Crises, trabalho e soberania política: elementos conceituais e diagnósticos

Luiz Gustavo da Cunha de Souza

doi:10.20336/rbs.1138

Authors

Luiz Gustavo da Cunha de Souza Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1323-8347

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20336/rbs.1138

Keywords:

crises, division of labor, critical theory

Abstract

Since its foundation, the so-called Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School has assumed that the defining element of capitalist societies is their character as bearers of crises. Notwithstanding this, the characterization of the specifically critical aspects to be addressed by the theory changes in tandem with the constantly updated or reworked diagnoses of the times. At least since the end of the 1960s, with Jürgen Habermas’ early works, the confluence of criticism about the centrality of productive work paradigm, emergence of new social movements, and communicative-moral disputes over the legitimation of norms and values has established for Critical Theory – in its “second generation” – a particular paradigm for understanding the idea of crisis, in which the dispute over the meaning of social integration and the values contained therein is central. In this paper, we will first present elements that advance and unfold this concept of crisis towards a crisis of legitimation of contemporary political economy and, subsequently, this concept will be broken down into some diagnostic elements of crisis in the present. The main elements highlighted will be the forms of division of labor and their relationship with the exercise of individual political sovereignty, as presented in Axel Honneth's recent book, The Working Sovereign. Based on this work, then, the article discusses the relationship between the diagnosis of crises in the present and the formulation of a critical theory.

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Author Biography

Luiz Gustavo da Cunha de Souza, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Professor de Sociologia no Centro de Filosofia e Humanidades, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Doutor em Sociologia pela Universidade Estadual de Campinas, com estágio sanduíche na Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität em Frankfurt am Main. Pós-doc na Goethe-Universitẗat e no Institut für Sozialforsgung, em Frankfurt am Main.Bolsista CNPq nível 2. Materiais para a realização deste trabalho foram adquiridos com auxílio da Fundação Alexander von Humboldt e do DAAD.

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