The main purpose of this paper is to examine Hartmut Rosa's account of 'resonance'. To this end, the analysis is divided into four parts. The first part elucidates the concept of resonance, including Rosa's differentiation between horizontal, diagonal, and vertical 'axes of resonance' and their role in the construction of different 'world-relations'. The second part centres on the concept of alienation, notably the degree to which it constitutes an integral element of modern life forms and, in a larger sense, of the human condition. The third part grapples with the dialectic of resonance and alienation, shedding light on the assumption that they are antithetical to each other, while contending that their in-depth study provides normative parameters to distinguish between 'the good life' and 'the bad life'. The final part scrutinizes Rosa's attempt to defend his outline of a sociological theory of resonance against objections raised by his critics and comprises a point-by-point assessment of his plea for a resonance-focused sociology of world-relations. The paper concludes by suggesting that, notwithstanding its limitations, Rosa's approach represents one of the most promising developments in twenty-firstcentury critical theory.The main purpose of this paper is to examine Hartmut Rosa's account of 'resonance' 1 , which is crucial to his outline of a Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. 2 As is common with key concepts in the humanities and social sciences, there may be no accurate translation of this programmatic
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AbstractThe main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth discussion of John Holloway's recent book, Crack Capitalism. To this end, the paper offers a detailed account of the key strengths and weaknesses of Holloway's version of 'open Marxism'. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on six significant strengths of Crack Capitalism: (1) its insistence upon the importance of autonomous forms of agenda-setting for both individual and collective emancipation;(2) its emphasis on the ordinary constitution of social struggles; (3) its fine-grained interpretation of the socio-ontological conditions underlying human agency; (4) its processual conception of radical social transformation; (5) its recognition of the elastic, adaptable, and integrative power of capitalism; and (6) its proposal for an alternative critical theory, commonly known as 'open Marxism' or 'autonomous Marxism'. The second part of the study examines the principal weaknesses of Crack Capitalism: (1) the counterproductive implications of the preponderance of negativity, owing to a one-sided concern with critique, cracks, and crises; (2) conceptual vagueness; (3) an overuse of poetic and metaphorical language; (4) the absence of a serious engagement with the question of normativity; (5) a lack of substantive evidence; (6) a residual economic reductionism; (7) a simplistic notion of gender; (8) the continuing presence of various problematic 'isms';(9) the misleading distinction between 'doing' and 'labour'; (10) a reductive understanding of capitalism; (11) an unrealistic view of society; and (12) socioontological idealism.
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