The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory by Amy Allen

Author:Amy Allen
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: PHI040000, Philosophy/Movements/Critical Theory, PHI019000, Philosophy/Political
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2015-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST: POWER AND THE METHODOLOGY OF CRITICAL THEORY

In the previous section, I argued that Forst’s conception of practical reason obscures rather than illuminates reason’s various entanglements with certain kinds of power relations, particularly with forms of authoritarianism and subjection that are found in various relations of subordination and that assume particularly pernicious forms in the context of colonialism. And yet, Forst himself insists that what distinguishes his framework for critical theory from alternatives is its ability to foreground questions of power (JC, 109–125). As he puts it, the first question of justice is the question of “the justifiability of social relations and the distribution of the ‘power of justification’ within a political context” (RJ, 11). This insight is central to a critical theory of justice, which insofar as it is critical must also be radical, that is, it must uncover the roots of social injustice. The first good of a critical theory of justice is therefore “the socially effective power to demand, question, and provide justifications, and to turn them into the foundations of political action and institutional arrangements” (RJ, 11). Hence a critical theory of justice that puts the issue of justification at its center is one that, as Forst puts it, puts “first things first,” where this means that it puts the issue of “justificatory power” first (JC, 120). Justice, Forst rightly insists, is a matter not of the distribution of goods but of the subjection of some individuals to the domination or arbitrary rule of others.32 Thus the first question of justice is the question of power.

And yet, it is far from clear that Forst succeeds in putting first things first. The reasons for this have mainly to do with Forst’s conceptualization of power. In The Right to Justification, Forst tends to present justificatory power as something normatively positive and empowering, and to link it to the ability on the part of subjects of domination or arbitrary rule to demand justification for their situation. In this vein, he claims that justificatory power is “the highest good of justice (though one that cannot be distributed like a material good)” and he defines it as “the ‘discursive’ power to provide and to demand justifications, and to challenge false legitimations” (RJ, 196). As a result, his formulation of justificatory power in that text is open to the criticism that it overemphasizes reason’s emancipatory potential and underemphasizes the subordinating power of justification, that is, the ways in which conceptions of practical reason and practices or orders of justification can and do serve to entrench, rationalize, and legitimate relations of domination by defining female, queer, and subaltern subjects as irrational or unreasonable.33 However, Forst claims in response to this line of criticism that his more recent work articulates a more complex and ambivalent conception of power that is attentive to both the empowering and the subordinating effects of justificatory power (JJ, 178).

In this recent work, Forst continues to equate power with justificatory power, though he now describes such justificatory power in normatively neutral terms.

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