Stephan Lessenich
Mittelweg 36
Mittelweg 36
Eurozine
Social subjectivity
The new governmentality of society
Stephan Lessenich
The article seeks to clarify the basic structure of Niklas Luhmann's theory of the social and of modernity by contrasting it with contemporary theories of culture. Luhmann's theoretical framework follows a "logic of separation", where as theories of culture support a transgression of boundaries (between the social and the psychic, the modern and the traditional etc.). In the end, these analytical differences between systems theory and cultural theory seem to be motivated by opposing normative positions.