Kirk Wetters: The Short Spring of German Theory (II): WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN POSTCRITICAL

Theory, Critique, Critical Theory

In the retrospect of almost a decade, the year 2015 seems to offer at least two openings which can help us better understand and localize the “end of theory” narratives that began to take hold sometime around the end of the millennium. Rita Felski’s much-discussed and much-maligned 2015 book, The Limits of Critique, construed the long history of “critique” as largely continuous with the more recent (postwar) idea of “theory,” which allowed her to question the presupposed progressivity and utility of the dominant critical-theoretical discourses of late 20th-century North American academia. In the same year, Philipp Felsch’s Der lange Sommer der Theorie (which was recently published in English as The Summer of Theory) went so far as to assign specific dates, 1960–1990, and tended to define theory not as a purely academic product, but as a much wider cultural movement.[1]  Between the two books, questions of the difference between theory and critique, their specific institutional locus within and beyond academia, became objects of acute concern. „Kirk Wetters: The Short Spring of German Theory (II): WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN POSTCRITICAL“ weiterlesen

Eva Stubenrauch: DIE KRISE DER ZEITDIAGNOSTIK. Reckwitz, Rosa und die Gesellschaftstheorie der Gegenwart

Die Gegenwart wurde in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten so oft diagnostiziert wie nie zuvor. Seit den 1980er Jahren, angefangen bei Ulrich Becks ›Risikogesellschaft‹, häufen sich entsprechende Zuschreibungen:[1] ›Erlebnisgesellschaft‹, ›Informationsgesellschaft‹, ›Postdemokratie‹, ›breite Gegenwart‹, ›Retrotopia‹ und dergleichen mehr. Wie der Begriff und die in ihm angelegte medizinische Semantik schon andeuten, geht mit der Zeitdiagnostik immer eine Kritik an der Gegenwart einher. „Eva Stubenrauch: DIE KRISE DER ZEITDIAGNOSTIK. Reckwitz, Rosa und die Gesellschaftstheorie der Gegenwart“ weiterlesen