Critical Theory

Indagare sugli esordi della prospettiva è possibile soltanto se si tenta di comprendere il modus operandi e la forma mentis di Brunelleschi. Ricostruendo la cornice concettuale possiamo attendibilmente azzardare quali siano state le strategie cognitive e quali le modalità operative che portarono, nella prima metà del Quattrocento a Firenze, a mettere in atto un sistema di rappresentazione spaziale che tutt’ora chiamiamo prospettiva rinascimentale. Cercheremo pertanto di dimostrare che Brunelleschi fu protagonista in un ambiente ove artisti, letterati e mercanti ritenevano i concetti di accertamento e dimostrazione, strettamente correlati all’esperienza concreta: un elogio del sapere pragmatico che anticipa, sotto l’aspetto della verificazione sperimentale, la scienza moderna. Fu proprio in seno a questo sapere pragmatico che prese corpo il concetto di verifica e dimostrazione e, nello specifico, il processo si realizzò nelle botteghe e nei cantieri degli architetti e degli artisti rinascimentali, le cui opere furono valorizzate dagli umanisti fiorentini ai fini di una glorificazione della storia cittadina. Non a caso Ernst Gombrich pose in evidenza che l’idea di progresso nacque nel quadro delle conoscenze applicative: è a partire da Brunelleschi e da Ghiberti che l’artista iniziò a lavorare come uno scienziato poiché le sue opere servivano anche a illustrare «in modo insolito e ingegnoso come il maestro risolve un problema artistico».

The article used curricular documents affiliated with 3 different subgenres of Catholic schooling. The author suggests a critical reading of these curricular materials for the purpose of better understanding the kinds of educational messages sent to students through a) the hagiography of saints affiliated with the schools as well as in the b) documents produced by religious orders for lay and avowed teachers meant to propagate a unique schooled experience. In the process, the author draws upon curriculum theory as a way to critique the largely unquestioned kinds of theology-as-pedagogy that become intrinsically influential for teachers and students.

This introduction contextualizes and evaluates Herbert Marcuse’s the accompanying, previously untranslated review of John Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Marcuse’s critique of pragmatism is indebted to Max Horkheimer’s claim that pragmatism is an example of “traditional” theory and reduces thought to mere instrument in service of external ends. Unlike Horkheimer, Marcuse concedes that Dewey, unlike the logical positivists, attempted to develop a material logic of ends. However, he concludes that the attempt was ultimately unsuccessful. I place this conclusion in the context of Marcuse’s critique of technological reason. Lastly, I defend Dewey from the charge of crude instrumentalism and delineate Marcuse’s and Dewey’s critical disagreement on science’s capacity for self-reflection.

How can we develop a political critique of urban form at the time of a tall building boom? Pointing to limitations of interpreting towers as representations of finance and power, I introduce an understanding of skylines as phantasmagoria of capitalist culture: a dazzling image that abstracts from the commodified urban landscape by promoting its further commodification. I show that both professionals who argue for and those who argue against the construction of tall office buildings in London approach the city’s ‘new skyline’ as an easily marketable visual reproduction that is defined as a compositional whole: a bounded composition with St Paul’s Cathedral at its centre. I claim that this approach and the widespread idea that commercial skyscrapers ‘destroy’ the historic cityscape assume an element of integrity that is ideological and which itself must be ‘ruined’. My argument for a shift of the ways in which cityscapes are viewed draws on Walter Benjamin’s critical montages and allegories. I explore his reading of ruins as emblems of the fragility and destructiveness of capitalist culture and his understanding of ruination as a form of critique. My argument for ruining the cityscape’s ‘beautiful appearance’ focuses on compositional wholeness and symbolic coherence. In so doing, I provide an interpretation of skylines that sheds light to the ways in which financial capitalism is justified by a specific way of viewing the city and the ways in which it is embedded in texts that are deemed to be socially meaningful.

Seit den Erfahrungen der Gewaltexplosionen im 20. Jahrhundert erleben wir insbesondere nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September 2001 weltweit eine neue Dimension von Gewalt und Terror, wie sie Hannah Arendt in ihrer eindrücklichen und nachhaltigen Analyse der totalen Herrschaft bereits vor einem halben Jahrhundert antizipiert. Die globalisierte Zivilisation, so Arendts These, berge eine Destruktivität, die alle Zivilisation zu vernichten drohe, wenn nicht die zentralen Fragen der politischen Verantwortung ebenso wie die Folgen ihres Scheitern in die öffentliche Reflexion gerückt werden.
Einige der vielfältigen Aspekte des komplexen Zusammenhangs von Politik und Verantwortung, vor allem mit Bezug auf das Werk von Hannah Arendt, werden im vorliegenden Band behandelt.
Mit Beiträgen von Hannah Arendt, Margaret Canovan, Ronald Beiner, Jeffrey Newman, Richard J. Bernstein, Waltraud Meints, Nancy Fraser, Julia Kristeva und Albert Friedlander

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

Die Systemtheorie und die Kritische Theorie sind Schulen, die Theoretikerinnen seit langem ein Zuhause bieten. In der Zeit ihres Bestehens kam es immer wieder zu Treffpunkten und Theoriekollisionen dieser beiden Traditionen des Denkens der Gesellschaft. Durch die hier entwickelte Metareflexion wird es möglich, zu analysieren, wie diese
Theorietraditionen verbunden werden. Da sich die aktuelle Diskussion auf die Perspektive der Systemtheorie beschränkt, ist es notwendig, die Verbindung auch aus der Perspektive Kritischer Theorie zu debattieren. Denn erst die Unterscheidung der heute immer mehr ins Gespräch kommenden Kritischen Systemtheorie von der kaum diskutierten Kritischen Theorie sozialer Systeme macht es möglich, die volle Produktivität der Theoriekollisionen zu erkennen. Wir konzipieren unsere Metareflexion damit als eine Intervention im Sinne einer soziologischen Selbstkritik. Sie richtet sich gegen die Gefahr des theoretischen Dogmatismus und plädiert für die Öffnung der Kontingenz des eigenen Denkens der Gesellschaft.

Systems theory and critical theory are schools of thought that for a long time have been familiar for theorists. During the period of their emergence, there were several theoretical collisions between these two traditions of thinking of society. The meta-reflection that is developed here makes it possible to analyze how these theoretical traditions are connected. As the current discussion is limited to the perspective of systems theory, it is necessary to amplify the debate and to ask for a connection from the perspective of critical theory. Only through the distinction between critical systems theory, which is increasingly discussed today, and a critical theory of social systems, which is barely discussed, we may be able to recognize the full productivity of these theoretical collisions. Therefore, we understand our metareflection as an intervention that takes the form of sociological self-criticism, which is directed against the risk of theoretical dogmatism and advocates for opening up the contingency of sociology’s own thinking about society.

Hunter Vaughan interweaves phenomenology and semiotics to analyze cinema's ability to challenge conventional modes of thought. Merging Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception with Gilles Deleuze's image-philosophy, Vaughan applies a rich theoretical framework to a comparative analysis of Jean-Luc Godard's films, which critique the audio-visual illusion of empirical observation (objectivity), and the cinema of Alain Resnais, in which the sound-image generates innovative portrayals of individual experience (subjectivity). Both filmmakers radically upend conventional film practices and challenge philosophical traditions to alter our understanding of the self, the world, and the relationship between the two. Films discussed in detail include Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967); and Resnais's Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and The War Is Over (1966). Situating the formative works of these filmmakers within a broader philosophical context, Vaughan pioneers a phenomenological film semiotics linking two disparate methodologies to the mirrored achievements of two seemingly irreconcilable artists.

In this book, I identify contemporary developments on the theme of vulnerability within critical theory while also seeking to reconstruct an idea of vulnerability that enables an articulation of the political and demonstrates how it is socially produced. Philosophies that take vulnerability as a moral object contribute to rendering the political, as the site of a specific power and action, foreign to vulnerability. The notion of recognition offered by critical theory does not correct this deficit. Instead, I argue that vulnerability, as susceptibility to a harmful event, is above all a breach of normative expectations. I demonstrate that these expectations are not mental phenomena but are situated between subjects and must even be conceived as institutions. On this basis I argue that the link between the political and vulnerability cannot be reduced to the institutional implementation of moral principles. Rather I seek to rethink the political by taking vulnerability as the starting point and thereby understand the political as simultaneously referring to the advent of a world, the emergence of a relation, and the appearance of a political subject.

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

The discipline of disaster studies has been hesitant to critically interrogate dual discourses of vulnerability and ‘building resilience’ in a meaningful way as it continues to dominate research and practice. This is despite deep engagement within different disciplines to offer radical reconsiderations of these discourses. I use multi-year long autoethnographic immersion into the problematic of resilience. I integrate personal experience as a White, female scholar who studies disasters, with an almost decade-long project focused on the pre-and-post Katrina context of New Orleans bounce rap. I task what it means ‘to be resilient’ and who decides when groups have reached this state. I situate an empirical challenge to metanarratives of resilience and the colonialism they suggest, and also task resilience as constructed by elites and imposed on those decided as vulnerable. This work suggests a dramatic shift away from the building resilience discourse into meaningful engagement with the institutional neglect of the colonial present that fosters disaster in the first place.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union when explicitly anti-capitalist movements have all but vanished from the contemporary political scene, along with the waning that followed soon after of Marxist theory as the prime source of (at least theoretical) resistance in academia to the forms of oppression and exploitation engendered by capitalism, the idea of immanent critique has taken on a new urgency. Recent avatars of the Frankfurt School critical theory tradition have attempted to develop the concept of immanent critique and extract from it a new approach to understanding and (hopefully) correcting the “social pathologies” that are currently strangulating humanity’s collective energies. Whether their efforts have been successful, or even promising as a new way forward is a topic of contentious debate.

There are several possible avenues of attack when assessing recent models of immanent critique, only one of which will be explored for the purposes of this paper. I will argue, first, that immanent critique, as it is defined in the work of Rahel Jaeggi, manages to foreground some of the key contradictions and impasses that critical theorists currently face. However admirable her constructive aims are, the answers Jaeggi provides to her own questions are (even on a charitable reading) unsatisfying. I will pinpoint two unsatisfactory aspects of her account: 1) Despite her attention to normative, institutional change, the explanation given for how positive social, economic or political transformations occur is incomplete. 2) There appears to be no place for the concept of Universality in her account. These two criticisms might appear to be totally disjoint; I will attempt to show how they are, in fact, intimately related.

In contemporary classrooms, it is crucial for teachers to have a thorough understanding of sociological issues in education. Understanding Sociological Theory for Pedagogical Practices addresses sociological theory, highlighting its relevance to policy, curriculum and practice for the pre-service teacher education student. The book explores a range of sociological issues related to diversity, disadvantage, discrimination and marginalisation, contributing to the preparation of future teachers for work in a range of educational contexts. It seeks to dispel the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ notion of education, encouraging future teachers to think critically and reflexively in terms of creating a welcoming and equitable student environment through knowledge, inclusion and understanding. Understanding Sociological Theory for Pedagogical Practices is an invaluable resource for primary, secondary and early childhood pre-service teacher education students as they prepare to navigate the ...

While " inclusion " has been seen as a central mode of redressing ongoing injustices against communities of color in the US, Indigenous political experiences feature more complex legacies of contesting US citizenship. Turning to an important episode of contestation, this essay examines the relation between inclusion and the politics of eliminating Indigenous nations that was part of a shared policy shift toward " Termination " in the Anglo-settler world of the 1950s and 1960s. Through a reading of Indigenous activist-intellectual Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), it demonstrates how the construction of what I call the " civic inclusion narrative " in post–World War II American political discourse disavowed practices of empire-formation. Widely considered a foundational text of the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement, the work repositioned Indigenous peoples not as passive recipients of civil rights and incorporation into the nation-state but as colonized peoples actively demanding decolonization. Deloria's work provides an exemplary counterpoint to the enduring thread of civic inclusion in American political thought and an alternative tradition of decolonization—an imperative that continues to resonate in today's North American and global Indigenous struggles over land, jurisdiction, and sovereignty.

'@ is For Activism' examines the transformation of politics through digital media, including digital television, online social networking and mobile computing. Joss Hands maps out how political relationships have been reconfigured and new modes of cooperation, deliberation and representation have emerged. This analysis is applied to the organisation and practice of alternative politics, showing how they have developed and embraced the new political and technological environment. Hands offers a comprehensive critical survey of existing literature, as well as an original perspective on networks and political change. He includes many case studies including the anti-war and global justice movements, peer production, user created TV and 'Twitter' activism. "@ is For Activism" is essential for activists and students of politics and media. Note the version here is a pre-print proof which differs from the published version and should not be cited from.

Enacted February 24, 2014 and effective until August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act targeted Ugandans of minority sexual orientations and gender identities—many of whom self-identify as 'kuchu'—by imposing life sentences for homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. The original Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009 promised even worse for kuchus: it would have mandated that all Ugandans report known homosexuals and threatened execution for serial offenders and other perpetrators of “aggravated homosexuality.” In the context of Ugandan political conflict, emerging international human rights norms, and global asymmetries of power, Uganda has become an ideological battlefront where competing actors—both US-based and Ugandan—advance their respective visions of a just and righteous global society. These factors mandate that US-based activists and organizations painstakingly consider how (or whether) they can advocate responsibly and effectively for international human rights related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Through interdisciplinary lenses and critical analysis, this paper explores three questions:

• How is Uganda distinct from other sites of antigay legislation?
• How have US-based organizations impacted Ugandan discourse and policy toward kuchus?
• How can US-based rights advocates and activists campaign for kuchus without doing them further harm?

This essay was published in The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology, edited by Christopher A. Beeley and Mark E. Weedman, for the CUAP Studies in Early Christianity (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018); this is the uncorrected proofs. Exploring the humanity and divinity of Jesus, the Son's relation to the Father, and the agency of the Holy Spirit, it is one of five essays suggesting Johannine contributions to trinitarian discussions in the early church.

Este ensaio pretende reavaliar a crítica de Machado de Assis a O Primo Basílio, de Eça de Queirós. Nesta releitura, o ano de 1878 é considerado crucial na internacionalização do sistema literário lusófono. Assim, propõe-se a releitura da dura crítica de Machado ao romance de Eça a partir dessa premissa. A consequência principal da crítica machadiana teria sido o resgate, deliberadamente anacrônico, da técnica clássica da aemulatio, reinventada sob a forma de uma "poética da emulação".

This paper aims to concretize this notion of literary theories being in dialogue by exploring the intertwining of the Marxist theory, mainly depending on Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin’s theories, and Freudian psychoanalytic theory, based on Sigmund Freud’s writings, in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” with focus on Reverand Parris as a representative of the Bourgoise and John Proctor, Abigail Williams and the people of Salem as representatives of the Proletariats. “The Crucible” portrays the Marxist ideology of class division, yet more importantly, it traces religion, a concept long debated among the Marxists, as the trigger to the class struggle. The characters in the play have taken to 2 extreme measures for power attainment; Hysteria, triggered by the Id, and revolution, triggered by the Superego. This is what this paper aims to explore further with taking

For more than a decade, criticisms levied against Muslims and Islam in Western European countries such as France and the Netherlands have been shielded under the auspices of a call for increased security and a desire to protect liberal secularism. An example of this can be found in the recent move by the Dutch cabinet to implement legislation to ban the burqa in public places such as schools, hospitals, government buildings, and public transportation. The proposed Dutch ban follows the French parliament who implemented similar legislation in 2011 restricting the presence of discernible religious symbols such as burqas and niqabs from the public sphere. In a statement to the press, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, explains the proposed ban " had nothing to do with religion, " but rather it is intended to help facilitate " recognizable communication " (qtd. in " Netherlands Plans "). He clarifies " In a free country like the Netherlands, everyone has the right to dress how they choose, no matter what others think. That freedom is only limited in situations when it is essential for people to look at each other " (qtd. in " Netherlands Plans "). In this statement the restrictions placed on full face-veils are steeped in concerns of contemporary cultural conflict, inflamed by language that claims that Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands need to be better integrated. In France and the Netherlands, full face-veils have become symbols of " religious extremism " that are actively legislated against. As such they are tied to a series of judgments and evaluations that situate them as objectionable cultural objects and indicative of problematic immigrant groups. Defined as " extremist " or " politically dangerous " this vision of full face-veils is based on normative conceptions of the subject. When considered in relation to the secular, violence is done to those who are visibly different, marked by religious symbols that are understood through binaries such as objectionable/unobjectionable, Western/Eastern, Islamic/Christian, religious/secular further problematizing them. These schisms have intensified in the aftermath of 9/11 and the global war on terror creating a rift between secular and religious worldviews. There is no greater symbolic target of this schism between the secular and the religious than the burqa. The polarization of these two groups, secular and religious has gained further strength when they are posited in relation to the nation state. Within this context secularism is invoked as that which protects the state, defines it, and transforms practices related to public and private life via institutions. This paper explores the invocation of normative dispositions of secularism and security in light of the increasing restrictions placed against Muslim women in the public sphere in France and the Netherlands within dominant discourse. Drawing from the draw work of Saba Mahmood, Judith Butler, and Talal Asad I explore how bodies are marked as " different " within public spaces, through a discussion of the schism between the secular/religious. Such an examination is significant as these legislations are some of the most prohibitive in the West.

What does the development of a truly robust contemporary theory of domination require? Ashley J. Bohrer argues that it is only by considering all of the dimensions of race, gender, sexuality, and ability within the structures of capitalism and imperialism that we can understand power relations as we find them nowadays. Bohrer explains how many of the purported incompatibilities between Marxism and intersectionality arise more from miscommunication rather than a fundamental conceptual antagonism. As the first monograph entirely devoted to this issue, "Marxism and Intersectionality" serves as a tool to activists and academics working against multiple systems of domination, exploitation, and oppression.

Jürgen Habermas und Talal Asad zählen zu den bedeutendsten Protagonisten des Diskurses um die postsäkulare Gesellschaft. In der vorliegenden Arbeit unternehme ich eine vergleichende Lektüre zentraler Schriften beider Autoren. Dabei versuche ich, möglichst präzise zu beschreiben, wie Habermas und Asad einen neuen Blickwinkel auf die Verhältnisbestimmung von Religion und Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart freigeben und plausibilisieren.
Einen zentralen Stellenwert schreibe ich der Tatsache zu, dass hierfür von beiden der Begriff der ‚Übersetzung‘ herangezogen wird. Ziel der Untersuchung ist es folglich, erste systematisierende Vorstöße bezüglich des Begriffspaars ‚Religion übersetzen‘ zu leisten. Dabei gilt es ein Bündel an Forschungsfragen zu beantworten: Wie wird der Begriff der Übersetzung verstanden? In welcher Art und Weise kommt Religion im Werk der Autoren zur Sprache? Auf welche Aspekte der Religion soll sich die Übersetzungsleistung beziehen? Wer sind die Subjekte dieser Übersetzung? Und schließlich, welche Chancen und Probleme bringen die beiden Ansätze für eine politiktheoretische Perspektive auf religiös-gesellschaftliche Fragestellungen mit sich?

A fil rouge goes through Habermas's decade long research. It is the idea that Reason and rationality permeate human societies and may lead human action towards emancipation, if aptly elaborated through the filter of theoretical reflection. Theory must pick up on this rational core and turn the intrinsic rational potential inherent to modern societies into a self-consciously pursued 'project of enlightenment'. This introduction to the special issue 'Habermas, Democracy, and the Public Sphere: Theory and Practice' shows how Habermas's work in different scientific domains contributes to the construction of the 'project of modernity' from the many angles that such a complex project requires. The public sphere is, in Habermas's theory, the societal domain in which communicative interactions have a chance to make Reason come to bear on human societies and lead them on the path to social and political emancipation. The contributions to this special issue focus therefore on the public sphere and illustrate the evolution of the concept in Habermas's work and its relation to democracy at national and supranational level.

Aux mois d'avril et de mai 1981, Michel Foucault prononce un cours qu'il intitule Mal faire, dire vrai. Fonction de l'aveu en justice. Il y poursuit l'élaboration de la notion de gouvernement par la vérité, introduite en janvier 1979 dans La naissance de la biopolitique puis reprise en janvier 1980 dans Le gouvernement des vivants pour donner un contenu positif et différencié à la notion de savoir-pouvoir et opérer par rapport à celle d'idéologie dominante un second déplacement.

Le cours est la trace d'un engagement militant : le fruit de l'alliance nouée avec des juristes radicaux, sous l'égide de l'École de criminologie de l'Université catholique de Louvain, à l'occasion d'un projet de révision du code pénal en vigueur en Belgique. Adressé à un public de juristes et de criminologues, il replace l'analyse du développement de l’aveu pénal dans l’histoire plus générale des technologies du sujet et examine diverses techniques par lesquelles l’individu est amené, soit par lui-même, soit avec l’aide ou sous la direction d’un autre, à se transformer et à modifier son rapport à soi. D’entrée de jeu, Michel Foucault annonce que le problème qui l’occupe a deux aspects. Politique : « savoir comment l’individu se trouve lié, et accepte de se lier au pouvoir qui s’exerce sur lui ». Philosophique : « savoir comment les sujets sont effectivement liés dans et par les formes de véridiction où ils s’engagent ».

Ainsi conçues, les leçons peuvent se lire comme une suite donnée à Surveiller et punir ou comme une première esquisse de l’analyse de la parrêsia et des formes alêthurgiques développée dans Le courage de la vérité. Avec le sujet avouant, ce n’est pas seulement le thème du dire vrai qui est introduit. Parce que les formes de véridiction ont partie liée avec l’assujettissement et la déprise de soi, c’est aussi la question de ce qui s’en déduit pour la philosophie critique – qu’en l’occurrence, Michel Foucault met en œuvre, à la croisée de l’activité pratique et de l’activité théorique, de la politique et de l’éthique.

« On parle souvent de la récente domination de la science ou de l’uniformisation technique du monde moderne. Disons que c’est là la question du "positivisme", au sens comtien du terme, et peut-être vaudrait-il mieux associer à ce thème le nom de Saint-Simon. Je voudrais évoquer, pour y loger les analyses que je vous propose, un contre-positivisme qui n’est pas le contraire du positivisme, plutôt son contrepoint. Il se caractériserait par l’ étonnement devant la très ancienne multiplication et prolifération du dire vrai, la dispersion des régimes de véridiction dans des sociétés comme les nôtres. »