Mediathek

Futuring Critical Theory, Keynote 3: Éric Pineault

Videos

»Ecologizing Critical Theory. From the Materiality of Social Relations to the Ecological Contradictions of Advanced Capitalism«

Éric Pineault (Université du Québec à Montréal)

Section 3 – Materializing Critical Theory, Keynote 3 International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory«

The contemporary renewal of critical theory is confronted with a conjuncture shaped by an ecological crisis which has now existential implications for humanity and is intimately tied to the historical trajectory of capitalist society. This crisis is occurring at a time when the very notion of societal relations to nature is being called into question by critical theories and approaches based on post-Cartesian ontologies and hybridist conceptions of reality. In this new epistemic context, is it still possible to propose a critical theory that recognizes the mediation of social relations and the societal totality by natural structures with their own biophysical and ecological causalities? Or is this language which recognizes the objectivity of a natural world to be condemned because of its entanglements with modernity's project and practices of domination and exploitation through othering, dualism and abstraction? While acknowledging the situated nature of modern ecological thought and Earth sciences, we will argue that a critical ecological materialism is urgently needed to confront and think beyond the aporetic societal relations of capitalism to the planet, understood as a biophysical world. Social ecology, with its key concepts of social metabolism and colonization, has developed an epistemic approach that captures these relations within a framework based on the intermediation of social and biophysical causalities, a framework that recognizes the autonomy of each of these spheres as well as their articulations. This dialectic of intermediation provides a solid foundation for the ecologization of the theory of advanced capitalism and for a renewed non-reductionist, non-idealist, critical materialism.

Futuring Critical Theory Thursday, 14 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt

Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS

Fututring Critical Theory, Keynote 2: Gurminder K. Bhambra

Videos

»Critical Theory in a Reparative Frame«

Gurminder K. Bhambra (University of Sussex, Brighton)

Section 2 – Globalizing Critical Theory, Keynote 2 International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory«

Frankfurt School Critical Theory is grounded in a theory of capitalist modernity which, in common with wider sociological approaches, elides histories of colonialism. The failure to acknowledge the centrality of colonialism to the development of capitalism results in a misdiagnosis of current problems of inequality and the positing of inadequate solutions. Many theorists, for example, focus primarily on issues of redistribution associated with a capital-labour relation organised nationally and seen to be threatened by »globalisation«. This involves a related failure to understand how an apparent decommodification of labour through welfare has been bound to colonial patrimonies. In this talk, I criticise the analytical and substantive separation of colonialism and capitalism. Colonialism, I suggest, put in place the specific forms of global and national inequality that are otherwise understood in terms of developments within capitalism. A proper address of these issues requires a reparative frame that recognizes the ways in which the legacies of the past continue to configure the present and its possibilities. It involves making colonial histories central to understandings of capitalist modernity and to the normative address of inequalities that otherwise risk being legitimated by the standard accounts of Critical Theory.

Futuring Critical Theory Thursday, 14 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt

Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS

Futuring Critical Theory, Evening Conversation 2

Videos

»Futuring Critical Theory – Critical Social Research in Prospect«

Stephan Lessenich in conversation with Athena Athanasiou, Robin Celikates and Poulomi Saha

Section 3 – Materializing Critical Theory, Evening Conversation 2 International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory«

Futuring Critical Theory Thursday, 14 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt

Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS

Futuring Critical Theory, Keynote 1: Estelle Ferrarese

Videos

»How vulnerable is Critical Theory? On the Experience of Vulnerability«

Estelle Ferrarese (Picardie-Jules-Verne University, Amiens)

Section One – Dissecting Critical Theory, Keynote 1 International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory«

The talk will present how Critical Theory allows us to apprehend vulnerability as living at the mercy of others, and how it can be heuristic to borrow from different theoretical traditions, particularly feminist ones, to think the experience of vulnerability through a (critical) phenomenology of sobbing. What does a sobbing body claim? What does it manifest, and how does it modify one's relationship to the world?

Futuring Critical Theory Wednesday, 13 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt

Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS

Futuring Critical Theory, Opening: Stephan Lessenich

Videos

Opening Stephan Lessenich (Director of the Institute for Social Research)

International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory«

The aim of the conference is to determine where Critical Theory stands and to reorient it in the light of the existential challenges of our times. In the course of recent academic and political debates on, for example, post- and de-colonialism, queer feminism and new materialism, several supposed certainties of Frankfurt School Critical Theory have in part been fundamentally challenged. Critical Theory has been put to the test on two fronts: On the one hand, the explanatory power of an approach that in its interpretation of crises has so far neither focused on the global interconnectedness of social phenomena nor on the material dimension of social reproduction has been called into question. On the other hand, it is debatable whether classical Critical Theory’s normative tools are still appropriate for theorizing contemporary social relations. To mark the IfS’s 100th anniversary, »Futuring Critical Theory« will be the place where the process of developing a new research program for the IfS comes to a preliminary conclusion and the program will be presented to a wider public for the first time.

Futuring Critical Theory Wednesday, 13 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt

Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS

Futuring Critical Theory, Evening Conversation 1

Videos

»100 Years of Critical Theory – 100 Years of Solitude?«

Martin Jay in conversation with Rahel Jaeggi

Chair: Martin Saar

Section One: Dissecting Critical Theory, Evening Conversation 1

International Conference »Futuring Critical Theory« Futuring Critical Theory Wednesday, 13 Sep 23 Campus Westend, Casino Building Goethe University Frankfurt

Video / Sound / Editing: @mkffm © IfS

FAZ über die Frankfurter Schule: »Was Herbert Marcuse von Gen Z und Klimaklebern gehalten hätte«

Zeitungsartikel, Über das IfS

Herbert Marcuse stand auf der Seite neuer sozialer Bewegungen und jugendlicher Rebellen. Er hätte die Gen Z verteidigt und wohl auch die Klimakleber unterstützt.

Stephan Lessenich: »Sterben lassen und leben machen«

Zeitungsartikel, Aus dem IfS

Sind wir heute nicht alle ein bisschen neoliberal? Bei dieser Frage könnte das Gedenken an den Putsch in Chile beginnen, von dem aus der Neoliberalismus seinen historischen Siegeszug antrat.

FAZ über die Frankfurter Schule: »Horkheimer und das Verhältnis des Menschen zum Tier«

Zeitungsartikel, Über das IfS

Die Missachtung von Tieren beweist ein gestörtes Verhältnis zur Natur, sagt Max Horkheimer: Vorstufe einer Einstellung, die sich heute mehr und mehr Bahn bricht.

FAZ über die Frankfurter Schule: »Was Adorno zur woken Identitätspolitik gesagt hätte«

Zeitungsartikel, Über das IfS

Wenn er das geahnt hätte: Die Kulturindustrie durchdringt die Gesellschaft wie nie zuvor. Und eine Identitätspolitik greift um sich, die Menschengruppen isoliert. Adorno hätte das jedenfalls nicht behagt.