Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2121516
Gordon Hull
{"title":"How Foucault Got Rid of (Bossy) Marxism","authors":"Gordon Hull","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2121516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2121516","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Foucault distanced himself from Marxism even though he worked in an environment—left French theory of the 1960s and 1970s—where Marxism was the dominant frame of reference. By viewing Foucault in the context of French Marxist theoretical debates of his day, we can connect his criticisms of Marxism to his discussions of the status of intellectuals. Foucault viewed standard Marxist approaches to the role of intellectuals as a problem of power and knowledge applicable to the Communist party. Marxist party intellectuals, in his view, had developed rigid and universal theories and had used them to prescribe action, which prevented work on the sorts of problems that he uncovered—even though these problems were central to the development of capitalism.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"372 - 403"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45309057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2133803
M. Haugaard
{"title":"Foucault and Power: A Critique and Retheorization","authors":"M. Haugaard","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2133803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2133803","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT From the perspective of sociological theory, Foucault’s concepts of power, power-knowledge, and discipline are one-sided. While Foucault contends that there is no center of power, his account of power remains top-down or structural, missing the interactive and enabling aspects of power. A more balanced view would suggest that all exercises of power include meaningful agency (the ability to do something); social structures (not simply as constraints but as interactive creations); social knowledge (including both reifying truth claims and enabling truth or knowledge); and social-ontological being-in-the-social-world (both as enabling and dominating).","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"341 - 371"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48462445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2152253
Michael C. Behrent
{"title":"A Case for the Young Foucault","authors":"Michael C. Behrent","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2152253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2152253","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Between 1949 and 1961 (or, arguably, 1966), three interconnected dimensions of Foucault’s early thought emerged. First, the young Foucault offered a Hegelian perspective on Kant’s notion of the transcendental. The a priori conditions of thought, Foucault suggested, both shape and arise from historical experience. Second, Foucault drew on Heidegger’s study of Kant to argue that modern thought rests on the premise of human finitude and embraces a problematic epistemology rooted in philosophical anthropology. Foucault argued that anthropology enabled a vast extension of the scope of possible knowledge predicated on the falsely modest pretense that human understanding is inherently limited, even as it embraced a diminished conception of human existence. Third, Foucault developed a pointed critique of contemporary psychology and psychiatry, maintaining that they fallaciously seek to acquire positive knowledge of human beings, despite the fact the latter are inherently defined by what Foucault called “negativity.” This three-pronged interpretation of the young Foucault allows us to better situate Foucault’s work in intellectual history, to clarify his key arguments, and to grasp the articulation of his youthful and his mature thought.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"299 - 340"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43381877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2054612
Quinlan Bowman
{"title":"Re-Engaging Normative and Empirical Democratic Theory: Or, Why Normative Democratic Theory Is Empirical All the Way Down","authors":"Quinlan Bowman","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2054612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2054612","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Historically, many philosophers and social scientists have sharply distinguished between “normative” and “empirical” forms of inquiry. In response, some have called for a re-engagement of these forms of inquiry. Here I offer a novel way of justifying such re-engagement in democratic theory. Drawing on classical pragmatism, I argue that normative democratic theory is a form of practical reasoning, hence inevitably involves empirical inquiry. Thus, in reasoning about what democratic processes ought to look like, we should avoid sharply distinguishing normative from empirical forms of reasoning, just as we should avoid sharply distinguishing theoretical from practical forms of reasoning.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"159 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47190349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2060540
P. Moreira
{"title":"Laclau’s New Postmodern Radicalism: Politics, Democracy, and the Epistemology of Certainty","authors":"P. Moreira","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2060540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2060540","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A timeless critique holds that the radical is animated by a deep sense of certainty that leads to the worst excesses. By distinguishing essentialist and non-essentialist forms of radicalism, Ernesto Laclau offers a “coalitional” form of radicalism that, in effect, responds to this critique. Laclau deconstructs classical forms of radicalism, such as Marxism, to show how one can use some of their formal components, such as dichotomic rhetoric and a notion of utopia, without assuming that their particular content (e.g., the figure of the proletarian or the socialist utopia) entails the permanent abolition of oppression. Laclau’s radicalism enables political actors to build their own radical front by politicizing and creating linkages between issues. Laclau thus avoids the epistemic certainty of classical radicalisms. However, in the interest of politically effective radicalism, he deploys a localized form of certainty that has an ambivalent potential for intolerance and violence.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"244 - 278"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49256649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2055899
Miljan Vasic´
{"title":"How Realistic Is the Modeling of Epistemic Democracy?","authors":"Miljan Vasic´","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2055899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2055899","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The “diversity trumps ability” (DTA) model is often interpreted as a mechanism supporting epistemic democracy. However, as a variety of empirical and mathematical studies have shown, if we attempt to test the realism of the model, it turns out that it points as much toward epistocracy as democracy. This might appear to leave epistocracy with an advantage, since its rationale is not usually thought to rely on the DTA but on the obvious relevance of expertise to making complex decisions. Yet if we apply the same test to epistocracy that we should apply to epistemic democracy—the test of realism—we find that it, too, is unsustainable. This suggests that epistemic democracy and epistocracy alike are indefensible on the basis of the abstract assumptions about diversity and expertise on which the DTA is predicated.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"279 - 298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42764716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2052597
Anke Gruendel
{"title":"The Technopolitics of Wicked Problems: Reconstructing Democracy in an Age of Complexity","authors":"Anke Gruendel","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2052597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2052597","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT “Complexity” is ubiquitous in contemporary political commentary, where it is invoked to justify innovative governance programs. However, the term lacks analytic clarity. One way to make sense of it is to construct a genealogy of the notion of “wicked problems,” a concept that highlights the intractability of complex problems and problematizes the technocratic management of complexity. The term wicked problems originated in science planning in postwar Germany and urban planning in the United States. In both cases, planners rejected a naïve optimism about the potential of technical expertise in favor of recognizing that many problems transcend the knowledge possessed by experts. This appreciation of complexity led to attempts, still ongoing, to accommodate both participatory and expert-based decision making in the face of wicked problems, producing a form of technical democracy in which problem solving requires the orchestration of conflict.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"202 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41968696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2030608
A. Preston
{"title":"Philosophical Foundations of Contemporary Intolerance: Why We No Longer Take Martin Luther King, Jr. Seriously","authors":"A. Preston","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2030608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2030608","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A growing body of research suggests that political polarization in the United States is at a forty-year high, and that it is rooted less in disagreements over policy than in hostile attitudes toward political opponents. Such attitudes explain the manifest increase of intolerant behavior in American culture and politics in recent years. But what explains the attitudes themselves? One significant contributor may have been the rise of scientism in the early twentieth century, which undermined the metaphysical, epistemic, and institutional foundations of the type of morality required to transcend our instinctual tribalism.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"99 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45365914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2050024
Shterna Friedman
{"title":"Early Modern Epistemologies and Religious Intolerance","authors":"Shterna Friedman","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2050024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2050024","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There is a direct relationship between epistemology and one's attitude toward those with whom one disagrees. Those who think that the truth is difficult to ascertain can be expected, other things equal, to tend to tolerate (in the sense of sympathizing with) those with whom they disagree, as the blameless victims of an opaque reality. Those who think that the truth is easy to ascertain can be expected, other things equal, to tend to be intolerant (in the sense of being unsympathetic) toward those with whom they disagree, who perversely refuse to acknowledge what should be clear to any well-intentioned inquirer. However, these tendencies toward tolerant or intolerant attitudes can be offset by other factors; and they do not, in any case, necessarily dictate whether one will favor tolerant or intolerant policies regarding those toward whom one feels tolerant or intolerant. The complex relationship between epistemology, tolerant or intolerant attitudes, and tolerant or intolerant policies is evident in the thought of prominent early-modern Protestant theologians who, under the pressure of rampant and violent religious disagreement, theorized tolerance.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"53 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46875598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Critical ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08913811.2022.2030523
Jan-Werner Müller
{"title":"Citizens as Militant Democrats, Or: Just How Intolerant Should the People Be?","authors":"Jan-Werner Müller","doi":"10.1080/08913811.2022.2030523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2022.2030523","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Militant democracy calls for pre-emptive measures against political actors who use democratic institutions to undermine or outright abolish a democratic political system. Born in the context of interwar fascism, militant democracy has recently been revived by political and legal theorists concerned about the rise of authoritarian right-wing populists. A long-standing charge against militant democracy—also articulated with renewed force in our era—is that, as a top-down way to deal with the intolerant, militant democracy is inherently elitist and bears uncomfortable similarities with technocracy (also understood as an intolerant form of governance). But while it is true that militant democracy relies on state institutions to preserve democracy, it by no means excludes citizen engagement: “courts or the people” is a false choice. On the other hand, citizens engaged in militant democracy must take on the difficult task of distinguishing very clearly between democratic essentials under threat and political questions about which citizens might reasonably disagree. While citizen assemblies are not the answer to all of contemporary democracies’ travails, they might be very helpful in clarifying such distinctions for wide audiences.","PeriodicalId":51723,"journal":{"name":"Critical Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"85 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46551191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}