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Diremptions of the social : the ideas of crisis and critique in contemporary social theory
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Cordero Vega, Rodrigo (2011) Diremptions of the social : the ideas of crisis and critique in contemporary social theory. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2569167~S1
Abstract
This thesis is a study of the way in which contemporary social theorists
conceptualise the divisions, disturbances, and failures of social life. It examines
the special role that classical ideas of crisis and critique play in grasping the
experience of rupture and finitude of the institutional frameworks that sustain
human relations. The analysis developed in this thesis is designed to examine the
inner relationship between these concepts and to demonstrate their mutual
capacity to give meaning to moments of diremption of the social. It does so against
customary claims in contemporary social theory that, at least since the 1960s and
1970s, have tended to regard crisis and critique as obsolete and inadequate
analytical tools. The thesis examines and challenges the idea that social theory
must do away with these concepts, for it obscures what is essential to these
concepts: the potentiality of revealing what limits and exceeds our current ways of
life.
The thesis makes the case for the continuing importance of the concepts of crisis
and critique as ‘social moments’ by way of rediscovering their mutual relationship
in terms of ‘dialectical affinity’; that is to say, a non-causal relationship in which
each term can actively register, bring about and turn into the other, and in which
the unity of its elements is as important as their divorce. The core assumption is
that social theory already provides us with essential tools for reconstructing
different modes of encounter between the objective experience of crisis and the
subjective practice of critique. To demonstrate this, the thesis draws upon the
writings of Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism, Michel Foucault on
governmentality, and Jürgen Habermas on communicative rationality.
The sought-for contribution of the thesis is to find neither new foundations nor
better definitions for each of these concepts but rather to rediscover the inner
connectedness between them as a mode of sociologically grasping moments of
diremption of social life.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Interpersonal relations, Sociology -- Research, Human beings -- Social life and customs | ||||
Official Date: | July 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Sociology | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Fine, Robert, 1945- | ||||
Sponsors: | Chile. Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT) ; Universidad Diego Portales | ||||
Extent: | 221 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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