Alex Struwe: Totalität (Buchvorstellung)

Totality names the problem of whether and how it is possible to understand society as a whole. With the "end of the big stories", this question seemed to have been unnecessary for a long time. But in times of the multiple crisis, climate catastrophe and the global strengthening of the right, the need to determine the context of the whole: There is a "increasing interest of the public in comprehensive theories of human society and history in their entirety" (Andreas Reckwitz/Hartmut Rosa), you can see that "all suffering and the same system (Nancy Fraser) and again to "a social analysis that goes all over" (Kolja Möller), or "correctly understood history philosophy" (Rahel Jaeggi). Current theories now have to fill this empty space of totality. From the concept of populism to the new class policy to the rediscovery of critical theory, authoritarianism to historical philosophy is once again speculated about structure and the whole of society. But these provisions remain abstract - and thus part of the problem. So is totality always a bad generalization or are they really?

Alex Struwe traces this question in his book and finds possibilities for a concrete determination of the overall context with Marx and the development of materialism to Theodor W. Adorno. He discusses the book presentation why the current social theory has an ideology problem and why, despite everything, it needs a concept of totality for the opposition to the circumstances.