Reconsidering Habermas's Colonization Thesis
A Critical Theory of Neoliberalism
(Routledge, 2025)
240 pages
Description
This book reconsiders Habermas’s critique of capitalism as a foundation for a critical theory of neoliberalism. Taking criticisms into account, the author refines and redevelops Habermas’s system-lifeworld paradigm in three parts, focusing on system, lifeworld, and communication. The exposition unfolds through a new synthesis and convergence, from within Habermas’s frame, of Axel Honneth, Niklas Luhmann, Talcott Parsons, and Karl Marx. This synthesis is interwoven with an account of the neoliberal turn, such that social theory is historically contextualized and neoliberalism theoretically explained at one and the same time. The end result is a reconstruction of the colonization thesis in a new theory of relinguistification, advancing a communicative, dialectical, and reflexive theory of reification.
Contents [Preview]
1. Introduction - Neoliberalism and Contemporary Critical Theory: A Return to Habermas
2. Social Evolution and the Colonization of the Lifeworld: Neoliberalism and the Blockage of Moral Learning
Part 1: Social Structure and The Evolution of Society
3. Theorizing the Economy: Habermas, Honneth, and Luhmann
4. System-Lifeworld Refined
Part 2: Cultural Structure and the Evolution of Worldviews
5. Habermas and Parsons: Capitalism and Democracy as Evolutionary Logics
6. Modern Culture, Mediation Problems, and Political Ideologies
Part 3: Communicative Structure and the Making of History
7. From Colonization to Relinguistification: Reframing Habermas
8. Colonization as Relinguistification: A Critical Theory of Neoliberalism
9. Conclusion
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