Skip to main content

Post Modernism and the Art of Impossible: A Foucauldian Paradigm of Science, Art, and Power

What do we understand about science in the era of "Technological Rationality"? How do we know about what really do we know? May be, you need not to think too much about these questions. Technology will take care of all sort of "verdictionary" politics (Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics). Technology provides those underneath and beneath rules to derive a sense of truth. The real power lies in "right to decide", to refer Carl Schmitt. Then question is what is truth? How do we know about what is truth? And what are the limitations to know the truth. This is a foucauldian paradigm, an art of impossible, which provides the basis of all "normalising powers". Science is desired by homo sapiens for the sake of power. The master narrator, Francis Bacon, once remarked that "knowledge is power". The quest of knowing is mastering. Ignorance is despised. Even Kantian paradigm went into the similar direction to discipline human minds as per the law of nature, to formalize the very sense of ethics in form of categorical imperatives. And of course, the historians all time, Hegel and Marx went into the similar direction to unearth the law of nature in form of dialectics. The European Enlightenment culture and counter Enlightenment cultures have turned the tide, super-imposed their narratives over the multiple sense of science, arts, and politics which were demonized as per the "verdictiory art of enlightened citizens of the Earth". Wasn't there any possibility to find other models of sciences, other dimensions of politics, other colours of arts? Of course, it was there! But, it was a politics of liberal art which went with the demystification, "demagification", and "the disenchantment of the world"(Weber, Science as a Vocation). Needless to say, that the fact loving citizens, who are in the illusion of fact, started to change the social and cultural milieu as per the requirements of materialism and dialectical materialism. Science as a paradigm became an art to define the possibility of truth and false. Nay, a technology to create, deface, and rationalize a sense of truth which gave the tragedic birth of innumerable possibilities, which in a way, emnanted into an impossible task to decide the validity of truth and false. So many informations, so many possibilities, so many discretions, emanated into an impossible task to decide what is a proper way to live authentically. And humans invested all their possible energies to create some smart and newer technologies to replace the older and traditional ones. Their over-dependence and surplus love over the myriad technological slumber provided enough space for not too indulge in big questions. Life became too faster and narrower. The vision for life contracted in such a way that self interest becomes the simulacrum of life-success and its glorified symbol. Freedom and its ideals were conceived in individualistic and egotistic goals without having any emotional attachment with family, foes, and friends. Western philosophy in that sense taught us some arts to master over others. Every artist was destined to learn, in that environment, to run in the competition of life, and to fight and survive. When Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, it was not a theological pen that proclaimed a sensentional sermon, neither a news room theatrical chord. It was a sociological phenomenon which depicted a new born reality in form of "secularized myth" (Carl Schmitt, Political Theology).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Physical Basis of Conscious Life: A Synthesis of William James's Physiological Psychology

I Introduction: Bridging Physiology and Psychology William James, in his landmark work The Principles of Psychology, provides a foundational framework connecting the brain's physiological mechanisms to the purposive, selective, and unified nature of conscious mental life. This blog analyzes James’s synthesis, which grounds psychological phenomena in the material workings of the nervous system without reducing consciousness to a mere epiphenomenon. We will explore his hierarchical model of the brain, which evolves from simple reflex actions in the lower nerve centers to the complex, deliberative functions of the cerebrum. Key themes include the role of the cerebrum as an organ of foresight and prudence, the physiological mechanism of habit as the process by which experience physically imprints itself upon the brain’s plastic matter, and consciousness's essential function as a “selecting agency” that is causally efficacious in steering the organism toward its own interests. Ultim...
Post a Comment
Read more

Martin Heidegger's Deconstruction of the History of Ontology

I  Introduction In the opening pages of his magnum opus, Being and Time, Martin Heidegger resurrects a question he argues has been buried for millennia, framing his entire project with an epigraph from Plato’s Sophist: “For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression ‘being’. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.” This is no mere academic exercise but a deliberate reawakening of what Heidegger argues is the most fundamental and, paradoxically, the most forgotten question in the history of Western thought. For Heidegger, a pervasive “forgetfulness of Being” has characterized philosophy since antiquity, where the initial, vibrant inquiry into what it means “to be” solidified into a series of unexamined dogmas. The question was not answered and then set aside; rather, it fell into obscurity, concealed by the very traditions that were supposed to preserve it. This blog argues that Heidegger's critical "dest...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Glory of Belief Industry

Disappearance of questions is the pre-condition of artificial certainty. Therefore, it is profitable investment to establish and sustain the belief industry. This industry produces the efficient Man whose substratum is not the divine soul or mental faculty but a non-thinking mind which militantly conform the group solidarity of the masses. When answers are easily available and generated by the Artificial Intelligence, who will take the pain for thinking and unthinking or deliberating to develop logical capacity or for establishing the paradigm of truth? As Ashis Nandy explains the creative process which requires to meditate with the questions and to remain with the questions for a longer period of time to create and unveil the mask of deception. The artistry in epistemic creativity necessitates the patience caring of the questions. The cultivation and exploration of questions and mitigated skepticism to unravel what is said and unsaid, the expressions and silences. Even so called Dark ...
Post a Comment
Read more