ABSTRACT
Haslanger presents social meanings as cultural tools for social coordination. One of their main features is ‘naturalness’ of use in cognition and practice. Some cultural tools undergird unjust social practices, in which case they constitute an ideology. In my commentary, I wish to investigate the notion of cultural tool, and consider how the break-down of these tools is often a pre-requisite for conducting ideology critique. I take naturalness to be a quality possessed by social meanings that consists in a) their taken-for-granted character as unarticulated significance-granting entities; and b) their unquestioned character. When these features are lost to a member or a group of society, we have what I call their cognitive estrangement. Estrangement consists in two processes that ‘de-naturalize’ social meanings: first, the articulation of previously inarticulate social meanings, and, second, their emergence as something that is earnestly interrogated. Articulation and earnest interrogation are necessary steps in developing an ideology critique. I contend, further, that estrangement can itself be a social practice. In the latter case both orthodox and heterodox groups participate in estrangement, since–in as much as both interact with each other–both are exposed to the earnest interrogation of hitherto taken-for-granted social meanings. I consider some consequences of this perspective in situations where, due to marginalization, the discursive resources for articulation have themselves been unjustly limited.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).