Pub Date : 2021-02-25DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2021.1872667
Lucas Pohl, E. Swyngedouw
ABSTRACT This paper engages centrally with the political impotence of much of critical theory today and suggests how a Lacanian-inflected perspective may offer a possible way out of the present intellectual and political deadlock. Lacanian thought has been central to many post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored. Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of ‘the political’ can help to open up a space for articulating the current deadlock that locks the Left in a state of melancholy, anxiety, depression, and/or impotent acting out. After a brief conceptual introduction to the notion of ‘the political’, the paper mobilizes and develops the Lacanian theory of the subject. This permits opening up the terrain of psychoanalyisis to the question of the political as that what does not work in the world. The key insights of a Lacanian-inflected political theory are then explored through the work of some of the key critical political theorists: Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou.
{"title":"‘What does not work in the world’: the specter of Lacan in critical political thought","authors":"Lucas Pohl, E. Swyngedouw","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2021.1872667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2021.1872667","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper engages centrally with the political impotence of much of critical theory today and suggests how a Lacanian-inflected perspective may offer a possible way out of the present intellectual and political deadlock. Lacanian thought has been central to many post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored. Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of ‘the political’ can help to open up a space for articulating the current deadlock that locks the Left in a state of melancholy, anxiety, depression, and/or impotent acting out. After a brief conceptual introduction to the notion of ‘the political’, the paper mobilizes and develops the Lacanian theory of the subject. This permits opening up the terrain of psychoanalyisis to the question of the political as that what does not work in the world. The key insights of a Lacanian-inflected political theory are then explored through the work of some of the key critical political theorists: Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78163465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-05DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1853581
Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Olli Pyyhtinen
ABSTRACT Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect; finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and distance themselves from it.
{"title":"Living on the margins: dumpster diving for food as a critical practice","authors":"Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Olli Pyyhtinen","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1853581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1853581","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect; finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and distance themselves from it.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87067804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-18DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1861044
A. Brighenti, A. Pavoni
ABSTRACT In this piece, we introduce the notion of ‘atmoculture’ as a conceptual tool to analyse the new forms of mobility supported and enacted by digital algorithms. In historical perspective, we analyse how modernity has created a movement-space where the problem of finding one's way through an increasingly ‘displaced’ urban space first emerged, with noticeable psycho-social consequences. Reconstructing the new digital media as a continuation of this spatial imagination, we seek to zoom in on the forms of mobility facilitated by digital algorithms. Urban digital navigation, we suggest, proceeds in parallel with a reorientation of the urban experience towards atmospheric considerations, maximizing safety and pleasure in the user's encounters with the environment. In this context, atmoculture appears a spatial-aesthetic, psycho-cultural, and bio-technological milieu that prepares space for convenient navigation. We discuss a number of consequences: first the disburdening effect, whereby subjects delegate to a number of perceptions and decisions to algorithms, expropriating the natural problem-solving aspect of subjectivity; second, the invisible transformations of urban space due to the biases that are built in algorithms themselves; third, the tensional, even contradictory outcomes of atmocultural expectations, whereby the goal of a secure and pleasant environmental interaction is undone by the very quantity of information provided and the level of alertness required from the user.
{"title":"On urban trajectology: algorithmic mobilities and atmocultural navigation","authors":"A. Brighenti, A. Pavoni","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1861044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1861044","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this piece, we introduce the notion of ‘atmoculture’ as a conceptual tool to analyse the new forms of mobility supported and enacted by digital algorithms. In historical perspective, we analyse how modernity has created a movement-space where the problem of finding one's way through an increasingly ‘displaced’ urban space first emerged, with noticeable psycho-social consequences. Reconstructing the new digital media as a continuation of this spatial imagination, we seek to zoom in on the forms of mobility facilitated by digital algorithms. Urban digital navigation, we suggest, proceeds in parallel with a reorientation of the urban experience towards atmospheric considerations, maximizing safety and pleasure in the user's encounters with the environment. In this context, atmoculture appears a spatial-aesthetic, psycho-cultural, and bio-technological milieu that prepares space for convenient navigation. We discuss a number of consequences: first the disburdening effect, whereby subjects delegate to a number of perceptions and decisions to algorithms, expropriating the natural problem-solving aspect of subjectivity; second, the invisible transformations of urban space due to the biases that are built in algorithms themselves; third, the tensional, even contradictory outcomes of atmocultural expectations, whereby the goal of a secure and pleasant environmental interaction is undone by the very quantity of information provided and the level of alertness required from the user.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83632174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1856161
Anton Törnberg
ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a surge of interest in prefigurative politics, which refers to the political strategies that model a future society on a micro level and aim to instantiate radical social change in and through practice. While most previous studies have focused on defining the concept and categorizing various types of prefiguration, this paper contributes by investigating under what circumstances prefiguration leads to revolutionary social change. The paper takes an original approach to these issues by turning to transition studies and the socio-technical change literature. This field focuses on the technical equivalence of prefiguration: namely, the relationship between small-scale niche innovations and large-scale technological transitions. Through theoretical discussions and empirical illustrations, this paper presents a typology of five transition pathways through which prefigurative strategies may result in a range of social change outcomes from reformative to revolutionary transformation.
{"title":"Prefigurative politics and social change: a typology drawing on transition studies","authors":"Anton Törnberg","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1856161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1856161","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a surge of interest in prefigurative politics, which refers to the political strategies that model a future society on a micro level and aim to instantiate radical social change in and through practice. While most previous studies have focused on defining the concept and categorizing various types of prefiguration, this paper contributes by investigating under what circumstances prefiguration leads to revolutionary social change. The paper takes an original approach to these issues by turning to transition studies and the socio-technical change literature. This field focuses on the technical equivalence of prefiguration: namely, the relationship between small-scale niche innovations and large-scale technological transitions. Through theoretical discussions and empirical illustrations, this paper presents a typology of five transition pathways through which prefigurative strategies may result in a range of social change outcomes from reformative to revolutionary transformation.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81701365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1833955
R. Swedberg
ABSTRACT This article has two major goals: to present the different ways in which sociologists use the term ‘method’; and to suggest a tentative explanation why these been invested with their current meaning. The following uses are discussed: method as a mean to a goal; methods as methodology; the scientific method; method as a craft; and the heuristic method. It is also pointed out that sociologists today tend to view methods as distinct and independent of theory. The main reason for this, it is argued, is that modern sociologists have broken with the view of the classics that sociology as a science is defined by having its own distinct object of research (such as social facts [Durkheim] or social action [Weber]). The tendency to ignore this and instead study anything ‘social’, which is common in modern sociology, has important consequences for theory as well as methods. The two will tend to drift apart, with the result that theory tends to become out of touch, and methods be seen as the best way to access reality and understand what is going on. Methods, however, cannot replace theory.
{"title":"What is a method? On the different uses of the term method in sociology","authors":"R. Swedberg","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1833955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1833955","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article has two major goals: to present the different ways in which sociologists use the term ‘method’; and to suggest a tentative explanation why these been invested with their current meaning. The following uses are discussed: method as a mean to a goal; methods as methodology; the scientific method; method as a craft; and the heuristic method. It is also pointed out that sociologists today tend to view methods as distinct and independent of theory. The main reason for this, it is argued, is that modern sociologists have broken with the view of the classics that sociology as a science is defined by having its own distinct object of research (such as social facts [Durkheim] or social action [Weber]). The tendency to ignore this and instead study anything ‘social’, which is common in modern sociology, has important consequences for theory as well as methods. The two will tend to drift apart, with the result that theory tends to become out of touch, and methods be seen as the best way to access reality and understand what is going on. Methods, however, cannot replace theory.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91292582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-16DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1832023
Kim Sune Karrasch Jepsen, Mikkel Dehlholm
ABSTRACT Managerial coaching is an important and arguably emblematic example of the transformation of managerial techniques that has occurred in the last decades, where more equal work relations and empowerment of employees is increasingly promoted. In the literature on managerial coaching, the role of the manager-coach is to open up a space for the employee to formulate her desires and attempt to clear the way for their realization. Tensions between the desire of employees and that of managers, although to some degree acknowledged in parts of the literature, is not sufficiently addressed. Furthermore, there is a marked lack of recognition of how the fact that coaching takes place in the context of hierarchical organizations, operating on markets with the aim of creating profit, affect the praxis of managerial coaching. We address these issues by conducting a Lacanian discourse analysis of managerial coaching literature, and show that it operates with a paradoxical notion of autonomy: The autonomy of employees is only called upon in so far as it can be aligned with the aims of management. Through a transposition of Lacan’s four discourses, we furthermore situate the phenomena of managerial coaching in the context of the history of management forms. We argue that managerial coaching is emblematic of a shift from what Lacan calls the University discourse (under Taylorist management), to what is best understood as a semblance of the psychoanalytical discourse. It is only a semblance, since the manager-coach in reality retains the position of master in relation to employees.
{"title":"Does managerial coaching empower employees? – A psychoanalytical approach","authors":"Kim Sune Karrasch Jepsen, Mikkel Dehlholm","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1832023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1832023","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Managerial coaching is an important and arguably emblematic example of the transformation of managerial techniques that has occurred in the last decades, where more equal work relations and empowerment of employees is increasingly promoted. In the literature on managerial coaching, the role of the manager-coach is to open up a space for the employee to formulate her desires and attempt to clear the way for their realization. Tensions between the desire of employees and that of managers, although to some degree acknowledged in parts of the literature, is not sufficiently addressed. Furthermore, there is a marked lack of recognition of how the fact that coaching takes place in the context of hierarchical organizations, operating on markets with the aim of creating profit, affect the praxis of managerial coaching. We address these issues by conducting a Lacanian discourse analysis of managerial coaching literature, and show that it operates with a paradoxical notion of autonomy: The autonomy of employees is only called upon in so far as it can be aligned with the aims of management. Through a transposition of Lacan’s four discourses, we furthermore situate the phenomena of managerial coaching in the context of the history of management forms. We argue that managerial coaching is emblematic of a shift from what Lacan calls the University discourse (under Taylorist management), to what is best understood as a semblance of the psychoanalytical discourse. It is only a semblance, since the manager-coach in reality retains the position of master in relation to employees.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88448047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-11DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1810730
R. Coleman
ABSTRACT Mindfulness, as the cultivation of ways to become attentive to the present moment, has grown exponentially in some areas of the global north over the past decade or so. As such, it has generated much important debate about its efficacy and the politics it produces, especially in terms of whether and how mindfulness is a response to, or effect of, neoliberalism. Drawing on Berlant's argument that affects are structured and collective but not necessarily determinative of how people feel and act in relation to them, I explore the affective relations between mindfulness and contemporary (neo)liberal culture as a series of relays, modulations, or recalibrations. More specifically, I approach these affective relations through focusing on temporality. I argue that the practice of mindfulness as a deliberate and conscious focus on the present is central to how its value is imagined by those who promote it and experienced by those who practice it. Drawing on interviews with mindfulness practitioners, analysis of mindfulness books, online forums and communities, I centre the significance of the present to an understanding of the recent proliferation of mindfulness. I draw out the affectivity of mindfulness presents and think these ‘mindfulness presents’ alongside Berlant's identification of the significance of the present to contemporary liberal-capitalism. Situating my argument within broader work that sees time, temporality and affect as central means through which contemporary capitalism is organized and hence should be conceived, I examine how mindfulness is perhaps one way in which contemporary liberal-capitalism is felt and lived with.
{"title":"The presents of the present: mindfulness, time and structures of feeling","authors":"R. Coleman","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1810730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1810730","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Mindfulness, as the cultivation of ways to become attentive to the present moment, has grown exponentially in some areas of the global north over the past decade or so. As such, it has generated much important debate about its efficacy and the politics it produces, especially in terms of whether and how mindfulness is a response to, or effect of, neoliberalism. Drawing on Berlant's argument that affects are structured and collective but not necessarily determinative of how people feel and act in relation to them, I explore the affective relations between mindfulness and contemporary (neo)liberal culture as a series of relays, modulations, or recalibrations. More specifically, I approach these affective relations through focusing on temporality. I argue that the practice of mindfulness as a deliberate and conscious focus on the present is central to how its value is imagined by those who promote it and experienced by those who practice it. Drawing on interviews with mindfulness practitioners, analysis of mindfulness books, online forums and communities, I centre the significance of the present to an understanding of the recent proliferation of mindfulness. I draw out the affectivity of mindfulness presents and think these ‘mindfulness presents’ alongside Berlant's identification of the significance of the present to contemporary liberal-capitalism. Situating my argument within broader work that sees time, temporality and affect as central means through which contemporary capitalism is organized and hence should be conceived, I examine how mindfulness is perhaps one way in which contemporary liberal-capitalism is felt and lived with.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85077701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1816558
J. Barbalet
That obligations arise from both social exchanges and social roles is well established in sociology. Less appreciated is the fundamental and dichotomous nature of exchange obligation and role obligation. In the absence of an understanding of the distinction between them exchange and role obligations may be confused, as when Mauss believes the obligations he discusses come from social exchange when he in fact shows that they derive from the imperatives of social roles. Explicit awareness of the obligations associated with both social exchanges and roles can clarify and enhance ongoing research and research traditions, including social network analysis, as shown here. Discussion in the article of obligations of exchange and role affirms the unavoidability of social obligation in interactions and relationships. An irreducible distinction within the general category of obligation is also indicated.
{"title":"Bases of social obligation: the distinction between exchange and role and its consequences","authors":"J. Barbalet","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1816558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1816558","url":null,"abstract":"That obligations arise from both social exchanges and social roles is well established in sociology. Less appreciated is the fundamental and dichotomous nature of exchange obligation and role obligation. In the absence of an understanding of the distinction between them exchange and role obligations may be confused, as when Mauss believes the obligations he discusses come from social exchange when he in fact shows that they derive from the imperatives of social roles. Explicit awareness of the obligations associated with both social exchanges and roles can clarify and enhance ongoing research and research traditions, including social network analysis, as shown here. Discussion in the article of obligations of exchange and role affirms the unavoidability of social obligation in interactions and relationships. An irreducible distinction within the general category of obligation is also indicated.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89241607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/1600910x.2019.1687093
P. Ranasinghe
ABSTRACT Malaise – e.g. melancholy, ennui or boredom – compels subjects to deal with profound existential crises concerning the meaning of life. Discussions of malaise, however, tend to focus on points of departure that fragment its myriad forms. This is often done by downplaying points of overlap that are not given their proper due, and this means that it is difficult to appreciate the ways that malaise constitutes being. Attempting to address this issue, this article focusses specifically on acedia, ennui and boredom and claims that malaise gives rise to ‘nothingness’ in subjects. In other words, malaise constitutes the being of subjects as nothingness. The article theorizes nothingness as a simultaneity of nothing and something. Nothingness is not nothing in the sense of a tangible absence of something but a feeling of emptiness or void that is not fully explicable. This means that nothingness also captures a missing ‘thing’, itself something, though again not tangible and also not fully amenable to explication. The article concludes by locating the importance of nothingness to being, one constituted by indeterminacy.
{"title":"Theorizing nothingness: malaise and the indeterminacies of being","authors":"P. Ranasinghe","doi":"10.1080/1600910x.2019.1687093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910x.2019.1687093","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Malaise – e.g. melancholy, ennui or boredom – compels subjects to deal with profound existential crises concerning the meaning of life. Discussions of malaise, however, tend to focus on points of departure that fragment its myriad forms. This is often done by downplaying points of overlap that are not given their proper due, and this means that it is difficult to appreciate the ways that malaise constitutes being. Attempting to address this issue, this article focusses specifically on acedia, ennui and boredom and claims that malaise gives rise to ‘nothingness’ in subjects. In other words, malaise constitutes the being of subjects as nothingness. The article theorizes nothingness as a simultaneity of nothing and something. Nothingness is not nothing in the sense of a tangible absence of something but a feeling of emptiness or void that is not fully explicable. This means that nothingness also captures a missing ‘thing’, itself something, though again not tangible and also not fully amenable to explication. The article concludes by locating the importance of nothingness to being, one constituted by indeterminacy.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90711377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2020.1816557
Kevin W. Gray
ABSTRACT In this paper I will sketch a theory of how normative demands for freedom emerging from the lifeworld both serve to provide new bases of legitimation for capitalism by drawing on underlying normative orders in the lifeworld while simultaneously giving rise to precarity on the part of new classes of workers. I argue that such a theory can provide a means of theorizing recent protests against capitalism (including, for instance, the events of the Occupy Wall Street movement and protests against the so-called sharing or gig economy). My thesis is that the phenomenon Standing identifies as the precariat emerges out of the reaction of the capitalist system to the events of the 1960s, and to available normative potentials contained therein.
{"title":"Capitalism’s revenge: critique, response and the third wave of capitalism","authors":"Kevin W. Gray","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2020.1816557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1816557","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper I will sketch a theory of how normative demands for freedom emerging from the lifeworld both serve to provide new bases of legitimation for capitalism by drawing on underlying normative orders in the lifeworld while simultaneously giving rise to precarity on the part of new classes of workers. I argue that such a theory can provide a means of theorizing recent protests against capitalism (including, for instance, the events of the Occupy Wall Street movement and protests against the so-called sharing or gig economy). My thesis is that the phenomenon Standing identifies as the precariat emerges out of the reaction of the capitalist system to the events of the 1960s, and to available normative potentials contained therein.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84599120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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