Référence : LASH, Scott, Critique of Information , Baltimore, SAGE Publication Ltd, 2002, 256 p.

Thèmes : Introduction et Guide en Digital Media

Mots-clés : Information criticism ; Critical Theory

Langue : Anglais

Format : Imprimé

Compte rendu existant : GOLUMBIA, David, “Critical Theory”, dans The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, p. 100, : “Among the works closest in spirit to that of the original critical theorists with direct application to digital media is Critique of Information (2002) by the Goldsmiths sociologist and cultural theorist Scott Lash. Lash expands on the notion of ideology critique associated with the Frankfurt School to a notion appropriate for the digital age which he calls informationcritique. Lash notes the existence of two modes of critique: first, “the critique of the particular through the universal . . . the sort of critique we have in Habermas, in which the particularism of ‘strategic rationality’ is criticized from the universalism of communicative rationality” (2002, 6), a critique that Lash suggests “is difficult in the information age because of the very speed and immediacy of sociocultural processes.” Second, “the more widespread notion of critique,” he writes, “is the critique of the universal-particular couple itself,” which “rejects propositional logic as the space of ‘the same,’ and operates instead from a critical space of ‘the other.’ ” Rejecting such dualisms even further, Lash writes that the “ ‘out there’ and ‘in here’ no longer make sense in the information age’s Nietzschean problematics of immanence”; “in the age of general informationalization, critique itself must become informational. . . . With the disappearance of a constitutive outside, informationcritique must be inside of information. Critique, and the texts of Critical Theory, must be part and parcel of this general informationalization” (2002, 10). Lash’s is the most abstract of recent extensions of critical theoretical methods into the world of the digital.”

Description existante : “This penetrating book raises questions about how power operates in contemporary society. It explains how the speed of information flows has eroded the separate space needed for critical reflection. It argues that there is no longer an 'outside' to the global flows of communication and that the critique of information must take place within the information itself.The operative unit of the information society is the idea. With the demise of depth reflection, reflexivity through the idea now operates external to the subject in its circulation through networks of humans and intelligent machines. It is these ideas that make the critique of information possible. This book is a major testament to the prospects of culture, politics and theory in the global information society.” Trouvé sur < https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/critique-of-information/book205809 >, consulté le 1er novembre 2016.