On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 10:40 AM, Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> wrote:
>>On 2017-10-14 03:30, Brian Holmes wrote:
> "Has critique run out of steam?" asked Bruno Latour around ten years
> ago. It was a significant question.
I think there are two ways to address this question.
One relates more to culture and as to do with the information overload
online
The other one is, I presume, what Latour has in mind. The task at hand
is less a deconstructive one (that, it seems has been achieved), but a
constructive one. <<
Brian and Felix,
I agree that it is good to revisit the critique of critique and I appreciate your clarifications. You know that I like to take a historical and comparative view of such matters. I hope that this comment contributes more than pedantry to the discussion.
Traditionally information was scarce and came from an authority who demanded social acceptance. the norm was to treat the source with deference. The late 18th century saw the birth of the mass media and one issue was how to inculcate the social practice of selective reading with independent judgment. Kant wrote his three Critiques with this end in mind. The last and greatest, The Critique of Judgment, was possibly the single most influential work in 19th century European thought.
There are two main objections to Kan's project: that most people were still consumers of information, not its producers; and Hegel's claim that this was the last dying gasp of bourgeois individualism, when an approach adequate to the movement of societies in history was needed.
It does seem likely that critique has run out of steam in the internet era, if only because consumers of information have a better chance to be producers and, as you say, because of information overload (although it seemed like that in the 18th century too).
I will not raise here how you both find an axiomatic foundation for global politics in the fact of climate change, from which many assumptions flow. The main question for me is whether Hegel was right in replacing individual subjectivity (the humanities) with what amounts to a charter for the social sciences.
Are we sure that privileging the social has served or will serve humanity well? The shift to deconstruction and construction presumes, to my mind, that the question of homo duplex has been resolved and I don't think it has. This confusion allows individuals to propose their own judgments as social solutions without examining how they get from A to B.
Best,
Keith
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