somethingsomething
No bio...
User ID: 1123
somethingsomething
4yr ago
I appreciate the link, I'll have to spend more time digging through the previous sections but the page you linked helps me understand where you're coming from.
There are a few threads that interest me that I think expose weaknesses in CRT related to your reply here.
-
If you accept the capture of French philosophy and academic elites by communism in the 60's as analogous to CRT, its collapse could point to similar ways CRT could collapse in the future. And part of that was surely the political situation, but I'm also curious how much of that was Foucault, who possibly gave the academics something to "chew on", a less obviously activist, more wide-ranging theory. I'm sure that's a simplification, but I do think there was this kind of new breed with him and others of something more sophisticated that allowed communism to be kind of moved on from, something passe.
-
As far as the abusers go of critical theory, like that legal theorist, I'm curious how much that is a kind of perversion or simplification of something that is more useful when treated with maturity, and not just useful to the left, but against the left's power. And it doesn't necessary have to be useful in a sense of persuading them, but instead of disillusioning its sort of fair-weather followers potentially.
-
The other thing is something that I've had a hard time expressing, but I feel like CRT can't escape it's intellectualist roots, which is a point of failure it shares with communism. It wants to be pure activism, all about changing minds, but its identity demands that it take an intellectual root, and it sort of has to assume that the most effective activism is intellectual (or even pseudo-intellectual) activism, which I think is far from true, because I think you can argue most people bounce off that kind of thing, if not now then after it outstays its welcome.
Anyway I'll read your other posts but those are the threads of thought I've been pursuing
somethingsomething
4yr ago
My instinct though is that if critical theory would evolve to refute itself, it would be a positive evolution, and would be a kind of completion of the original theory, as in more critical theory, not less.
I haven't thought through too much the actual way it plays out in the real world. It's possible the modern critical theorists have immunized themselves. But on the other hand, you had a similar situation with the Marxists in France in the time of Foucault, and that evolution is kind of what I am proposing could happen again today. Similarly, it might be a philosopher who is "inside" the system that hits at the right time during some slump in their power, that speaks their language while subverting them.
somethingsomething
4yr ago
I think that's right that that was the original conception, but I think there's something to how Marxists were kind of adapting to the failure of communism, and how Foucault abandoned Marxism, that could have possibly revealed a more core principle to Critical Theory which I think is a critique of power or a lens of dissecting behavior through power.
And through this lens, there's no reason why we couldn't have right-wing critical theory. And I wonder how salient an argument you could have that a lot of right-wing, or anti-activist critique against left-leaning power structures owes any debt to critical theory, including in its arguments against modern critical theorists, by using their arguments against themselves.
Though I could buy that that's not critical theory anymore because it's too dislodged from its leftist activist roots.
I think that the idea that critical theory is an activist philosophy is self-contradictory and that those who practice critical theory to change the world in some way, or motivate action, are basically destined to have an incomplete, irreconcilable worldview.
(edit for clarity: Modern critical theory obviously is often activist, and believing that is not self-contradictory. But believing that critical theory at its core is activist, and should be practiced as a kind of means-to-an-end to affect social change, as many critical theorists believe, I think contradicts with the actual core of critical theory philosophy)
I started coming to this idea watching the Foucault/Chomsky debate, where Foucault is suspicious of Chomksy's Anarcho-syndicalism as a way to bring out a kind of ideal human nature, because he thinks the formulations we make about an ideal human nature, or society without political violence, are informed by the society we live in, which makes violence and non-ideality kind of unavoidable.
This argument is interesting in terms of the political spectrum because on one hand, it "out-criticals" the critical activist, but it also echoes the basic conservative reaction to leftist societal transformation projects.
There's no reason to me that a critical theory couldn't exist critical of social justice projects, BLM, modern Marxism, etc. The modern leftist capture of critical theory appears arbitrary.
But the Foucault debate led me to think, that conservatives, or just anti-progressives, could be a lot more bold in using their own critical theory against them in a way. I think it would be a field worth studying as a way to deconstruct leftist idealism and activism in a way that, like Chomsky, would leave them looking kind of pathetic in debate.
Doing that would kind of require doing the Nietzschian thing of acknowledging power, political violence, etc. and working with it in the debate, which I feel like is probably a step too far for most politicians. But I think specifically that rather than debate competing visions, there's room for a thinker to basically just deconstruct modern "critical theory" on its own terms, argue that it is self-contradictory and unlikely to do anything but breed new forms of political violence and power imbalance.
To tie it back to Nietzsche, it seems his works have an irony to them, even a self-aware irony, and that is what makes his calls for action "work" in some sense. It seems to me that a modern critical theory text that calls for action with no sense of irony is not thorough, and has a huge blind spot by basically not applying self-criticism.
I've been kind of working this idea out on my own, not sure if this is well trodden ground elsewhere, apologies for the half-baked quality.
I think objection to AI art will gradually be more coded as right-wing than left, and I think it goes hand in hand with the left caring more about art as "symbol" or its usefulness, rather than as something like contact with the real, which I think is more right-wing and implicitly rejects death of the author.
I think Vaush is basically holding a reactionary opinion here, because something he likes is threatened. But I think the pro-AI art is the view that's going to be rewarded most on the left. It's what young people will be doing, it's equal-opportunity, etc. I think the hair-splitting he does across tech progress in art kind of gives away that he's not holding a cohesive worldview. I don't think art as "communication" solves the riddle here, especially if AI art could allow us to communicate better or more easily.
Instead I think that there's a pretty cohesive argument that every technology that led to making art easier to produce, was eventually exploited to make cheaper, broadly appealing, "worse" art. Even oil paint fits, especially if you argue that the time between introduction and exploitation got shorter and shorter over time, possibly due to a weaker institutional reactionary resistance each time. But you see it with photography, synths, digital cameras, and I'm sure I could go on. And what you're seeing right now is that there is absolutely no friction against someone exploiting this new tool, to the point they are exploiting it before it's even any good.
But I think inevitably a leftist or liberal would accept a pro-AI art position. In a leftist utopia you'd have both, and they'd be paid the same. And a liberal would just challenge you to make your art better and challenge the AI on its own terms. Is that an incorrect characterization?
Sidenote: The way these youtube debaters interact with chat or play videogames when they talk (not in this video) just completely reads decadent society to me.
More options
Context Copy link