Acta Academica: Critical views on society, culture and politics

Marcien Towa, father of Cameroonian Critical Theory: a comparison with Max Horkheimer

Adoulou Bitang — 2023-12-06

In this paper, I examine the extent to which Marcien Towa (1931-2014) can be considered the Father of Cameroonian Critical Theory. In this regard, I compare what can be called his social philosophy with the project of a critical theory of society, as outlined by Max Horkheimer (1895-1973). I specifically consider Marcien Towa’s idea of philosophy, which I confront with Horkheimer’s project from the perspectives offered by their sociopolitical premises, conceptual references, and progressive goals. On each of these aspects, I discover sufficient correspondences that allow me to argue that Towa and Horkheimer, who barely knew each other, formulated a somewhat similar claim, namely to provide a critical theory of society, whose aim is not only to understand society but more importantly to change it.

Self-realizing a lived existence in service of emancipation: Tsenay Serequeberhan’s activist hermeneutics

Justin Sands — 2023-12-06

Through his own activistic hermeneutics, Sereque berhan crafts a philosophy which allows African(a) persons pathways to self-realization and self-emancipation from Western cultural imperialism. He does this through a unique reading of Heidegger to arrive at a hermeneutics of existence, and through Gadamer to posit a specific historicity which he calls ‘our heritage’. This article first charts how Serequeberhan articulates these concepts, and then explores their prescriptive, activist intent. The upshot of this is a stronger appreciation of Serequeberhan’s work and how it provides a fresh approach through which we can better understand existence in a globalized, postcolonial, late capitalist society. For Western readers especially, it offers a framework to better describe the relationship between, the self, others, and the historical interactions between them in a world fraught with enclosure and harmful ideologies.

Borrowing practices in modern revolution-making: from Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte to Rancière’s The Names of History

Matthias Pauwels — 2023-12-06

Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte has served as a locus classicus for postmodern interpretations of Marxism’s contemporary legacy and relevancy due to its thematisation of the performative, imaginary, psychological and linguistic aspects of revolutionary politics. This work has been used to redeem and rethink Marxian revolutionary politics along postmodern lines beyond its orthodox varieties, positioning Marx as an important forerunner of contemporary “post-Marxian” radical philosophy. I here argue that Jacques Rancière should feature prominently in this scholarship on the so-called postmodern Marx. Although having first offered a scathing reading of The Eighteenth Brumaire in The Philosopher and His Poor (1983), I demonstrate how Rancière offers a more affirmative yet implicit interpretation in The Names of History (1992). By determining the nature, value and potential of Rancière’s poststructuralist reworking of central themes from The Eighteenth Brumaire, I aim to deepen understanding of radical politics’s performative and affective aspects.

A Benjaminian appraisal of mass culture and its technologies of reproduction

Mark Jacob Amiradakis — 2023-12-06

This paper reconstructs the views of Walter Benjamin - with particular focus and emphasis on his analyses of mass culture and its reproductive technologies. This reconstruction is intended to highlight how Benjamin managed to develop a powerful, insightful and multifaceted theoretical platform from where the contemporary technologies of mass communication and modern culture can be assessed and understood. This line of ana- lysis and investigation highlights how the first gene- ration of critical theorists found themselves in a particularly nuanced, antagonistic and dialectically laden position with regard to the technologies of mass communication and the mass culture of the 20th century. It is further hoped that this reconstruction will aid us in our attempts to come to grips with the new communicational technologies confronting the society of the 21st century.

‘A love note to our future selves’: the coaching imperative in platform cultures

Panos Kompatsiaris — 2023-12-06

This article looks at the imperative of life coaching on media platforms as a broader social technology and a technology of the self. Life coaching suggests that a better future self can be achieved through the constant training of one’s personality, body, taste, preferences, emotions, image, communication skills, and a myriad of other life aspects. I understand the coaching imperative as a wider mandate of self- improvement standing at the crossroads of the wellness and spirituality industries (e.g. mindfulness, yoga, self-help), the body industry (e.g. fitness, health, exercise), guidance and counselling (e.g. ‘how to become a millionaire’, ‘how to become an alpha male’) and the affordances of media platforms. Using literature on micro-celebrities and platform studies as well as research on life coach training programmes, books, and instructions, I argue that the ‘self’ in this narrative is an ongoing project, constantly under supervision and reframing. The imperative to improve assembles a productive process composed of technical infrastructure, e.g. self-tracking devices, tests, and apps, and labour power, e.g. self-labour, the labour of the therapist, the coach, and the analyst.

On the proletarian public sphere and its contemporaneity: crises, class and the media

Yiannis Mylonas — 2023-12-06

This article attempts a critical enquiry into contemporary politics and culture as characterized by a prolonged capitalist crisis and its concomitant economic, social, political, and environmental dimensions. The article highlights the position of the working class today, and its critical potential for a politics of social change, and socialism. Class is understood in intersectional terms, taking into consideration the associations of ethnicity, race and gender in the formation of classed subjects in a globalized world. The experience of the lower classes in structural as well as political terms, is largely negated from publicity, or assimilated and distorted by the media and cultural industries. This has dire consequences for understanding the crisis, its causes, effects, and possible solutions, interpellating the working class and the poor to bourgeois norms and sensibilities. The negation of proletarian voices and the mediation of the proletarian experience by hegemonic bourgeois ideas is theoretically discussed, drawing on the proletarian public sphere notion, and also by looking at empirical contexts of media practices (notably the mainstream news coverage of the Greek/European economic crisis of the 2010’s, and the European “refugee crisis” from 2015 onwards). By not addressing the systemic foundations of crises (e.g., economic, humanitarian) in their complexity, the insecurities triggered by neoliberalism are articulated by liberal pundits and mainstream media through discourses blaming targeted groups (e.g., migrants and workers of the European periphery). Hence, the development of effective antagonistic politics, relies on the creation of both organizational forms and communication structures, to produce shared meanings and identities, as well as political goals and strategies; class perspectives are crucial to overcome the prolonged, current political impasse that capitalist society reproduces, and the possibility to overcome the crises that capitalism produces.

Comparative digital protest cultures in South Africa and Tamil Nadu: #feesmustfall, #Jallikattu, and Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) - a case of surveillance and diasporic potential

Jabulani Nkuna — 2023-12-06

This paper explores three protest movements differing in scale and scope in two regions in the world. #feesmustfall (2015-2016) was a social media movement in South Africa to protest against prohibitive hikes in university fees. #Jallikattu (2017) was a social media movement in Tamil Nadu (India) to lift a ban imposed by the Supreme Court of India against an ancient cultural sport with bulls. Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a South African social media movement to raise issues related to shack dwellers. While there is literature focusing on these movements individually (Bosch 2016, Kalaiyarasan 2017, Mdlalose 2014), a comparative approach offers some alternate insights into how state power manifests in the age of digital capitalism. Habermas (1987, 1989) theorised the transformation of the public sphere and key to understanding how these publics contest existing power structures is his explication of authentic communicative action. Using Fuchs’s (2016) and Zuboff’s (2019) analyses of social media activism, we examine police brutality and surveillance in these three movements. The classical model of diaspora (Harutyunyan 2012) is introduced to show how it manifests in two of the protest movements, and contemporary notions of diaspora (Grossman 2019: 1265) are explored to see what they could offer to diverse protest cultures.

The individual in the gig society: is the gig economy exploitative of the informal economy, or a means of empowerment?

Danelle Fourie — 2023-12-06

This article argues that the gig economy is an exploitative extension of the informal economy. With its decentralised promise of individual entrepreneurship, I will argue that it places undue burdens on the worker as an ‘independent contractor’ that would otherwise be upheld by the employer. I will do so by applying a Marcusian analysis of the gig economy, highlighting two primary concerns. First, Marcuse’s critique of ‘industrial rationality’ explains how industrial rationality creates the framework for – and justification of – exploitation within the gig economy. Second, as Wendy Brown notes, following Marcuse, the gig economy promotes the neoliberal notion of ‘self-care’ as a means of absolving corporations from any duty towards their employees. More specifically, ‘self-care’ within the gig economy forms part of the exploitation of workers within the informal economy which is often viewed as a buffer to absorb the unemployed within a neoliberal society. Building on this critique, I refer to the work of Byung-Chul Han and his concept of ‘self-exploitation,’ arguing that the gig economy should be considered an extension of an informal economy, in which workers are left in a perpetual state of servitude.

The simultaneous atomisation and massification of neoliberal reason

Kiasha Naidoo — 2023-12-06

Neoliberal reason is often defended for its supposed radical individualism. While critics of neoliberalism are right to problematise the atomising effects of this sort of individualism, an immanent critique of neoliberalism helps us to see that this atomisation does not necessarily lead to the development of individuality. That is, I will suggest that neoliberal individualism does not make room for individuality at all. I will focus on the neoliberal tendency to constrain human activity to the ends of the firm and argue that because of this, neoliberal reason cannot create the conditions for subjects to act on their potentiality. Rather than allowing for individuality, I will suggest that the neoliberal proliferation of the logic of the firm has an effect that is instead massifying. Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of capitalism in their chapter on the culture industry helps us to understand and critique capitalist massification by offering the notion of pseudoindividuation. I will argue that the massification of people occurs when they are subjected to some end outside themselves, such as participation in the maximisation of capital. When we turn to a discussion on neoliberal reason, drawing on Foucault and Brown, we are interested in how a kind of capitalist logic comes to dominate every aspect of our lives. While the concepts seem to be at odds with one another, I will read Foucault and Brown to suggest that neoliberalism is both atomising and massifying. That is, the neoliberal goal of maximising capital puts subjects in competition with one another while simultaneously subjecting them all to the same end outside of themselves. Yet, capital maximisation is not a substantive end in itself, since capital is, by definition, only a means to some other end. Neoliberal reason thus leaves subjects in a state of discontent that is brought about by the constant striving toward a goal which can never be met – more capital can always be had. Capital, by definition, cannot be understood as an end, but can only be understood as a means. That is, the neoliberal subject is not only socially alienated (atomised) but is also constrained in the potentiality for participating its own ends, and thus has no real opportunities for individuality.

In medias res: the diminishing of historical continuity in modern thought

Kara Te Water — 2023-12-06

Innovation and future predictions are discussed as the main goals of modern technology. Living in this empirical, modern world set on the future has the possibility of diminishing the value of historical continuity as observation and outcome-based theory take precedence over contemplation and tradition. It is proposed that the forgetfulness of modernity creates a stilted perception of time and thought which results in a dissonance between the perceiving subject and their surroundings. This is exacerbated by digital media as it mostly frames information as an attractive or trending source of amusement rather than as a possibility for edification. The result of this dissonance between the subject and their surroundings and the influence of digital media can be seen in the thoughtless or repetitive action and the abdication of action altogether in favour of escape from reality. This is problematised in as far constructive action for the well-being of the individual cannot be sustained in terms of the current engagement with digital technology.

Drawing on thinkers such as Connerton (1989, 2009), Davidson (2004), Habermas (1987, 1989), a discussion follows regarding how the diminishing historical continuity in thought can lead to the manipulation and a lack of rationality discussed in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s culture industry thesis. To adopt the approach of continuity as embodied in the phrase in medias res(in the midst of things) in interpretation, rather than an observation assuming novel activity, may bring an alternative consideration for how modern technology (specifically the digital) can be used to assist the individual in taking contextual action rather than trying to escape action altogether while reframing the potential of digital technology towards a constructive, achievable standing rather than resigning it to a problematic system of distraction and degradation of thought.

A social constructivist understanding of culture for environmental justice and policy

Abiodun Paul Afolabi — 2023-12-06

In addressing the environmental threats to cultural resources, some environmental ethicists have taken for granted the idea that culture has an essential character of change that is to be welcomed. In this article, I show that there are pressing moral issues, in this age of environmental crisis, that lurk behind the idea that culture has an essential nature of change. One question that I address is whether, if change is always a pervasive part of culture, we should be morally neutral about changes to cultural values and resources, especially when such change is harmful and external forces are responsible. To address this question, I adopt a social constructivist understanding of culture to show why concerns for loss of culture in the event of environmental crisis that is qualified as cultural change is normatively flawed. I argue that this perspective on culture, yet to be considered in environmental justice literature, prescribes not being neutral about cultural change in addressing environmental issues that affect cultural resources. I demonstrate that seeing culture in this new light has revealing implications for environmental justice. I conclude that failure to integrate this idea of environmental justice runs the risk of dismissing what is harmful to some cultural groups under the guise of ‘normal’ cultural change.

New radicalism – a call for discussion

Platform — 2023-12-06

Why is the world at war? - a call for engagement.

Platform — 2023-12-06

Culture industry 2.0: Africa, Global South, world

Ewa Latecka — 2023-12-06