*Number 14* by Bradley Walker Tomlin, 1949.

Issue 184-185, December 2024

Reading, Ethics and Society

Articles

Why is the extreme right everywhere? some notes

Alain Caillé

This is a translation of an essay by Alain Caillé originally published in French in La Revue du MAUSS. It addresses the topical issue of the global rise of the far right and examines its relation to traditional totalitarianism and democracy. It discovers paradoxes in the recent political history: the movement is a neoliberal reaction to neoliberalism. Instead of empowering progressive political appeal, economic conditions have driven people into the embrace of ‘tyrannical buffoons’ who promise the intensification of neoliberal reform. This leads to an ‘inverted totalitarianism’ or ‘parcellitarianism’.

Emancipation and liberation as normative horizons in critical theory

José Fernando Andrade Costa

Although they are often used as synonyms, emancipation and liberation constitute two distinct normative horizons in critical theory of society. In this article, I offer an analysis of these two concepts, including their historical and epistemological characteristics, pointing out similarities, differences and the possibilities for their combined use as basis of models of normative social criticism. I argue that the critical horizon of human emancipation emerges in post-Kantian European thought, while the horizon of liberation was developed in Latin American decolonial thinking in the second half of the 20th century. The horizon of emancipation arises with the critique of the primacy of systemic domination, while liberation emerges in the resistance to the primacy of the experience of oppression. The analytical distinction between these two normative horizons can be helpful to better understand both the foundations of epistemic decolonization and the potential for dialogue between the critical perspectives of center and periphery.

Reassessing the political dimension of the labor market: Power relations, recommodification, and epistemic reflexivity

Jorge Sola

Labor market deregulation has been at the core of the changes in the political economy during the last decades. The pervasive neoliberal wisdom has depoliticized the nature and effects of this process, a bias that has also affected the scholarship, which often overlooks its power dimension. This article aims to explore the role of power in the labor market to offer some theoretical insights for empirical research and public debate. Departing from the worker–employer “contested exchange” at the workplace, the article pivots on the concept of “decommodification” to grasp the institutional arrangements that shape this relationship at the institutional level of power. Furthermore, the article addresses the symbolic dimension of power and how epistemic reflexivity enables us to examine whether social research ideologically depicts or conceals the role of power in the study of labor relations, as illustrated by two subjects in vogue: the insiders–outsiders divide and the activation policy. The article concludes with a discussion of the normative implications of the preceding argument about freedom as nondomination for workers.

The twist of the institution: Arnold Gehlen on the concept and the ethics of the state

Christine Magerski

This paper aims at transforming the nexus institution–passivity into a vibrant interrelation. With this goal on my mind, I will refer to Arnold Gehlen and his controversial discussion of the state as the most powerful institution that offers an analysis not only of the complexity of institutions but also of the genuinely paradoxical nature of the institution. Seen from the perspective of philosophical anthropology, institutions are, on the one hand, inextricably intertwined with restriction and passivity, but, on the other hand, the restriction and passivity fostered by the institution must be understood as the pre-condition of an action and therefore as a force of freedom. In order to outline this thought, the paper focusses on Gehlen’s last book Moral und Hypermoral (1969) and presents the institution of the state as a social-political form from which a critique – that is, a rethinking of the concept of the institution – could start.

Concentration in contemporary society: Towards a theory of crisis based on Marx and Luhmann

Rafael Alvear

When examining the current form that modern society has acquired, it is hard to overlook the emergence of a systemic dimension that has become far removed from its social-symbolic roots. This systemic dimension is the result of a process of functional differentiation and simultaneous growth that has led to the gradual formation of social systems that, alongside their coordinating effect, give rise to multiple conflicts or crises. But how are the crises of modern societies to be understood in light of this logic of functional differentiation and internal growth? The purpose of this article is to postulate one particular form of crisis, which will be understood as the result of a consubstantial tendency towards systemic growth. The trend takes the form of a concentration of the performances of social systems that recreates modern schemes of stratification, homogenizes the diversity of options and selections of these systems and, by becoming caught up in thoughtless patterns of growth, produces critical scenarios.

Adorno on the relapse of enlightenment into Auschwitz: The exclusion and resumption of the non-identical [open access]

Céline Charlotte Casmir

This paper answers Adorno’s question, once asked in a lecture, about whether we, by forbidding the thought of the non-identical, fall in radically completed enlightenment back into the darkest form of mythology. In arguing for this in the question implied observation of enlightenment’s fallback, the paper analyses Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of enlightenment and its relapse due to excluding the non-identical, suggesting that emotions and memory represent this non-identical. As the darkest form of mythology Adorno is referring to is not to be understood as a myth itself but actually happened with the Holocaust, the paper then demonstrates how enlightenment, chiefly its exclusion of the non-identical, led to central conditions of the Holocaust that Adorno named ‘Auschwitz’. As enlightenment, according to Adorno, remains in its relapse, the paper finally discusses how his philosophy after Auschwitz advocates for the reintegration of the non-identical, mainly through the recollection of the past and the remembrance of nature within the subject.

In defense of obscure academic writing

Sean Braune

There has been a backlash against academic writing in the humanities that can be found in popular culture at least since the 1990s. By considering a selection of arguments from critics of academic writing in the humanities, I then defend a certain kind of ‘obscurity’ or ‘difficulty’ in scholarly prose by developing a concise genealogy of obscure academic writing. This paper develops the notion that an ‘uncommon sense’ should be situated against ‘common sense’ to unveil an assumed ‘world’ or ‘reality’ alongside the structural formations of that which is considered ‘useful’ language. Often, complicated academic language grapples with the intrinsic complexity that is hidden behind ‘simple’ ideas.

Leszek Kolakowski and moral integration [open access]

Chris Rojek

How are consent and the rule of law possible in post-Enlightenment societies? The rule of law is necessary. But a rule of law based upon secular principles exposes various problems of relativism that compromise its validity. Leszek Kolakowski is a neglected social theorist in the West. One of his striking arguments on the question of the integration of society is that no valid moral principles exist in experience or logic. It is a position founded on his personal history which rejects both Marxism and capitalism. Kolakowski concludes that the moral integration of society requires a faith-based foundation. This article situates Kolakowski’s position by identifying three stages in the development of his thought. It goes on to examine the role of phenomenological sociology in his outlook, especially the work of Husserl and Bergson. The faith-based conclusion that Kolakowski draws will be indigestible to many readers. Yet the questions that it raises about purposeful being and secure identity are especially pertinent in the fake news/post-truth climate of the present day.

Mimetic accumulation: Marx, Foucault, and Adorno in and with Federici’s Caliban and the Witch

Jake Sokolofsky

Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is a landmark text in Marxist feminism, rethinking capitalism’s development from and with the standpoint of women. In this paper, I trace Federici’s theory and use of the Marxist concept of primitive accumulation through both Marx and Foucault, the two central interlocutors employed to analyze the perpetuity of violence following the explicit violence of capital’s originary privatization. After understanding Federici’s reading of the dialectical double helix of violence and compulsion via Marx, and the relation of capital (as Reason and Order) to the body via Foucault, I position Adorno as a backdrop against which to view Federici’s thesis on primitive accumulation. Despite the innumerable theoretical similarities between Adorno and Federici, a close pairing shows what Caliban and the Witch misses in its final pages: a theory of mimesis—mimetic accumulation—that accounts for the dialectic of primitive accumulation’s perpetuity.

The hidden abode of artificial intelligence production: Stretching the limits of artificial intelligence ethics and critique

Bernardo Paci

The present article aims to discuss the possibility of including the sphere of artificial intelligence production within the domain of artificial intelligence ethics and investigate its moral implications. In the first section, the role of human labour in the artificial intelligence production processes is considered, with particular reference to the distinction between high-skilled and low-skilled jobs, their differential distribution in the production process itself, and the labour conditions of ghost workers, in order to analyse the main ethical issues emerging within the field. In the second section, some aspects of the existing critical literature concerning artificial intelligence and labour are discussed, focusing on Marxist and decolonial scholarship and more precisely on its lack of consideration of the global value chain through which artificial intelligence AI production processes are structured. Finally, the possibility and limits of an ethics of artificial intelligence production are reconsidered by assuming the centrality of workers’ struggles and agency along artificial intelligence’s global value chain.

The early Sartre and Arendt on action: Exploring a neglected relationship

Gavin Rae

The purpose of this paper is to engage with Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Hannah Arendt’s analyses of action. Although Arendt’s analysis of action is well known and interest in Sartre’s early analysis of action has recently grown, there has been little attempt to bring the two thinkers together on this topic. This is presumably because their respective positions appear to be antithetical and, indeed, Arendt’s assessment of Sartre’s philosophy was so critical. My guiding contention, however, is that the early Sartre and Arendt actually share a number of common positions regarding the question of action. By first outlining Sartre’s analysis of action in Being and Nothingness, before turning to Arendt’s discussions in The Human Condition and the essay “What is Freedom?” (from 1958 and 1960), I show that, although differences exist, their respective positions overlap on a number of important points, including a common critique of the free will tradition, both for its supposed dependence on arbitrariness and for reducing action to a mental activity, and their joint insistence that action entails a projection of the entire being of the individual that is grounded in a prior orientation (defined in terms of values for Sartre and a principle for Arendt).

The makings of the debtor: Morality tales and economic reasoning in contemporary neoliberal societies

Mikkel Thorup

This article explores both how the debtor became a key actor in contemporary society and relatedly how indebtedness went from being a deplorable, exceptional condition to be avoided to a normal everyday precondition of modern life. Personifying the credit side of futurity, possibilities, enjoyment or accumulation, the debtor is an ambivalent and precarious actor, never an end unto itself, but always a means to something else. The debtor is always embedded in cautionary tales. She or he needs to redeem and discipline her-/himself to become economically sound and accepted within the free market order. In line with this, while crucial for the functioning of neoliberal society, the debtor has not been a project or focus of neoliberal theory. This article explores how the debtor – despite debt being a prominent part of neoliberalism, was not theorized by neoliberals but by their critics both within academia and in activist circles.

Tracing the threads of figurational sociology: From Elias to Giddens and Goffman

Alexander Kruglov

This article explores the relationship between Norbert Elias’s figurational sociology and the theories of Anthony Giddens and Erving Goffman. It highlights the shared use of functionalism and structuralism in their conceptual frameworks, while also acknowledging their critiques of these approaches. Both Elias and Giddens emphasize the interplay between structure and agency, considering the duality of influence between individuals and social systems. The concept of figuration in Elias’s theory is reflected in Giddens’s theory of structuration, showcasing the influence of Elias’s ideas. Additionally, the article discusses the connection between Elias’s theories and Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology, focusing on the role of social interactions and the self in shaping social behaviour. Despite similarities, each approach offers unique perspectives on historical processes, micro−macro dynamics and the continuity of social events. The article highlights the significance of figurational sociology in contemporary sociological discourse and its potential application in analysing both historical and current societal transformations.