Monday, July 04, 2005
(10:20 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Spectacle
From Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural:More often than not, the general critique of the "spectacular"--of mediatization, television, and so on--provides an alibi and stage for a very poor ideology. Whether it is belligerent, whining, or disdainful, it is most interested in propagating the notion that it possesses the key to what is an illusion and what is not. For example, it pretends to know that "people" are "fools" because of "television," which is to say, because of "tele-cracy." But this ideology knows nothing about the genuine use "people" make of TV--a use that is, perhaps, much more distanced than the critics would like to admit--or anything about the real state, sometimes genuinely "foolish," of the popular cultures of earlier times. The critique of the spectacular has been performing its routine for some time--but now it is beginning to get old.A classic bitchy footnote. My full Nancy immersion is not proceeding as quickly as I had hoped, but I see myself spending a lot of time with him in the coming years, so there is ultimately no hurry, even if it would be better to get the review finished sooner rather than later.
BONUS PHILOSOPHICAL UPDATE: John Emerson, sometime contributor to The Weblog, has posted an assessment of the "other" Wittgenstein, including some attention to The Seriousness.
