Mind and matter: Critical theory a hot topic

Kendra BalLingall

Critical theory was debated this week when the Department of Philosophy hosted its 12th annual Critical Theory Roundtable on Oct. 16 and 17. Participating researchers came from universities in Germany, the United States, and Canada.

This tradition of radical philosophy places equal emphasis on reflective theory and empirical social science. In critical theory, music, cities, language and institutions can become the material for abstract concepts of power, justice, democracy, and communication.

Respected scholars in the field, including Arash Abizadeh from McGill, Dominique Leydet from UQAM, Keith Topper of Northwestern and Hauke Brunkhorst from Flensburg, presented papers, criticism, and books at the conference.

Topics ranged from the status of immigrants in the European Union and the role of reason in conceptions of democracy, to the relationship between individualism and global systemic poverty.

“To hear and see experts interact is of considerable social and intellectual value to our department,” said Philosophy professor Kai Nielsen.

Concordia professors are also making significant contributions to the field, notably the four tenure-track professors hired since 2002.
“We have new young people in our department who know critical social theory, and teach it,” Nielsen said.

Matthias Fritsch and Pablo Gilabert are two such scholars, and were the organizers of the event. For Fritsch, the annual conference is an “attempt to discuss and advance the program of critical social theory in North America.”

As a research practice, critical social theory originated in Europe. Developed in Germany during the ominous years between the World Wars, it was conceived by philosophers, historians, social scientists, and psychoanalysts known as the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin.

Opposed to the Vienna School of positivism, which claimed that social research was a value-free collection of facts, this eclectic group sought to illuminate the contradictions of modernity.

Early empirical studies, Gilabert said, tried to “explain why people might join authoritarian movements, and to explain the emergence of authoritarian politics at the institutional level, but also at the psychological level.”

Fritsch explained that since the 1930s, critical theory has been committed to the diagnoses of modern pathologies, such as alienation, exclusive political processes, exploitation and unemployment.

Critical theorists develop new normative standards and propose courses of action to move towards justice and autonomy, whether through “educational reform, social movements or institutional rearrangements.”

One of the most sophisticated and often cited critical theorists today is Jurgen Habermas. At the living end of a lineage that includes Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, Habermas offers a theory of communicative action, seeking the most rational and least oppressive route to true understanding.

Melissa Yates, a PhD student at Northwestern University in Ill, is interested in how citizens negotiate their personal worlds with public, legislated realities. Focusing on Habermas’s theory of democracy, she wonders whether the secular demands of modern society can over-burden religious citizens, such as in debates around abortion.

“Religion is a good test case to push him on this issue,” she said. “Like multiculturalism, it’s in the news; it’s something everyone has a stake in figuring out.” She welcomed dissertation advice from her international peers and mentors.

Since its origins in the 1930s, critical theory has expanded in response to trends such as literary theory, new conceptions of power, and globalization. For Gilabert, this growth can be a “sign of vitality, a capacity to evolve and engage in a respectful conversation among different tendencies.”

Courses offered by Fritsch, Gilabert, and Nielsen address these critical turns in philosophy, and enrolment in the department has increased by 56 per cent since 2002. “We have many grad students applying to our department, saying that they have an interest in critical theory,” Gilabert said.