May 18, 2023

RRR

Laclau – draws from Gramsci but goes beyond his concept. Gramsci’s – binary social structure
such as capitalist and worker

Classical Marxism

Critical theory

Contemporary critical theory

Post-structuralism

Laclau – idea of exploitation come from articulation

Workers in Okhla – working 16 hours and underpaid but consider it as for their benefit. They do
not see it only as exploitation but we can construct it as exploitation. How would you make the
economic exploitation as the hegemonic discourse?

Laclau says there is no necessity where a worker has to see it as exploitation. So, exploitation or
its experience has to be discursively articulated.

Post-structuralism is trying in one sense to historicize. It is contingent.

Contingent relativist meanings coming to them is discursive exploitation.

Idea of exploitation or its experience has to be constructed. Experience itself need to be

constructed here. It happens when you have meaning making. It happens when we limit the free
flow, such as look at it as exploitation only. There is nothing in the material but the construction
of that material as exploitation has to be constructed.

Honneth would say there is pre-political normative structure. There will be no society without
the sense of mutual obligation. So, there is a sense of moral injury born from moral injury. It all
is pre-articulation. No social intersubjective kind of relation can be there without this kind of
normative. Such as idea of respect in Thappad, she came to the conclusion by experiences.

Idea of respect is contingent, coming together of various variables.

Then how one frame becomes dominant?

Hegemony is nothing but the dominant frame. Dominant frame is that which holds the capacity
to draw and equivalence between disparate, heterogeneous, unconnected elements. In the case of
Thappad, the idea of respect becomes contingent articulation. Here multiple variables come
together. It is about the idea of identity. Hegemony is created through articulation and through
that, you draw equivalence between different disconnected categories and it is a temporary
hegemony until something else comes and draws different kind of connections among categories.
Such as Marxism become dominant frame because it could explain why there is exploitation etc.,
all linked to economic structure. But for Laclau, these are not foundational, not necessarily
linked to economic structure. But this is all contingent. All hegemonic is contingent. A frame was
dominant for some time and then changed. Dalits put caste as the central category and Dalit as
the new country. Then there is Autonomous Dalit movement that says what is Dalit assertion but
only the articulation by upper caste. So, the hegemony of this category Dalit began to crack.

So, the idea of discourse which is meaningful totality. It is temporary totality. It is totality
because it is capable of giving meaning to other variables. Idea of elements and movements. A
woman moving out from the privacy of house to the beauty pageant, then how can you explain it.
It can be making sense of from the categories of freedom, exploitation, autonomy, security, male
gaze, self-respect, dignity etc. Such as what the veil would mean is contingent on various
categories, such as in Iran they are fighting to remove it and in India, they are claiming it as their
own. So, how do you fix the meaning of veil. You can not essentialize the meaning of veil.
Somewhere, it is about constraint and at other places, it is about identity, protection. Then how to
construct the meaning of veil? Variables are anti-signifiers. They do not have meanings in
themselves such as worker but it needs to be filled and given meaning. Hegemony is the
contingent construction of discourse which can give meaning. The ability to give meaning which
is about giving stability.

Laclau – structure is about time and space. When something becomes repetitive, it becomes
structure, temporarily. So, you will not be able to look at other variables. Contextually, we can
give meaning but can not talk in terms of finality. Such as for Kashmiri movement where their
identity is at the centrality, state will bring other categories such as Sunni, Shia in order to
decentralize that.
Difference between Laclau and Foucault – Laclau makes sense everything in the discursive field.
He eschew the moral field. Everything is a discourse. For Honneth, everything makes sense in
the moral field. For Foucault, there is difference between discursive and extra-discursive. For
him, power is not in ideology but in small practices. Power is in our bodies, related to practices.
Laclau, critical of Foucault, says practice is related to the discourse. Foucault says it is not about
discourse but functional. You just do that. Discursive is about discourse which is about meaning
making. These practices are non-discursive. Power flows not through binaries, prisoner does not
become a resistance but becomes a clog through which power flows. Meaning making and fixing
meaning does not determine how they flow. This is not the central thing. The central thing is the
materiality. So, there is extra-discursive to what is called .. Foucault criticizes the liberalism’s
theorization of power as it hides the flow of power and in turn justifies it, as it diverts from
practices.

Fraser’s problem with this: Foucault’s entry is very value neutral. The idea of power as very
functional. Foucault’s theory is not about normative but like in a war which is very
functional, we do not say soldier that it is right or wrong as it is power game. Normative take
on power does not take into consideration what is happening which is practices, techniques
and procedures. It is all functional. However, procedures can have ethical concerns. For
Foucault, power is in this very procedure of selection and elimination. These procedures
contain power. So, focus on procedures, techniques and practices to capture power. Fraser
first question is, Foucault’s value neutral. Is he critical of all kind of normativity? Is
normativity itself is related to power? Or is it only related to the critique liberal order? In
formulating the very idea of power as social constraint, there is something wrong with that
constraint. What is wrong? It is constraining as choice. Foucault’s point is that in the name of
autonomy and freedom, liberal state fixes it. Meaning making – fixity – power. Foucault is
against fixity. Ordering is power because one person has to constraint themselves, in that
sense it is functional, capillary, micro practices etc. Fraser says that why to take it as
constraint. If it is a constraint, why it is so bad for Foucault. What is it suppressing, a certain
idea of free will? For Foucault, anything against free will is power, it is micro, capillary,
decentered power flows through it. We all are conductors, carriers of power. So, there is no
power free zone. Foucault has shifted our gaze from state to everyday such as class. What
can we do? Nothing much. But only small disruptions. Gandhian idea of violence is very
 Foucauldian. Fraser – by formulating in this hyper way, it has shifted our gaze from state to
micro, this has happened by eliminating normative. But he also has a normative, privileging
the idea of choice and autonomy? So, the question is, is all related to liberalism but he is
hyperbolic to reject all this . 2. If this is power, then what is an alternate conception of power.
So, her method would be autonomy and other are worthy features and the problem with
Foucault and all it that it rejects everything in totality. This whole some critique of reason is
misplaced excitement. Foucault seems to collapse the difference between reason and
instrumentalization. Such as we can criticize the ideas of equality, liberty in liberalism but
need not to eschew them all. Then, how to theorize modernity without capitalism? Fraser
argues that can not we make some kind of distinction, such not all constraints are same, so
can not we make the distinction? Foucault rejects normative in one way and is only
normative in terms of absolutism in the other way.

Social Activist – black panther Namdev Dasal. Movie Istri.

May 19, 2023

Foucault is critical of only liberal order, to look at power through the lens of legitimate or
illegitimate authority. It is legitimate because it is based on some kind of process, so
legitimate power. It seems like Foucault is critical of liberal normative order of legitimacy,
contract, sovereignty etc. Now, Fraser is saying at one point Foucault is critical of liberal
order and also saying he is critical of all normative which can not capture modern power.
Because modern power is like battle power. Modern power is like micro physics of power -
1. So it is both synoptic and individualized. It can target large population and at the same
time individualized like prison system when gaze is on everything and individualizing has
gaze on themselves in terms of disciplinary power. Pre-modern power is intermittent and
targeted, asking soldiers to go out and kill, no gaze throughout. It is related to the physical
power, focused, visceral, targeted, violence as spectacle, movie – game of thrones, Gladiator.
Modern power is invisible and passive, therefore, it has greater penetrative capability, no
running away, such as panopticon when soldier is not visible to the prisoner because of which
it is continuous and internalized as prisoner thinks that soldier is there throughout – 2.
Modern power is like running belts where the target of your power becomes the carriers,
 repositories of your power, in pre-modern times, they resisted power as it was visible. Power
flows through us. So, power is not external but gets amplified in our performance.
Difference between Althusser and Foucault – Althusser says this is done by state but
according to Foucault, it is done by the subject itself.
Honneth – intersubjective is market by moral. For Foucault, intersubjective is marked by
power. It is like a medium or language so nothing like positive and negative about this.
Marx – power is about repression. Foucault – the other less is also there.
Power is positive because it allows you to value things.
Foucault was not interested in the content of knowledge.
It is not about what this knowledge is saying but how this has come to become knowledge
such as why science has come to be more dominant? This is related to technique, procedures,
practices. It is quasi-material and quasi-cultural, imaginative and discursive. So, his idea of
extra-discursive. Ideology and beliefs are not the repository of power. It is in practices that
we do not think about. Everyday techniques such as how people come together, how
universities, education system, prisons etc. all work. Power at the basic level is a constraint.
It is a patterned dispersal so apparatus not in terms of ideology but creating a pattern over a
course of time and it is very functional. Power is not what you think but structured pattern.
Everything which is structured pattern is power for him.

FRASER

Patterned philosopher
The entire critique of what Foucault calls power is liberal imaginative.
Normative itself is the repository of power. Liberal itself is repository of power by focusing
on legitimacy, sovereignty etc.
2. Normative cannot capture modern power so there is no good or bad. Fraser called himself
Nietzschean Marxism, talks about class and all but is cannot be defeated through counter-
hegemony. Because it would again be centralized.
Zizek ‘why Heidegger should not be criminalized’
Fraser point is at one point critique of liberal and secondly all normative. It means either
Foucault is normatively neutral or only normative.
 Her question is What are the normative basis of this critique of modern power by Foucault?
These are autonomy, sovereignty, liberal. No escape of normative liberal. Foucault says his
method is both historical and contingent. Historical in sense that it emerges in relation to past
and contingent says no necessary emerges from past. So, all practice emerge from previous
set of practices but it is constituted outside. Genealogical method.
Foucault – Norms are condition and not outside impositions.
Capitalism commodifies everything, beauty, resistance.
Foucauldian and Laclau method does not take into account the force of capitalism.
Centralizing power of state and capital has the universalizing capacity of internalizing power.
Capacity of state is the mirror image of the capacity of market – Marx.
Foucauldian politics in reality resulted in everyday politics.
Two ways to read it: weakness to resist capital and trying to decentralize liberalism.
Badiou – in the new spirit of capitalism – capitalism is a shapeless phenomenon. It can grow
with or without culture.

POST-STRUCTURALISTS AND POST-COLONIALISTS

Marxism

Weberianism

Post-structuralism

Liberalism

Pragmatism

Fraser is neither fully accepting nor rejecting fully any of them. Her attempt to make her
theory consistent unlike Foucault. Bringing liberalism with destruction. Exaggerated
critique of liberalism is the problem with post-structuralism and post-colonialism. Need to
fuse liberal autonomy with destruction with class. Critique – whether it is so eclectic? She
says yes. This is post-structuralists obsession with techniques etc.
Key category for Fraser is which she is drawing from Butler is resignifying.
Critical theory is important in the context of conventional confrontation of liberalism and
Marxism.
 Decentering is the key category in the context of post-structuralism.
Deconstruction is post-structuralism. Autonomy is liberal. Coming together of all this is
pragmatism.
Fraser wants to reconcile recognition with redistribution.

May 25, 2023

Hegelian Marxists

Post-Structuralists

Five frames of Fraser in her version of critical theory. Pragmatism is one philosophical trend that
originated in US and others in Europe.

Pragmatism – starting point is not metaphysical assumptions and practical empirical world and
theory is formed in course of practical problems. So, there is no apriori assumptions. According
to pragmatism, the problem of political philosophy is the assumptions with which it began,
making apriori assumptions and making metaphysical problems. So, cannot have emotional
consolation or what you feel as relevant variables, it is not about subjective perceptions.
Pragmatism believes in experiences. It thinks that its aim is to reduce the sufferings of the world.
It believes in interpretative but not believes that there are hidden meanings like hermeneutics.,
normative structures that are working its way working in ways of moral responsibility. Meanings
are contextually interpreted. Justice emanates from its ability to reduce suffering in the real
world. It is arguing about not to impose super categories as it has created unreal/false problems
in the world that does not exist in the real world. So, philosophy itself is the problem. To know
real world, by looking at what is empirically working in the real world. There is centrality of the
category of contingency, when there are no hidden meanings.

Richard Rorti is neo-pragmatist. His central theoretical questions is how would you combine
consciousness of contingency of evaluative vocabulary with a commitment to reducing suffering.
We have evaluative vocabulary regarding what is good and bad and it is contingent, so we do not
have like normative structures and all. So, we have to see whether it works in real world. Mind is
not the replica of the real world. Mind throw categories in linguistic structures. Then how map
this vocabulary and combine it with reducing suffering in a specific spatial context. Fraser’s
borrowing this pragmatic
For Fraser, empirical world is made of structures but these are to be undone by practical so she is
not normative but schematic. Such as, we have to see strategies of mobilization. At times,
different problems come and we have to find solutions. There are not deep rooted normatives.

Pragmatism – empirical world. Evaluative vocabulary to make sense of real world but that
vocabulary is contingent as there is no guarantee there it will work to solve the problems of the
real world such as Marxism may not be valid in today’s context so instead of focusing on
philosophy, need to focus on contingent.

Fraser – Structure and justice

Rorti – Contingent and suffering

With this difference, Fraser is drawing from pragmatism. For Fraser, everything is not very
contingent as there are structures but still drawing on pragmatism as focusing on concrete
outcomes. So, participatory parody – treating everyone as . if we apply this in real world and see
what works and what not, so judge on the basis of concrete outcomes and not normative content.

Rorti – is recognition at all a useful concept? Particularly for left politics? If purpose is to reduce
suffering, we have to go to the source of that. It comes from certain groups claiming superiority
and holding real time prejudices against other groups. So, problem of prejudice. So, solution
should be the removal of prejudice, which is contingent and real time problem. So, for real time
problem, you create unreal problem of recognition. Instead of eliminating prejudice, you are
valorizing them such as blacks have great history etc. which is very complicated route. Such as
instead of saying that Muslims should not be prejudiced on the basis of their religious identity,
we start valorizing them such as they are so good. Such as it will be prejudice that something is
very unhealthy thing. So, unreal theorization create unreal problems, such as if we say something
bad about Muslims, it would seem like you have prejudice against them. So, 1. cultural
recognition needs valorization of identities while what you need is elimination of prejudice.
Here, Fraser and Rodrigus agrees. 2. Emphasis on commonality of humanity is much better
than series of recognitions of identities which are historical specificities created. If we do not
know that history, that will also lead to prejudice. Not acknowledging the difference will lead to
prejudices. It is simply impossible to know the details of each culture as if you do not, it means
you have prejudice… what is the difference between prejudice and identity? Because of
prejudice, we create identities and then valorize them. Difference leads to valorization. Earlier it
was only about prejudice but now you create the bigger problem that if you do not valorize, you
have prejudice. Instead to focusing on differences, why can’t we focus on commonality of
humanity. These categories such as women, Dalits, blacks are all contingent, nothing is given
there. So, idea of history. Specificities v/s commonality. Specificities are actually distorting our
picture. His common terms are humanity, solidarity and empathy. Commonality means the
dominant groups will claim their attribute of commonality and subvert other but Rorti’s point is
that we should have common categories of suffering. So, deconstruction is very ahistorical and
useless categories and not stable, nuisance category. Example – Muslim question. Like
pragmatist, began in context of majoritarianism and deep-rooted prejudice against Muslims. How
to fight? 1. Politics of difference – Muslim culture is different and preserve their cultural
differences so as to reduce their cultural marginalization who glorifies their history of rule and
Hindus have anxieties of their rule, 2. Hindu and Muslim are one, all are humans. Common idea
of humanity based on common sensibilities of suffering. Rorti thinks this is the best way to fight.
Schooling is very important mode of socialization. White and black schools in neighborhood,
where teaching white that both of you are equal. Other approach is this that this is black, black is
beauty, and their forefathers are like this or that. There is terrible compression of space. If we say
their food is not good, it should not turn into prejudice. Second, is to valorize that food. Second
is more complicated way of solving prejudice, where you make unreal problem of valorizing
their species. Whether at point people have to valorize their identity so as to get dignifies? So,
common identities.

Pragmatist see life in concrete world. Revaluation has side stepped the question of prejudice.
Will this commonality give space to the dominant discourse to prevail?

We have now two choices: identification and difference. Rorti says build social mechanisms that
lead to better.

Every culture has certain prejudices. When prejudice become integral to recognition,

So, there can not be reduction of suffering without identification. This identification has to
happen on the basis of commonality of suffering and empathizing. Necessity of good early
schooling. Normalization of differences. Common sensibilities of sufferings.
Honneth – Sufi, good like.

May 26, 2023

It looks at social life in terms of practices which have been historically and contingently
constructed. Problem of suffering exist in the same world in those practices only. So, a good
theory should think about how to bring the change, not as transcendence universal normative
principle, external imaginative, new normative order. though these practices are contingently
settled, they are settled because they are best available values and human action in course of
solving problems give rise to practices so values that practices hold have born out of human
action in course of solving concrete problems. so, these practices are dependent.

Difference with Honneth – social and material world is based on normative.

Greek philosophy is about abstract thought process, about imagining universal principles. Unlike
conventional social theory, pragmatism does not believe that values come out of normative but
human actions. We do not evaluate human actions through some kind of normative. What is
central is human action, similar to post-structuralist idea. While thinking about solving problem,
we think about immediate, most efficient, effective way and not normative, just like what thing
should one do. This becomes a value in social. There can be no normativity outside the context.
Morality can not be learnt just like. Only when we think that morality has a practical value that
people become moral. Morality is not an independent universal order. the values that finally
come to institutionalize in society are worth to people but no normative reason. So, need for
theory is not about finding these values about justice which people realize in everyday life when
we see something is fair. People do not think exclusively in moral frame. Morally, we do not
realize what is justice or not but we realize only in everyday practices. We think in terms of
immediacy. With this backdrop, we need to analyze. With Rorty, homogenization, hegemony is
not the problem. Example – Racism. Racism is historically evolved. There is unfair treatment of
blacks. Cultural recognition is coming out of Hegelian idea of universality of recognition for
good life, this is normative principle. Hegelian idea of spirit. Hegelian thought – spirit embodied
the – march towards the universal. Is this idea of spirit empirical? Think of racism as set of
practices where you began to discriminate towards each other. It is not about cultural recognition
but about solving the immediate problem that we think is prejudices against blacks. Civil rights –
Luther- talks about elimination of prejudices racism. 60s discourse of expressive elimination of
prejudices through institutional practices. It is only after second wave feminist movement that
brought the idea of cultural recognition. He says women do not face stigma. Blacks, caste face
stigma but not gender. There could be cultural attitude of inferiority. Stigma is that you can not
be other than that, so blacks and caste. Stigma is for all the time, and not for women. Cultural
recognition was relevant category for women because there was no stigma and could claim
certain history.

One of the followers of it can be to dignify everything when problem is stigma and idea of
cultural recognition. Does that help fight sex work?

Post-colonialists says everything need to be dignified. So, rape survivor and not rape victim. Not
sex work but like any other work. Maltha woman getting blanket for good sleep. Idea of agency.
By saying rape victim, we make her more dependent, she becomes helpless. Dignifying through
resignifying those practices.

Recognition – agency. Recognition leads to agency. Is cultural recognition good for left? Politics
of naming an act itself becomes stigma such as calling someone sex work itself becomes a
stigma. Post-colonialist problem is naming but not altering the problem. Can this profession be
prohibited? Can these questions be framed through the question of cultural recognition? Does
this help in destigmatizing? Rorty is against this kind of cultural recognition. So, differences
should be taken from lens of empirical reality and not from some normative. We can build more
empathy from commonality of suffering. Increasing identification, psychological and emotional,
and solidarity among people. Why can not we expand it to larger world. Commonality can be
captured through deep empathy. Focus on specificities through commonality and not difference.
For him, prejudice is just like mental concept. Fraser is about recognition through status model
and not identity politics.

For Fraser, cultural recognition in itself is problem but for Rorty it is as he considers it as
misplaced histories. Do our normative emerge from our human action? Agency is a complex
question. if everything evolves in terms of problem solving then how would they explain the rise
of fascism and holocaust?

Fraser – recognition with institutional force