NIKLAS LUHMANN E RICHARD RORTY: CONTINGÊNCIAS E INCONSISTÊNCIAS

Rorty enfrentou as contingências do mundo contemporâneo apostando no partilhamento da “retórica das democracias liberais”, como a mais aceita e mais adequada em uma sociedade caracterizada pelo fim das metanarrativas e das condutas de moral absoluta. Mas essa aposta resvala claramente num pragmatismo moral mal disfarçado. Luhmann, ao contrário, levou até o fim a preocupação, abandonada por Rorty, de elaborar uma teoria antimetafísica e despida de um projeto normativo para a sociedade contemporânea. Sua teoria dos sistemas enfrenta as contingências do mundo, excluindo tudo que for externo ao sistema, ou seja, tudo que não possa se tornar um mecanismo de manutenção da identidade dos sistemas face à complexidade do mundo.

From "Rational Utopia" to "Will-to-Utopia". On the "Post-modern" Turn in the Recent Work of Agnes Heller

Agnes Heller recently described her position as 'postmodernist', suggesting a move from a political radical to a politically liberal or 'neoconservative' position. The aim of this paper is to assess the degree to which Heller can still be regarded as a radical political thinker through an evaluation of her work on autonomy, democracy and contingency all of which remain key concepts in her thinking about the political. We find in each case that whilst many of the motifs of her critical Marxist period recur in her recent work, they are losing their oppositional or 'negative' character in the sense that making these motifs operational would require changes to the structure or functioning of liberal-capitalism. Whils remaining in some sense a radical thinker Heller has moved from the advocacy of a 'rational utopia' to a form of theorising which I describe as 'will-to-utopia': radical at the surface yet conservative at the core.

Embodied women at work in neo-liberal times and places

In this article five women explore (female) embodiment in academic work in current workplaces. In a week-long collective biography workshop they produced written memories of themselves in their various workplaces and memories of themselves as children and as students. These memories then became the texts out of which the analysis was generated. The authors examine the constitutive and seductive effects of neoliberal discourses and practices, and in particular, the assembling of academic bodies as particular kinds of working bodies. They use the concept of chiasma, or crossing over, to trouble some aspects of binary thinking about bodies and about the relations between bodies and discourses. They examine the way that we simultaneously resist and appropriate, and are seduced by and appropriated within, neoliberal discourses and practices.