Across a spectrum of academic disciplines, the topic of globalization is at the forefront of contemporary efforts to understand a dynamically changing world society. How might critical social theory respond creatively to the challenge of thinking and theorizing globalization in its full complexity? Globalizing Critical Theory collects essays by scholars at the forefront of Critical Theory as they confront this timely topic. This book offers readers a chance to see contemporary Critical Theory in its full range-from political analyses of a global public sphere, critical race theory, and the politics of memory, to aesthetics and media studies. It includes crucial new essays by JYrgen on the transformations of the global order in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, and major interventions by Nancy Fraser, Peter Hohendahl, Andreas Huyssen, James Bohman, and others. Globalizing Critical Theory provides a fascinating exploration of how Critical Theory is confronting the question of globalization-and how globalization is transforming Critical Theory.

Across the Euro-Atlantic world, political leaders have been mobilizing their bases with nativism, racism, xenophobia, and paeans to "traditional values," in brazen bids for electoral support. How are we to understand this move to the mainstream of political policies and platforms that lurked only on the far fringes through most of the postwar era? Does it herald a new wave of authoritarianism? Is liberal democracy itself in crisis? In this volume, three distinguished scholars draw on critical theory to address our current predicament. Wendy Brown, Peter E. Gordon, and Max Pensky share a conviction that critical theory retains the power to illuminate the forces producing the current political constellation as well as possible paths away from it. Brown explains how "freedom" has become a rallying cry for manifestly un-emancipatory movements; Gordon dismantles the idea that fascism is rooted in the susceptible psychology of individual citizens and reflects instead on the broader cultural and historical circumstances that lend it force; and Pensky brings together the unlikely pair of Tocqueville and Adorno to explore how democracies can buckle under internal pressure. These incisive essays do not seek to smooth over the irrationality of the contemporary world, and they do not offer the false comforts of an easy return to liberal democratic values. Rather, the three authors draw on their deep engagements with nineteenth-and twentieth-century thought to investigate the historical and political contradictions that have brought about this moment, offering fiery and urgent responses to the demands of the day.

Jurgen Habermas is one of the best-known and most influential philosophers in Europe today. Heir to the Frankfurt school, his reputation rests on more than thirty years of groundbreaking works on society knowledge, history, technology; ethics, and many other subjects. He is also a familiar figure in his native Germany where he has often played a prominent role in public de-bates. In recent years, he has spoken out ever more directly on the extraordinary changes taking place in Germany, Europe, and the world.

This volume of interviews reveals Habermas's passionate engagement with contemporary issues. Wide-ranging and informal, the interviews focus on matters of decisive importance to Germany and the rest of the world in the 1990s: German unification; recent explosive debates about interpretations of German history, Germany's asylum policies, and the Nazi era; efforts to create a cooperative, peaceful Europe; and the significance of the Persian Gulf War. A final interview focuses on the relation between theory and practice--between philosophy and the so-called real world. In an afterword to the volume, Habermas addresses a broad spectrum of issues facing Germany and other nations in this final decade of the century.

Ably translated and annotated by Max Pensky, professor of philosophy at the State University of New York-Binghamton, "The Past as Future" provides a striking portrait of an intellectual who is equally at home in the world of academic philosophy and in mainstream debate--and who can make valuable connections between the two.