This book provides the first detailed account of Gramsci's work in the context of current critical and socio-cultural debates. Renate Holub argues that Gramsci was ahead of his time in offering a theory of art, politics and cultural production. Gramsci's achievement is discussed particularly in relation to the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Bloch, Habermas), to Brecht's theoretical writings and to thinkers in the phenomenological tradition especially Merleau-Ponty. She argues for Gramsci's continuing relevance at a time of retreat from Marxist (...) positions on the postmodern left. Antonio Gramsci is distinguished by its range of philosophical grasp, its depth of specialized historical scholarship, and its keen sense of Gramsci's position as a crucial figure in the politics of contemporary cultural theory. (shrink)

This essay considers the beginnings of the journal October's critical practice and the significance of a work by Michel Foucault: “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”.1 The theoretical issues/problematics raised by this essay became key to future debates in and around October; the essay becoming something of an emblematic means by which October might be distinguishing from other visual art critical practices. The importance of Foucault's text in relation to October was revealed during correspondences with Rosalind Krauss in August 2001. Foucault's (...) self-referential essay can be seen as crucial not only to Rosalind Krauss's intellectual development, but also to the continuing debate on the nature of text and image in which the journal would be involved. The spiralling interplay of Foucault's narrative, combined with Magritte's picture, might be interpreted as a metaphor for the mediations of post-structural visual criticism itself as its practitioners sought to institute language into the visual sign, a project that attempted to produce a theoretical rationale – and perhaps a justification – for images being treated as if they were texts; thus, paraphrasing Foucault, introducing into the plenitude of the image a certain disorder. Such a weaving together of representation and discourse is interpreted as the formation of a destabilizing dialectic, a dialectic that can be linked to the writings of October as it shifts its rhetorical locations in an attempt to break down the normative pictorial and discursive frames of reference; becoming in essence a dedisciplinary and de-formative critical practice. This essay provides an outline of the determining conditions that led to the development of this “linguistic turn” and an associated reflection on Foucault's text that seeks to direct attention specifically towards its semiotic and discursive implications in relation to the developing oeuvre of criticism exemplified by the magazine. The essay is supported by interviews with Rosalind Krauss and Douglas Crimp conducted by the author in March 2002. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

Critical thinking, considered as a version of informallogic, must consider emotions and personal attitudesin assessing assertions and conclusions in anyanalysis of discourse. It must therefore presupposesome notion of the self. Critical theory may be seenas providing a substantive and non-neutral positionfor the exercise of critical thinking. It thereforemust presuppose some notion of the self. This paperargues for a Foucauldean position on the self toextend critical theory and provide a particularposition on the self for critical thinking. Thisposition on the self is (...) developed from moretraditional accounts of the self from Descartes toSchopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Debates between Habermas and the poststructuralists - specifically, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard - over the nature of critiques of Enlightenment rationality and modernity are investigated in order to argue for an agenda for critical theory beyond the 'French Fries and the Frankfurter'.1 Part I interrogates key elements of Habermas' theory of communicative rationality in his reconstruction of Enlightenment modernity and his critique of the poststructuralists. This orients the discussion toward an evaluation of Habermas' neo-Kantianism, theory of language (discourse ethics), and (...) the 'critique' he employs in his bid to defend and complete the project of modernity. Key Words: critical theory • Derrida • Enlightenment modernity • Foucault • Habermas • Lyotard • Marx • postmodernism debates. (shrink)

The debate that contrasts Marxism and the work of Michel Foucault often overlooks that both projects share a political and ethical commitment. Both have moreover engaged that commitment by challenging what Marx called ‘traditional ideas’, viewing them as historically compilcit with the exercise of power. This ‘radical rupture’ with traditional ideas has been the hallmark of the critical theory project since The Communist Manifesto. By challenging traditional notions of power and language, however, Michel Foucault went further than the Marxist tradition (...) in carrying out the critical theory project. Foucault's alternative ideas of discourse/practice and of power as ‘positive’ are moreover intricately linked in a way that has not been sufficiently appreciated. This is evident in a genealogy of Foucault's early work, where neither notion is able to take hold in the absence of the other. It only after The Archaeology of Knowledge, where Foucault rethought the relationship of language to reality, that he was able to formulate the notion of power as positive in works to come. This link should cause us to rethink our relationship to Foucault's work, of it to Marxism, and of the critical theory project to the power. (shrink)