REVIEW ARTICLE In defense of speculative sociology: a response to Simon Susen Rodrigo Cordero Department of Sociology, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile KEYWORDS Crisis; critique; negativity; fragility; foundations; critical theory; speculation Simon Susen’s generous, detailed and insightful reading of my book gives me the chance to further reflect on the challenges involved in asserting the legacy of critical theory in a non- foundationalist manner, and on whether the dialectical relation between the practice of critique and social crises may play a part in such a project. In the first part of my response, I place the argument of the book in relation to the issue of foundations in critical social theory. In the second part, I engage directly with Susen’s main criticisms in light of the speculative approach that informs my work. I. In political – as well as in scientific – debates, not having ‘foundations’ for the things one says or does is often considered to be indicative of a ‘failure’ to comply with certain moral, factual or epistemic standards, as it suggests the absence of solid grounds upon which one’s claims and actions may be interpreted, evaluated and justified within the space of reasons. In view of this fact, the quest for foundations is perhaps one of the most conten- tious issues in contemporary critical theory. After Habermas’s imposing verdict on the failure of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectics of Enlightenment to provide normative grounds for their pessimistic critique of capitalist society, a considerable amount of ink has been spent in reconstructing such foundations. In this learning process, critical theory has certainly gained theoretical sophistication and normative purchase on issues of justice, rights and democracy, but it has done so at the heavy price of leaving behind a significant part of its ‘speculative’ kernel. My book seeks to embody and move forward this speculative spirit by engaging with what Gillian Rose calls the actual ‘experience of lack of identity’ (2009, 53): namely, the sense and presence of negativity that inhabits social life. This condition of negativity means that even if social life acquires structural features and reproduces through durable institutional forms (legal, economic, political and cultural), its relative unity is pre- dicated upon the absence of essential unity. The absence of secure foundations is the very reason why social life is a lasting yet fragile achievement, for it brings together qualitatively different (even irreconcilable) entities that were not originally united and therefore could © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Rodrigo Cordero rodrigo.cordero@udp.cl DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2017.1310664