Alternative View of Modernity: The Subaltern Speaks

This article derives from my 2021 ASA presidential address. I examine how sociologists including Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and white American sociologists have omitted key determinants of modernity in their accounts of this pivotal development in world history. Those determinants are white supremacy, western empires, racial hierarchies, colonization, slavery, Jim Crow, patriarchy, and resistance movements. This article demonstrates that any accounts omitting these determinants will only produce an anemic and misleading analysis of modernity. The central argument maintains that the sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois developed a superior analysis of modernity by analytically centering these determinants. I conclude by making a case for the development of an emancipatory sociology in the tradition of Du Boisian critical sociological thought.

The Concept of Emancipation as Political Action (Marx, Arendt, Rancière)

The text attempts to rethink the concept of emancipation and how it is structured as political action, while describing its historical origins and how it is further understood by the three important political philosophers: Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Rancière. All three of them – specifically and with substantial differences – understand politics as a space for political action that leads to emancipation in the name of equality. In order to determine the historical origin of the concept in more detail, the argumentation of the text rely upon its elaboration within the school of “conceptual history”, which deals with the historical semantics of terms and sees the etymology of and the change in the meaning of terms as forming a crucial basis for a contemporary cultural, conceptual, and linguistic understanding, and afterwards it links this “pre-history” with Marx’s, Arendt’s, and Rancière’s understanding of the concept of emancipation, and see how they differ and are related to each other, considering what theoretical conclusions about the concept of emancipation we can take from these relations. Particular interest is aimed at how the concept of emancipation is perceived today, who the subject of emancipation is, what the method and final goal of emancipation is, and, finally, how these understandings can help us in the present time when it seems that we need emancipation more than ever.

Mistica: A Marxist Praxis

The Mística is the symbolic or dramatic social movement of Marxism initiated by Brazilian Landless Rural Workers. It is the popular movement practiced by the Communist parties and socialist organizations of the world. It was developed from Latin American liberation doctrine and interpreted as love for a cause, solidarity experienced in collectivity, symbolic presentation of the socialist movement, and belief in radical change. It is one type of philosophical movement which has a demonstrative attachment, praxis of pedagogy, behavioral collectivity, and cultural movement to change the social world guided by the theory of Karl Marx. It has political roots against the homogenization of culture, imperialism, and capitalist domination of the world. It uses art, music, drama, activity, symbol, media, and other modern tools which help the people for emancipation. This article will demonstrate some of the major aspects of mistica based upon the field observation of Brazil and Nepal.