Entre crítica, crise e contradição: uma análise do caráter não funcionalista da teoria crítica do capitalismo de Nancy Fraser

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the critical theory of capitalism developed by Nancy Fraser, taking as its central axis the relationship between crisis, critique, and contradiction in her recent writings. It proceeds from the diagnosis that, following the 2008 financial crisis, Fraser comes to conceive of capitalism as an institutionalized social order marked by structural contradictions between the economy and its non-economic background conditions - politics, social reproduction, and nature - whose tensions are expressed in the form of crisis tendencies. The aim of this study is to examine to what extent her conception of capitalism brings her theory closer to a functionalist model of critique, as suggested by Rahel Jaeggi, or whether, on the contrary, it preserves a normative core capable of sustaining an immanent critique of capitalism. To this end, the research adopts a reconstructive-analytical method, with a systematic examination of Fraser's recent works, especially Capitalism: a conversation in critical theory and Cannibal Capitalism, in critical dialogue with her principal interlocutors, namely: Jürgen Habermas, Karl Polanyi, and Rahel Jaeggi. Initially, the critical potential of the concept of crisis in the tradition of social theory is made explicit, highlighting its ambiguity between historical diagnosis and normative judgment. Subsequently, the expanded definition of capitalism proposed by Fraser is analyzed and, as a way of dissecting its genesis, the study examines the author's critical appropriations of Karl Polanyi's thesis of the double movement and Jürgen Habermas's theory of the colonization of the lifeworld, in dialogue with Fraser's notion of cannibalization. The work then concentrates on the concepts of contradiction and crisis in Nancy Fraser. These, in turn, are examined first through their general vocabularies and subsequently explicated in their respective interdomain dynamics concerning the dimensions of social reproduction, nature, and politics, together with their behavior across temporal and spatial levels within capitalism. Finally, the different meanings of functionalism mobilized by Rahel Jaeggi and Jürgen Habermas are examined in order to assess the pertinence of the objection directed at Fraser. As a result, it is demonstrated that although Fraser mobilizes elements of functional analysis in explaining the conditions of reproduction of capitalism and its crises, her theory does not reduce to a diagnosis of systemic deficits, since it remains oriented by a historicized and politically situated normativity, linked to social struggles and to the critique of forms of domination that obstruct democratic participation. It is concluded that Nancy Fraser's critical theory of capitalism does not fall into the strict functionalism attributed to her by Jaeggi, nor into a model identical to the Habermasian model of functional differentiation, but rather configures a form of critical theory that articulates structural diagnosis, historicity, and emancipatory potential. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]