Andrew Feenberg’s brown bag lunch
The other day, Andrew Feenberg, gave a brown bag lunch talk at the School of Communication. Feenberg, aside from being my supervisor, is a Canada Research Chair and heads up the ACT Lab at SFU Harbour Centre. Peter Chow-White organized the year-long brown bag lunch series where various faculty members presented their current work. I typically go for the free sandwiches, but it’s also nice to see what the profs are up to.
Feenberg’s talk was entitled Marxism and the Critique of Rationality: From Surplus Value to the Politics of Technology. I’m the type to get excited just by a title like this, but I have to say, even if you weren’t particularly geeked about it, the talk itself was engaging and accessible. Now I wouldn’t call Andrew a comedian, but he cracks the odd joke or two, usually in his genial, self-depracating style. He began by informing us that he wouldn’t be reading his presentation, as we were trying to eat lunch. Indeed, the conversational approach to his delivery helped make what might have seemed a dry and complex topic quite digestible after all.
In brief, Feenberg’s intent was to respond to the silencing of critique by invoking rationality. He asks: “When an action is rationally justified, how can reason deny its legitimacy?” If it’s rational to receive a good in exchange for money, how could there be anything wrong with our capitalist society? Never mind that within that seeming equivalence of exchange, one class is continually enriched, while the other barely holds its ground.
Feenberg finds a way around this silencing of critique in Marx’s method (clearly distinguished from the content of his theory), which anticipates Foucault’s power/knowledge formulation. The nascent concept of underdetermination in Marx emerged more fully in contemporary science and technology studies, despite its apolitical aspect. According to Feenberg, “this revision of the academic understanding of technology contributes to weakening technocratic rationales for public policy. A new era of technical politics has begun.”
For another small write up, and audio of the talk, check here.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Feenberg is hilarious. awesome. Wouldn’t it be safer to say that Marx functions best solely as a critique of capitalism and not as an actual political/structural model of government. centralized power without a separate system for spreading moral or ethical thinking does not work nor is it capable of handling economic stability or technological innovation. financial prosperity and technological development plummets in a egalitarian thinking system so it would be best….
you know what, good post. keep adding to the discourse.