Agência, conhecimento e capacidades críticas no capitalismo contemporâneo: uma abordagem cosmopolita a partir de baixo

This paper aims at focusing on the process of transformation of knowledge – something intrinsically heterogeneous, going from its being specifically situated in different forms of life and experiences to a more abstract and universal nature – into what Amartya Sen defines as “informational basis for judgment and justice”, that is, the informational basis which policies and public action are based on. It is a crucial process, as it strongly contributes to framing the territory over which policies are going to intervene, establishing how the borders of this territory have to be drawn, what has to be included and what can be dropped off into the area of legitimate social, political and bureaucratic indifference. Such a process has to be historically and sociologically situated, in order to fully understand the way actors’ capacities are implied in it. The paper points out the so- called “trap of trajectorism” characterizing the field of tension configured by the capitalist mode of translating the space of possibility opened up by modernity: the relationship knowledge/informational basis results strongly affected by social inequalities and concurs itself in reproducing them. An approach inspired from a cosmopolitanism from below is then explored, according to which citizens’ capacities – in terms of capacity to aspire – can be actively involved in the process of transformation of knowledge into informational basis. A redefinition of the knowledge-production process in terms of a human right to research seems to be the direction to be addressed in order to empower this relationship between capacity and knowledge; and social sciences can find a promising challenge of revitalization in addressing themselves in this direction.