Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory最新文献

{"title":"The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy","authors":"Etienne Cardin-Trudeau","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"146-147"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147565556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Provincializing Frankfurt: A Postcolonial Rereading of Habermasian Theory","authors":"Floris Biskamp","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70026","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The terms postcolonialism and decoloniality are used for a wide variety of critical theories that have one premise in common: the conviction that the world as we know it has been shaped by European colonialism, that it continues to be shaped by colonialism's post- or neocolonial afterlife, and that this process is violent, oppressive, and should come to an end—a constellation for which Quijano (<span>2007</span>) coined the term coloniality. In this article, I will refer to all these approaches collectively as <i>postcolonial critique</i>.1</p><p>The implications postcolonial critique has for political theory and its methodology have already been discussed by various authors (e.g., Kerner <span>2018, 2022</span>, <span>2024</span>; Dhawan <span>2014</span>). In this article, I build on their works but pursue a question that is much narrower but at the same time goes somewhat further. I not only discuss what aspects of mainstream theories appear to be “critical” from a postcolonial perspective, but I also use a specific example to explain what should be done with these theories once they have been subjected to postcolonial critique: Should we still read them, and if so, how? How should they be altered? And to what extent can they still be useful? As an example for this discussion, I choose Habermasian theory. I do so for two reasons. The first reason derives from the theory itself, namely, from the proximity between postcolonial critique and critical theory (Kerner <span>2018</span>, 617–623). This proximity raises hope for fruitful engagement. The second reason is more subjective and idiosyncratic. Being socialized in Habermasian theory and willing to take postcolonial critique seriously, I want to find out what I should do with the critical theory I inherited. I mention this reference to a subjective and idiosyncratic motivation to avoid a possible misleading impression: I do not want to suggest that the quest for a postcolonial rereading of Habermasian theory is among the prime concerns of postcolonial critique. It is not. Nevertheless, postcolonial theory can be read with this question in mind—as I argue with fruitful results.</p><p>The remainder of the article consists of four sections. I begin by sketching the two aspects that seem most critical about mainstream political theory from a postcolonial perspective: first, the entanglement between the discourse of emancipation and the discourse of inequality in the Western tradition, and second, the ethnocentric treatment of global heterogeneity (Section 2). I then go on to deliver a sketch of Habermasian theory and lay out which aspects of this theory could appear critical from a postcolonial perspective (Section 3). Next, I present four types of postcolonial critique. These are the minimally invasive approach of selective historicization (Section 4.1), Amy Allen's notion of decolonization as a return to metanormative contextualism (Section 4.2), Walter Mignolo's notion of decolonization as b","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"14-24"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Ambiguities of Laclauian Populist Leadership","authors":"Riku Kusumoto","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70023","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Looking at the political developments of the past few decades, it is interesting to observe two seemingly opposite types of political movements. On the one hand, we have those that are often referred to as leaderless or horizontal political movements, such as Zapatistas in Mexico and Occupy Wall Street in the United States. On the other hand, there are populist movements with a clear leader, for instance, Hungary's Viktor Orbán or Alexis Tsipras in Greece. It appears that the former pushes toward greater autonomy and agency for the individuals, whereas the latter moves toward further concentration of power in the leader. But it also seems that the latter has enjoyed greater success in terms of seizing power and materializing their political projects. Political theorists have weighed in on this conjuncture, each presenting arguments in favor of movements with or without a clear leader figure (Hardt and Negri <span>2004</span>; Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis <span>2014</span>; Mouffe <span>2018, 2022</span>).</p><p>In such academic debates, populist leadership has been the focal point of arguments that denounce populism as normatively unfavorable. These arguments question the compatibility between liberal democratic regimes and populist movements and find the vertical relationship established between the populist leader and the mobilized citizens problematic. For instance, drawing on Western and Latin American cases, Jan Werner Müller argues that populist leaders make an anti-pluralist claim that “they and they alone represent the people,” which in turn renders their opposition as well as dissenting citizens as outcasts that do not need to be treated as equal citizens (Müller <span>2016</span>: 101). In a similar vein, Koen Abts and Stefan Rummens maintain that populism is “proto-totalitarian,” for it shares with totalitarianism “the fictitious image of the people-as-one” that is ultimately represented by the populist leader (Abts and Rummens <span>2007</span>: 414). Furthermore, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri claim that populism features “constant lip service to the power of the people but ultimate control and decision-making by a small clique of politicians” (<span>2017</span>: 23), suggesting that populist movements cannot offer anything more than a façade of democracy.</p><p>It is then no wonder that Ernesto Laclau's theory of populism—which has been a central reference point of populism theory in general as well as its left-populist strategic adaptation—has been criticized for the centrality that the leader occupies in the framework. Critics have pointed out that Laclau's formulation harbors authoritarianism or a cult of personality and is therefore questionable as a democratic force (Arato <span>2013</span>; Arditi <span>2022</span>; Ballacci <span>2017</span>; De la Torre <span>2013, 2019</span>; Peruzzotti <span>2019</span>). Such concerns are also directed at Chantal Mouffe's proposed counteroffensive to right-wing populism which is based","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"72-82"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rebuilding the Frankfurt School's Bridge From Theory to Practice: Jürgen Habermas's Rehabilitation of Critical Theory","authors":"Peter J. Verovšek","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70001","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The relationship between theory and practice is a key philosophical problem. Since Plato reacted to the sentencing of Socrates to death by separating the contemplative work of theory from the active work of politics, most philosophers—even most political philosophers—have argued that practical applications “are not prerequisites of a theory” (Schmidtz <span>2006</span>, p. 27). Today, these questions have reemerged, as philosophers and political theorists increasingly have to justify the value of theory to both public officials in order to obtain funding and to students worried about their employment prospects. This has led some political philosophers to claim that they should “have socio-political ambitions for their work” (Bright <span>2021</span>). Going even further, proponents of public philosophy argue that political thinkers “have a responsibility to take matters of public policy seriously” (Wolff <span>2011</span>, p. 1).</p><p>The critical theory tradition associated with the <i>Institut für Sozialforschung</i> (Institute for Social Research, hereafter IfS) in Frankfurt is a touchstone for these debates. Established in 1923 following the worker's uprisings that accompanied the end of the Great War in Germany, the Frankfurt Circle sought to understand why the proletarian revolution had failed. Driven by Karl Marx's project of “ruthless criticism of the existing order” (in Tucker <span>1978</span>, p. 788), the first generation sought to fulfill Marx's Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach by building a bridge between theory and practice.</p><p>However, on its hundredth anniversary, there is widespread agreement that “critical theory today is rarely <i>practiced</i> in the sense intended by its founders” (Ibsen <span>2022</span>, p. 3). This “domestication” (Thompson 2016) is often attributed to the “neo-idealist” linguistic paradigm Jürgen Habermas introduced in the 1970s. These critics allege that Habermas “abandoned” (Thornhill <span>2000</span>, p. 173) the practical aspirations of the original paradigm of the Frankfurt School by creating a “philosophy which finds peace within itself… [that] has nothing to do with critical theory” (Rockmore <span>1989</span>, p. 166). This scholarship presents Habermas as an apostate, who, despite learning from Theodor Adorno, “retreated into a kind of transcendentalism” that sealed critical theory off from practice. Raymond Geuss (<span>1981</span>, p. 94) thus concludes that the Frankfurt School is “better off” insofar as it is “closer to Adorno…than to Habermas,” while other prominent commentators see Habermas's approach as “an insidious ruse” (Butler <span>1995</span>, p. 56).</p><p>This article pushes back against this tendency to pit “the ‘good’ Adorno against the ‘bad’ Habermas” (Specter <span>2019</span>, p. 322). In contrast to the dominant interpretation outlined above, I argue that the Frankfurt School's retreat from practice actually dates back to the first generation itself, which lost its faith","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"3-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147563217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Facing Authority. A Theory of Political Legitimacy","authors":"Donald Bello Hutt","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"148-150"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147566341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Second-Order Disorders” as Pathologies of Reason or Pathologies of Critique? Conceptualizing Critical Theory's Emancipatory Potential","authors":"Rik Ouwerkerk","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"35-43"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kinship Beyond Borders: Relational Sovereignty and the Limits of Liberal Statist Secession","authors":"Elliot Goodell Ugalde","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70022","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The doctrine of territorial integrity remains a dominant debate in international relations discourse, consistently privileging the preservation of existing state structures over the self-determination claims of substate collectivities (Weller <span>2005</span>). Following, within the liberal canon, this <i>statism</i>2 is found in Allen Buchanan's (<span>1997</span>) distinction between <i>primary-right</i> theories—according to which a people(s) may secede by virtue of their collective identity3—and <i>remedial-right-only</i> theories, which concede secession solely as a remedy for significant injustices already suffered. Buchanan defends the latter on the grounds that remedialism aligns more closely with the morally defensible principles of existing international law (IL), mitigates the risk of perverse incentives, and—though not explicitly stated—implicitly gestures toward a pragmatically viable path to <i>Kantian perpetual peace</i>, as this paper later argues.</p><p>The present essay contends, however, that Buchanan's position is scaffolded by tacit ontological and normative commitments that cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Drawing on historical–materialist analysis and Anishinaabeg resurgence thought, it exposes five interlocking presuppositions. First, Buchanan's framework is expressly tailored to align with contemporary IL and thereby sustain a teleological march toward perpetual peace. Second, IL itself arose to advance colonial expansion and, as Brown (<span>2020</span>) argues, now operates as a fetish of <i>Liberal Neutralism</i>,4 concealing its role in facilitating capital accumulation. Third, because IL's genealogy is colonial, its normative architecture stands in structural tension with Indigenous assertions of sovereignty. Fourth, the linear temporality implicit in Kantian (and Buchannian) teleology clashes with the cyclical temporalities through which the Anishinaabeg organize political authority and ritual renewal. Fifth, any coherent alternative secession doctrine must therefore ground a <i>primary</i> right to secede in cyclical relationality rather than in the linear progressive horizon on which Buchanan's remedialism depends.</p><p>This final premise is defended on two interrelated fronts: (1) normatively, as an expression of ontological and epistemological commitments rooted in Indigenous worldviews, whose legitimacy derives from first principles rather than colonial referents—a position oft-framed within Indigenous-resurgence literature as <i>a politics of refusal</i>; and (2) functionally, insofar as Anishinaabeg jurisprudences demonstrate greater systemic coherence and institutional resilience than Buchanan's remedialist model, which paradoxically relies on functionalist reasoning to legitimate itself yet fails to deliver comparable durability—particularly in the economic domain, as will be elaborated through Marxian analysis later in the paper.</p><p>Of note, within the concrete context of Anishinaabeg experience","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"83-90"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.70022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Am I My Fellow Citizens’ Keeper?” Distrust, Democratic Backsliding, and Conspiracy Theories","authors":"Adelin-Costin Dumitru","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70030","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"103-114"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147565875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marxist Feminism, Reproductive Labor, and the Question of Value","authors":"Charles Prusik, Sarah E. Vitale","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 4","pages":"681-691"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145695243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marxism Without Irony: On the Failure of Alfred Sohn-Rethel's Transcendental Materialism","authors":"Katherina Kinzel, Jan Overwijk","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.70011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.70011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":"32 4","pages":"612-621"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145695419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}