Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.52685/pihfb.52.1(103).5
Deconstructing the Universal Subject: Progress and the Authors of the Future in Selected Works by Blaženka Despot
Ana Maskalan
orcid.org/0000-0001-9969-1507
; Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This paper examines the notion of the “authorship of the future” in the philosophy of Blaženka Despot within the context of the crisis of the modern idea of progress and its subject. Starting from Despot’s critique of the teleological conceptions of history and the privileged agents of social change, the paper shows that she relocates the concept of progress from the sphere of historical necessity to that of an open, politically contingent social practice. Within the tradition of the Praxis School, Despot develops a conception of the revolutionary subject that does not arise automatically from an objective class position but from the development of self-consciousness, education, and the capacity to reflect upon concrete historical relations. Particular attention is devoted to her feminist critique of Marxist universalism, which reveals that the presumed subject of emancipation is gendered and that the hierarchical structure of emancipatory theories systematically produces the invisibility of women as historical actors. The paper argues that Despot thereby not only expands the subject of social change but also reconsiders the very concept of historical authorship and its philosophical presuppositions.
Keywords
Blaženka Despot; progress; revolutionary subject; Praxis philosophy; Marxist feminism; women’s question; authorship of the future
Hrčak ID:
346883
URI
Publication date:
5.5.2026.
Visits: 0 *