The Marginalized and Critical Theory: Dialectics of Universalism

ABSTRACT

When the marginalized dare to speak of a world in which inequality is not the norm, they are accused of utopianism by those who usually do not take issue with faith-based assumptions that contradict even the most elementary of the laws of physics and biology. This irony has been going on unnoticed thanks to the bourgeoisie’s totalitarian domination of the means of knowledge production. Given this hegemony, it is imperative for any genuine form of critical thought to seek a revolutionary mode of perception and theorization to deliberately and insistently negate the actual for the sake of the realizable. This is precisely the forgotten essence of critical theory. From its origins in Marx’s work, critical theory was an anti-philosophy philosophy, a negative theory aimed at negating the capitalist and racist order and problematizing the unspoken rules of domination. These stateless outsiders who refused to compromise in return for personal and financial security left us a school of thought that adamantly defies the prevalent order in favor of universal emancipation. In defense of this stance, and negativity as a philosophy of resistance, this article aims to expand the potential scope of critical theory by enhancing its fidelity to the marginalized.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical theory
• Marxism
• negativity
• marginalized
• universalism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The American federal spending on “national defense” for the 2021 fiscal year was 754.8 billion USD or 11% of the total federal spending, whereas the total federal spending for education, training, employment, and social services was 296.6 billion USD or 4% of the federal spending (see “Federal Spending by Category and Agency,” https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spending/categories/; “Monthly Treasury Statement,” https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/monthly-treasury-statement/summary-of-receipts-outlays-and-the-deficit-surplus-of-the-u-s-government). In the 2022 budget, that so called defense budget has been increased to 777.7 billion USD (US Office of Management and Budget 2021a). For a detailed statistical comparison between military budgets of the United States and China, see GFP (Global Firepower 2021). In terms of the American federal government’s IT (information technology) budget distribution, below is a brief overview of some information from the 2021 fiscal year. The Department of Defense alone, which does not include Veterans Affairs or Homeland Security, was allotted an IT budget of 38,815 million USD, while the Department of Education was allotted 887 million USD (US Office of Management and Budget 2021b). The ratio for education to defense is about 1:43.76. The Department of Veterans Affairs alone was allotted 7,761 million USD from the federal government IT budget, which amounts to more than 8.7 times of what the Department of Education received. Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security was allotted an IT budget of 7,298 million USD, which amounts to over 8 times more than the Department of Education’s federal IT budget.

2 See “Number of Prisoners under Jurisdiction of Federal or State Correctional Authorities from 2005 to 2020, by Gender.” US Bureau of Justice Statistics. Accessed December 21, 2021. https://www-statista-com.libproxy.union.edu/statistics/252828/number-of-prisoners-in-the-us-by-gender/.

3 Indeed, Horkheimer makes this point very clear. For instance, he writes:

In maintaining this doctrine of the necessary limitation of knowledge to appearances or rather in degrading the known world to a mere outward show, positivism makes peace, in principle, with every kind of superstition. It takes the seriousness out of theory since the latter must prove itself in practice. If non-positivist metaphysics must exaggerate its own knowledge (since by its nature it must claim autonomy for itself), positivism, on the contrary, reduces all possible knowledge to a collection of external data. (2002, 38)

4 As I will explain, that is also the main thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.

5 Hawking writes,

Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other—they cannot both be correct. One of the major endeavors in physics today, and the major theme of this book, is the search for a new theory that will incorporate them both—a quantum theory of gravity. We do not yet have such a theory, and we may still be a long way from having one, but we do already know many of the properties that it must have. And we shall see, in later chapters, that we already know a fair amount about the predictions a quantum theory of gravity must make. (Hawking 2011, 12)

6 The term “culture” was introduced to anthropology in 1871 by Edward B. Tylor who famously defined it as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor 2010). Since then, the applicability of the concept has been the subject of extensive debate in anthropology. Still, the term has been generalized, oversimplified, and mystified to the degree that even some anthropologists (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001, chapter 7; Wallerstein 2006, chapter 1; Said 2000) became highly critical of its use as a fixed set of traits to define groups of people.

7 A recent book, Fascism and the Masses: The Revolt against the Last Humans, 1848–1945, by Ishay Landa (2018), does an excellent job both showing how the masses have regularly been blamed for fascism and refuting that assumption.

8 This evidently clear from exit polls (for instance, see CNN 2021).

9 I have explained this thesis, historical materialism as a negative and revolutionary philosophy, in another article, which will be published in the journal of Science and Society in 2022. It is also explained in more details in my next book, Revolutionary Hope after Nihilism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saladdin Ahmed

Saladdin Ahmed is the author of Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura (2019, SUNY Press) and Revolutionary Hope after Nihilism (2022, Bloomsbury). He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Ottawa and currently teaches political theory and international relations at the Union College in Schenectady, New York.