaîtrisable et intotalisable. Par conséquent, toute tentative de présentation synthétique et générale de l’œuvre de Lefort échouerait nécessairement avant même d’avoir commencé. Cependant, en retraçant brièvement le parcours de Lefort, nous pouvons mettre au jour la constance de certains de ses questionnements, parmi lesquels le problème de l’articulation entre reconnaissance, conflit et servitude. Au sortir de la seconde guerre mondiale, le jeune Lefort a développé une critique marxiste hétérodoxe du totalitarisme bureaucratique soviétique. Contre la réification du prolétariat et sa mise sous tutelle partidaire, Lefort défend une approche non totalisante, à la fois subjective et objective, de l’expérience prolétarienne5. Lefort promeut ici l’auto-émancipation ouvrière. S’il abandonnera par la suite ce programme auto-gestionnaire aux accents spontanéistes, il pose alors les premiers jalons d’une réflexion constante sur la relation ambiguë entre domination et émancipation. À ce titre, Lefort pourrait d’ailleurs être rapproché des travaux de la première École de Francfort, notamment en ce qu’il mêle perspectives individuelles et sociales6. À partir des années 1960, Lefort rompt avec le militantisme. Il cherche alors dans l’œuvre de Machiavel7 et La Boétie8 une voie pour prolonger sa réflexion sur la dynamique du conflit social, contre les apories du marxisme orthodoxe – au premier rang desquels une téléologie et un économicisme qui trahissent un désir de résorption définitive du conflit. Pour Lefort, le conflit social doit être pensé à partir des thèmes du désir et de la dépendance constitutive du sujet à l’autre. Cette période machiavélienne et laboétienne sera cruciale dans l’élaboration de la pensée lefortienne de la reconnaissance, mais elle annonce aussi le passage de Lefort à une réflexion sur un nouvel objet: la démocratie, envisagée par contraste avec le totalitarisme. En effet, à partir de ces lectures, Lefort construit une théorie de la division symbolique du social. Il distingue ainsi société totalitaire et société démocratique à partir de la façon dont chacune se rapporte à sa division constitutive. Le totalita-

5   C. Lefort, L’expérience prolétarienne, in: Id., Éléments d’une critique de la bureaucratie, Paris, Gallimard, 1979, p. 71. 6   Pour un rapprochement entre Lefort et cette école, voir C. Pagès, Quelques remarques sur une comparaison entre l’École de Francfort et “Socialisme ou barbarie”, «Rue Descartes», 96 (2019) 2, pp. 127-150. 7   C. Lefort, Le Travail de l’œuvre Machiavel, Paris, Gallimard, 1986 (19721). 8   C. Lefort, Le nom d’Un, in: Id., Le discours de la servitude volontaire.

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risme témoigne d’un effort imaginaire de recouvrement du conflit et d’unification sociale. Par contraste, la démocratie apparaît marquée par un effort d’institutionnalisation du conflit et de reconnaissance des différences. Cette dernière ne constitue cependant pas un régime stable et achevé: elle reste traversée par des idéologies et des formes de servitudes qui tentent de répondre à l’angoisse suscitée par la «dissolution des repères de la certitude»9. En effet, selon Lefort, les sociétés modernes sont privées du fondement extra-social pérenne (naturel ou religieux) qui organise les autres formes de sociétés. Cette approche pourra être qualifiée de «post-fondationaliste»10. Les sociétés modernes ne sont pas sans fondement (thèse anti-fondationnaliste), elles sont en quête de leur fondement (thèse post-fondationnaliste). C’est la société démocratique qui, dans toutes les sphères de son activité, prend en charge cette quête. À l’épreuve de la tentation d’une clôture du social sur lui-même, la démocratie fait de l’institutionnalisation du conflit le moteur de l’auto-transformation d’une communauté politique dont l’identité n’est jamais acquise. On peut donc ranger Lefort au sein d’une vaste constellation de théories de la «démocratie agonistique», qui considèrent que l’institution d’un monde commun est «l’enjeu de luttes entre des acteurs qui construisent leurs identités dans et par ces luttes»11. En passant de Marx à Machiavel et La Boétie, Lefort prolonge et infléchit ses premiers travaux. La réflexion initiale sur la subjectivité prolétarienne s’est déplacée vers une réflexion sur la subjectivité démocratique. Dans ce cadre, les luttes ouvrières sont alors ressaisies comme des luttes démocratiques parmi d’autres – et porteuses à ce titre d’un sens diffus de la justice dont aucune ne peut plus revendiquer le monopole. La démocratie est l’espace d’émergence d’une multitude de sujets politiques évanescents, qui demandent la reconnaissance dans le langage du droit (féministes, homosexuels, écologistes, etc.). Le mouvement ouvrier ne conserve ici une certaine prééminence qu’eu égard à la grande richesse de son histoire et de ses conquêtes juridiques12.

  C. Lefort, Essais sur le politique: XIXe-XXe siècles, Paris, Seuil, 1986.   O. Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau, Edinburgh, EUP, 2007. 11   S. Hayat, Démocratie agonistique, in: I. Casillo (dir.), Dictionnaire critique et interdisciplinaire de la participation, Paris, GIS Démocratie et Participation, 2013. 12   «L’histoire du mouvement ouvrier n’est après tout qu’un immense chapitre de l’histoire des droits de l’homme. C’est à travers la revendication du droit d’association, du droit de grève, plus tard du droit au travail, du droit à la sécurité sociale, que s’est poursuivie la dynamique des droits de l’homme» (C. Lefort, Le temps présent: écrits 1945-2005, Paris, Belin, 2006, p. 419). 9

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2.  L’articulation entre reconnaissance, conflit et servitude Du penseur des expériences révolutionnaires au penseur du conflit démocratique, le parcours sinueux de Lefort apparaît marqué, non par une stricte cohérence doctrinale, mais par la persistance de plusieurs questions, sans cesse retravaillées et reformulées à l’épreuve des évènements. Au terme de ce bref parcours, l’une des lignes de force de l’œuvre apparaît: le projet de saisir comment la domination peut faire retour sous couvert de l’émancipation et à partir d’un besoin de reconnaissance. S’il s’est progressivement éloigné du marxisme révolutionnaire de sa jeunesse, Lefort n’a ainsi jamais abandonné le problème de l’émancipation. Il a continué à explorer l’ambiguïté du désir de liberté, en penseur de la démocratie mais aussi en penseur des échecs des révolutions passées – à commencer par l’échec de la Révolution de 1917 – afin de saisir les transformations du désir de servitude. Nous pouvons désormais aborder plus en détail la façon dont Lefort articule reconnaissance, conflit et servitude. Comme nous l’avons annoncé, la référence à Machiavel est essentielle pour comprendre le rapport de Lefort à la reconnaissance13. Toutefois, elle pourrait surprendre les lectrices et lecteurs de La Lutte pour la reconnaissance. En effet, Honneth y présente d’emblée Machiavel comme un représentant emblématique d’une philosophie de la lutte individuelle pour l’existence – à l’opposé de la lutte sociale pour la reconnaissance14. Pour Honneth, l’anthropologie utilitariste de Machiavel l’empêcherait de concevoir un autre fondement des rapports sociaux que l’intérêt égoïste. La société apparait comme le lieu d’une perpétuelle rivalité, sans espoir de reconnaissance. Le questionnement de Machiavel serait d’ordre purement instrumental et sans portée normative. D’après Honneth, le florentin s’interroge prioritairement sur les moyens adéquats à la manipulation des intérêts, exploitant la rivalité sociale au profit du pouvoir en place. Ce faisant, l’Etat assume chez Machiavel, comme chez Hobbes, un rôle de neutralisation du conflit au profit de la classe dominante. Si le conflit renait sans cesse du fait du désir égoïste humain, il ne produit aucune reconnaissance15. Cette lecture de Machiavel est contestée par de nombreux auteurs, parmi lesquels Skinner ou Pocock, mais aussi Lefort. En effet, dans son maître-­   Nous suivons ici en partie les travaux de Serge Audier. Voir S. Audier, Machiavel, conflit et liberté, Paris, Vrin-EHESS, 2005, pp. 269-270. 14   A. Honneth, La lutte pour la reconnaissance, Paris, Gallimard, 2000, pp. 17-22. 15   H. Guéguen – G. Malochet, Les théories de la reconnaissance, Paris, La Découverte, 2012, pp. 25-28. 13

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ouvrage, Lefort montre en effet que le conflit machiavélien repose sur une conception singulière du désir16. Pour Machiavel, la cité voit s’opposer deux classes, animées par deux désirs contradictoires et asymétriques: le désir des grands – qui veulent dominer – et le désir du peuple – qui ne veut pas être dominé17. Ce conflit affectif est irréductible à la logique égoïste de l’intérêt; et les deux affects en question ne sont pas du même ordre. Le peuple, à la différence des grands, ne désire aucun objet déterminé. Ainsi, en manifestant sa volonté de ne pas être opprimé, le peuple demande à être reconnu par la loi. Par ce mouvement précaire qui vient du peuple, la liberté politique peut prendre forme dans la république et l’ordre naître du désordre. Lefort découvre ainsi chez Machiavel une conception négative du désir. S’agissant de cette conception négative du désir, on se bornera à pointer, avec Alain Mahé, d’une part, l’influence diffuse de la théorie lacanienne du symbolique sur Lefort18. D’autre part, cette conception du désir pourrait gagner à être confrontée à la lecture kojèvienne de Hegel19. En effet, cette lecture marqua durablement la pensée française du XXe siècle, à commencer par Lacan, Merleau-Ponty mais aussi le jeune Lefort20. Pour Kojève, «l’être humain ne se constitue qu’en fonction d’un désir portant sur un autre désir, c’est-à-dire (…) un désir de reconnaissance»21. La constitution de soi passe ainsi par une lutte pour la reconnaissance qui comporte donc un moment négatif qui doit être surmonté22. Il existe donc une différence fondamentale entre cette conception de la négativité et celle que Lefort découvre chez Ma-

  Lefort, Le Travail de l’œuvre, pp. 722-723.   «Le désir des Grands vise un objet: l’autre, et il s’incarne dans des signes qui les assurent de leur position: richesse, rang, prestige. Le désir du peuple est en revanche, à rigoureusement parler, sans objet. Il est l’opération de la négativité. Le peuple peut bien les convoiter, en tant que peuple, il ne saurait s’emparer des emblèmes du dominant, sans perdre sa position. L’image qui régit le désir des Grands, c’est celle de l’avoir; l’image qui régit le désir du peuple, c’est celle de l’être» (C. Lefort, Les Formes de l’histoire, Gallimard, Paris, 1978, p. 131). 18   A. Mahé, La Boétie entre l’amitié et l’inimitié: l’échange, l’alliance et la complicité, in: E. La Boétie, De la servitude volontaire, Paris, Bouchène, 2015, p. 293. 19   Kojève a proposé une interprétation tronquée, mais très influente en France, de la dialectique du maître et de l’esclave. Avant Honneth, cette lecture pionnière a souligné le rôle central de la reconnaissance chez Hegel (F. Fischbach, Fichte et Hegel. La reconnaissance, Paris, PUF, 1999, pp. 116-117). 20   Les articles écrits par Lefort au début des années 1950 témoignent de son intérêt précoce pour la question de la reconnaissance. Outre ses articles consacrés à l’idéologie et l’aliénation repris dans Les Formes de l’histoire, on pense surtout au célèbre article de 1952, qui propose une lecture dialectique et phénoménologique de la théorie du don de Marcel Mauss. 21   A. Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, Paris, Gallimard, 1947, p. 14. 22   L. Carré, Axel Honneth. Le droit de la reconnaissance, Paris, Michalon, 2013, p. 15. 16 17

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chiavel: chez Lefort, le travail du négatif prend place au sein d’une dialectique insurmontable. Le conflit social est infini. La référence à La Boétie participe également à la construction d’une théorie lefortienne de la reconnaissance, quoique sur un mode plus discret. D’une part, La Boétie prolonge et corrige Machiavel. Avec La Boétie, la dualité des désirs qui oppose les grands et le peuple au sein de la cité se trouve en quelque sorte déplacée vers le fort intérieur de chaque individu23. Comme l’a montré Lefort (et Abensour à sa suite), La Boétie complique notre compréhension du désir du peuple, en révélant sa fragilité. Comme l’avait déjà laissé entendre Machiavel sans approfondir particulièrement la question24, le désir n’est pas seulement désir de vivre libre. Il peut aussi être désir d’asservissement, c’està-dire désir d’identification à la personne du tyran. Dans les cas les plus graves de dépersonnalisation, les sujets peuvent aller jusqu’à vouloir leur propre destruction au nom du tyran. La Boétie propose ainsi une théorie du renversement du désir populaire, qui permet à Lefort d’édifier une théorie originale de la domination et de la reconnaissance, irréductible à une sociologie de la domination. La servitude volontaire est «contraire au désir de liberté sans y être étrangère 25»: autrement dit, la domination répond aussi à une aspiration. D’autre part, Lefort trouve chez La Boétie un versant positif de la reconnaissance, dérivé de sa théorie de l’amitié26. À la reconnaissance du désir de ne pas être opprimé pensée par Machiavel, La Boétie permet d’ajouter l’idée de «reconnaissance mutuelle», qui irriguera la pensée de la démocratie de Lefort. Tout particulièrement, les luttes de droits permettent «une mobilisation des énergies, une vitalisation du tissu social qui fait qu’est instaurée une quête de la reconnaissance de l’un par l’autre»27. À l’épreuve de l’altérité, les personnes se lient, dans un double mouvement indissociable de connaissance de soi et de reconnaissance de l’autre. Refusant l’alternative tyrannique entre unité et séparation, elles forment ainsi, par la communication démocratique qu’elles instaurent, ce que La Boétie nommait une communauté des «tous uns», par opposition à la conspiration du «tous Un». Dernier apport de La Boétie: il permet à Lefort de penser les formes de servitude contemporaines. En effet, Lefort a beaucoup écrit sur la servitude totalitaire, notamment dans son ouvrage sur Soljenitzyn, publié en 1976 – la

  Mahé, La Boétie entre l’amitié et l’inimitié, p. 321.   Lefort lisant Machiavel se borne à noter en passant que le peuple peut se faire «complice de la tromperie des Grands ou du prince» (Lefort, Le Travail de l’œuvre, p. 728). 25   C. Lefort, L’invention démocratique, Paris, Fayard, 1994 p. 81. 26   Mahé, La Boétie entre l’amitié et l’inimitié, p. 317. 27   Lefort, Le temps présent, p. 938. 23 24

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même année que ses travaux sur La Boétie. Lefort s’intéresse à la pyramide du pouvoir soviétique en ce qu’elle repose sur l’identification à Staline (particulièrement chez les militants). Cette servitude radicalise la logique de l’Un en devenant totale. Mais contrairement à une représentation courante, Lefort ne limite pas sa critique à l’URSS. Il évoque également des formes de servitudes invisibles qui toucheraient les sociétés démocratiques – nous y reviendrons. Au terme de ce bref parcours, il nous faut préciser que la vaste question de la servitude volontaire – souvent minorée par les commentateurs – dépasse largement le cadre de cet article dans la mesure où elle traverse une grande partie de l’œuvre de Lefort. En effet, ce dernier a plusieurs fois reconnu le caractère déterminant de sa lecture du Discours de la servitude volontaire. Cette lecture a rejailli sur toute son œuvre. D’une part, elle l’a amené à considérer que ses travaux antérieurs le portaient implicitement vers cette question28. D’autre part, Lefort n’a pas cessé, par la suite, d’approfondir explicitement ce questionnement, comme en témoignent plus d’une quinzaine de textes dispersés dans diverses publications29. Ces deux considérations rendent donc particulièrement difficiles non seulement de localiser mais aussi de résumer de la réflexion de Lefort sur la servitude volontaire: nous n’en donnons ici qu’un aperçu en l’articulant à sa réflexion sur la reconnaissance par le conflit. 3.  Conflit ou réconciliation? Servitude volontaire ou reconnaissance idéologique? Nous pouvons désormais comparer Lefort et Honneth à partir des questions posées en introduction de cet article. En premier lieu, la mise au jour d’une théorie de la reconnaissance chez Machiavel et La Boétie – rapidement faite sienne par Lefort – permet de distinguer les philosophies de Lefort et Honneth du point de vue de leurs conceptions du conflit. Si l’un et l’autre insistent sur l’importance de la conflictualité inhérente à la vie sociale, il se séparent quant à son orientation et à sa productivité. La conception lefor  C. Lefort, Écrire à l’épreuve du politique, Paris, Calmann-Levy, 1992, p. 343.   Par manque d’espace, nous nous bornerons à noter que le concept de servitude volontaire est très fréquemment mobilisé par Lefort, explicitement et implicitement, et ce dès 1976: aussi bien pour penser le totalitarisme (voir notamment Un homme en trop, La Complication ou encore Le temps présent) que les ambiguïtés la démocratie contemporaine (voir notamment L’invention démocratique) mais aussi pour éclairer les œuvres de plusieurs auteurs comme Dante, Tocqueville, Quinet ou encore Orwell (voir Écrire à l’épreuve du politique, Essais sur le politique ou Le temps présent). On pourrait également citer plusieurs entretiens non repris en volume. 28 29

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tienne du conflit, fondée sur la négativité du désir, se caractérise par son illimitation30. Chez Lefort, le conflit est sans fin. Il ne saurait donc produire de réconciliation durable. Par contraste, la théorie honnethienne est ordonnée à une visée réconciliatrice, minorant ainsi le moment conflictuel. Les travaux de Lefort relèvent ainsi d’une pensée de la reconnaissance agonistique. Alors que la théorie de la reconnaissance honnethienne apparaît comme une théorie réconciliatrice31. En second lieu, les travaux de Lefort peuvent être rapprochés d’une autre critique fréquemment faite à Honneth, qui n’est d’ailleurs pas sans lien avec la première. Cette critique porte sur le rapport entre reconnaissance et idéologie, c’est-à-dire sur la possibilité d’une instrumentalisation de la reconnaissance au service de la domination. Honneth a apporté une réponse aux critiques en proposant le concept de reconnaissance idéologique, admettant ainsi la possibilité d’une fausse reconnaissance, c’est-à-dire d’une promesse institutionnelle de reconnaissance qui va produire de la souffrance chez le sujet dans la mesure où elle ne se réalisera pas matériellement32. La culture du management néolibéral constitue un bon exemple de cette forme de reconnaissance idéologique contre laquelle Honneth s’inscrit en faux. En effet, cette culture repose sur l’intériorisation par le salarié de normes utiles à la productivité de l’entreprise, conduisant celui-ci à adopter des comportements apparemment autonomes et volontaires, qui s’avèrent in fine très insatisfaisants du point de vue de la reconnaissance. Ce concept de reconnaissance idéologique a déjà été jugé insatisfaisant par certains auteurs qui, s’inscrivant dans les débats internes à la philosophie sociale, ont donc tenté de l’amender33. À distance de ces débats, Lefort

  Nous rejoignons, ici encore, les travaux de Audier, Machiavel, conflit et liberté, pp. 269-

30

270.   On rejoint ainsi certaines critiques adressées à Honneth par la philosophie sociale française contemporaine, tout particulièrement par E. Renault. Par delà les différences de styles et d’époques, Renault et Lefort développent des conceptions partiellement convergentes du conflit et de la domination, qui incitent à tempérer l’optimisme honnethien (E. Renault, Reconnaissance, conflit, domination, Paris, CNRS, 2017, pp. 58-60). 32   Honneth, La Société du mépris, p. 269. 33   Renault a ainsi critiqué la «conception expressive» de la reconnaissance d’Honneth. L’idée de servitude volontaire lui permet d’ailleurs d’illustrer des phénomènes de méconnaissance institutionnelle dont cette conception expressive peine à rendre compte en raison de sa vision optimiste du rôle de l’institution. Ce qui permet à Renault de proposer une «conception constitutive» de la reconnaissance. Chez Renault, l’institution n’est donc pas seulement chargée d’exprimer les normes de justice disponibles dans le cadre des luttes pour la reconnaissance (conception expressive), elle est aussi productrice de reconnaissance 31

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permet de proposer une autre critique, qui ne paraîtra pas si éloignée de la précédente, notamment par sa référence à La Boétie. Il faut d’abord préciser que la pensée de Lefort ne tend pas à identifier reconnaissance et assujettissement. D’une part, Lefort se distingue d’une tendance de plusieurs auteurs critiques français34, auxquels il s’est d’ailleurs opposé35. D’autre part, Lefort ne réduit pas non plus l’effervescence démocratique à l’opposition à l’Etat36. En effet, la démocratie institue des formes de reconnaissance qui, bien que vouées à la corruption, sont porteuses d’une émancipation réelle. La conquête et la défense de droits jouent ici un rôle central, car ils diffusent et entretiennent l’éthique démocratique. Ce que Honneth nomme consensus moral désigne donc, chez Lefort, une construction fragile en perpétuelle production et transformation. La démocratie n’existe qu’à condition d’être animée par des conflits qui produisent de la reconnaissance. Mais cette production est sans garantie: elle dépend de la mise en relation, au plan de la parole et de l’action, de sujets politiques dont l’identité fait question – notamment du fait de leur vie passionnelle instable et de l’inlassable renouvellement des torts vécus. En ce sens, la démocratie ouvre à la possibilité d’un espace public dissensuel, fondé sur des formes de reconnaissances mutuelles. Comme forme de société, la démocratie vit cependant sous la menace d’un retournement des désirs de liberté et d’altérité en désirs de servitude et d’unité. Ce retournement prendra la forme de demandes d’identification et d’unité. À cet égard, la servitude totalitaire analysée par Lefort ne constitue, aussi terrible soit-elle, qu’une espèce parmi d’autres. En effet, la démocratie peut devenir le lieu d’apparition d’idéologies à vocation hégémonique qui, bien qu’irréductibles à l’idéologie totalitaire, constituent une menace aussi importante pour l’efficacité symbolique du conflit en démocratie. Devant le reflux de la menace totalitaire, Lefort avait théorisé une idéologie de ce type – qu’il nomme parfois idéologie invisible37. et de méconnaissance (conception constitutive). Voir E. Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice. Reconnaissance et clinique de l’injustice, Paris, La Découverte, 2004, p. 198. 34   À la suite de V. Descombes, J. Butler a fait de l’opposition à Hegel – souvent lu au prisme de Kojève – un trait commun à plusieurs pensées critiques françaises des années 1960-1970 (V. Descombes, Le Même et l’autre, Paris, Minuit, 1979; J. Butler, Sujets du désir. Réflexions hégéliennes en France au XXe siècle, Paris, PUF, 2011). 35   On pense ici à ses critiques de Deleuze, Althusser et Foucault (Lefort, Le temps présent, pp. 275-299). 36   Voir par exemple M. Abensour, La démocratie contre l’État. Marx et le moment machiavélien, Paris, Éditions du Félin, 2004. 37   C. Lefort, Les Formes de l’histoire, Paris, Gallimard, 1978.

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À la fin des années 1970, Lefort a offert une présentation de cette idéologie invisible sur fond des idéologies qui l’ont précédée – chaque idéologie réfléchissant les contradictions de la précédente, sans nécessairement la dépasser. Lefort articule ainsi trois idéologies: l’idéologie bourgeoise dénoncée par Marx (qui avait déjà perdu de sa pertinence), l’idéologie totalitaire dont nous avons parlé et enfin l’idéologie invisible. Cette dernière forme d’idéologie ne tente pas d’occulter le conflit par la référence hypocrite à des principes universels, comme le faisait l’idéologie bourgeoise. L’idéologie invisible ne tente pas non plus de faire coïncider l’imaginaire et le réel, sur le modèle de l’idéologie totalitaire. L’idéologie invisible est plutôt une idéologie implicite et subtile de la conformité, du rationalisme et de l’expertise38. Lefort montre que cette idéologie s’article à des formes nouvelles de servitudes invisibles, qui s’étendent dans toutes les sphères de la société, de la communication à la consommation, de l’éducation aux relations de travail. Ici, le discours idéologique serait enfoui dans le processus de socialisation, et simultanément il créerait l’illusion que rien n’est occulté, que rien ne s’oppose à circulation de biens et d’informations. Cette idéologie de la transparence communicationnelle occulterait ainsi la division en faisant croire à la disparition de la figure du maître, puisqu’elle demande aux agents de produire eux-même, chacun à son niveau, sa servitude. 4.  En guise de conclusion Notons que Lefort reconnaît l’ambiguïté de la reconnaissance, entre communication et domination. En cela, il rejoint Honneth. Pourtant, il semble concevoir autrement le versant négatif de la reconnaissance. La différence tient notamment à l’attention portée au retournement du désir, autrement dit à l’intériorisation de la domination par les dominés, qui conditionne leur participation volontaire à celle-ci. Chez Lefort, la méconnaissance est inscrite dans la reconnaissance, à un niveau symbolique, c’est-à-dire à la fois psychique et social. Par contraste, la théorie de Honneth ne semble pas réellement intégrer cette dimension négative de la reconnaissance. La reconnaissance demeure essentiellement conçue comme productrice d’un rapport positif à soi et comme ressource normative permettant d’entrer dans le conflit. En réalité, le concept honnethien de reconnaissance idéologique

  Lefort affirme que Marcuse, Whyte ou encore Baudrillard ont fourni des pistes pour penser cette idéologie. 38

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désigne une fausse reconnaissance, autrement dit une instrumentalisation de la reconnaissance. C’est pourquoi ses victimes conservent une capacité à prendre conscience de la fausseté des promesses de reconnaissance qui leurs sont faites. À la différence de la servitude volontaire, la reconnaissance idéologique désigne donc une forme d’adhésion relativement superficielle à la domination39. Pour autant, la servitude volontaire n’est pas une fatalité dans la pensée de Lefort, ni dans celle de La Boétie. Lefort ne développe pas une conception monolithique, inéluctable et désespérée de la servitude. La servitude ouvre toujours à un horizon de résistance, comme il l’a montré dans ses réflexions sur la servitude totalitaire – ce dont témoignent les formes de résistances (actives ou passives) qui émaillèrent l’histoire du goulag40 ou des camps nazis41. Si la servitude volontaire n’est pas une fatalité, elle demeure un phénomène dérangeant qu’il est nécessaire de penser dans toutes ses dimensions42. En tant que servitude désirante, elle constitue une virtualité permanente de l’agir politique moderne. Virtualité qui, au gré des bouleversements historiques, s’actualise sous diverses formes (servitude monarchique, servitude totalitaire), dont certaines restent encore à étudier dans toutes leurs ambiguïtés (servitude néolibérale43). C’est dire que l’énigme de la servitude volontaire porte en elle la question de son actualisation. Conformément à son style de pensée, Lefort n’a pas formulé de véritable critère de l’entrée et de la sortie de la servitude volontaire. Si l’on adopte le point de vue de la philosophie sociale, on pourra regretter ce manque44. Le souci de conserver à la servitude volontaire son caractère d’énigme n’est   Nous rejoignons ici partiellement une critique formulée contre Honneth à partir d’une relecture de la théorie symbolique de Bourdieu. L. Voir Carré, An “Enchanted” or a “Fragmented” Social World? Recognition and Domination in Honneth and Bourdieu, «Critical Horizons», 2009; doi: 10.1080/14409917.2019.1616481. 40   C. Lefort, Un homme en trop, Paris, Belin, 1976. 41   C. Lefort, Préface, in: G. Petit, Retour à Langenstein, Paris, Belin, 2001. 42   La démarche de Lefort se rapprocherait donc davantage de la première génération des penseurs de la théorie critique que de la deuxième ou de la troisième génération (respectivement représentées par Habermas et Honneth). Pour une comparaison entre Lefort et la première génération de cette école, voir C. Pagès, Quelques remarques sur une comparaison entre l’École de Francfort et “Socialisme ou barbarie”, «Rue Descartes», 96 (2019) 2, pp. 127-150. 43   Cette forme de servitude intéresse tout particulièrement la psychologie du travail (C. Dejours, Souffrance en France. La banalisation de l’injustice sociale, Paris, Seuil, 1998). S’appuyant sur ces travaux, Emmanuel Renault a proposé de la penser dans le cadre d’une théorie agonistique de la reconnaissance qui s’inscrit dans l’héritage critique de la théorie de Honneth (Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice, p. 381). 44   On serait alors tenté d’approuver la démarche d’Emmanuel Renault. 39

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pourtant pas nécessairement critiquable. Il peut en tout cas revendiquer une filiation proprement laboétienne. Loin de se dérober, la philosophie politique reconnaitrait ainsi les limites de la pensée devant les paradoxes et vicissitudes de ce que l’on peut nommer – empruntant alors une formule d’un lecteur de Lefort et de la première théorie critique – la «dialectique de l’émancipation»45. Emmanuel Charreau Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium [email protected]

  M. Abensour, Le nouvel esprit utopique, «Cahiers Bernard Lazare», 128-130 (1991), p. 152. 45

EINDIMENSIONALITÄT ZWISCHEN HOMOGENITÄT UND HETEROGENITÄT. MARCUSE UND BATAILLE*

Abstract: The question of unity and difference is at the base of this writing. Through an analysis of the main postulates of Herbert Marcuse and Georges Bataille regarding unidimensionality and homogeneity respectively, the text proposes to understand the agglutinating tendencies of modern society both as a result of totalizing projects (Marcuse), as well as, more deeply, an operation of the understanding itself (Bataille). This is analyzed in the light of the passage from a society of rigid advanced capitalism in the times when Marcuse’s and Bataille’s texts were written, to a flexible and financialized capitalism. In the latter, one-dimensional postulates are challenged at first sight due to a greater presence of pluralistic discourses, liberal democracy and lifestyles, while from a second look this can be seen as an incomplete promise that is structured on the basis of an undisputed economic framework. 1

*** Herbert Marcuse fasste 1964 unter den Begriff der „Eindimensionalität“ eine Reihe von Tendenzen, welche für die Gesellschaften des fortgeschrittenen Kapitalismus typisch seien. Diese Tendenzen führen zu einer fixierenden Standardisierung der Lebensweise in der Moderne, welche die Möglichkeit einer Weiterentwicklung negiert. Obwohl wir keinesfalls einen radikalen Wandel der kapitalistischen Gesellschaften hin zu einer neuen Gesellschaftsordnung beobachten können – geschweige denn einen Höhepunkt des Kapitalismus selbst –, ist es nicht weniger wahr, dass die gegenwärtige Organisation der Gesellschaft sich gegenüber der von Marcuse beschriebenen unterscheidet. Marcuse verfasste die Analyse in der Mitte der 1960er Jahre und beschränkte sich in weiten Teilen auf die nordamerikanische Gesellschaft, welche (laut Marcuse) durch ein kulturelles Monopol mit einer praktisch nichtexistierenden Gegenkultur charakterisiert war. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist seine konzeptionelle Kritik der „modernen“ Homogenisie*  Ich danke Johanna Streit und Manuel Moser für ihre aufschlussreichen Kommentare und die grammatikalische Überarbeitung dieses Textes.

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rung zu verstehen, welche laut ihm Elemente zur Förderung von Vielfalt aus den Produktionsprozessen verdrängt. Weil wir jedoch in einem anderen Zeitpunkt leben als Marcuse, ist sein Konzept der „Eindimensionalität“ kritisch zu überdenken. Meines Erachtens bietet sich hierfür ein Einbezug der Definitionen Homogenität und Heterogenität von Georges Bataille an. 1. He glanced distractedly through a few book reviews, pausing for a moment on the review of a work called Euromarketing which aroused his professional interest: the homogenization of needs and consumption patterns is one of the overall trends characterizing the new international business environment (…). The review ended with an evocation of the conditions suitable for the development of a mix that would be as standardized as possible (…)1.

Was Herbert Marcuses Konzept der Eindimensionalität charakterisiert, bezieht sich hauptsächlich auf die Analyse einiger Tendenzen, welche in den (im kapitalistischen Sinne) am weitesten entwickelten Gesellschaften der 1960er Jahre auftraten. Es ist nicht zufällig, dass Marcuse selbst bereits einige Elemente sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der analysierten Gesellschaften identifiziert, welche die Diagnose von The One-Dimensional Man relativieren oder hinterfragen. Wie bereits erwähnt, sind wir hier nicht mit Aussagen über einen Zustand bereits vollendeter Dinge konfrontiert, sondern sozusagen mit einem Blick durch das Mikroskop: Marcuse schreibt von Tendenzen. Es geht also nicht um die Beschreibung vollendeter Tatsachen, sondern darum, bestimmte charakteristische Merkmale der Gesellschaft des fortgeschrittenen Kapitalismus herauszuarbeiten, um ihre Besonderheiten zu klären, und über die Ziele, an denen sie orientiert ist, Hypothesen aufzustellen. Marcuses Bild der Eindimensionalität ist nicht nur als eine Beschreibung individuellen Verhaltens, sondern auch als eine Gesellschaftstheorie zu verstehen. Das „Eindimensionale“ bezieht sich auf eine Lebensweise und nicht nur auf kontingente Einzelaspekte der sozialen Organisation. Auf Grund einer indoktrinierten Lebensform „entsteht ein Muster eindimensionalen Denkens und Verhaltens, worin Ideen, Bestrebungen und Ziele, die ihrem Inhalt nach das bestehende Universum von Sprache und Handeln trans-

1   M. Augé, Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London, Routledge, 1995, SS. 5-6.

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zendieren, entweder abgewehrt oder zu Begriffen dieses Universums herabgesetzt werden“2. Die Rationalität einer solchen Lebensweise umfasst die Integration von Frustration und Unzufriedenheit auf eine Art und Weise, die der Lebensweise funktionale Ideen und Bestrebungen, sowie die Motivation für abweichendes Verhalten mit sich bringt. Das bedeutet, dass sowohl das, was befriedigt, als auch das, was nicht befriedigt, eine Lebensweise bildet, die dem kapitalistischen System entspricht. Wir befinden uns in einem „eisernen Käfig“, welcher die Lebenskräfte in der Trägheit der gegenwärtigen Lebensweise ersticken lässt, und wenn doch Kräfte der Veränderung auftreten, diese in eine kapitalismusstärkende Funktion einbindet. Der Begriff der Eindimensionalität kann nur ausreichend entfaltet werden, wenn wir davon ausgehen, dass es soziale Situationen gibt, welche als konträr zur Vernunft und zu einem Prozess der Emanzipation verstanden werden können. Dies führt zu der Frage, ob Marcuse selbst nicht auch an den stalinistischen Kommunismus der Sowjetunion dachte. In diesem Sinne bezeichnet der Begriff der Eindimensionalität eine soziale Pathologie, die einen Entwicklungsprozess bzw. die Entstehung von alternativen Lebensweisen, welche eine emanzipatorische Realisierung individueller und sozialer Kräfte ermöglichen würden, verhindert. Mit Axel Honneth lässt sich der Patologiezustand als eine unvorsichtige Entwicklung des gesamten Zivilisationsprozesses definieren3. 2. Es kann nicht von einem aktuellen Kontext gesprochen werden, welcher identisch mit dem wäre, welcher damals Marcuse dazu veranlasste, die homogenisierenden Tendenzen der Gesellschaft unter eine Theorie der Eindimensionalität zu fassen. Der Kapitalismus hat sich von einer Industrieära zu einer Konsumära entwickelt und zeichnet sich heute durch eine Umweltkrise und zunehmende Digitalisierung aus. Kurz gesagt, können wir heute das Ende eines „starren“ Kapitalismus und den Übergang von einer „soliden“ Moderne   „Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe“. H. Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, London, Routledge, 2007, S. 14. Deutsche Ausgabe: Der eindimensionale Mensch. Studien zur Ideologie der fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaft, Berlin, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1967, S. 37. 3   A. Honneth, Pathologien des Sozialen. Tradition und Aktualität der Sozialphilosophie, in: Id., Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Aufsätze zur praktischen Philosophie, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 2000. 2

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zu einer neuen Ära der „flüssigen Moderne“ (Bauman) beobachten. Während in der „soliden Moderne“ die Produktion nur an einem einzigen „Ort“ stattfand, die Bewegungsfreiheit sich weitestgehend auf die Eliten reduzierte und der Kapitalverkehr in den Industrieländern noch stark eingeschränkt war, herrscht in der „flüssigen Moderne“ laut Bauman eine weiterreichende Bewegungsfreiheit, welche die Ströme des Finanzkapitals und gleichzeitig der Menschen beschleunigt. Das paradigmatische Ziel des Lebens in der „flüssigen Moderne“ besteht nun darin, „(möglichst) leicht zu leben“, und in der (Fort-) Bewegung aller Dinge, was zu einer Veränderung unserer Raum-Zeit-­ Beziehung4 führt. Dies hat auch Auswirkungen auf die materiellen Bedingungen der Gesellschaft, welche individuelle Weltsichten (oder-vorstellungen) (mit-)formt. Dies bedingt nicht nur beispielsweise den Einfluss des Kapitals auf die Frage bis zu welchem Grad (Lebens-)Zeit für Arbeit oder für Freizeit genutzt wird, sondern führt auch dazu, dass Kapitalzeit als Lebenszeit verstanden wird. Dies bedeutet nicht nur, dass die Zeit in Arbeitszeit und Freizeit unter vom Kapital vorgegebenen Bedingungen eingeteilt wird, sondern auch, dass die ‚Zeit‘ des Kapitals als lebenswichtige Zeit integriert wird. Die effektive „Technologie des Selbst“ kann sogar die allgemeinen Bestimmungen für individuelle Dispositionen darstellen: entweder als Studium, Arbeit, Freizeit, Unterhaltung oder Märkte, die mit Lebensphasen entsprechend der Jugend, des Erwachsenenalters oder des Alters verbunden sind. Die Notwendigkeit einer geordneten und einheitlichen Zeitberechnung variierte je nach Wachstum und Niedergang der staatlichen Einheiten, nach Breite und Grad der Integration ihrer Völker und Gebiete und nach dem entsprechenden Grad der Differenzierung und Erweiterung ihrer kommerziellen und industriellen Beziehungen5. Der weitgreifendste Effekt der Individualisierung ist, dass gesellschaftliche Einschränkungen als selbstbestimmte Rahmenbedingungen wahrgenommen und folglich die Ursachen für das eigene Unwohlsein nicht in der Gesellschaft, sondern in der eigenen Person gesucht werden. 3. Die Tendenzen in der zeitgenössischen Gesellschaft unterscheiden sich von den charakteristischen Elementen der Situation, welche Marcuse in den 60er Jahren als Gesellschaftsordnung definiert hat (insofern ist es möglich,   Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, London, Polity, 2000, S. 14 und Kap. 3: SS. 91-129.   N. Elias, Über die Zeit. Arbeiten zur Wissenssoziologie II, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1988, SS. 75-76. 4 5

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hier von einer Mutation zu sprechen). An der Verbreitung diverser Lebensweisen und der Anerkennung, die das genießt, was als „anders“ und nicht „traditionell“ verstanden wird, sowie am Werbediskurs, an den Modetrends und der künstlerischen (musikalischen, kinematografischen und architektonischen) Avantgarde lässt sich erkennen, dass heutzutage Abweichungen von althergebrachten Modellen akzeptiert und in der Gesellschaft miteinbezogen werden. Es findet hier eine Differenzierung der Lebensweisen statt, die Differenz wird jedoch positiv anerkannt und gewinnt somit an Stärke und verbreitet sich immer weiter. In diesem Sinne ist die Frage der Differenz sowohl von theoretischer Bedeutung für den Kampf verschiedener Betrachtungsweisen als auch von empirischer Relevanz in einer Gegenwart, die ihre Möglichkeiten untersucht. Unser Fokus liegt auf der materiellen Beobachtung der Gesellschaft, weil wir den Bezug zu „Tatsachen“ als integralen Bestandteil der Beobachtung und Praxis der Theorie verstehen. Dies ist ein Versuch zu zeigen, wie greifbare Phänomene aus der heutigen Welt einige der Tendenzen korrigieren könnten, welche der Diskurs der eindimensionalen Gesellschaft projiziert(e). Trends sind real, aber die Realität besteht nicht nur aus Trends. Ich denke, es ist notwendig, das schriftlich festzuhalten, damit wir nicht davon ausgehen, dass die Eindimensionalität eine „Sackgasse“ ist, da Marcuse selbst von Trends und nicht von einer effektiven eindimensionalen Gesellschaft sprach. Unser Problem bezieht sich sowohl auf die Konzeption des Homogen-eindimensionalen als auch des Heterogen-diversen. Dieser Unterschied wurde bereits von Georges Bataille in einem Essay mit dem Titel La structure psychologique du fascisme6 thematisiert. Bataille versucht darin, die duale Situation zwischen dem Ähnlichen und dem Divergierenden als Zugehörigkeit zu den Strukturen des Wissensdiskurses hervorzuheben: La description psychologique de la société doit commencer par la partie la plus accessible à la connaissance – en apparence, partie fondamentale – dont le caractère significatif est l’homogéneité tendancielle. Homogénéite signifie ici commensurabilité des éléments et conscience de cette commensurabilité (les rapports humains peuvent être maintenus par une réduction à des règles fixes basées sur la conscience de l’identité possible de personnes et de situations définies; en principe, toute violence est exclue du cours d’existence ainsi impliqué)7.   G. Bataille, La structure psychologique du fascisme, in: Œuvres complètes de G. Bataille. Premiers Ecrits, 1922-1940, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, S. 339-371. Deutsche Übersetzung: Die psychologische Struktur des Faschismus. Die Souveränität, Berlin, Matthes & Seitz, 1978. 7   Bataille, La structure psychologique du fascisme, SS. 339-340 [Kursivschrift im Original] („Die psychologische Beschreibung der Gesellschaft muss mit dem für das Wissen 6

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Das Zitat verdeutlicht, dass Bataille Homogenität anders charakterisiert als Marcuse die Eindimensionalität. Bataille geht von einem bestimmten Verständnis von Homogenität aus: Für ihn handelt es sich um ein der Vernunft eigenes Handeln und nicht um eine ausschließlich soziale Begebenheit. Trotzdem ignoriert Bataille den Einfluss der materiellen Organisation der Gesellschaft auf die Homogenität nicht: „D’une façon fondamentale, l’homogénéité sociale dépend de l’homogénéité (au sens général du mot) du système productif“8. Seine Analyse konzentriert sich folglich auf die Kategorien der Homogenität und Heterogenität, ausgehend sowohl von einem materialistischen als auch von einem epistemologischen Blickwinkel. Auf diese Weise begreift Bataille soziale Assimilationen als Teil des Verständlichkeitssystems selbst, wobei die wissenschaftliche Tätigkeit deutlich zu beobachten ist: Ces deux sortes d’assimilations ont une seule structure: la science a pour objet de fonder l’homogénéité des phénomènes; elle est, en un certain sens, une des fonctions éminentes de l’homogénéité. Ainsi, les éléments hetero-gènes qui sont exclus par cette dernière se trouvent également exclus du champ de l’attention scientifique: par principe même, la science ne peut pas connaître d’éléments hétérogènes en tant que tels9.

In gewisser Weise könnte diese Beobachtung Marcuses Kritik an der Eindimensionalität widerlegen und Marcuse vorgeworfen werden, zu vergessen, dass jeder Diskurs versucht, Regelmäßigkeit und Homogenität zu erfassen und zu erklären. Sicherlich sind die von Marcuse beschriebenen Tendenzen nicht in ein wissenschaftlich-positives Modell eingebettet, sondern haben den Anspruch, „kritisch“ zu sein. Dies bedeutet aber nicht, dass am besten zugänglichen Teil beginnen – offensichtlich mit dem grundlegenden Teil, dessen wesentliches Merkmal die Homogenität als Tendenz ist. Homogenität bedeutet in diesem Fall die Verhältnismäßigkeit der Elemente und das Bewusstsein dieser Verhältnismäßigkeit (menschliche Beziehungen können durch eine Reduzierung auf feste Regeln auf der Grundlage des Bewusstseins der möglichen Identität von Personen und definierten Situationen […] aufrechterhalten werden“). 8   Ebd. S. 343 („die soziale Homogenität grundsätzlich von der Homogenität (im allgemeinen Sinne des Wortes) des Produktionssystems ab“). 9   Ebd. S. 344 („Beide Arten von Assimilierung haben nur eine Struktur: Die Wissenschaft zielt darauf ab, die Homogenität von Phänomenen zu begründen; in gewisser Weise ist sie eine der herausragenden Funktionen der Homogenität. So sind die heterogenen Elemente, die von letzteren ausgeschlossen werden, gleichermaßen vom Bereich der wissenschaftlichen Aufmerksamkeit ausgeschlossen: Die Wissenschaft kann nach ihrem Prinzip keine heterogenen Elemente als solche kennen“).

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er auf einen Erkenntnisanspruch verzichtet, welcher aus einer dichotomen Strukturierung der Gesellschaft kommt. Die Gesellschaft ist strukturiert und vielfältig, aber dieser Unterschied ergibt sich auch aus dem Verständnis selbst, das das Allgemeine vom Besonderen und das Notwendige vom Kontingenten trennt. Marcuse betont die Struktur und Differenz der Gesellschaft, während Bataille benutzt es, um diese Unterscheidung als ein Muster des Wissens selbst zu thematisieren. Der Unterschied besteht jedoch darin, dass Marcuse sein Projekt als eine nicht-instrumentelle Voraussetzung für eine Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft versteht und nicht als eine positive Wissenschaft oder idealistische Metaphysik. In diesem Sinne wäre Marcuses kritische Beschreibung als ein Versuch zu deuten, dadurch, dass die aktuelle Situation rational fassbar gemacht wird, mit den Parametern der Vereinigung verschiedener Elemente die Möglichkeit deren Überwindung aufzuzeigen. Das Eindimensionale hätte also nicht nur mit dem Zustand der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft zu tun, sondern auch mit der Aufhebung der Differenz, welche sich überhaupt erst durch alle kognitiven Aktivitäten entwickelt. 4. Eine solche Beobachtung reduziert jedoch zu sehr die Komplexität eines vollständigen Verständnisses der Eindimensionalität. Obwohl Batailles Argument über die Gruppierung von Elementen, welche bevor der Integration der Differenz geschieht, im rationalen Denken gültig ist, ist es nicht möglich, daraus abzuleiten, dass der Begriff der Eindimensionalität das Ergebnis von Gedankenspielereien ohne Realitätsbezug ist. Nachdem die Bedeutung der Begriffsbildung erkannt ist, sollte abgewogen werden, inwiefern die von Marcuse beschriebenen Tendenzen auf die heutige Gesellschaft immer noch zutreffen. Dazu verwenden wir eine umgekehrte Strategie zur Beobachtung des Homogenen, Standardisierten und Eindimensionalen, d.h. wir suchen nach dem Ort oder der Möglichkeit, welche das ausmacht, was als plural, verschieden, „exotisch“, sowie okkult, einfach und grotesk verstanden wird. Was wir betrachten möchten, ist das Gewicht der Differenz – sowohl jene Differenz, welche nicht direkt einen Platz findet, als auch die, welche mit dem „Heterogenen“ identifiziert wird und eine Rolle bei der Herausbildung jedes psychischen und sozialen Organismus spielt. Auch hier ist ein Rückgriff auf Bataille vielversprechend, weil er der Homogenität einen gegenteilig definierten Begriff der Heterogenität gegenüberstellt.

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5. Der heute beobachtbare Multikulturalismus kann auf den ersten Blick der Hypothese einer von einer eindimensionalen Lebensweise dominierten Gesellschaft widersprechen, welche zu einer dominanten Homogenität tendiert. Die Globalisierung und ihre enge Verbündete, die liberale Demokratie, weisen verschiedene Brüche und Diskontinuitäten mit dem Homogenen auf, von Kämpfen um Anerkennung bis hin zu subversiven Bewegungen. Diese Diskontinuitäten sind Anzeichen für einen zunehmend offensichtlichen Systemwandel, welcher bedingt, dass „kulturelle Toleranzen“ nun ein entschärfter Umgang mit alternativen Lebensweisen ausmachen, obwohl diese noch vor kurzem nicht in den kapitalistischen Rahmen integriert werden konnten. Die These ist also, dass Toleranz mit der Integration alternativer Lebensstile ins kapitalistische System zusammenhängt. Die Frage nach der Vielfalt und der Artikulation des Multiplen macht es notwendig, sich tiefergehend mit der Spannung zwischen den beiden auseinanderzusetzen. In der Psychologischen Struktur des Faschismus definiert Bataille Heterogenität als das, was die homogene Gesellschaft „wegwirft“ oder auf die eine oder andere Weise zensiert. Dies ist meines Erachtens nicht unbedingt ein charakteristisches Merkmal der „westlichen“ Kultur, sondern eine Struktur aller psychischen und sozialen Konfigurationen, wenn auch mit starker Betonung der kapitalistischen Version: (…) le monde hétérogène comprend l’ensemble des résultats de la dépense improductive (les choses sacrées forment elles-mêmes une partie de cet ensemble). Ceci revient à dire: tout ce que la société homogène rejette soit comme déchet, soit comme valeur supérieure transcendante. Ce sont les produits d’excrétion du corps humain et certaines matières analogues (ordures, vermine, etc.); les parties du corps, les personnes, les mots ou les actes ayant une valeur érotique suggestive; les divers processus inconscients tels que les rêves et les névroses; les nombreux éléments ou formes sociaux que la partie homogène est impuissante à assimiler: les foules, les classes guerrières, aristocratiques et misérables, les différentes sortes d’individus violents ou tout au moins refusant la règle (fous, meneurs, poètes, etc.)10.

  Ebd. S. 346 [Kursivschrift im Original] („[…] Die heterogene Welt umfasst den Satz unproduktiver Ausgabenergebnisse (die gleichen heiligen Dinge sind Teil dieses Satzes). Das heißt: alles, was die homogene Gesellschaft als Verschwendung oder als transzendentalen Mehrwert ablehnt. Es sind die Ausscheidungsprodukte des menschlichen Körpers und einiger analoger Materialien (Müll, Würmer, etc.); die Körperteile, Menschen, Worte oder Handlungen, die einen suggestiven erotischen Wert haben; die verschiedenen unbewussten 10

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Auf diese Weise wird das Heterogene, als Überschuss des Homogenen, wiederum als irreduzibel profiliert. Es geht nicht um die Kategorisierung des Anderen, des Diversen, als eine Ebene, die dem Homogenen gegenüber steht und dem untergeordnet ist, was nicht in das Schematisierte „hineinpasst“, sondern darum, einen eigenen Status zugunsten der immer konstanten Präsenz des Multiplen zu erhalten. In gleicher Weise und in einem strukturalistischen Register weist Pierre Bourdieu unter Bezugnahme auf die totalitären Regime, die mit der Konfiguration von Staatsapparaten operieren, auf die Unmöglichkeit einer absoluten Absorption des Kampfes in den sozialen Bereichen in Situationen expliziter Unterdrückung hin: Total institutions – asylums, prisions, concentration camps- or dictatorial states are attempts to institute an end to history. Thus apparatuses represent a limit case, what we may consider to be a pathological state of fields. But it is a limit that is never actually reached, even under the most repressive „totalitarian“ regimes (...). The appearence of an apparatus, in fact, conceals a field of struggles in which the holder of ‚absolute power‘ must himself participate11.

Dies widerspricht nicht der Tatsache, dass soziale Konflikte in einem eindimensionalen Kontext stattfinden können. Es ist durchaus möglich, parteipolitische Auseinandersetzungen im Rahmen einer kapitalistischen Standardisierung aufrechtzuerhalten, die jenseits divergierender Positionen ihre Hegemonie nicht bedroht sehen würde. Das Ziel der eindimensionalen Theo­ rie wäre es, zu zeigen, dass die Stabilität eines Lebenssystems nicht von der Aufhebung der Differenz abhängt, sondern von einem ewigen Kampf, Hegemonien zu schließen und Homogenitäten herauszufordern. Mit anderen Worten: wie die Anerkennung von Unterschieden nicht einfach durch ihre Akzeptanz, sondern erst durch ihre konkrete Realisierung gelingen kann. Dies scheint Marcuses Argument bei der Beobachtung von Tendenzen innerhalb

Prozesse wie Träume und Neurosen; die zahlreichen Elemente oder sozialen Formen, die der homogene Teil nicht aufnehmen kann: Menschenmassen, Kriegerklassen, aristokratisch und elendig, die verschiedenen Arten von gewalttätigen Individuen oder die zumindest die Norm verletzen (Verrückte, Agitatoren, Dichter, etc.“). 11   P. Bourdieu, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, London, Polity, 1992, SS. 102-103 („Die gesamten Institutionen – Häuser, Gefängnisse, Konzentrationslager oder diktatorische Staaten – sind Versuche, ein Ende der Geschichte zu erreichen. Der Apparat stellen also einen Grenzfall dar, den wir als pathologischen Zustand der [Kampf-]Felder betrachten könnten. Selbst unter den repressivsten „totalitären“ Regimen […] verbirgt das Erscheinen eines Apparats in der Tat ein Feld von Kämpfen, an denen der eigentliche Besitzer der „absoluten Macht“ teilnehmen muss“).

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fortgeschrittener kapitalistischer Gesellschaften zu sein: keine getarnte Assimilation des Heterogenen, sondern seine materielle Assimilation und Werdegang. 6. La violence, la démesure, le délire, la folie, caractérisent à des degrés divers les éléments hétérogènes: actifs, en tant que personnes ou en tant que foules, ils se produisent en brisant les lois de l’homogénéité sociale. Cette caractéristique ne s’applique pas d’une façon appropriée aux objets inertes, toutefois ces dermers présentent une certaine conformité avec les sentiments extrêmes (…)12.

Die Elemente von Ausgrenzung und Differenz sind an sich heterogen und können nicht durch eine der Gesellschaft fremdartige Kategorie verstanden werden, sondern müssen durch die ihr eigenen Unterschiede analysiert werden. Jeder Prozess der Unterscheidung ist innerhalb der Grenzen der Gesellschaft angesiedelt und nicht auf Konstanten zurückzuführen, welche von vornherein durch Natur, Zustand und Design vorgegeben wären. Darüber hinaus stellt das Heterogene nicht nur eine innere Dimension eines Körpers oder eines sozialen Organs, sondern auch die Möglichkeit des sozialen Körpers als Ganzes dar. Die Summe verschiedener Homogenitäten, die wiederum eine Heterogenität bilden. 7. (...) When examining the later work of the Frankfurt School, especially as related to its analysis of American society, domination in what Marcuse was to popularize as „one-dimensional“ society seemed to exist without the conscious direction of dominators, whether economic or political. As a result, it appeared more sinister and invulnerable, and the chances for effective action to negate it even more remote13.

12   Bataille, La structure psychologique du fascisme, S. 347 („Gewalt, Disproportion, Delirium, Wahnsinn, charakterisieren heterogene Elemente in unterschiedlichem Maße: Als Personen oder Menschenmengen aktiv, brechen sie die Gesetze der sozialen Homogenität. Diese Eigenschaft gilt nicht ausreichend für inerte Objekte, letztere zeigen jedoch eine gewisse Übereinstimmung mit extremen Gefühlen“). 13   J. Martin, The Dialectical Imagination, London, Heinemann, 1976, S. 166 („die spätere Arbeit der Frankfurter Schule, insbesondere die, die mit seiner Analyse der [amerikanischen] Gesellschaft zusammenhängt, die Dominanz, in der Marcuse als „eindimensionale“

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Der eindimensionale Charakter ist tragisch, wenn wir uns seiner bewusst werden. In dem Augenblick, in dem sich Sisyphos der Absurdität seiner Aufgabe bewusst wird, wird ihm der Felsen zur Last und die Arbeit zu einer Wiederholung fernab von Kreativität und Selbstbestimmung. Wie im Mythos des griechischen Gottes wird die Strafe des Sisyphos erst tragisch, wenn der Arbeiter sich des Mangels an Motiv oder Orientierung seiner Tätigkeit bewusst wird. Nur während er den Berg hinunterläuft, um seinen Felsbrocken wieder einzuholen und einen neuen Versuch zu starten, erwirbt Sisyphos das notwendige Bewusstsein, um die Abwesenheit von Sinn in seinem Bemühen zu verstehen. Doch gerade in diesem Bewusstsein liegt die Befreiung von Sisyphos: Er wird zum Meister seines Schicksals und nimmt es als solches an, sich immer wieder neu verpflichtend trotz eines Motivmangels weiter zu arbeiten. Dies ist eines der Merkmale einer Gesellschaft, die über die von Marcuse beschriebene Eindimensionalität hinausgeht: eine Situation, in der ein Teil ihrer Mitglieder sich ihres eingeschränkten und objektiven Zustands bewusst wird. Das mechanische und halb-schlafwandlerische Verhalten der eindimensionalen Gesellschaft erhält ihren Moment der Klarheit in dem Moment, in dem das Bewusstsein ihrer (fehlenden) Sinnrichtung sie angreift. Diese Bedingung wird als primäres Merkmal einer Zeit angezeigt, in der die Lebensziele unsicher werden. Die Möglichkeit eines Auswegs ist nicht in einem epochalen Halbschatten zu sehen, sondern in einer negativen Selbstbestätigung darin. Deshalb kann der letzte Marcuse als moderater Materialist betrachtet werden: Nur in der richtigen Definition von Tragödie, nur in ihrer richtigen Akzeptanz, wird eine Herrschaft über die Tragödie möglich. Selbst wenn diese Herrschaft de facto eintritt, auch wenn es Sisyphos gelingt, seinen Willen im Schicksal des Steins zu verwirklichen, wäre seine Aufgabe der Selbstbestimmung erst dann erfüllt, wenn er seine unendliche Aufgabe als Bedingung der Möglichkeit angenommen hätte. 8.  Nachwort Wenn die Theorie der Eindimensionalität ein Interesse hat, dann ist sie an ihren dialektischen Ergebnissen interessiert. Nicht nur als Spiegel der Realität, sondern als Beeinflussung der Realität selbst. Dies macht die HoffGesellschaft populär werden sollte, schien ohne die bewusste Ausrichtung der Dominanten zu existieren, sei es politisch oder wirtschaftlich. Infolgedessen schien es unheimlicher und unverwundbarer zu sein, und die Möglichkeiten effektiver Maßnahmen, um es zu leugnen, schienen noch weiter entfernt“).

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nung auf „Verbesserung“ oder „Fortschritt“ in Marcuses Diagnose, die auf den gegenwärtigen Kontext hochgerechnet wird, verständlich, da der Kontext zurzeit der Verbreitung der Theorie der Eindimensionalität, ohne völlig unterschiedlich zu sein, heute definitiv nicht derselbe ist. Die tiefe Überzeugung, sich in einem Zustand unüberwindlicher sozialer Tatsachen zu befinden, ist verdächtig, egal ob sie sich auf eine Situation der Gnade oder des Terrors bezieht. In diesem Zusammenhang gewinnen die extremsten Positionen gegenüber der Gegenwart der Gesellschaft an Kraft: „Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst. What is the point of our celebrated freedom of choice when the only choice is between playing by the rules and (self-)destructive violence?“14. Eine berechtigte Frage wäre, für wen ist der Ausbruch sinnlos, für welchen Teil der Gesellschaft, wo beginnt und endet der vermeintliche Unsinn? Auch wenn wir die Tendenzen zur Eindimensionalität nicht überwinden können, betrachten wir die Marcuse-Diagnose aus einem anderen Blickwinkel, wenn wir die Integration der Heterogenität als eine der Voraussetzungen für die Möglichkeit des Sozialen betrachten: Von nun an wird die Eindimensionalität vor allem ein unvermeidliches Element der Gesellschaftskonstitution sein, das jedoch nie in der Lage sein wird, ihre Gesamtheit zu standardisieren oder homogenisieren, denn das Unvorhersehbare und das Multiversum können nicht durch einen sozialisierten Willen besänftigt werden. Die Vielfalt hängt nicht davon ab, das exakte Gegenteil ist der Fall! Dies ist zumindest eine plausible Kritik an den zentralen Thesen des eindimensionalen Menschen. Frente a la homogeneidad social aparece la heterogeneidad, que es tal en tanto la homogeneidad la delimita por exclusión como fuerza o excrecencia antitética. Dice Bataille: “El término mismo ‘heterogéneo’ indica que se trata de elementos imposibles de asimilar. Esta imposibilidad (…) concierne a lo más básico de la asimilación social”. Fuera de la sociedad homogénea, fuera de la ley que sostiene la asimilación, los elementos heterogéneos quedan “igualmente excluidos del campo de atención de la ciencia: por definición, la ciencia [elemento integrante de la homogeneidad, según Bataille] no puede conocer elementos heterogéneos en tanto que tales”. Esos elementos “se encuentran de hecho censurados15.   Shoplifters of the World Unite, «London Review of Books», Ausgabe 25. August 2011; https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n16/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite (Zugang Juni 2020). 15   G. Raíces, Algunas fuentes de lo real en la obra de J. Lacan, unter: http://www.imagoagenda.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo=759 (Zugriff Juni 2020) („Im Gegensatz zur sozialen 14

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Wenn die Tendenz zu einer Homogenisierung der Gesellschaft dominant wird und ein angemessenes Maß an Heterogenität verloren geht, könnte der Übergang zu einer anderen Instanz als traumatische Situation wahrgenommen werden, denn früher oder später wird sich die Sicherheit, eine homogene Welt zu bewohnen, in dem wiederfinden, was ihrer Herrschaft entkommt, was erbärmlich und damit ihr eigener Zustand ist. Schließlich braucht die Kritik der Homogenität die Einbeziehung des Heterogenen als störendes Element und damit die Vererbung einer marxistischen Lesart des Kapitalismus als globale Dominanz der Natur als solche, welche sich in einer eindimensionale Beziehung positioniert, in welcher eine Lebensweise der Assimilation an die patriarchalische und kapitalistische Struktur verschärft wird. Gleichzeitig wird der „Stand der Technik“ des Spätkapitalismus in Bezug auf die Situation, in der die Diagnose von Marx gestellt wird, sichtbar verändert, insbesondere in Bezug auf das Entstehen von sozialen Medien, Digitalisierung und die Intensivierung der Geschlechterkämpfe. Die Frage der Kritik der Homogenität wird selbst im Rahmen der Mitbestimmung ein- und mehrdimensionaler Verbindungen thematisiert. Im Dialog mit der Definition der Eindimensionalität nach Marcuse und der „Homogenität“ im Verständnis von Bataille habe ich versucht, die beiden Konzepte zu erweitern und einander näher zu bringen. Es stellt sich die Frage, warum wir heute Eindimensionalität leben und durch welche Heterogenitäten wir sie in Frage stellen können. Felipe Torres Max Weber Center, University of Erfurt, Germany [email protected]

Homogenität tritt Heterogenität auf, die insofern gegeben ist, als Homogenität durch Ausschluss als antithetische Kraft oder Ausbreitung begrenzt wird. Bataille sagt: „Schon der Begriff „heterogen“ deutet darauf hin, dass es sich um Elemente handelt, die nicht assimiliert werden können. Diese Unmöglichkeit […] betrifft die grundlegendste soziale Assimilation. Außerhalb der homogenen Gesellschaft, außerhalb des Gesetzes, das die Assimilation unterstützt, sind heterogene Elemente „gleichermaßen vom Blickfeld der Wissenschaft ausgeschlossen: Per Definition kann die Wissenschaft [integraler Bestandteil der Homogenität nach Bataille] keine heterogenen Elemente als solche kennen. Diese Elemente „werden tatsächlich zensiert“).

Azimuth is a highly-scientific review headed for an international public, that would be interested in the double orientation of philosophy, as it is conceived by the editors: it is genealogy of problems and themes in the modern Age as well as reinterpretation of them in the present days. This two-dimensional attitude also explains the name chosen, Azimuth, that’s the english translation from arabic term as-sûmut indicating the distance from a point to the plane of reference, which gives the necessary coordinates to determine the position of a celestial body. The aim is to provide the necessary coordinates to guide human thinking through the elaborate, stratified reality of the present days, which requires an intersection of different knowledges and approaches in order to be understood in its complexity.

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Azimuth è una pubblicazione scientifica di carattere internazionale, attenta alla questione filosofica nella sua duplice vettorialità: rivolta da un lato alla genealogia di idee e problemi nel mondo moderno, e dall’altro proiettata sulla riformulazione e applicazione contemporanea di forme e dinamiche del pensiero. Questa vocazione bidimensionale spiega il nome prescelto, Azimuth: trascrizione inglese del termine arabo as-sûmut, che indica in astronomia la distanza tra un punto e il piano di riferimento, fornendo le coordinate indispensabili per determinare univocamente la posizione di un corpo nella sfera celeste. L’obiettivo è quello di offrire al pensiero, esaminando in numeri monografici i nodi fondamentali della coscienza filosofica e culturale odierna, le coordinate necessarie per un orientamento critico nella società umana, la cui stratificazione rende indispensabile un pensiero a sua volta composito, che non sia solo comprensione ma anche un tentativo di posizionamento nel mondo.