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Moral philosophy and post-structuralism have long been considered two antithetical enterprises. This book argues that Judith Butler's work makes possible a productive encounter between these two aspects of philosophy, rethinking responsibility and critique as key concepts at the juncture of ethics and politics

Moral philosophy and poststructuralism have long been considered two antithetical enterprises. Moral philosophy is invested in securing norms, whereas poststructuralism attempts to unclench the grip of norms on our lives. Moreover, poststructuralism is often suspected of undoing the possibility of ethical knowledge by emphasizing the unstable, socially constructed nature of our practices and knowledge. In Unbecoming Subjects, Annika Thiem argues that Judith ButlerGs work makes possible a productive encounter between moral philosophy and poststructuralism, rethinking responsibility and critique as key concepts at the juncture of ethics and politics. Putting into conversation Butler, Levinas, and Laplanche, Thiem argues that responsibility becomes possible only when we do not know what to do or how to respond, yet find ourselves under a demand to respond, and even more, to respond well to others. In further conversation with Adorno and Foucault, Unbecoming Subjects examines critique as a central practice for moral philosophy, interrogating the limits of moral and political knowledge and probing methods of social criticism to uncover and oppose injustice.

This article examines the Netflix true crime series When They See Us (2019) as a form of "popular legality" (Olson 2022). I argue that the show criticizes structural racism in the US criminal justice system and emphasizes this critique on a level of affect. More precisely, it is through an affective engagement of the audience with the show's protagonists that When They See Us highlights how Black and Latinx communities are discriminated by US law and the criminal justice system. It thereby not only depicts African American and Latinx legal identities as marginalized by the law and legal system, but makes viewers able to feel them to be so. In addition, I argue that the show negotiates issues of testimonial injustice as one form of discrimination against People of Color in the US legal system. This negotiation of testimonial injustice also primarily takes place on a level of affect by inviting the audience to feel the effects that testimonial injustice has on the show's protagonists.

Thiem examines German philosopher Herbert Marcuse's criticism of the legacy of Reformation thought and its social effects by expanding on the importance of individual freedom within the Protestant tradition, a theological perspective that's paradoxically coupled with a reluctance to seek structural change of the established social, economic, and political institutions and practices. Drawing on Freud and his theories of 'bad conscience' and guilt as central to social subject formation, Marcuse shows how ambivalent attachments to social authority are intensified rather than lessened as organized, hierarchical religion loses its power to practices of individualized spirituality. She then turns to Marcuse's more affirmative, although still mostly implicit, engagements with a critical dimension of religion presented in the context of his aesthetics. Adapted from the source document.

Hannah Arendt und Walter Benjamin haben sich zu unterschiedlichen historischen Zeitpunkten mit dem Werk von Karl Marx auseinandergesetzt, und für beide war es, gerade auch als Nicht-Ökonomen, wichtig, sich im Rahmen ihrer eigenen gesellschaftskritischen Ansätze zu Marx zu positionieren. Die Autorin nimmt die unterschiedliche Marx-Lektüre von Arendt und Benjamin zum Anlass, um darüber nachzudenken, wie heute die kritischen Impulse dieser Lektüre aufgenommen und weiter entwickelt werden können. Denn ihre Fragestellungen ermöglichen es, die Zugänge zur aktuellen Kapitalismus- und Neoliberalismuskritik zu erweitern und die Begriffe für diese Kritik zu schärfen. Von Arendts Kritik an Marx greift die Autorin die Reflexionen über die Dynamiken der Entpolitisierung auf, wie Arendt sie vor allem in "Vita activa" und "Über die Revolution" ausführt. Anhand dieser Texte nimmt sie das Verständnis von Politik als Arbeit an der Grundverfassung der politischen Gemeinschaft mit ihren Grenzen und Regeln genauer in den Blick, um dann mit Marx Arendt gegen sich selbst zu wenden. Die These der Autorin lautet, dass die Kritik der Ökonomie im Arendt'schen Sinne politisch wird, wenn sie auch grundsätzliche Fragen nach den Konsequenzen aufwirft, die wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse für die politische Ordnung haben. (ICI2)

What does it mean to do justice and especially to do justice to women? This article examines the difficulties of interpreting justice and women's rights on the international plane. The problems arise from the fundamental tension between the theoretical epistemological field and the practical "real life" scene, since the mediation between them does not reduce to a neat theoretical clarification of a general meaning of justice that then can be practically applied to our perceived reality to yield a certain set of political strategies. The argument presented here shows that the two planes interdepend and that a meaning of justice always necessarily is contextually bound and yet in its limitedness is always open for contestation and that it needs to remain contested in order not to slip into fundamentalism and ideological fanaticism. The context for this argument is the international political struggle for women's rights in the specific case of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). With this document as a starting point, it is possible to enter into a discussion of the questions of relativism vs. universalism, of a concept of democratic discourse, and of hermeneutical guidelines for the interpretation of the meaning of justice for women. This article therefore starts with this concrete historical and practical context and then asks whether it is possible and legitimate to claim a universal notion of justice or whether there can only be locally restricted interpretations that have to remain incommensurable with each other. The question that follows from this inquiry is how the notion of democratic discourse has to be shifted and opened up to allow for productive, fair, and inclusive deliberation about women's rights policies. This, however, cannot pursued without accounting for and contesting the hermeneutical guidelines that underlie the discourse and that cannot only be procedural but must be material as well, for example, as the capabilities approach by Nussbaum (2000) provides.

This paper inquires into assumptions on sexuality and kinship in religious and theological interventions in the debates around same-sex marriage and assisted reproduction. I am especially concerned about how a steadfast investment in "the natural" and "the normal" haunts these debates. Not only does the Roman Catholic Church object to same-sex relations, but the supporters of same-sex marriage often equally rely on the sexual and erotic privilege of the monogamous couple, which serves as the basis for "normal" family life. This "normality" is completed by the fulfillment of the desire to raise children, a creation of the model modern family that increasingly, for both heterosexuals and homosexuals, includes assisted reproductive technologies. In both discussions, how the family is defined focuses on the body and on its legal, medical, and scientific status. The aim of this paper is to ask in what ways the horizons of intelligibility and practices of recognition structure who and what we can become.

Inhalt; Einschulung? Eine Vorbemerkung; Die Macht der Verfassung im Werk Hannah Arendts; Die Frage ist, wie man das Schwimmen im Strom vermeiden kann; Im Spiegel eines Dritten: Hannah Arendt und Theodor W. Adorno; Arendt, Adorno und die Anfänge der Antisemitismusforschung; Konzeptionen des Judentums zwischen Säkularisierung und Marxismus: Hannah Arendt und Max Horkheimer; Benjamins Begriff der Geschichte als Quelle von Arendts Idee des Urteilens; Mit und gegen Marx: Politische Ansprüche der Gesellschaftskritik bei Arendt und Benjamin