Everyday identity change is common after conflict, as people attempt to move away from oppositional group relations and closed group boundaries. This article asks how it scales up and out to impact these group relations and boundaries, and what stops this? Theoretically, the article focusses on complex oppositional configurations of groupness, where relationality and feedback mechanisms (rather than more easily measured variables) are crucial to change and continuity, and in which moral authority is a key node of reproduction. It uses (...) the normatively weighted concept of transformation to augment existing research on boundary and identity change, while elaborating it to recognise the role of everyday agency in furthering change and moral inertia in impeding it. Substantively, the article compares the processes of everyday transformation of groupness in three cases that are very similar in historical depth, social embeddedness, symbolic opposition and everyday change, but very different in time-scale and with contrasting outcomes: successful transformation of reformation religious groupness; partial transformation of national groupness; and failed transformation of complexly-configured ethnic groupness in Northern Ireland. This allows tracing of the patterns and mechanisms at work. To anticipate, the article argues that everyday identity change can erode the moral authority of groupness. Its impact is generational and dependent on institutional linkages. The article highlights the importance of moral mechanisms as drivers of and obstacles to change; and it suggests ways that the obstacles could be overcome by radical policy interventions. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo reconstruye los principales motivos que impulsaron la más reciente renovación de las bases epistemológicas de la teoría crítica, esto es, el desplazamiento desde su fundamentación en una teoría de la “acción comunicativa” hacia el concepto de “reconocimiento”. Se muestra que esta renovación, así como el “giro intersubjetivo” emprendido décadas antes por Habermas en relación con el programa originario de “crítica de la ideología”, puede ser entendido a partir de una de las tareas distintivas que la teoría (...) crítica asume a partir de su posicionamiento epistemológico: comprender sus formas de conocimiento como un momento de autorreflexión de un interés emancipador socialmente existente. Esto supone conectar de alguna manera su crítica de las injusticias con las experiencias vividas de injusticia. En suma, los distintos modos de abordar esta tarea autorreflexiva pueden ser entendidos como un hilo conductor entre las sucesivas renovaciones epistemológicas de esta tradición de la crítica social.: This article reconstructs the main motives that led to the most recent renewal of the epistemological foundations of critical theory. It analyses the move from a theory based on the notion of “communicative action” to one centred on “recognition”. The article argues that both this renewal and the “inter-subjective turn”, proposed decades ago by Habermas as response to the original agenda focused on the “critique of ideology”, can be understood by looking at one of the distinctive goals critical theory seeks to meet from its epistemological positioning: to conceive its forms of knowledge as a moment of self-reflection of a socially existing emancipatory interest. This implies connecting in some way its critiques of injustice to the lived experiences of injustice. In sum, the different ways of addressing this self-reflective goal can be understood as the guideline between consecutive epistemological renewals of this tradition of social criticism. (shrink)

It is not evident in what sense philosophy relates to its own time and present. From the history of philosophical thought, several models have been suggested, ranging from a strong reliance on tradition to the wholesale rejection of the present and demand for a ‘philosophy of the future,’ from the suspicion that philosophy is nothing but one ideology among others to the demand that philosophy should engage in the struggles and conflicts of its time in order to prepare for a (...) better future. The essay presents an assessment and problematization of these approaches and argues for a point of view that starts from philosophy’s precarious, ambivalent and contingent relation to its time and contemporaneity. Neither wholly independent of nor entirely subjected to its own time, philosophy can inhabit a shifting position from which critique and resistance are possible even if not ultimately guaranteed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While the first generation of the so-called Frankfurt School has promoted a strong interconnection between social critique and knowledge of the social world, contemporary critical theory seems to consider that epistemological issues don’t deserve anymore consideration. Is it really possible to elaborate a convincing theory of social critique without taking seriously the various links between social critique and knowledge? This article argues that the answer is no. In a first step, it recalls the ways in which the philosophical debate (...) about social critique is currently articulated and how it disconnects social critique and knowledge. One of the reasons for such a disconnection relates to a vision of politics as consisting mainly in a conflict between normative principles, notably between conceptions of social justice. This vision of politics is criticized in the second step of this paper. A second reason, examined in the third part of the paper, relates to the risk of epistemic violence. The shared but questionable assumption is that any sociological or philosophical attempt to produce knowledge would necessarily lead to epistemic violence rather than to epistemic empowerment. (shrink)

This paper aims to enrich the idea of the institutionalized sphere of recognition developed by Axel Honneth and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “social field” by combining them. First, it underlines the characteristics that the two viewpoints share. Second, the paper argues that their combination can be mutually beneficial for overcoming some of their respective theoretical limits: the issue of the determination of the amplitude of the social field and the nature of the power that institutions of recognition exercise on (...) individuals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article I examine Axel Honneth’s positive theory of recognition. While commentators agree that Honneth’s theory qualifies as a positive theory of recognition, I believe that the deeper reason for why this is an apt characterisation is not yet fully understood. I argue that, instead of considering only what it is to recognise another person and what it means for a person to be recognised, we need to focus our attention on how Honneth pictures the practice of recognition as (...) a whole, which according to him works to make societies into places of greater freedom. This conception of recognition as a freedom-enhancing practice is supposed to provide a solution to a key problem of Frankfurt School critical theory, namely of how to determine the emancipatory practice in which critical theory is rooted, which becomes apparent as soon as one turns to the context in which Honneth originally develops his theory of recognition. At the end of the article, I offer a few reasons for doubting the overly positive picture of the practice of recognition that Honneth provides us with. (shrink)

Does theorising always presuppose a programme of justification? Does the Critical Theory of Adorno and Horkheimer do so? Do they claim it does? The answer should be a resounding ‘no’ to all three questions. In regard to the second and third question, I have sketched an argument to that effect in an earlier paper in this journal. In this paper, I offer a rejoinder to the critical reply offered by Stefan Müller-Doohm und Roman Yos on behalf of the Habermasian mainstream (...) in Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This rejoinder depends on giving a negative answer also to the first question. In rejecting the Habermasian idea of a programme of justification, I stand accused of dogmatism and, consequently, decisionism. I show that this accusation itself betrays a certain dogmatism – insofar as it accepts that such a programme of justification is undeniably possible and required, without consideration of evidence or arguments to the contrary. Self-reflective and critical theorising about society can, indeed must, take other forms. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 676-692, June 2022.