Emancipatory struggles and their political organisation: How political parties and social movements respond to changing notions of emancipation

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Abstract (may include machine translation)

In this article, I address the ways in which debates in liberal, (post)Marxist and postmodernist social theory have remoulded readings of emancipation – and how these reformulations have affected the organisation of emancipatory struggles by and in political parties and social movements. I focus on three conceptual ambiguities that have spurred theoretical disputes and restructured organisational imaginations of emancipation: who might struggle for liberation, to what end and in which ways. In all three respects, understandings of emancipation have become increasingly individualised, contingent and process-oriented – both in theory and in its political-organisational correspondents. As a consequence, effective collective struggles for autonomy may become ever more difficult to organise. While occurring in the name of further liberation, the ongoing reinterpretation of emancipation and its impact on the political organisation of emancipatory struggles might in the end hamper or even undermine the very liberation and autonomy they had aimed to promote.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)94-117
Number of pages24
JournalEuropean Journal of Social Theory
Volume25
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2022
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Dialectic of emancipation
  • individualisation
  • political parties
  • social movements

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