The "pragmatic turn'" proposed by Boltanski and others should not lead us to abandon the project of Critical Theory, as if all necessary criticism were already articulated within everyday practices of critique. The reflective capacities of "ordinary" actors and their practices of justification and critique, which are convincingly reconstructed by the sociology of critique, constitute the social and methodological basis of critical theory. However, this should not lead us to attribute an epistemic authority to the perspective of the participants that is immune to being put into question from a theoretically informed point of view.
Critical Theory; pragmatic turn; systematic misrecognition; justification