1 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2022
    1. What if explanations resorting automatically to power, society, discourse had outlived their usefulness and deteriorated to the point of now feeding the most gullible sort of critique?8 Maybe I am taking conspiracy theories too seriously, but it worries me to detect, in those mad mixtures of knee‐jerk disbelief, punctilious demands for proofs, and free use of powerful explanation from the social neverland many of the weapons of social critique. Of course conspiracy theories are an absurd deformation of our own arguments, but, like weapons smuggled through a fuzzy border to the wrong party, these are our weapons nonetheless. In spite of all the deformations, it is easy to recognize, still burnt in the steel, our trademark: Made in Criticalland.

      Are earlier tools of critiqueing obsolete, and now misused by conspiracyfantasists? Criticism as instrument vs criticism as rejection/avoiding change? The first is part of a theory of change, so what's the other, theory of stasis? Sounds too neutral, it's more destructive than that. Not moving is also a move, in the face or urgencies, usually in the wrong direction. Note this paper is from 2004! Since the early pandemic this is more pertinent in our everyday lives