![]() Not only does the capitalist economy depend on these activities and resources, it also disavows their value. Central to Fraser’s account is her claim that the capitalist economy relies upon several non-commoditized background conditions: unwaged social reproductive labor, non-human nature, public powers, as well as the confiscated labor and resources of racialized groups. The first two chapters showcase her inimitable capacity for synthesizing diverse literatures – Marxism, feminism, ecology, and postcolonialism – into an elegant conceptual framework. While talk of crisis has become ubiquitous – financial and sovereign debt crises, ecological crisis, the crisis of care, the crisis of democracy – Fraser’s ambition is to ‘disclose the structural grounds of multiple crisis tendencies in one and the same social totality: capitalist society’ (p. To describe such a project as ambitious would be an understatement, but Fraser and Jaeggi’s execution displays the clarity, insight, and rigor that one would expect from two thinkers at the peak of their abilities. 222), critical theory at its best can help social actors develop a clearer understanding of the conjuncture, including its latent emancipatory possibilities. ![]() 2), and of the rise of right- and left-wing populist movements and parties around the world which signals the crumbling of neoliberalism’s legitimacy (p. In light of the ‘widespread agreement that capitalism is (again) a problem’ (p. Finally, deploying a phrase from Marx that is repeated throughout the book, the authors argue that critical theory aims to provide ‘self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age’ (p. 2), but also analyzing the more ‘objective’ crisis tendencies and contradictions of capitalism. Fraser and Jaeggi offer just such an analysis, beginning from the observation of a ‘pervasive sense that we are caught in the throes of a very deep crisis – a severe systemic crisis’ (p. Second, as Benhabib ( 2018) has recently argued, a critical theory of society that builds on the legacy of the Frankfurt School needs to focus on crisis. The picture of capitalism that emerges eschews its reduction to a purely economic system, and instead encompasses its social, political, and natural background conditions and entanglements. First, both thinkers engage in unabashed grand theorizing of capitalist society, whether the latter is understood as an ‘institutionalized social order’ (Fraser) or as a ‘form of life’ (Jaeggi). There are three main aspects of earlier iterations of critical theory that the authors reprise in this work. In doing so, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi lay out a bold agenda for a theoretical approach that, in their view, has become almost indistinguishable from liberalism (pp. ![]() This book aims to bring the study of capitalism back to the forefront of critical theory. ![]()
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