Avaliação: Technological Rationality and Neoliberal Subjectivity through a Marcusean Philosophical Lens –

Philosophy and Thinking - Workshop Abstract
ICA Brazil, 2021

Coordinator: Prof. Terry Maley, York University, Canada
Co-Coordinator: Prof. Robert Kirsch, Arizona State University, USA

In this proposal for the Philosophy and Thinking section of ICA 2021, the Coordinators would like to propose a Workshop that explores how the relationship between technological rationality, the ecology and the social disintegration that defines the neoliberal global order can be comprehended on the level of thought. The Workshop proposes a re-examination of tensions within the global neoliberal order in the Americas between continuity and change, or stability and disintegration. An important part of the Workshop will address the relationship between neoliberal subjectivity and the one-dimensionality of neoliberal technological rationality. Neoliberal subjectivity is proving to be fragmented and polarized, torn between the social movements’ attempts to envision alternatives based on the slogan of the World Social Forum and Porto Alegre - that ‘another world is possible’, on the one hand, and authoritarian state capture in defense of plutocratic global capital, on the other hand.
The Workshop seeks to re-envision the utopian possibilities within these contemporary issues and tensions by looking at them through a philosophical lens informed by Critical Theory and the thought of Herbert Marcuse in particular. How does the philosophical thought of Marcuse help us understand these important contemporary issues? How can Marcuse’s thought help us make sense of them? How can re-reading Marcuse’s work today help us register these forces on the level of thought? And how can Marcuse’s thought help us analyze ways in which alternatives to the status quo remain possible?

• Technology
• Rationality
• Neoliberalism
• Subjectivity
• Marcuse