Retrieving the universalism of critical sociology—Adorno, Hegel, and Rose.

Universalism (as an abstraction) has fallen into disrepute, and with it, the concept of the ‘social’ has fallen to the heterogeneity of the other. But to what extent is this another victory for the power of abstraction in the free market that shapes consciousness in its own image? In many respects, the protests against the domination implicit in universalist claims has been empowering for the marginalized and the excluded. But abstract universality so dominates the theorizing of the universal and the protests launched against it, that it also marginalizes and excludes anything other than abstract versions of the universal, therein denying the struggles for inclusion and justice appeal to any other or different concepts of universality, As such, it denies universal significance to any critique of abstraction. Perhaps it requires something of Adorno’s critical sociology and Gillian Rose’s speculative sociology to retrieve a universalism here. And if a retrieval of social universalism can challenge the universalism of abstract forms of consciousness by way of a retrieval of critical sociological consciousness, then this commends us to re-examine what sociological consciousness was, what its conditions of possibility were, and what shapes it might take in any reappearance.