CFP: PPI, vol. 11, 2021

Special Issue:  Capitalism and Critical Theory

This special issue will include a discussion of Nancy Fraser’s Capitalism. A Conversation in Critical Theory, co-authored with Rahel Jaeggi (Polity Press 2018), with commentaries by Giorgio Fazio (Sapienza University), Alessandro Ferrara (Tor Vergata University), Laura Pennacchi (Basso Foundation), Stefano Petrucciani (Sapienza University), Angela Taraborrelli (Cagliari University), followed by Fraser’s replies.

Submission Deadline

Long Abstract (1,000 words max):  August, 31, 2020

Full paper (9,000 words max, upon acceptance):  November, 30, 2020

Guest Editor: Giorgio Fazio (Sapienza University)

Aims and Background

For a long time, “capitalism” had largely been absent from political and intellectual debates. It was even absent from the agenda of “critical theory”. The tendency to abandon an orthodox and reductively economistic paradigm of capitalism pushed most of those who think of themselves as critical theorists to move toward moral, political, or legal theory, and to leave the terrain of a large-scale social theory of capitalist societies dealing with large historical processes, systemic conflicts, and deep-seated contradictions and crisis tendencies. Since the new capitalist crisis emerged in 2008 this trend has been reversed. There is a momentum to critical analyses of contemporary capitalism.

How to conceptualize capitalism “as such” without homogenizing the great variety of ways in which capitalist societies differed from one another during the last four centuries, and still do differ from one another nowadays? And accepting that the task of critical theory should be to provide a large-scale social theory of capitalism focused on its “crisis tendencies” and “contradictions”, how to conceive a “crisis theory” of capitalism without falling back into mechanistic, deterministic, teleological, functionalistic assumptions? How to integrate the Marxian paradigm with other critical paradigms, like the ecological one, that understand capitalist sistemic crisis in a different, not economicistic way?

These are some of the guiding questions of Capitalism. A Conversation in Critical Theory – co-authored by American philosopher, Nancy Fraser and German philosopher, Rahel Jaeggi. The book aims to provide “an enlarged view of capitalism”, working out in an innovative way four macro issues: “Conceptualizing Capitalism”, “Historicizing Capitalism”, “Criticizing Capitalism”, “Contesting Capitalism”.

There is a growing and rich discussion on these topics, which this issue of Philosophy and Public Issues intends to capture and explore. We encourage submissions of original papers that philosophically explore aspects of an updated critical theory of capitalism – revolving around the four issues: conceptualizing, historicizing, criticizing, contesting capitalism – and possibly engaging with Nancy Fraser’s «neo-Polanyian approach to capitalism».

We expect original contributions discussing problems such as (but not limited to):

• Contradictions and crisis tendencies of neoliberal capitalism;
• “Varieties of capi­talism” and historical develop­ment of different stages of capitalism;
• Capitalism and ecological crisis;
• Contradiction of Care and Capitalism;
• Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy;
• Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique;
• Functional, moral, and ethical Critique of Capitalism;
• Social Movements and Global Capitalism;

… or any other relevant topic, subject to the Editors’ approval.

Submission Details

Please send a (.odt, .doc or .docx) file containing a long abstract (1,000 words max) and a title, prepared for blind review with all revealing references to the author removed. All personal information (name, affiliation, and contact) must be submitted separately, along with a short abstract (200 words max). Deadline for abstract submission is August, 31, 2020. Decisions will be made within a month.

All material should be submitted sending an e-mail to special issue’s editors giorgiofazio77@gmail.com, editorppi@luiss.it, and PPI’s managing editor malpassimo@hotmail.com

Upon notification of acceptance, you will be invited to submit the full paper (9,000 words max) no later than November, 30, 2020. The volume will be published in 2021.

Further Inquiries

Please direct any queries about this call for papers to PPI’s Editor s at malpassimo@hotmail.com. More information on the Philosophy and Public Issues can be found at http://ppi.luiss.edu.