When a critical theorist chastised Critical Theory

This video is an invitation to read the academic article of Bruno Latour entitled "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern". To introduce the viewer to the article we give a brief presentation of the climate in which Critical theory, Postmodernism, and Latour himself were enveloped in after the publication of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (written by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont). Then we summarize some of the article's main points, among these a critique of social constructivism and critical theory as a whole.

Link to the full article:

Other comments:

Latour appears to count himself among the critical theorists at numerous junctures within the article, so to make the title more immediate we call him a critical theorist even though the label is fuzzy and some might not categorize him this way. Similar issues may present themselves with the label "postmodernist", depending on its definition.
Also, for reasons of brevity, we don't go into the distinction between social constructionist and social constructivist (Latour calls himself a constructivist in the article).

▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Twitter:
Discord:
Substack:

[kipwonder]

Fascinating comments below. If we define post-modernism, as others have, to be a general skepticism towards grand narratives (e.g., religion, political theory, etc)...then it becomes clear that post-modernism is a form of disillusionment based on transparency generated by technology (i.e., the internet). Meaning...it's much more difficult for institutions to maintain traditional lies regarding what-is (e.g., God, democracy, freedom, equality, 'the good', inter-ethnic conflict, etc). Post-modernism is the result of being forced to acknowledge that much of what Western culture has taught is complete non-sense intended to facilitate unfettered capital accumulation by the few. This disillusionment generates the age old question "Based on the available evidence...how then shall I live???"

[richardfield]

Sokal put a last nail in the coffin of deconstruction and postmodernism. In the end it is an issue of academic communities isolating themselves--which postmodernism did very well since no one could understand what they were saying--and with that isolationism protecting themselves from any real critique from the broader academic community. Sokal called the bluff, and it tore a giant hole in the original bluff. I am willing to listen to anyone who puts forth an argument with evidence, of which there is plenty, of the power inequities in modern society. But please don't ask me whether E=MC 2 privileges the number 2.

[jamesboswell]

Ummm, so let's get this straight. A few French (generally) intellectual (vaguely) chaps (by and large) who know lots of big words but absolutely NOTHING about science whatsoever sat around bloviating and came to the conclusion that there's nothing more to it than any other academic "social construct". Then, wait for it... one of these French chaps decided he now believed in climate change and that suddenly made it real in a completely different way (at least to him). So he sat down again and wrote a long, long article saying that actually it would be far better if the majority of people (ignorant in general of everything and most especially of science) are encouraged to believe whatever "social construct" the scientists happen to have agreed upon. Phew, that's a relief (he thought). At last we can all stop worrying about the nitty-gritty doubts surrounding the formulation of objective truth and simply relax again, albeit in a highly unsceptical, blithely anti-scientific (if you must), and socially prescribed way. It's all true if only because we need it to be true, and thank heavens for that!

[Xob_Driesestig]

Constructivist here. I don't know of anyone who believes in this 'strongest version of social constructivism'. I always saw constructivism as a project to chart the ways in which certain hypotheses are privileged over others for social reasons.
If we ask a scientific question like: which economic system produces the most QALY’s" we have an infinite amount of possible answers. With science and logic we can cross out some possible answers (e.g. mercantilism, an economy where everyone produces rubber duckies…), but after we’ve finished crossing all those out we still have a (near?) infinite amount of possible answers. Even disregarding blatant propagandists, everyone, including the highly intelligent and honest scientists, will have to come up with "a best answer" (which the intellectually honest will stipulate with a "for now"), but which one they land on is almost certainly a product of which ones are e.g. more socially acceptable to say, are getting more funding for research, are easier to talk about, have established vocabulary, are easier to imagine, won't get you thrown in jail during a red scare… (And the scientists might genuinely belief they’re being purely scientific, because evolution didn't make us truth maximizers, but social survivors).
Scientific insights aren't fake but they don't carry us even halfway there while the rest gets filled in by other factors, and pretending they aren't there is, ironically, bad science.

[bmanagement]

I was a critic of postmodernism, but I'm a fan of post-postmodernism.
(My interpretation of) Postmodernism is as a criticism that stands at 51% irreverence and 49% reverence, whereas post-postmodernism switches to 51% reverence and 49% irreverence. It seems to me Postmodernism is the 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater, ' where post-postmodernism knows there is STILL something to be garnered from the baby AND the bathwater.
To me post-postmodernism is extensive centrism as opposed to 'enlightened' centrism which I think is fanatical conformity.

[springinfialta]

Jordan Peterson is criticized for claiming that there is a bond between neo-Marxism and postmodernism. LaTour's move is, however, exactly what Peterson predicted: postmodernism and critical theory would first be used as intellectual acids to disintegrate faith in existing political and economic systems, and then used to buttress the rise of neo-Marxist power structures to fill the void.

[maya-amf]

the fact that any of this is even considered academic work is hilarious.
This article is a rambling opinion piece, which I should say, is pretty representative of the whole field.
The idea that any of this "work" should be treated as definitive enough to drive political actions and ideological prescriptions the way it has turned into is simply absurd. It's a bunch of charlatans who produce nothing of value who simply put into prints intellectual masturbation and elaborate sophistry.
It was a fun game to play, but at the end of the day, that's all it was. A game. A word game. Congrats, they proved that if you play on semantics and ask "why" for long enough you reach a point where nothing means anything. Kids tend to figure that one out in elementary school too.

[AngloSaks]

Just like meditation is not actually about letting all feelings go so you can feel blissful emptiness, but a way of feeling what you really feel, what you feel underlying ideas of feelings, and what really is important to you instead of what you've learned to think is important, this kind of critical thinking isn't about attempting to prove everything to be empty, untrue, a mere construction, etc., etc., but it's about finding where we are fixing certain realities to constructs and not letting ourselves continue further into ever greater nuance and contextualisation and 'further truth' about them. Just like everything else, people strip the nuance out of something until it means at best a shell of what it's supposed to mean, but often even completely the opposite. That an awareness of lack of nuance and an attempt to bring people's attention to it should merely be a victim of that very lack of ability to perceive nuance is only natural, and actually a confirmation.

[albertcapley]

Post modernism and critical theory Not the same thing, you'll find, in fact, that it fits much better under social conflict theories than post modern thought. Why do people keep insisting that everything is "postmodern"? I even see people using post modern interchangeably with Marxism which is... Silly, to be blunt.

[johnbrown]

See: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
50th Anniversary Edition
Fourth Edition, Thomas S. Kuhn

[LiquidDemocracyNH]

Translation: I criticized objective truth because i believed it to be reinforcing the ideas of the privileged (like straight white dudes) because I am Left-Wing.

But now i see people who are Right-Wing criticizing the objective truth about clinate change...so...

*Shrugs while providing no answers*

[Samsgarden]

Why not hold a superposition? Why repent?

[d.lav.]

Please, please take care to distinguish (social) 'constructivism' from (social) 'constructionism'. It's a subtle but important difference. Constructivism is an empirical, interdisciplinary approach to developmental science (eg, 'individuals as problem-solvers') whereas constructionism is an approach to meaning-making that assumes the primacy of an arbitrary system of signs. They are not at all the same thing. The former has very little to say on the 'politics' of sign systems and the latter has very little to say on the developmental learning mechanisms that might underpin ontogenesis.

[draweveryone]

Dewey and Honneth offer the model of critique that Latour is searching for!

[richardouvrier]

Laboratatory Practices: the Social Construction of scientific facts. Bruno Latour.

[shannonm.townsend]

Now I know where James Lindsay & co got their inspiration.

[roundninja]

My impression is that the earlier generations of thinkers, like Kuhn and Foucault, had some genuine insight, but second and third rate intellectuals like Latour tried to follow in their footsteps, eventually leading to a situation where discourse is dominated by people who don't really deserve to be called intellectuals at all.

[donniekak]

I’d like to see a postmodernist create anything objectively real.

[socksonmafeet]

This latour guy traded CT for dogmatic liberalism after realizing the former no longer served the latter

[dadsonworldwide]

Don't confuse philosophical concepts with actual maps of chaos theory or that everything interesting occurs in critical extreme states. That between order and chaos we find patterns.
These are not the samethings