The End of Immanent Critique?

Abstract

Immanent critique has been a defining feature of the programme of critical social theory. It is a methodology that underpins theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society, based on its linking normative and empirical modes of analysis. Immanent critique distinctively seeks to discern emancipatory or democratizing tendencies. However, the viability of immanent critique is currently in question. Habermas argued that it was necessary to revise the normative foundations of critical social theory, late-capitalist developments tended to undermine immanent critique. Although there is a need for critical social theory to incorporate aspects of alternative interpretations of the contemporary period, the logics of influential theoretical perspectives on the present, especially postmodernism, the risk society and globalization, will be shown to be inconsistent with some of immanent critique's presuppositions. The synthetic aspirations of critical social theory nevertheless persist in recent attempts to reconcile positive liberty and social justice.

Turning critique inside out: Foucault, Boltanski and Chiapello on the tactical displacement of critique and power

“…It is not uncommon to find observers in critical theory mourning the decline of the grand critiques of society or at least discussing how social critique based on externally given universal values can be maintained (Browne 2008;Honneth 2000). Often, it is presented as if 'real' critique must necessarily build on an externally given normative foundation, which is not distorted by power or similar empirical phenomena.…”

Discourse analysis as immanent critique: Possibilities and limits of normative critique in empirical discourse studies

“…Contrary to the notion that immanent critique means revealing the contradiction between socially accepted claims and reality, these contradictions have always been necessary ones in Critical Theory (Browne, 2008), in which 'necessary' refers to those contradictions that inevitably arise from the social order. Thus, immanent critique is not a matter of holding a mirror up to the criticized individuals and showing them their own contradictions so that they can deliberately change their behaviour.…”

“…The notion of immanent critique -a normative position that is developed from existing society that not only reveals prospects for social change but also contributes to that change -represents a solution to the problem of how to justify normative critique (see also Browne, 2008;Romero, 2013;Stahl, 2013b). This type of critique is also described as immanent transcendence (Honneth, 2000).…”

In the letter of mere reason: Rethinking the universal secular intellectual with Immanuel Kant, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

“…In the name of (self-)discipline, it must remain accountable. Immanent critique, whether it has reached its end (Browne 2008), revives the logic of krino from which it descends and leads the universal secular intellectual to ask herself: 'And what if religio remained untranslatable?' (Derrida 2002a, 67).…”