| Summary: | This thesis explores the possibility of recasting the idea of emancipation in an age in which some have tarred it with the 'incredulity' brush. The prevailing trend is one of a scepticism about the utility of the idea, either because one believes the demands associated with it have been met (e.g. political rights, such as the right to vote as a universal right, an opportunity to stand for public office, etc.) or, in its more radical form . (e.g. revolutionary discourses such as Marxism and 'Radical' Feminism), because one believes the demands pursued to be unworkable, inevitably leading to the exercising of terroristic violence and the perpetuation of further injustice. Harnessing certain elements from Kant's critical method and distilling particular ideas from contemporary French philosophy (in particular from the philosophies of Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Jean- Luc Nancy and Jacques Ranciere), this thesis shall seek to find an answer to the sceptic, and shall hope to do so through the tentative presentation of an alternative understanding. However, to do so it must first extricate any recasting of the idea from established interpretations. Both the arguments of the sceptic and the dogmatist are predicated on questionable suppositions, which lead to a set of antinomies and other illicit dialectical inferences.
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