Critical Theory and Social Transformation: Reflections on the ‘Empowerment’ of the ‘Subject’

Abstract

The paper aims to discuss the limitations of empowerment. Contemporary research and discussions have focussed on transforming development as a process for social inclusion. From the standpoint of critical theory, it is important to understand the deep structure of the processes of social inclusion. From this perspective, the paper will look at the housing sector to understand the social inclusion of women, marginalised labour, and victims of violence. The research is based on the content analysis of the film Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, case studies of victims of violence from Jharia, Jharkhand, and discourse analysis of the mass production of low-income housing in India. The conceptual vocabulary for this analysis draws upon the works of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, and Christopher Alexander. Foucault in his work ‘Orders of Discourse’ critiques the proposition that ‘knowledge empowers.’ He raises the question of orders of discourses to understand how human agency is hegemonised by knowledge. Louis Althusser in his work ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ argues that individuals becomes citizens only on the condition that they agree to be governed. Christopher Alexander in his work, ‘The Production of Houses’ has argued that to acquire one's own agency to limit the power structures, it is important to make one's own home within limited resources. This vocabulary highlights the deep structures of the violence of social inclusion. This paper attempts to explore the nature and scope of the methodology of social inclusion. An important aspect of this methodology is that marginalised individuals are objects of research that are fixed in a frame by the gaze of a researcher. The intersubjectivity between the researcher and the researched is denied because of which their tangible-intangible needs, wants, and desires are rendered null and void.