LAUSR

My conclusion after reading Rodrigo Cordero’s book is that the original core of the German critical theory is alive and healthy. Within the German tradition, trademark critical theory remains relevant and productive thanks to theoretical innovations of such authors as Jürgen Habermas, Hauke Brunkhorst, Axel Honneth and Hartmut Rosa. Cordero’s proposal to understand the relationship between crisis and critique in modern society is inscribed in this very tradition. It revitalizes it by bringing together Marx, Hegel and Adorno (Chapters 1 and 2), Habermas and Koselleck (Chapters 3 and 4), Arendt and Foucault (Chapters 5 and 6) into a negative critical theory. Cordero’s book carries a rather strong philosophical assumption. It is explicitly committed ‘to a non-essentialist mode of social theorizing’ and, therefore, ‘to a critically open attitude toward the persistence of the negative in social life’ (p. 9). Because of the ‘negative’, we are invited to think in terms of relations rather than components, in fragility rather than solidity, in non-closure rather than essential unity. The negative becomes evident in times of crisis when things actually break and the fragility of foundations becomes visible, and also in the practice of critique when fissures in social institutions come to light. In my view, what Cordero achieves is a highly original postfoundational and postrational critical theory that is particularly suited to the contingency and differentiation of modern society. By revisiting Marx, Cordero recovers the sociological concept of crisis as evidence of the contingency of foundations. Crises reveal the fragility of social institutions and norms and, at the same time, motivate society towards self-reflection (pp. 20–21). The concept of diremption (Entzweiung, in Hegel’s language) plays a central role (pp. 41– 43), for reflection and critique must begin by placing attention on the fissures and incompleteness of institutions, and not by imposing a principle on reality. Therefore, critique cannot be conceived of as a technique for healing, but instead as a form of resisting any attempt of ‘closing’ the social world – of attributing it a definite, natural form. In terms of Luhmann’s theory of evolution (2012), critique becomes a mechanism of variation; a form of defying affirmative identities, thereby reinforcing the potential of negativity in social communication. 722899 SOC0010.1177/0038038517722899SociologyBook Review Symposium book-review2017