Care, Power and Deconstructive Postcolonialism Reformulating the Habermasian Response

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2022

Abstract

The discourse-ethical programme of Jurgen Habermas stands accused of a fundamental structural failing — namely, it’s supposed incapacity to attend to the irreducible epistemic incongruities that reside at the core of all self-other relations. To certain thinkers, this deficit renders Habermas' model conceptually impoverished and anachronistic, a relic of the long since discredited social scientific imaginary of Enlightenment modernity. This chapter discusses some of these critical perspectives under the loose rubric of ‘deconstructive postcolonialism' (DP). In sharp contrast, the tradition of DP aims to dissolve the foundationalism of ultimate groundings — the chain linking subject, representation, sign, and truth — and the attendant view of the self as unitary, knowable, autonomous, and self-legislating. In Axel Honneth's framework, logos, whose dominative mastery DP seeks to dethrone, is in a sense humbled and forced to reckon with the attitude of affective, non-ratiocinative felt concern that precedes the standpoint of deliberative justice and makes it possible.

Publication Title

Deprovincializing Habermas: Global Perspectives, Second Edition

First Page Number

130

Last Page Number

147

DOI

10.4324/9780429329586-9

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS