Critical Theory and the Pragmatist Challenge

Habermas\u27s theory breaks with the Continental tradition that has denigrated pragmatism as an Anglo-Saxon philosophy subservient to technocratic capitalism. While Habermas deftly uses pragmatist insights into communicative rationality and democratic ethos, he shows little sensitivity to other facets of pragmatism. This article argues that incorporating the pragmatist perspective on experience and indeterminacy brings a corrective to the emancipatory agenda championed by critical theorists. The pragmatist alternative to the theory of communicative action is presented, with the discussion centering around the following themes: disembodied reason versus embodied reasonableness, determinate being versus indeterminate reality, discursive truth versus pragmatic certainty, rational consensus versus reasonable dissent, transcendental democracy versus democratic transcendence, and rational society versus sane community

The Frankfurt School : the crisis of subjectivity and the problem of social change

The crisis of subjectivity and the problem of social change is the underground history of the European Revolution of 1917-23. Its final signal in the inter-war years came with the defeat of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War in the years preceding the Second World War. The defeats of progressive social forces in the inter-war years, leading to the catastrophe of the Second World War and the Holocaust brought the original Western Marxists into a socio-political terrain involving new developments and unexpected setbacks in the struggle for a rational society (socialism). Stalinism and Fascism blocked the route to socialist democracy on an international scale.In the dialectic of hope and despair the Second World War can be understood as representing the great terminus of accumulated defeats of the working class internationally in the inter-war period. For the Frankfurt School the Second World War was not only the lowest point humanity had reached at the height of technical progress, the sheer technological efficiency of the destructiveness it unleashed seemed to foreclose any impetus for optimism. Hope and despair, progress and reaction, became increasingly intertwined and at times impossible to distinguish in the succession of events. For Horkheimer and Adorno this was the dialectic of Enlightenment, the apotheosis of Western rationality dominating and consuming its own progress in an orgy of regression leading to barbarism. Midnight in the twentieth century became, for Horkheimer and Adorno at least, the eclipse of reason itself.The Frankfurt School, it has been argued here, expresses a tendency of Western Marxism and has to be analysed in this context. The notion that Western Marxism and thus the Frankfurt School were a simple product of defeat has been shown to be mistaken and ultimately dismissive of the complex interplay between theory, politics, and history. For the events in the inter-war years did not 'give rise to' the Frankfurt School as if thought were merely a reflection of historical events. The critique of orthodox Marxism must be applied to the sociology of the Frankfurt School: in other words, thought is not an 'affect' propelled by historical laws. The examination of the role of philosophy in the restoration of the subjective factor in ideology critique and the analysis of social change - and hence the reconstruction of the Marxian project - has shown that the Frankfurt School's major contribution to such a reconstruction was in restoring the dynamic concept of subjectivity as pioneered by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology [1845/46].This study has attempted to show the continued relevance of this School of Western Marxism in terms of its contribution to solving the crisis of subjectivity and the problem of social change, and as an important guide in the struggle for a humanist renaissance of Marxian socialism which, it has been argued, forms the essential dimension of this solution

What\u27s Left?

Addressing the future of radical politics at the end of the cold war, this article offers a reconstruction of radical theory around the goal of enabling collaborative self-realization through participatory democratic politics. It offers an interpretation of the radical tradition as defined by a view of human nature as a cultural artifact, and a conception of liberation as the self-conscious transformation of human nature. It proceeds to critique radical theory’s traditional focus on revolution as the means of radical transformation. Distinguishing instrumental and self-expressive conceptions of transformation it critiques revolutionary processes as tending to reproduce instrumental culture. It offers democratic association as an alternative model of transformation and defends this project against the deconstructive critiques of participatory democracy and community. The logical extension of these arguments would preclude radical politics altogether and replace it with critique

Constructing Democracy in the North American Free Trade Area

This paper focuses on the implementing mechanisms, examining their character and implications for regional government as the possibility of a hemisphere-wide free trade area looms across the Americas. The essential problem is how to define the political framework that Canada, Mexico, and the United States are creating. It is not clear that it is an inherently demo- cratic regime. The regime, created to oversee the complex system of trading rules, is arguably (and paradoxically) necessary to ensure free trade, but it may undermine the very emergent regional democ- racy it seeks to empower

Book Reviews

Making A Social Body: British Culture Formation, 1830-1864 (Mary Poovey) The Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosexual Desire (Christopher Lane) (Reviewed by John R. Reed) Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation, and the City (Deborah Epstein Nord) Sexing the Mind: Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Hysteria (Evelyne Ender) (Reviewed by John Kucich) Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, 1780-1930 (Carolyn Steedman) (Reviewed by Stephanie A. Smith) Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory, and Postcolonial Histories (Mary E. John) (Reviewed by Suchitra Mathur) Disciplines of Virtue: Girl\u27s Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Lynne Vallone) (Reviewed by Jodi L. Wyett) Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England (Demus Todd) (Reviewed by Carole Fabricant) Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture, and Politics (Neil Larsen) (Reviewed by Renata R. M. Wasserman) Marianne Moore. Questions of Authority (Cristanne Miller) (Reviewed by Lisa Samuels) Vision and Textuality (Ed. Stephen Melville and Bill Readings) (Reviewed by Nancy Locke) The Tory View of Landscape (Nigel Everett) (Reviewed by Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook) Shelley and The Revolution in Taste (Timothy Morton) (Reviewed by Steven Jones) Rhetorical Traditions and British Romantic Literature (Ed. Don H. Bialostosky and Lawrence D. Needham) (Reviewed by Mark Jones

Cybertheatres: Emergent Networked Performance Practices

This thesis explores the emergent genre of cybertheatres or networked performance, that is, performance that employs the Internet and/or other types of networking technologies (telecommunication, mobile) and attitudes. I argue that networking technologies produce hybrid spacetimes or heterotopias (Foucault), which function as stages for networked performances, a novel and increasingly popular field of practice and research. The aims of this project are to a) articulate networked performance as a distinct genre, which is a hybrid between theatre/performance and networking technologies, b) situate this within a lineage of performance practice, c) identify and analyse its principal ontological and dramaturgical elements and, d) explore appropriate curatorial strategies for its presentation to a spectrum of audiences. To achieve these aims I undertake a critical analysis of cybertheatres, starting from 1967 and focusing on current practices. My analysis unfolds through engagement with discussions along two pivotal conceptual vectors, and through applied exploration of two core elements of practice: The conceptual vectors along which this thesis develops are: 1. Space: I examine the spatial nature of the networks that host cybertheatres, employing British group Blast Theory as my case-study. 2. Presence: I question the validity of the presence vs. absence dichotomy within networked environments. I investigate this through the work of Belgian duo Entropy8Zuper!, relaunched as Tale of Tales. Further on, I undertake a practical exploration relating to the subject of the curation of cybertheatres. I reflect upon and evaluate the three-day event Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Pelformance (December 2007), which I initiated, produced, co-directed and cocurated, to propose curatorial strategies that are appropriate to emergent practices in general and cybertheatres in particular. I close by a shift of voice from the author to the collective: I join the collaborative project Deptford. TV as a method of studying artistic, curatorial and social platforms that demonstrate Web 2.0 attitudes, and argue for the genre's particular potential for new forms of social engagement within a computer-mediated culture

Understanding Contradictions in Teacher-Learner Identity, Digital Video, and Goal-Directed Activity in a Blended Graduate Reading Education Course

More teachers are experiencing professional development within blended/virtual learning communities, which I consider a fruitful avenue for expansion of new literacies in K-12 classrooms. However, new literacies challenge traditional structures in education even as new rules of corporate-sponsored reform and high-stakes accountability serve to reinforce these structures. Within this context of contradictions, a cohort of teachers from a rural, remote county in the southeast United States participated in a blended learning environment in their final semester of graduate-level coursework in Reading Education. Some of the teacher-learners, whose own attitudes and motivations toward technology were as diverse as the tools themselves, resisted new modes of learning, especially self-reflection through digital video. To better understand situational forces as well as the participants’ own identities as sources of resistance, I designed an activity-theoretical study that draws upon Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), New Literacies, and multiple realities perspectives. My data sources included observations and field notes, analysis of course documents, and interactive interviews. I applied grounded theory to code the data and used the initial findings to draft a case study report. I then used CHAT’s heuristic tools to graphically depict the tensions of joint activity between the school system and university course settings. I also developed activity portraits of three teacher-learners. My findings suggest the following implications for blended learning in Reading Education: seek better coordination and articulation of joint activity, avoid being overly prescriptive of digital tools, and engage participants more frequently in open dialogue about problems and issues. The findings also point to an enhanced role for CHAT to stimulate a theory-to-practice feedback loop for the practitioner-researcher