Philosophy Program Presents

Philosophy Salon: Critical Theory's Colonialism Problem

How should we go about criticizing society? According to Hegel, Marx, and philosophers in the Frankfurt School tradition, critiques of ideology are best if they are immanent. Unlike other forms of social criticism, they argue, immanent critique judges institutions and practices against standards contained within their objects of analysis. This enables critique to be both convincing and self-reflexive. Psychoanalysis is meant to be a helpful analogue. Therapists enter their patients’ conceptual frames in an attempt to figure out how their patients’ ways of perceiving and feeling prevent them from living a good life. The same is true for the ideology critic, who is supposed to come to social practices and judge it using norms that are already present in our ways of behaving and acting. In this paper, however, I argue that immanent critics have insufficiently reckoned with the insights of feminist, postcolonial, and decolonial philosophers. More specifically, I argue that in measuring social life against standards contained within our form of life, immanent critics replay a mechanism of domination articulated by Sandra Harding, Enrique Dussel, and Ashis Nandy. The ruled are supposed to oppose their rulers within the psychological limits set by the latter. After diagnosing the problem, I argue that feminist, postcolonial, and decolonial philosophers offer us resources for envisioning a more situated and emancipatory version of critique.

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For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Barringer House Global Classroom

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