The developmental dynamics of citizenship and autonomy

pp. 205-227

in: José M. Dominguès, Critical theory and political modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

If the former chapter leant over the developmental trends associated with state domination, emancipatory trends lie at the core of this one. Domingues differentiates analytically between freedom and autonomy. Classical political philosophy resumes its centrality here. The idea of self-property is crucial for the discussion. It then moves on in order to tackle the tradition of political emancipation that has been in full swing since the nineteenth century, specifically regarding the political dimension. Proudhon and anarchism are pitted against Marx, Engels and Lenin. Such contemporary authors as Hardt and Negri, Graeber and autonomism are taken up, in the context of a discussion of radicalization of autonomy. In the face of the closure of political spaces and the strengthening of the state, it is argued that emancipatory moves may overflow citizenship. Like the former chapter, the mechanisms—especially politically disembedding ones—and the symbolic/identitary elements that have produced this situation are discussed as well as what may lead us beyond it and the impasses it implies. The from-within and the from-without paths beyond modernity are, accordingly, distinguished.