EMANCIPATION TODAY AND THE CHALLENGES TO DEMOCRACY

Abstract

The article discusses the question of emancipation today in two stages. Initially, it attempts to briefly present the main reasons that caused the paradigms of revolution and reform, central to the classical socialist orientations, ceased to be the most appropriate reference for a renewed theory of emancipation focused on understanding the new social movements. Besides that, assuming the point of view of contemporary critical theory, it stresses that one of the biggest challenges to democracy today lies precisely in the fact that emancipation cannot have just one meaning, but rather is permeated by a plurality of meanings and perspectives.