Infinite Distraction by Pettman Dominic

Infinite Distraction by Pettman Dominic

Author:Pettman, Dominic
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509502295
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-01-11T00:00:00+00:00


Such new arrangements risk “the destruction of meaning by signs” (Baudrillard’s archtheme, of course). Moreover, “the increasing intensity of communications harbours the reinforcement of daily life, its consolidation and confinement.”

One of the greatest dangers Lefebvre warns against is the extinction of spaces reserved for critical thought, unhobbled by positivist exigencies. As if foreseeing the corporate enthusiasm for Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs), Lefebvre writes (in a crucial paragraph, worth quoting in full):

Not only does information ideology not present itself as ideology, but it proposes either to put an end to ideologies or to transfer the ideological function to information apparatuses, including the production and diffusion of positive knowledge, which was formerly the prerogative of schools and universities. The reduction of positive knowledge to information would have consequences: the end of critical and conceptual thinking, and hence the end of all thinking, or its departure to take refuge in illegality and violence. All the more so given that information apparatuses are in great danger of being administratively and institutionally controlled either by the national state, or by transnational forces which would use this supplementary means to consolidate their order. Not only would positive knowledge be reduced to recorded and memorized facts,18 but everything concerning the political and politics would go through the channels of official information. This would create the greatest difficulties for any action independent of established power, and possibly result in the disappearance of all counter-power. (819, emphasis added)



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