Meanings of emancipation: in addition to the antinomy revolution versus reform

Author(s)

Rurion Soares Melo

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2009-05-22

Examining board members

Ricardo Ribeiro Terra; Yara Adario Frateschi; Adrian Gurza Lavalle; Marcos Severino Nobre; Denilson Luis Werle

• Advisor: Ricardo Ribeiro Terra

Abstract

The socialist tradition was marked by the antinomy revolution versus reform of capitalism. However, as much as the revolutionary orientation, the reformists also pursued the utopie of labor society, and grounded its concept of emancipation in a paradigm of production. This paradigm was responsable for covering the articulation between emancipation and radical democracy and reducing the normative core of the autonomy to the model of action based on labor as in the case of the revolutionary orientation or weakning the political selfdetermination and domesticating the democracy trough interventions of the administrative power as in the case of the reformist orientation. We intend to show that, beyond facing against the determinations imposed by the paradigm of production, the emergency of new social conflicts and struggles for recognition can not be explained from only one sense of emancipation. The reconstruction of the political selfunderstanding of modern societies from a project of radical democracy allow us to understand the diferent senses of emancipation articulated in political processes of opinion and will formation. The utopie of labor society gives place to the struggles for the integrity and autonomy of forms of life, spheres of selfrealization, conquests of rights, and political selfdetermination. (AU)