Doors: 14:30 / Start time: 15:00
Suggested donation: 2 euro

If modern critique was invented during the Enlightenment and became an engine of historical progress with the French revolution, are we currently witnessing its demise? Intellectuals have argued that critique has “run out of steam” (Latour); that it has colonized the humanities at the expense of other methods (Felski); that it is assimilated by the very system it sets out to criticize (Boltanski and Chiapello). Their diagnoses point towards a crisis of critique that unfolds as new fascisms sweep across the Western world and politics does away with truth. Eighty years ago, critical theory didn’t stop fascism. What can we learn from the history of critique, and what power does it have today?

Four invited speakers will discuss the historical and conceptual conditions of critical discourse as well as its current viability (or vanity). The audience is invited to participate.

Invited speakers: 

• Jule Govrin
• Jan-Philipp Kruse
• Luce DeLire
• Hansun Hsiung

Organised by Dennis Schep

Part of the transmediale/CTM Vorspiel 2017 festival