Categories
Postmodernism Theory Wild Theory

The Metamodern Turn: Toward a Theory of Trump-Era Liberal Culture

“Metamodernism” offers a lens for interpreting the contradictory impulses of liberalism in recent years.

Categories
Postmodernism Poststructuralism Technology Theory

The Linguistic Turn: On “Cynical Theories,” Part 3

The postmodern emphasis on language derives from the evolution of hi-tech liberal capitalist societies.

Categories
Postmodernism Poststructuralism Theory

Metanarrative Obsolescence: On “Cynical Theories,” Part 2

Did “Theory” make people skeptical of science, as Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay claim? Jean-François Lyotard’s account of the decline of metanarratives offers another view.

Categories
Postmodernism Theory

Liberalism’s Autoimmune Disorder: On “Cynical Theories,” Part 1

James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose characterize Theory as a “virus” attacking the liberal body politic.

Categories
Postmodernism Poststructuralism Technology Theory

The Simulation of Violence after 9/11

Is totalized simulation a strategy of conflict management or a driver of conflict? Some of both.

Categories
Mimetic Theory Poststructuralism Theory Wild Theory

Control Societies with Sacrificial Characteristics

Hi-tech networked control and archaic sacrificial systems may seem like opposites, but in fact, they complement each other.

Categories
Technology Theory

The Intellectual Origins of Surveillance Tech

The philosophical backgrounds of Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp and his co-founder Peter Thiel offer surprising insights into the company’s guiding ethos.

Categories
The Outside Wild Theory

“Karen” and the Maenads

“Karen” videos and similar viral images project the threat of social breakdown onto spectacles of ranting women – much like the Maenads of ancient Greece.

Categories
Conspiracy Theory

Noise, Conspiracy, and Narrative Convergence

The conspiratorial theories about the fireworks outbreaks in US cities tell us something about our collective inundation in another kind of noise.

Categories
Mimetic Theory Outsiders Wild Theory

Sacrificing the Founder

The recent toppling of statues reveals the triumph of what Nietzsche called “critical history” over “monumental history.”