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JournalISSN: 1440-9917

Critical Horizons 

Taylor & Francis
About: Critical Horizons is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Critical theory. It has an ISSN identifier of 1440-9917. Over the lifetime, 450 publications have been published receiving 3268 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the drive-theoretical work of Melanie Klein provides critical theorists with a more realistic conception of the person and a richer explanatory account of human aggression and destructiveness than does Honneth's intersubjectivist view.
Abstract: If, as Axel Honneth has recently argued, critical theory needs psychoanalysis for meta-normative and explanatory reasons, this does not settle the question of which version of psychoanalysis critical theorists should embrace. In this paper, I argue against Honneth's favoured version – an intersubjectivist interpretation of Winnicott's object-relations theory – and in favour of an alternative based on the drive-theoretical work of Melanie Klein. Klein's work, I argue, provides critical theorists with a more realistic conception of the person and a richer explanatory account of human aggression and destructiveness than does Honneth's intersubjectivist view. As such, it better serves the ends for which Honneth claims that critical theory should turn to psychoanalysis in the first place.

128 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present some of the main features of the centrality of work within the framework of the "psychodynamic" approach to work developed by Christophe Dejours and argue that we should distinguish between four separate but related ways in which work can be said to be central: psychologically, in terms of gender relations, social-politically and epistemically.
Abstract: This article briefly presents some of the main features of the notion of "centrality of work" within the framework of the "psychodynamic" approach to work developed by Christophe Dejours The paper argues that we should distinguish between at least four separate but related ways in which work can be said to be central: psychologically, in terms of gender relations, social-politically and epistemically

108 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the project of resignifying "vulnerability" by emphasizing its universality and amplifying its generative capacity might dilute perceptions of inequality and muddle important distinctions among specific vulnerabilities, as well as differences between those who are injurable and those who have already been injured.
Abstract: This paper raises several concerns about vulnerability as an alternative language to conceptualize injustice and politicize its attendant injuries. First, the project of resignifying “vulnerability” by emphasizing its universality and amplifying its generative capacity, I suggest, might dilute perceptions of inequality and muddle important distinctions among specific vulnerabilities, as well as differences between those who are injurable and those who are already injured. Vulnerability scholars, moreover, have yet to elaborate the path from acknowledging constitutive vulnerability to addressing concrete injustices. Second, vulnerability studies respond to, and have been shaped by, debates in the 1980s and 1990s over oppression, identity and agency. This genealogy needs to be acknowledged and evaluated. As I demonstrate, prominent theorists define vulnerability in contradistinction to victimization, adopting neo-liberal formulations of victims and victimhood. Finally, I turn to address the politics of vuln...

103 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The ethical turn that affects artistic and political practices today should not be interpreted as their subjection to moral criteria as mentioned in this paper, and the radicality of this law is that it leaves no choice, and is nothing but the simple constraint stemming from the order of things.
Abstract: The ethical turn that affects artistic and political practices today should not be interpreted as their subjection to moral criteria. Today, the reign of ethics leads to a growing indistinction between fact and law, between what is and what ought to be, where judgement bows down to the power of the law imposing itself. The radicality of this law is that it leaves no choice, and is nothing but the simple constraint stemming from the order of things. This brings about an unprecedented dramaturgy of infinite evil, justice and redemption that can be traced not only in contemporary politics, but in philosophical reflection and film.

81 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors review the developments in Honneth's writing about this notion and offer an immanent critique, with a particular focus on his recent major work Freedom's Right, and expose and criticize his early context-transcendent approach and his more recent immanent approach.
Abstract: Over the last two decades, Axel Honneth has written extensively on the notion of social pathology. He has presented it as a distinctive critical resource of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, in which tradition he places his own work; and as an alternative to the mainstream liberal approaches in political philosophy. In this paper, I review the developments in Honneth’s writing about this notion and offer an immanent critique, with a particular focus on his recent major work Freedom’s Right .B oth his early context-transcendent approach and his more recent immanent approach are found wanting, and his increasing reformism is exposed and criticized. The central distinction in Freedom’s Right between social pathologies and misdevelopments is also shown to be unworkable. In addition, I demonstrate that Zurn’s influential proposal to characterize the phenomena Honneth identified as social pathologies in terms of a cognitive disconnect does not fit (with Zurn’s own description of) these phenomena. While some such phenomena, like what Honneth describes as ‘‘Organized Self-Realization,’’ call out for conceptualization in terms of the notion of social pathology, an alternative characterization of this notion is necessary.

76 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
202310
202218
202133
202024
201926
201824