Search results for "social criticism"
showing 5 items of 5 documents
Adult Education in Art Galleries
2016
Since I began researching adult education in art galleries 20 years ago in Europe, I have noticed two conflicting trends. Contemporary art has become more extraverted and socially engaged, whilst lifelong learning, the discourse of neoliberalism that informs most policy, has become increasingly focused on providing learners with predefined competencies and pushed for ‘measurable’ results (e.g. Pedersen, 2014; Illeris, 2015).
The Feminine Monster. The Uncanny and the Construction of Motherness in Furtivos
2018
The maternal figure embodies one of the most recurrent metaphors in Spanish cinema of late-Francoism and transi-tion, a metaphor that has been read as a device of social criticism towards the dictatorship. Largely due to the sym-bolic connotations that the Franco regime had projected on motherhood, it has been connected with the dictatorial past, functioning on the screen as a monstrous and uncanny personification of the Francoist repressive apparatus. Thus the maternal has become a privileged space for the deployment of film narratives that explore how power rela-tions within the family can be portrayed as a symbol of the relationship between the subject and the State. This arti-cle deals …
Socially Critical Humor : Discussing Humor with Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno
2017
This article brings Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno back into dialogue by discussing the cultural phenomena of humor and laughter based on their theoretical writings. I argue that what is typically considered socially critical humor, like offensive jokes or harsh satire, often fails to meet the preconditions of criticism in the light of Adorno’s and Fromm’s thinking. Humor, to be socially critical, has to be life-affirmative and non-positional, and it has to challenge the limits of humor. It is also claimed that in this scope, humor cannot be instrumental.
Grounding social criticism : from understanding to suffering and back
2019
This paper critically examines John Dewey’s and Axel Honneth’s critical social philosophies in order to highlight two different normative sources of social struggle: scientific understanding and social suffering. The paper discusses the relations of these sources with each other and aims to show to what extent the normative sources of Dewey’s and Honneth’s critical social theories are compatible. A further aim is to use the comparison between Dewey and Honneth in order to argue for a desiderata for critical social ontology. The argument is that we want to consistently include both elements – suffering and understanding – in critical social theory as only by having both will critical theory …
Critical Relativism and Disagreement
2020
The main message of this book is that moderate viewpoint relativism is a sound epistemological stance and basis for learning and creating new knowledge. The world is complicated and open to new interpretations and approaches. Everything has many different facets and aspects that different points of view bring out. The world can be articulated in different ways. This diversity is a gift—not a problem. Still, not all points of view have to be accepted. I consider critical relativism to be a relativist orientation where points of view can be critically examined by weighing their justifications and effects. The first part of this chapter deals with critical relativism, the basic theses of which…