In the Spirit of Critique

Andrew J. Douglas

Description

Focusing on the critical postures of Hegel, Marx, and a series of twentieth-century intellectuals, including Sartre, Adorno, and C. L. R. James, this book explores what dialectical thinking entails and how such thinking might speak to the lived realities of the contemporary political moment. What is revealed is not a formal method or a grand philosophical system, but rather a reflective energy or disposition—a dialectical spirit of critique—that draws normative sustenance from an emancipatory moral vision but that remains attuned principally to conflict and tension, and to the tragic uncertainties of political life. In light of the unique challenges of the late-modern age, as theorists and citizens struggle to sustain an active and coherent critical agenda, In the Spirit of Critique invites serious reconsideration of a rich and elusive intellectual tradition.
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

The Dialectical Tradition
A Spirit of Critique
The Story

2. Restaging the Dialectic

Dialectical Lightheartedness
Dialectical Despair
Nietzschean Disillusionment
Conclusion

3. In a Milieu of Scarcity

A Qualified Reading
Sartre’s Dialectical Lens
“In a Milieu of Scarcity”
“An Infernal Machine”
Reflective Limitation
Conclusion

4. Between Despair and Redemption

“In Face of Despair”
“From the Standpoint of Redemption”
Democracy to Come
Conclusion

5. The Instinctive Dialectic

Contours of a Romantic Humanism
Hegelian Pastiche
The Tragedy of Self-Activity
Conclusion

6. Conclusion

Notes
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Philosophie de la psychologie
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438448428
• Langue: English

Extrait

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
IN THE SPIRIT OF CRITIQUE
Thinking Politically in the Dialectical Tradition
ANDREW J. DOUGLAS
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
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Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Douglas, Andrew J., 1980–
In the spirit of critique : thinking politically in the dialectical tradition / Andrew J. Douglas.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4841-1 (alk. paper)
1. Dialectic. 2. Political science—Philosophy. I. Title.
B809.7.D68 2013
142—dc23
2012047513
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have worked on this book off and on for the better part of a decade, and over the years I have managed to incur quite a few debts. I certainly owe special thanks to the friends and colleagues who have read and commented on drafts of various portions of the project, including Paul Apostolidis, Banu Bargu, Michael Bray, Lewis Hinchman, Shannon Mariotti, Dean Mathiowetz, Melvin Rogers, Greta Snyder, and Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo. I likewise owe special thanks to some dear teachers and mentors who have inspired and nurtured my work at my various institutional homes: Marianne Constable, Frederick Dolan, Robyn Marasco, and Nancy Weston at Berkeley; Joshua Dienstag, Allan Megill, Corey Walker, and Denise Walsh at the University of Virginia; Philip Dynia, Luis Miron, and Roger White at Loyola University New Orleans; and Gregory Hall and Preston King at Morehouse College. Justin Rose has been like a brother to me, and certainly this book owes much to his friendship. And I am incredibly fortunate to have come into contact with two outstanding graduate mentors at the University of Virginia; both Lawrie Balfour and Stephen White have nurtured this project from its inception and have exhibited just a remarkable sense of grace and generosity. Of course none of this—the book, the career, the education—could have been possible without the loving support of my father, Edward, for whom I am forever grateful.
Alternative versions of three chapters have appeared elsewhere. An earlier version of chapter 3 was published as “In a Milieu of Scarcity: Sartre and the Limits of Political Imagination,” Contemporary Political Theory 10, 3 (August 2011), 354–371, an earlier version of chapter 4 was published as “Democratic Darkness and Adorno's Redemptive Criticism,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 36, 7 (September 2010), 819–836, and an alternative version of chapter 5 was published as “C.L.R. James and the Struggle for Humanism,” Constellations 20, 1 (March 2013), 85–101. I thank the editors of these journals for their contributions and for allowing me to reprint this material. I also thank Andrew Kenyon, Dennis Schmidt, and the editorial team at State University of New York Press, as well as two anonymous reviewers, both of whom read the manuscript with great care and put forth a range of suggestions that have improved the book tremendously.
Revisions to the original manuscript were rather significant, and in a rather wondrous way, these revisions did not really take off until my daughter was born, or until my time was pressed like never before, indeed until I learned to manage my time, and my work, for the sake of what really matters. For this reason, among many others, I dedicate this book to three women in my life who really matter: my late mother, Kay; my dear wife, Marcie; and my lovely daughter, Juliana.
ONE
INTRODUCTION

Any effort today to revisit the modern dialectical tradition is to set out upon a beleaguered intellectual terrain. To put an ironic twist on the famed words of one of our conversation partners, we might say that the dialectical has become a tradition of dead generations, and one that really only weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. 1 Nowadays mention of the dialectical legacy seems only to invoke forlorn specters of closed teleological narratives, presumptuous ontological assumptions, perhaps the delusional hubris of a grand Hegelian style of theorization. We are dealing, it would seem, with a rather forgettable legacy of modernist excess. But of course so much of this is common conjecture, based on a simplistic caricature of an elusive philosophical legacy. And part of the challenge here, a charge that doubles as part of the rationale for this project, is to expose such conjecture for what it is, to tell a broader and richer story about what dialectical thinking entails, in order ultimately to mine a set of intellectual resources that have tended to get buried under the purported dead weight of Hegelian and Marxian modernism.
One objective of this book, then, is to confront a historical problem, to pursue a more generous and nuanced reading of a complex and evolving set of ideas. But ultimately the project is stirred by an increasingly unsettling political problem. Marx's amplification of Hegelian thinking has forever linked the dialectical tradition with revolutionary politics. And this would seem to imply that the tradition sits rather uneasily with the general political ethos of the early twenty-first century. Today we confront a peculiar political moment in which so many seem so fired by discontent and yet so burned by resignation. It is, some have suggested, a kind of postpolitical age, one in which grim prospects for collective action, increasingly fugitive hopes for real structural change, undergird an embrace of the ethical as a preferred site of public engagement. This turn to ethics, to questions of how we might live the established structures rather than contest their hegemony, threatens only to exacerbate a public life increasingly devoid of substance or interest. Certainly the impulse to revisit the legacy of Hegel and Marx, to reconsider a dialectically informed critical theory, is moved by a felt need for some renewed political fervor. But what is referred to here as a spirit of critique is intended to address contemporary discourse on its own terms, to address the essentially ethical question of how we engage the political. The idea, the wager, is that a reconsideration of the dialectical tradition might help to reanimate the critical imagination in our time and to inform a public ethos imbued with a sharper and more politically incisive critical edge.
So the argument put forth in this book is moved by a historical problem and by a political one, and this introductory chapter sets out to elaborate on these twin concerns. Insofar as the overarching concern is to engage with the modern dialectical tradition, it is important to note at the outset that we are dealing with a rich, wide-ranging, and still evolving body of work. Any attempt to fully canvas the tradition today would require a rather Sisyphean sense of determination, and what has worked its way into the pages of this book amounts neither to a general introduction nor to a comprehensive survey. 2 While I engage initially with Hegel and Marx, with the root sources of the tradition, I focus most intently on Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodor W. Adorno, and C. L. R. James, three twentieth-century theorists who have caught my attention in a unique way and who have inspired me to craft a particular story about dialectical thinking and its enduring political import. I will outline the basic contours of this story in a moment. First I will provide some additional context by elaborating further on the two basic concerns that animate the project.

THE DIALECTICAL TRADITION
If already in the foregoing the term tradition has appeared too often, there are several reasons for this indulgence. In the first instance, the reference serves a kind of ancillary function, allowing us to manage the delicacy and inherent difficulty of the other terms that are, or could be, for our purposes attached to it. By referring to the tradition , we are able initially to simply add the adjective dialectical and to avoid immediate connection with what is often referred to more specifically as the dialectic . These terminological distinctions are subtle, to be sure. But they are quite significant. As the literary critic Fredric Jameson points out, “the parts of speech offer so many camera angles from which unsuspected functions and implications might be seized and inspected,” and “to speak of the dialectic , with a definite article or a capital letter,” he says, “is to subsume all the varieties of dialectical thinking under a single philosophical system, and probably, in the process, to affirm that this system is the truth, and ultimately the only viable philosophy.” In contrast to the noun with the definite article, the adjective dialectical can apply more broadly and is often used to describe various modes of apprehension that “rebuke established thought processes” and that challenge “the lazy habits of common sense.” 3 There is, of course, far more to it than this. But as regards choice words for an introduction, the adjective provides for our purposes a better initial inroad.
This is not to suggest in some ironic way that the dialectic , understood as a grand philosophical system or method, is somehow inessential to the modern dialectical tradition . 4 Another reason to emphasize the tradition is precisely to indic