Thesis title: La critica dell’ideologia nell’attuale teoria critica. Robin Celikates, Rahel Jaeggi e il ripensamento della critica immanente
This research reconstructs the events of the revival of the critique of ideology approach in the context of what is now commonly designated as the fourth generation of Frankfurt critical theory. The introduction immediately asks the question about the reasons for the revitalization of the Ideologiekritik debate, pointing out how it is precisely in times of invisibilization of the political character of dominant ideas, practices, structures and discourses that a critique that has recourse to the vocabulary of ideology is necessary.
The first chapter (I) reconstructs the history of this approach, with a special focus on Marxist social theories, and especially critical theory. The peculiarity of the Frankfurtian variant of the critique of ideology is that it is conceived as an immanent critique that on the one hand is based on actual social conditions, and on the other hand, by relying on the “normative surplus” embedded in them within a given society, allows at the same time not to stand still with the description it gives of itself, gaining a critical point of view to try to transform it in an emancipatory sense.
The second chapter (II) is devoted to the work of Robin Celikates, a leading exponent of the new critical theory. In his main contribution, titled Kritik als soziale Praxis (2009), Celikates uses the conception of psychoanalysis advanced by Jürgen Habermas in the text Knowledge and Interest (1968) to show how social criticism can be conceived social practice in the form of a reconstructive procedure, which aims both at understanding the reflexive impediments of subjects and at the self-reprovisioning of their critical faculties.
The third chapter (III) focuses on the work of another important contemporary critical theorist, also, like Celikates, a student of Axel Honneth, namely Rahel Jaeggi. The originality of Jaeggi's critical-ideological approach consists in shifting the emphasis of the lessons of Habermas and Honneth in a more materialist direction. The critique of Jaeggian ideology can in this sense be characterized as a critique of objective contradictions and crisis phenomena in the sphere of social reproduction.
The ultimate goal of this research is to contribute to the understanding of an extremely important and topical philosophical and sociological debate in which the very methods and tools of critical theory are being rethought and renewed today.