Luhmann Observed: Radical Theoretical Encounters PDF
Preview Luhmann Observed: Radical Theoretical Encounters
Luhmann Observed Luhmann Observed Radical Theoretical Encounters Edited by Anders la Cour Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos University of Westminster, UK Selection and editorial matter © Anders la Cour and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 2013 Individual chapters © Respective authors 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-01528-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-43698-9 ISBN 978-1-137-01529-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137015297 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents List of Figures v ii Notes on Contributors v iii Introduction: Luhmann Encountered 1 Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and Anders la Cour Part I Radical Paradoxes 1 Contingency, Reciprocity, the Other, and the Other in the Other Luhmann–Lacan, an Encounter 19 Jean Clam 2 Luhmann’s Ontology 3 8 William Rasch 3 The Autopoietic Fold: Critical Autopoiesis between Luhmann and Deleuze 6 0 Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos Part II Radical Materiality 4 Gendering Luhmann: The Paradoxical Simultaneity of Gender Equality and Inequality 85 Christine Weinbach 5 Luhmann, All Too Luhmann: Nietzsche, Luhmann and the Human 108 Todd Cesaratto 6 Only Connect: Luhmann and Bioethics 135 Sharon Persaud 7 Spatiality, Imitation, Immunization: Luhmann and Sloterdijk on the Social 150 Christian Borch v vi Contents Part III Radical Semantics 8 L imits of Interpretation, Closure of Communication. Umberto Eco and Niklas Luhmann Observing Texts 171 Elena Esposito 9 O rganizations, Institutions and Semantics: Systems Theory Meets Institutionalism 1 85 Anders la Cour and Holger H ø j lund 10 Luhmann and Koselleck: Conceptual History and the Diagnostics of the Present 203 Niels Å kerstr ø m Andersen Part IV Radical Politics 11 L uhmann and Derrida: Immunology and Autopoiesis 227 Willis Santiago Guerra Filho 12 I n the Multiverse What Is Real? Luhmann, Complexity and ANT 243 Barbara Mauthe and Thomas E. Webb 13 L uhmann and Marx: Social Theory and Social Freedom 263 Chris Thornhill Afterword 2 84 Index 2 89 List of Figures 10.1 M eaning as form 2 08 10.2 F orm of concept 2 09 10.3 M eaning dimensions 2 13 10.4 B ecoming concept 2 16 10.5 U niversalization logic 2 18 10.6 C ultivated semantics: a questionable concept 219 10.7 T he qualification of condensation 2 21 vii Notes on Contributors Niels Å kerstr ø m Andersen is Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research interests include management, play, partnerships and HRM. His publica- tions include Discursive Analytical Strategies (2003), Partnerships – Machines of Possibilities , (2008) and P ower at Play, (2009). Christian B orch is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research interests include crowd theory, architecture and social theory. His most recent books are Soziologie der Nachahmung und des Begehrens: Materialien zu Gabriel Tarde (2009, coedited with Urs Stä heli), N iklas Luhmann (Key Sociologists) (2011) and The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology (2012). Todd Cesaratto is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at the University of Arkansas. His publications cover such topics as heroism, humor, emotions, sports, and totalitarianism as they manifest in Austrian and German litera- ture, German philosophy and sociology, and American fiction and film. His book Achilles’ Line: The Man without Qualities, Musil, Luhmann, and Don Draper will appear in 2014. Jean Clam Jean Clam is Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris. His numerous researches deal mainly with the following topics: sociology and psychology of intimacy, legal theory (in particular that of Niklas Luhmann), general theory of the human and social sciences. His latest books are Kontingenz, Paradox, Nur-Vollzug. Grundprobleme einer Theorie der Gesellschaft (2004); Sciences du sens. Perspectives théoriques, Strasbourg (2006); L'intime: Genèses, régimes, nouages. Contributions à une soci- ologie et une psychologie de l'intimité contemporaine (2007); Aperceptions du présent. Théorie d'un aujourd'hui par-delà la détresse (2010); and Die Gegenwart des Sexuellen. Analytik ihrer Härte (2011); Orexis, désir, poursuite. Une théorie de la désirance: I. Orexis. L'animation du corps (2012). Elena Esposito teaches Sociology of Communication at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia. She has published many works on the theory of social systems, media theory and sociology of financial markets. Her publications include The Future of Futures: The Time of Money in Society and Finance (2011), Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realit ä t (2007; 2008), I paradossi della moda: Originalit à e transitoriet à nella societ à moderna (2004) and S oziales Vergessen: Formen und Medien des Gedä chtnisses der Gesellschaft (2002). viii Notes on Contributors ix Willis Santiago Guerra Filho is Professor of Legal History and Philosophy at the Federal University of the State Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) in Brazil and also a permanent professor of Legal Theory and Philosophy at the graduate legal studies program in the Pontifical Catholic University of S ã o Paulo (PUCSP). He holds a PhD in Legal Science from the University Bielefeld, Germany, a Private Docent title in Philosophy of Law from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and a post-doctoral title in Philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His contributions to the national development of his field include some pioneering work on both autopoietic legal systems, and constitutional rights, guarantees and judicial process theories. Holger H ø jlund is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His publi- cations include ‘Hybrid Inclusion: The New Consumerism of Danish Welfare Services’ in J ournal of European Social Policy , 2009, 19(5) and ‘Voluntary Social Work as a Paradox’ (with Anders la Cour) in Acta Sociologica , 2008, 51(1). Anders la Cour is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His main research interests are in social theory, social policy, management of welfare and voluntary social work. His recent publications include ‘Information and other Bodily Functions: Stool Records in Danish Residential homes’, in Science, Technology & Human Value, 2011, 36(2) ‘Euphemisms and Hypocrisy in Corporate Philanthropy’, in B usiness Ethics: A European Review, 2011, 20 (3) and ‘The Love Affair Between the Policy and the Voluntary Organizations,’ in Niels Å kerstr ø m Andersen and Inger-Johanne Sand (eds) H ybrid Forms of Governance (2012). Barbara Mauthe is a lecturer in Law at Lancaster University. She studied at Bristol University as a mature student after a career in local government. Her research interest is public law and epistemology . Sharon P ersaud recently completed her PhD thesis titled ‘From Irritation to Programming: A Luhmannian Reading of the Regulation of Pre-Implantation Tissue-Typing in the UK 2001–2008’, at Birkbeck Law School, University of London. She works as a criminal lawyer in London, while attempting to maintain a research interest in developing a loosely Luhmannian reading of contemporary controversies in criminal law. Andreas P hilippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, LLB, LLM, PhD, is Professor of Law and Theory at the University of Westminster and Director of the Westminster Law and Theory Centre. His research interests include law and space, critical autopoiesis, continental philosophy, environmental law, law and literature, gender studies, law and art. Andreas is intent on collapsing disciplinary boundaries, merging theories and creating concepts. His edited volumes include Law and the City (2007) and L aw and Ecology (2011) and his x Notes on Contributors monographs include Absent Environments (2007) and N iklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society (2009). William Rasch is Professor of Germanic studies at Indiana University. Among his best-known books are Niklas Luhmann’s Modernity (2000) and S overeignty and Its Discontents: On the Primacy of Conflict and the Structure of the Political (2004). Chris Thornhill is Professor of Politics at Glasgow University. He will be Professor of Law at the University of Manchester from the summer of 2013. During the earlier part of his career he worked primarily on the history of legal and political philosophy, especially in Germany. Most of his recent research has focused on processes of state formation and constitutionaliza- tion in different European societies. In this field, he has written a substantial amount of historical/theoretical research on statehood, constitutionali- zation, and the social and legal preconditions of political legitimacy. This includes his recent monograph, A Sociology of Constitutions (2011). He also has a strong (although critical) interest in the works of Niklas Luhmann. Thomas W ebb is a PhD candidate in Law at Lancaster University. He read law at Lancaster University before undertaking his PhD in 2009. His research interests include public law theory and methodology, complexity theory, and autopoiesis. Christine Weinbach is a Research Fellow at the Chair for Sociology of Gender Relations, University of Potsdam. Her research interests include systems theory, sociology of gender relations, citizenship studies, sociology of law, and political sociology of the welfare state.
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