Untangling the knot: moving away from common sense to regain a critical perspective

Abstract

The book La crítica agotada. Claves para un cambio de civilización (Criticism Exhausted: Keys to a Change in Civilisation) by José Manuel Naredo traces a series of fetish concepts or “non-concepts” that dominate current mainstream thinking. In this history of semantic shifts, Naredo shows how the original force or meaning of terms has been lost, or even how they have been pushed towards an almost opposite meaning, as in the case of the concepts of liberalism and neoliberalism. Beyond an intellectual history, Naredo's analysis approaches the history of concepts and socio-history. He traces the forms of objectification of a concept in statistics, such as Gross Domestic Product, or categories of public action. Naredo's work also dismantles several fetish concepts of criticism, especially of the environmental movement, such as “degrowth” and “the commons”. Working towards a solid critique involves dismantling the various myths that have accompanied critical thinking, rendering it a futile exercise. The book offers encouraging proposals, such as the eco-integrative paradigm on which the author has been working for years from a transdisciplinary perspective.