German Critical Theory Research Articles

Are Authors Authored? Cultural Politics and Literary Agency in the Era of the Internet

I argue that we need to view texts and all cultural products and practices as having been authored but simultaneously as constrained by the culture industry and its literary political economies. This theoretical apperception affords a social theory of the text that combines insights from German critical theory and French postmodern theory. Viewing the inherence of reading and writing in the social allows us to conceive of strategies that liberate authors and all cultural producers from domination while keeping in mind that language will always be a prison house of sorts, captured in Derrida's notion of undecidability. Developing a social theory of the text is especially important in the era of the internet and Web, when cultural production and transmission are opened up to many writers and readers.

Three Realms of Corporate Responsibility: Distinguishing Legitmacy, Morality and Ethics

In the mid-1960s and 1970s the field of business ethics saw a basic shift in emphasis from personal responsibility to corporate responsibility. While the notion of corporate responsibility has come to be a dominant concept in the field of business ethics since that time, it is a contested concept that admits of a range of conceptions. A concern underlying this paper is that many of these conceptions are less adequate than they might be. This paper has two overlapping goals. First, it seeks to elaborate a more adequate conception of corporate responsibility by drawing upon critical theory to distinguish three different normative realms (viz., legitimacy, morality and ethics). Second, the paper attempts to indicate from a critical theory perspective the nature of corporate responsibilities in each of these realms. The paper begins with a short introduction to German critical theory and an explanation of the different normative realms. The following three sections elaborate in turn the responsibilities of corporations in each on the three normative realms. Finally, the conclusion attempts to indicate some of the advantages of a critical theory conception of corporate responsibility.