Marcuse Today: An Introduction

This contribution serves as an invitation to a renewed exploration of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory. It discloses his continued relevance for critical social theory and politics in the contemporary moment and why Marcuse should not be condemned to the dustbin of history but should be appropriated and developed in our contemporary conditions in which crises are multiplying.

Social Consciousness in the Realities of IT-Civilization

Mental peculiarities of man of IT-civilization are being theoretically reconstructed in the article. The relevance of the topic is determined by the impact (which is apparently controversial and frequently even causing concern) of newest technologies on people’s psyche and somatic features, their private and social life. In methodology the authors rely on non-idealistic dialectics that is correlated with the content of critical social theory. In the stated methodological paradigm, priority is given to a positive non-classical dialectics which is being distinguished from both a classical dialectics and a negative one. The paper is primarily focused on specificity of social consciousness which categorical status is mostly related to Marxist intellectual tradition. The latter is chosen as a paradigm in the given text. Along with that, Marxist problematization of consciousness and its neighboring realities – ontological, epistemological, social ones – is interpreted with historically actual objective and subjective circumstances in mind. In this regard, the role of socio-cultural templates of modernity, modernism and postmodernity is being highlighted. We specify the content of conceptually significant concepts: social consciousness, information, ideology, propaganda, and consumer society. Consumer society itself is identified as capitalism of new technological and mental mode. The negative character of information and computer technologies’ influence on human psyche is being accentuated and elaborated. On the basis of adduced arguments, it is stated: consciousness of digital society’s man is prone to destruction, eclecticism and is susceptible to being manipulated which is fraught with totalitarian outcome. The resistance strategy is being defined. Its important component is an ability to detect innovative forms of exploitation and control concealed behind technological novelties.

The Nature of Space

In The Nature of Space, pioneering Afro-Brazilian geographer Milton Santos attends to globalization writ large and how local and global orders intersect in the construction of space. Santos offers a theory of human space based on relationships between time and ontology. He argues that when geographers consider the inseparability of time and space, they can then transcend fragmented realities and partial truths without trying to theorize their way around them. Based on these premises, Santos examines the role of space, which he defines as indissoluble systems of objects and systems of actions in social processes, while providing a geographic contribution to the production of a critical social theory.

O REGRESSO DO DESENVOLVIMENTO HUMANO: um sintoma da pandemia de Covid-19?

O artigo objetiva problematizar a perspectiva do desenvolvimento humano cujo risco de regressão é apontado como uma consequência do período pandêmico deflagrado com a COVID-19. Por meio de um levantamento exploratório baseado em fontes documentais apresenta indicadores sociais que demonstram os desafios do desenvolvimento humano ao longo das últimas décadas, particularmente no Brasil. Reforça quea reflexão orientada pela teoria social crítica marxiana e marxista aponta que os desafios para sustentar as conquistas do desenvolvimento humano para todos não podem ser atribuídos exclusivamente ao coronavírus SARS-Cov-2, porque antes mesmo da crise sanitária, os lentos, mas importantes avanços conquistados já se mostravam insustentáveis na ordem social capitalista, cuja superação é condição para um real e sustentável desenvolvimento da humanidade, na perspectiva da emancipação humana.THE REGRESS OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: A SYMPTOM OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC?AbstractThe article aims to problematize the perspective of human development whose risk of regression is pointed out as a consequence of the pandemic period triggered by COVID-19. Through an exploratory survey based on documentary sources, it presents social indicators that demonstrate the challenges of human development over the last decades, particularly in Brazil. It reinforces that the reflection guided by the Marxian and Marxist critical social theory points out that the challenges to sustain the achievements of human development for all cannot be attributed exclusively to the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus, because even before the health crisis, the slow but important advances already achieved proved unsustainable in the capitalist social order, whose overcoming is a condition for a real and sustainable development of humanity, in the perspective of human emancipation.Keywords: Human development. Human emancipation. Pandemic

Does emancipation devour its children? Beyond a stalled dialectic of emancipation

Emancipation serves not only as a midwife for progressive agendas such as greater equality and sustainability but also as their gravedigger. This diagnosis underpins Ingolfur Blühdorn’s ‘dialectic of emancipation’, which depicts a dilemma but offers no perspective on how to deal with it. By drawing on Foucault, this article suggests conceiving of emancipation as a task moderns are confronted with even if a given emancipatory project has come to devour its children. Claiming autonomy from given social constellations is key to this task; key also is judging between legitimate and illegitimate claims to autonomy. In late modernity, the criteria for such judgement are no longer universally given. Instead of regarding the latter as entry into mere subjectivism (Blühdorn), this article presents judgement as a key political, ‘world building’-activity (Arendt), a critical social theory may join in, by not only observing the world but by also taking sides in it.