Emmanuel Renault

The evidence today is practically uncontested: about thirty years ago we left Fordism behind and entered a new phase of capitalism. That the structures of the post-Fordist social order call for new modes of social critique is also a prevalent idea. The category of alienation continues, however, to be discredited. Nevertheless it is not clear that the categories of democracy (as apparatuses of non-domination), justice and the good life are capable of bringing about the political effects that may be expected today from the concept of alienation. For these reasons, not only the historical diagnostic that appears to have authorized jettisoning the problematic of alienation but also the model of critique used to replace it demand critical scrutiny.

Current debates on neo-liberal governmentality and the medicalization-psychologization of the social constantly refer to Foucault’s theory of biopolitics. I critically examine Foucault’s notions of biopolitics and liberalism as conveyed in his articles on the emergence of social medicine in the 19th century. My thesis is that the movement of sanitary reform is irreducible to the mere development of liberal governmentality and that the idea of social medicine was associated in the period with a critique of the normative principles of liberalism which remains relevant today

If it seems fully legitimate to introduce Marx in the contemporary discussion about recognition, it is more disputable to attribute to Marx an unified conception of recognition. There is no doubt that Marx hasn’t provided any systematic account of recognition, but he has tackled the issue of recognition from various points of view. Could these various points of view be unified in a general conception of recognition? This article claims that this is not the case since three accounts of recognition should be distinguished that are hardly compatible one with the other: one Feuerbachian account of recognition of the species being in the other, one account of recognition related to the dynamics of disrespect as social experience, and one account of recognition through social roles

The interpretation of Marx’s references to work and to domination is a vexed question. Can we say that Marx criticizes capitalism in terms of its effects on work? Or does he criticize capitalism from the standpoint of those subject to domination, and with whom his position is one of solidarity? Or does he elaborate a description of the unprecedented transformations brought about in the relations of power, which the category of domination is unable to apprehend effectively? The article argues that these differences in interpretation are actually based on a series of false oppositions. Marx’s aim is in effect to articulate the question of the domination of work and the question of domination at work, insofar as he accords a position of political centrality to the connection between domination and work.

This paper begins by defending the twofold relevance, political and theoretical, of the notion of social suffering. Social suffering is a notion politics cannot do without today, as it seems indispensable to describe all the aspects of contemporary injustice. As such, it has been taken up in a number of significant research programmes in different social sciences (sociology, anthropology, social psychology). The notion however poses significant conceptual problems as it challenges disciplinary boundaries traditionally set up to demarcate individual and social phenomena. I argue that philosophy has a role to play in the attempt to integrate the diverging perspectives stemming from the social sciences. I attempt to show that, as it engages with the social sciences to account for the conceptual and normative issues thrown open by the question of social suffering, philosophy in fact retrieves the very idea of critical theory, as a conjugated critique of social reality and of its knowledge. I conclude by showing how the question of social suffering then becomes a useful criterion to distinguish between the different existing approaches in critical theory

The concepts of globalisation and of neoliberalism are symptomatic of the transformations which have taken place in the way the question of social critique has been addressed. The contemporary period has witnessed the emergence of a protocol of social analysis in which political inquiry is linked to historical diagnosis, drawing on the categories of historical periodisation and of economic analysis. The debate is thus, to a certain degree, shifted to the terrain of Marxism. As for the latter, it is confronted with a new set of theoretical and political challenges.

La pensée de Marx est célèbre pour ses différentes critiques critique de la philosophie hégélienne, de la philosophie critique, de la philosophie tout court, de la religion, de la politique, du socialisme utopique, de l'économie politique... Une telle insistance ne peut être fortuite, elle indique bien plutôt un projet théorique original, critique en ce qu'il se veut polémique, mais aussi en ce qu'il se veut non dogmatique. L'ouvrage, en s'attachant aux étapes principales de l'évolution intellectuelle de Marx, montre que toujours le motif critique reste constitutif, depuis la jeunesse, alors que Marx adhère à la philosophie critique des jeunes hégéliens, jusqu'à la maturité, lorsque Le Capital donne son couronnement à l'entreprise de la critique de l'économie politique. Il s'avère en fait qu'un même projet critique traverse les différentes étapes de l'œuvre, et qu'il constitue l'un des foyers à partir duquel elle doit être interprétée.

The Marxian concept of ideology has been subjected to various types of criticism. Some criticism derives from the concept’s internal difficulties. Other criticism stems from the historical evolution of ideological forms. The article argues that a shift which is often presented as an overcoming of ideology is rather to be seen as a transformation of ideology, which in turn calls for a transformation of our conceptions of ideology. The article thus focuses on the trend towards the replacement of a paradigm of justification by legitimation by a paradigm of justification by description.