Critical Theory at a Crossroads - by Stijn de Cauwer (Paperback)

About the Book

Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past years and the use of the term "crisis" in political discourse. They offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new social movements have offered.

Book Synopsis

We are living in an age of crisis--or an age in which everything is labeled a crisis. Financial, debt, and refugee "crises" have erupted. The word has also been applied to the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and many other international events. Yet the term has contradictory political and strategic meanings for those challenging power structures and those seeking to preserve them. For critics of the status quo, can the rhetoric of crisis be used to foment urgency around issues like climate change and financialization, or does framing a situation as a "crisis" play into the hands of the existing political order, which then seeks to tighten the leash by creating a state of emergency?

Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past years, the protest movements that have risen up in response, and the use of the term in political discourse. Tariq Ali, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela McRobbie, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Saskia Sassen, and Joseph Vogl offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new social movements have offered, alongside an exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Roberto Esposito on theories of community. Sparring over crucial developments in these past years of catastrophe and the calamity of everyday life under capitalism, they shed light on how crises and the discourse of crisis can both obscure and reveal fundamental aspects of modern societies.

Review Quotes

Good reading for graduate seminars in the humanities and social sciences.-- "Choice"

Critical Theory at a Crossroads consists of eleven conversations with distinguished interviewees about various crises in the contemporary world, as well as a letter exchange in its concluding twelfth chapter. All of its contributions reflect and engage the work of the interviewees included in the book but also add new insights to it. This timely collection both develops a theoretical/philosophical reflection about crisis and a practical investigation of actually developing political or economic phenomena that have been characterized as 'crises.'--Arne De Boever, California Institute of the Arts

In this book the concept of 'crisis' is examined in all of its multiple expressions--historical, social, and philosophical. The result is extraordinarily rich and penetrating. Against the idea that 'there is no alternative, ' a form of resistance emerges that is capable of overcoming national confines and of opening a new space for action and thought.--Roberto Esposito, author of Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy

The benefits of this collection of interviews are many: an introduction to the thought of some leading critical intellectuals, a compendium of the terms and questions most pressing in contemporary theory, a confrontation with the political challenges of the present moment, and more. If you want an answer to 'what is to be done?' you won't find it here. But you will encounter the work of thought necessary for ideas capable of turning current crises into emancipatory possibilities.--Jodi Dean, author of The Communist Horizon

About the Author

Stijn De Cauwer is a postdoctoral researcher in cultural studies and literary studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium. He is the author of A Diagnosis of Modern Life: Robert Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften as a Critical-Utopian Project (2014).