The Global Roundtable on Critical Social Theory in the Age of Digital Alienation

Abstract

The article is an overview of the virtual meeting of researchers who are developing critical theory of society in different forms and in different countries. Restrictions on social activities in the period of COVID-19 pandemics have impacted (among other social structures and interactions) academic exchanges and scientific communications. Overcoming the routine of digital substitutes for traditional academic community life, the participants of the new scientific event contributed intensively to dialectical discourse of oppression and emancipation. The global roundtable was organized around 9 main presentations made by leading critical theorists. Preserving basic ideas from the Frankfurt school and other lines of Marxism and neo-Marxism, critical theorists are working to open new sources for development of rational and at the same time humanist and contextualized critique of new forms of alienation (including digital one) and new forms of oppression (including neo-colonialist one). Participants of the global roundtable have shared idea of permanent reflection aimed at continuation of the critical theorizing and at the emancipation of human beings.