The Highway of Despair

Critical Theory After Hegel
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-231-16867-0
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 346 g

Reihe: New Directions in Critical Theory

Hegel's "highway of despair," introduced in his Phenomenology of Spirit, represents the tortured path traveled by "natural consciousness" on its way to freedom. Despair, the passionate residue of Hegelian critique, also indicates fugitive opportunities for freedom and preserves the principle of hope against all hope. Analyzing the works of an eclectic cast of thinkers, Robyn Marasco considers the dynamism of despair as a critical passion, reckoning with the forms of historical life forged along Hegel's highway.

The Highway of Despair follows Theodor Adorno, Georges Bataille, and Frantz Fanon as they each read, resist, and reconfigure a strand of thought in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Confronting the twentieth-century collapse of a certain revolutionary dialectic, these thinkers struggle to revalue critical philosophy and recast Left Hegelianism within the contexts of genocidal racism, world war, and colonial domination. Each thinker also re-centers the role of passion in critique. Arguing against more recent trends in critical theory that promise an escape from despair, Marasco shows how passion frustrates the resolutions of reason and faith. Embracing the extremism of what Marx, in the spirit of Hegel, called the "ruthless critique of everything existing," she affirms the contemporary purchase of radical critical theory, resulting in a passionate approach to political thought.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marasco, Robyn

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: Deutscher Idealismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 19. Jahrhundert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. Dialectics and Despair
1. Hegel, the Wound
2. Kierkegaard's Diagnostics
Part 2. Dialectical Remains
3. Theodor W. Adorno: Aporetics
4. Georges Bataille: Aleatory Dialectics
5. Frantz Fanon: Critique, with Knives
Concluding Postscript
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Robyn Marasco is associate professor of political science at Hunter College. Her areas of specialization include critical theory, feminist theory, and the modern history of political thought. Her articles have appeared in Contemporary Political Theory, differences, Philosophy and Social Criticism, and Theory and Event.