Showing papers in "Thesis Eleven in 1995"

Where Are we at Home

Abstract: About thirty years ago I became acquainted with the middle aged owner of a little trattoria in Rome’s Campo dei Fiori. After a lively conversation I asked him to advise me about the shortest way to Porta Pia. &dquo;I am sorry, but I cannot help you&dquo;, he answered. &dquo;The truth of the matter is I have never ever in my life left the Campo dei Fiori&dquo;. About one and a half decades later, on the board of a Jumbo jet en route to Australia, I discussed the then current affairs with my neighbour, a middle aged woman. It turned out that she was employed by an international trade firm, spoke five languages, and owned three apartments

The Two Sociologies and the Theory of Society

Abstract: Since its beginnings sociology has attempted to respond to two very different questions. The one question runs: what is the case? The other: what lies behind it? Given such different questions, it has always been difficult to preserve the unity of the discipline. For a time, above all in the late 1960s, this difference gave rise to a controversy which threatened to blow the discipline apart. This controversy attracted attention in Germany under the title of the &dquo;positivism debate&dquo;.’ But in the USA as well it posed the question whether from now on theoretical production in sociology would be split between insiders and outsiders.’ These exaggerations and their accompanying controversial arguments have disappeared like last year’s snow. The corresponding publications are read

The Soviet Model as a Mode of Globalization

Abstract: supposed to highlight. It is, if I am not mistaken, most frequently used in connection with changes in the world economy during the last two decades and particularly during the 1980s. In this capacity, it has become part of the conventional liberal wisdom about the autonomy of economic life and the limits to state intervention. Globalizing trends and processes in the economic sphere are seen as indicators of an irreversible change in the relationship between economy and polity; the growing interdependence of markets (often taken for granted without any attempt to distinguish between the internationalization of finance and the much more complex developments in other areas) translates directly into a declining independence of states. This impressionistic notion of globalization is often used to explain the most momentous event of the postwar era: the demise of the Soviet model in the triple sense of a functioning social structure, a geopolitical entity and an ideological alternative. As Soviet-type societies were increasingly drawn into the orbit of a capitalist world economy, they were-on this view-forced to accept its standards and adapt to its imperatives, but proved incapable of adjusting their economic systems to the new environment. One version of the argument contrasts the Chinese success story with the Soviet collapse and reads the former as a test case of radical economic transformation without political reform. The regime that once seemed most committed to &dquo;putting politics in command&dquo; thus appears to have come full circle and grasped the logic of economic globalization well enough to save its political skin (but neither its social body nor its ideological soul). As for the collapse which began in Eastern Europe in 1989 and came to an end in Moscow

On Ideology-Critique Critically

Abstract: This chapter begins with the indication of some elementary tdemarcatingt features that characterise the Marxian understanding of ideology as distinct from many contemporary uses of this term. First of all, it needs to be emphasised that Karl Marx applied the term "ideology" exclusively to works of culture in the narrow, value-marked sense of this word. Ideology is not synonymous in Marx with the historical situatedness, determination or perspectivity of ideas in general, which is also true, as he well knows, of the theories of the natural sciences. In general, one could argue that the distinction between these two types and concepts of ideology expresses no more than the difference between the cultural representation of tmomentaryt historically concrete and local versus the generalised, historically long-term and fundamental social interests.Keywords: cultural analysis; ideology; Marx's social theory

Ferenc Feher and the European Hermeneutic: Reflections On the Frozen Revolution

Abstract: The span of Ferenc Feher’s oeuvre is wide and impressive. From aesthetics and literary criticism, through historiography and musicology, to politics and social philosophy, Feher made significant contributions to our understanding of the social historical world. Like Hermes, the messenger of the gods, Feher offered the guidance of insight for human travellers. Yet also like Hermes in his mischief, Feher frequently registered signposts which entailed ominous twists. For example, his various excursus into the dark side of the human condition of-

Review Article : Reassessing Cultural Criticism:

Abstract: intellectual. With the rise of poststructuralisrn, however, the role of the intellectual as cultural critic was put into question, mainly because it was felt that the voice of the intellectual as spokesperson lacked the legitimacy it claimed for itself. It is one of the many merits of Richard Wolin’s recent book 7be Terms of Cultural Criticism that it reminds us of the continuing importance and legitimacy of cultural criticism, provided the claims made in such criticism are philosophically justified and empirically adequate. Wolin’s book The Terms of Cultural Criticism is a collection of nine essays, five of which have been published previously. Nevertheless, the book comes as close to being a self-contained, thematically unified volume as can be expected under these circumstances. Wolin’s critical assessment of the three contemporary schools of European thought he focusses on, i.e. first generation Frankfurt School, Existentialism, and Poststructuralism, shows that his own position is strongly influenced by Jijrgen Habermas’s work, though it would be unfair to see in Wolin nothing more than a North American Habermasian. In fact, his analyses of the work of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, of Heidegger, Poststructuralism and Neopragmatism are often more perceptive than Habermas’s; and his scrutiny of French existentialism adds a new dimension to the analytical armoury of Wolin’s Habermasian framework. Apart from a preface and the nine essays, Wolin’s book contains a short

Review Articles : Why is Conscience Obscene?:

Abstract: One test of the intellectual power of psychoanalysis is its capacity to serve as a corrective to what Freud called "wild" versions of itself. The remarkable Slovenian intellectual Slavoj Zizek’s Enjoy Your Symptom! opens with a joke at the expense of the sort of wild psychoanalysis which indiscriminately applies theoretical generalisations (in this instance around pansexualism) to every particular case. But for the purposes of introduction (and so as not to spoil the joke for prospective readers) it would be more appropriate to cite another Zizekian attempt to demonstrate the auto-corrective capacity of psychoanalytical thinking. In this case Freud himself is caught napping.

Ferenc Fehér and Political Theory – Notes for a Biographer (1995)

Abstract: Ferenc Feher was a leading presence and a major thinker in the intellectual life of three continents. He was also, in particular, I would suggest, a preeminently political thinker. But how are we to make sense of his work and his legacy when it comes to politics? Let me begin with three assertions. First, Feher deserves an intellectual biography, but this task will present a major challengefor his was a life as dissident and pariah. He never became a star, and perhaps this was also dispositional; he disliked adulation and despised the cult of intellectuals which now so deeply saturates academic culture across the West. The second assertion follows on from the first. Agnes Heller deserves an intellectual biography. Or in other words, there are two different projects here and these two projects are separate but inseparable. Who writes the biography of Heller must also write that of Feher and vice-versa. The most fruitful endeavour in biography in this case would likely be a collective biography, as in that of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. The third assertion is related, but shifts, and returns to a reservation made earlier. Feher’s political life crosses over three vital and distinct moments: Budapest, Melbourne, New York and back, to where he began and where he died. In this memorandum I want to sketch around these markers in order to suggest some of the central features and themes of Feher’s political theory. These are, then, little more than notes for the biographer whom Feher de-