Ajit Sinha wrote:
>I think it is problematic to separate 'technology' from the relation under
>which that 'technology' was developed. If capitalist relation could not
>work with feudal technology, then how come socialist relation could work
>with capitalist technology? I think a critique of technology should be put
>on the agenda.
Absolutely, couldn't agree more - so I hope whoever's writing up the agenda
hears this! As amusing as Sokal's hoax on Social Text was, its long-term
effect has been negligible or even malignant, because it didn't do anything
(and may have detracted from) putting the critique of technology on the
agenda. It showed that the Social Text editors didn't really know what
they're talking about, but it's put nothing in the place they've been
evicted from. As far as I can tell, while he's opposed to physicists doing
nuclear bomb research, Sokal has no theoretical understanding or political
critique of science himself; he seems to take Reason as a category not
worth serious investigation. Vulgar science studies types have taken it too
far, but there is something to Foucault's power/knowledge pairing, and more
than linguistic accident that joins the multiple senses of "discipline."
Aronowitz-style science studies has been discredited, but what's to take
its place?
Monthly Review is about to publish a book by John Gillott and Manjit Kumar,
Science and the Retreat from Reason. I haven't seen a copy yet, but the ad
on the back of the December MR says the authors "positively reinterpret the
Enlightenment-based values of progress through development of humanity's
understanding and shaping of the physical world, made possible by
scientific research and experimentation." Turns out that the authors are
affiliated with LM, the magazine once known as Living Marxism, then
published by the former Revolutionary Communist Party and now apparently
published by a company whose main business is the British cybercafe chain,
Cyberia. As PEN-L readers are aware, LM is passionately
anti-environmentalist, holding green politics to be a symptom of the
devolution of the bourgeoisie from thrusting to timorous. I'll bet Gillott
& Kumar's book doesn't contain anything like a critique of technology, and
though MR furiously dissents from the rest of the LM package, I'll bet they
(as would many leftists) published the book because they were all too
happy, post-Sokal, not to entertain a critique of technology.
Doug
