Depois da liberdade: ensaio sobre a dissolução ontológica do problema da dominação social

“After Freedom" (Depois da liberdade) examines the reconfiguration of the classical problem of social domination within the scope of critical theory, starting from the recent privilege granted to the generic notion of “power” in current debates. From a historical and social situation to be politically overcome, domination came to be understood, ontologically, as something “inscribed at the level of being.” How did this transformation take place? What are its theoretical reasons? What are its political consequences? Above all, what is its material ground? These are the questions that the book intends to answer. Starting from the incorporation of the thought of Foucault and Butler by authors linked to the tradition of German critical theory dissatisfied with the models of their predecessors (Habermas and Honneth in particular), the book lays out the commitments and the bets that are behind this process. The key point is that, in the new framework, social and subjective transformation is assumed as always possible, whatever the situation, and this very possibility is taken in itself as the locus of a freedom that is the condition of critique. In short, one no longer transforms (and critiques) in order to be free, but because one is free. With this movement, the possibility of freedom ceases to be an empirical, historical, and sociological question, and comes to be assumed, independently of questions of fact, as an independent variable that is never itself taken as a direct object of investigation. The ultimate objective of the book is to put this framework to the test. This is done by pointing to the incongruities of its presuppositions, but, above all, by the introduction of a theoretical hypothesis by which, from within them, it is demonstrated that this freedom could very well be eliminated from the moment that transformation comes to become impossible due to historical and material factors, configuring a kind of “iron cage.” The historical and sociological plausibility of a situation like this resides in the “objective constraints” imposed, at a global level, by a particular technical artifact: nuclear weapons. Their capacity for destruction and the extent of their effects—which stand beyond effective use—create important limitations to the idea that an alternative reality would be possible at all. What must be taken as a result, however, is less the fatalistic conclusion that freedom does not exist, than the theoretical demand that the possibility of freedom be investigated materially and radically, and not simply assumed a priori. For this, however, that framework examined here needs to be abandoned.