Introduction

Abstract

Radical politics in contemporary Western democracies finds itself in a state of crisis. When viewed from the vantage point of social change, a progressive transformation of the social order, political radicalism is found wanting. This would seem to go against the grain of perceived wisdom. As an academic enterprise, radical theory has blossomed. Figures such as Slavoj Žižek openly discuss Marxism in popular documentaries, new journals have emerged touting a radical “anti-capitalism,” and whole conferences and subfields are dominated by questions posed by obscure theoretical texts. Despite this, there is a profound lack in substantive, meaningful political, social, and cultural criticism of the kind that once made progressive and rational left political discourse relevant to the machinations of real politics and the broader culture. Today, leftist political theory in the academy has fallen under the spell of ideas so far removed from actual political issues that the question can be posed whether the traditions of left critique that gave intellectual support to the greax movements of modernity—from the workers’ movement to the civil rights movement—possess a critical mass to sustain future struggles. Quite to the contrary, social movements have lost political momentum; they are generally focused on questions of culture and shallow discussions of class and obsessed with issues of identity— racial, sexual, and so on—rather than on the great “social question” of unequal economic power, which once served as the driving impulse for political, social, and cultural transformation.