Please note: You are viewing the unstyled version of this web site. Either your browser does not support CSS (cascading style sheets) or it has been disabled.

Department of Sociology

Local Navigation

Dr Pauline Johnson

BA Syd., PhD Macq.

Contact Details

Office: C3B 508

Phone No: (61 2) 9850 9491

Fax No: (61 2) 9850 9355

E-mail: Pauline.Johnson@mq.edu.au

Profile

Before coming to Macquarie as a Phd student in Sociology, I took out an honours degree in Philosophy at the University of Sydney. After graduating from Macquarie, I taught in the Philosophy department at Sydney for 5 years and took up a teaching appointment at Macquarie in 1987. While my sociological interests are quite varied, I have a particular interest in sociological theories with a particular liking for those critical theory perspectives (for example the Frankfurt school and Habermas) that attempt to traverse somewhat artificial disciplinary boundaries. Teaching interests include sociological theory, debates about social capital and the public sphere, topics around social justice (feminism, multiculturalism , impacts of globalisation etc).

Research Interests

For some time I have been writing about Jurgen Habermas' life long project to interpret and defend the modern public sphere. In an epoch dominated by neo-liberal ideologies that try and make each individual responsible for the 'success' of lives lived blindly in accordance with imposed objectives, an undertaking to reconstruct and rescue our capacities to rationalize our intertwined futures in terms of chosen and mutually negotiated goals seems a very timely one.

Before that, my main area of research concerned an interpretation of modern feminism's essential, but at that time largely unacknowledged, humanist allegiances. In another life I was interested in the problematic of a Marxist version of aesthetics. This was a project that interrogated a, then fashionable, functionalist- Marxist account of everyday thinking.

Today I am happily working my way into a brand new project. I want to explore some of the structuring tensions within intimacy as a sphere of modern social life. In particular I propose to track some of the ways in which the tensions between kinship and the elective character of intimate relations are being flattened out in some contemporary discourses.

Courses in 2006

List of Publications

Books

Jurgen Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere Routledge (UK) 2006

Feminism as Radical Humanism Allen and Unwin (Sydney) and Westview (California) 1994

Marxist Aesthetics Routledge (UK) 1984

Edited Books

Culture and Enlightenment: Essays for Gyorgy Markus edited by John Grumley, Paul Crittenden and Pauline Johnson (London: Ashgate, 2002)

Refereed Articles: On Habermas and the Public Sphere

2006 'Enlightenment and Romantic Legacies: Habermas's Post-Modern Critics' Contemporary Political Theory (Palgrave Macmillan (U.K) February

2005 'Habermas: A Reasonable Utopian?' Critical Horizons, December

2004 'Are Our Utopian Energies Exhausted? Habermas's Radical Reformism' European Journal of Political Theory 3(3) 267-291.

2004 'Irreconcilable Differences? Habermas and Feminism'  Critical Theory After Habermas edited by Dieter Freundlich Wayne Hudson and John Rundell,(Leiden-Boston: Brill)

2001 'Habermas's Search for the Public Sphere' European Journal of Social Theory 4(2) 215–326

2001 'Distorted Communications: Feminism's Dispute with Habermas' Philosophy and Social Criticism Vol. 27, No.1 39-63

2000 'Discourse Ethics and the Normative Justification of Tolerance' Critical Horizons Vol. 1 No. 2 

1998 'Carl Schmitt, Jurgen Habermas and the Crisis of Politics' The European Legacy Vol.3, No. 6, 15-33

1996 'Nietzsche Reception Today' Radical Philosophy 80 Nov/Dec, 24-34.

Refereed Articles: On Feminism and Humanism

1998 'Liberation Theory, Feminism and Utopianism' in Oxford Australian Feminism: A Companion edited by Barbara Caine (Australia: Oxford University Press) 206-214

1995 'Does Post-Modern Feminism Have a Future?' Australian Feminist Studies No. 22 Summer 1995, pp. 121-138

1995 'Quest for the Self: Feminism's Appropriation of Romanticism' Thesis Eleven Number 41,76-94

1993 'Feminism and Enlightenment' Radical Philosophy 63 Spring pp. 3-13

1991 'Feminism and Liberalism' Australian Feminist Studies No. 14, 57-69

1988 'Feminism and Images of Autonomy' Radical Philosophy No.50, 26-31

1988 'Feminism and Difference: The Dilemmas of Luce Irigaray' Australian Feminist Studies No.6, 87-97.

Refereed Articles: On Aesthetics

1987 'An Aesthetics of Negativity/An Aesthetics of Reception: Jauss's Dispute with Adorno New German Critique No.42, 51-70

1987 'From Virginia Woolf to the Post-Moderns: Developments in a Feminist Aesthetics' Radical Philosophy No.45, 23-31

Book Chapters

Pauline Johnson (2004) 'Aesthetics of Negativity/ Aesthetics of Reception: Adorno's Dispute with Jauss' in G. Delanty (ed), Theodor W. Adorno, London: Sage