Renowned French philosopher Jacques Ranciere presented a speech critiquing modern critical thinking to Dartmouth students and professors on Thursday. After the lecture in the Haldeman Center, attendees engaged the tweed-clad philosopher in a 25-minute question-and-answer session about topics ranging from ignorance to propaganda to the Bush administration's use of the media.
Ranciere is an professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Paris-VIII, St. Denis, and has written over 20 books challenging various aspects of societal relationships and logic.
He earned fame in the 1960s with the publication of "Reading Capital," a philosophical text coauthored by his mentor, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Ranciere has devoted much of his life to exploring political discourse and society's conception of class and aesthetic theory. More recently, he has focused his attention on what types of situations justify human rights interventions and war.
Thursday's lecture, titled "The Misadventures of Critical Thinking: how the critique of fetishism, consumerism, spectacle etc. fueled either sheer melancholy or anti-democratic rage," offered insight into modern cynicism, politics and frustration with capitalism.
"There is something wrong with critical thinking today," Ranciere said. He theorizes that although the concepts and frameworks of traditional critical thinking still exist, their current usage today reverses their original aim of action to inaction. Ranciere corroborated his argument with the examples of clashing images used in collage art and real life situations.
Ranciere explained the idea of critical thinking that does not result in action with an example of the view of protest as spectacle. In this case, a protester is not taken seriously because he is seen as a narcissist, drawing attention to himself or coming off as someone who is acting out of self interest.
"Any protest is a spectacle, and any spectacle is a commodity," Ranciere said.
Through collages composed of Vietnam War atrocities laid over scenes of American consumerism and prosperity, Ranciere described the role of art in unmasking truths and making them accessible to the public. He concluded that exposure to "truths" was not enough to incite reaction; the mere existence of these images is not revolutionary but is simply evidence of our own self-awareness.
"My idea is that it never was a question of ignoring reality, it was a question of how do you know your role in the system?" Ranciere said. For him, the only way to move past cynicism of society's initial level of perception is to recognize that valuable knowledge is not just information and truth-seeking, but rather the ability to continue to question.
His work continually struggles with the conflict between equality and the existence of politics. For Ranciere, politics are synonymous with democracy. No suitable model of equality exists to ground politics and therefore it is a principle that can accomplish little in society.
The Leslie Humanities Center sponsored the lecture.
