Capitalismo e justiça: três momentos da teoria crítica de Nancy Fraser

Abstract

The present work proposes a theoretical retrieval of Nancy Fraser’s oeuvre, taking as its central axes the ways in which normative analysis and the critique of capitalism are articulated in her production. It seeks to examine whether the recent centrality attributed to the systemic critique of capitalism in her theorization implies a redefinition of the normative presuppositions that guided her earlier contributions in the field of critical theory. Positioned between, on the one hand, an understanding of the critique of capitalist society as a constitutive axis of modernity and, on the other, the defense of incorporating other analytical registers – especially those arising from debates on gender, race, and ecology – Fraser continually seeks to reduce the distances and tensions that usually mark the theoretical traditions she analyzes. Oscillating between analyses anchored in social movements, attempts to understand their impasses, and diagnoses that recognize their limits in grasping the structural dynamics of domination, the author dynamically shifts the focus of her reflection both on normativity and on the very centrality of capitalism. Starting from her initial investigations into the political culture of late capitalism and her critiques of theoretical forms of apprehending normativity, the work subsequently examines her foray into the theory of social justice – the central axis of her intermediate writings – and, finally, seeks to understand how and for what reasons Fraser comes to privilege a systemic analysis of capitalism, centered on its economic and extra-economic contradictions, as well as its multiple crisis tendencies. In the end, it will be possible to demonstrate how the theoretical retrieval of part of the texts produced by Fraser since her earliest writings simultaneously reveals a complexification both of her critique of capitalism and of her view of normativity.