Social Theory's Burden: From Heteronomy to Vitacide (or, How Classical Critical Theory Predicted Proliferating Rackets, Authoritarian Personalities, and Administered Worlds in the Twenty-first Century)
Abstract
The burden social theorists must be willing to accept, respond to, and act upon pertains to the difficulties that predictably accompany all efforts to convey to nontheorists the unwelcome fact of heteronomy – that as actors, we are not as autonomous as we were told and prefer to assume – and to spell out what heteronomy in the form in which it has been shaping the developmental trajectory of modern societies means for professional theorists. I introduce the concept of “vitacide,” designed to capture that termination of life is a potential vanishing point of the heteronomous processes that have been shaping modern societies continuing to accelerate and intensify in ways that prefigure our future, but not on our human or social terms. Heteronomy pointing toward vitacide should compel us as social theorists to consider critically both the constructive and destructive trajectory that social change appears to have been following for more than two centuries, irrespective of whether the resulting prospect is to our liking or not. In this context, the classical critical theorists of the early Frankfurt School, especially Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, pursued what turned out to be an evolving interest in rackets, the authoritarian personality, and the administered society – concepts that served as foils for delineating the kind of theoretical stance that is becoming more and more important as we are moving into an increasingly uncertain future.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
I presented early versions or key aspects of this chapter at several conferences, including “The Challenge of Intersectionality: Who and What Are Missing?” Southern Sociological Society 82nd Annual Meeting, April 10–13, 2019; 12th International Critical Theory Conference, Rome, Italy, May 9–11, 2019; Self and Society Annual Meeting, August 7, 2020; “Post Fact Society: Sociological Solutions for the War on Truth,” Mid-South Sociological Association Virtual Annual Conference, October 14–17, 2020; “Precarity and Inequality: Covid-19, Neoliberalism, and the Future of Faculty,” Midwest Sociological Society Virtual Annual Meeting, March 18–21, 2021, and in the University of Tennessee Social Research Workshop, November 13, 2020. I would like to thank Lawrence Hazelrigg, Stelios Panageotou, Alexander Stoner, Anthony J. Knowles, Nadya Vera, Joel Crombez, Steven Dandaneau, Eric Oberle, Thomas Bechtold, Alex Moulton, and Timothy Gill for helpful comments and suggestions. And, last but not least, I also thank Katy Mathers, commissioning editor for sociology, and Abinaya Chinnasamy, the book project editor, for their determined and consistent support, without which this chapter and volume would not have seen the light of day, most certainly not at this time.
Citation
Dahms, H.F. (2021), "Social Theory's Burden: From Heteronomy to
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022 Harry F. Dahms. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited