Suchergebnisse

Ausgehend von einem 1978 im Auftrag des damaligen französischen Präsidenten Giscard d'Estaing von Simon Nora und Alain Minc verfaßten Berichts, in dem das Ende der Expertokraten-EDV und die Entwicklung zu einer Datenverarbeitung von großer Verbreitung, nämlich die Entwicklung der Mikro-EDV und der Netze konstatiert wird ("L'informatisation de la societe") wird ein Überblick über die französische Diskussion in der einschlägigen Fachliteratur zum Verhältnis von Technologieentwicklung und sozialem Wandel gegeben. "Die besondere Art von Kommunikation und Konvivialität, die den neuen Medien eigen ist, die Delokalisierung und Entmaterialisierung sowie die neuen Formen von Identität und Sozialität, die sie hervorrufen, verändern die Beziehungen zwischen Öffentlichkeit und Privatbereich und daher die Sozialisationsbedingungen der neuen IuK-Technologien selbst tiefgreifend." Diese Veränderungen mit ihren machtpolitischen und kulturellen Implikationen werden im einzelnen problematisiert.(UN)

New technological programs developed by the French government to facilitate mass communication via computers, video monitors, & other electronic devices are discussed in terms of their social impact. An attempt is made to ascertain whether these new programs & their accompanying policy of modernization are part of postmodernity, & whether we are on the threshold of a new epoch characterized by the information society. The disappearance of the local in favor of the spatial & global is discussed, & new forms of communication engendered by new technologies are explored. Also considered is the tendency of new communication technologies to give rise to value pluralism to alter significantly the way the subject apprehends him/herself. It is concluded that the social, political, & ideological effects of new communication technologies are ambivalent.

In his Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns ([Theory of Communicative Action] Frankfurt, 1982 [see abstract of English translation in SA 36:1/88c00922 & 00923]), Jurgen Habermas emphasized the necessary revision of critical theory under the double pressure of a profoundly changed socioeconomic context & of the postmodern philosophical & sociological theories (see also Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne [The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity] Frankfurt, 1985). He nevertheless seeks to reaffirm the normative content of modern reason. Since he argues that the communicative action itself is promoted by the process of modernization-rationalization, the question is how far his engagement for reason, in the form it has taken in his recent publications, can confront the new stage of the dialectic of enlightenment that is the postmodern condition. Here, it is shown that this dependence of the normative content on its actualizations is both Habermas's strength & weakness: nothing guarantees that rationalization will issue into a communicative practice such as to realize it in consensus. Habermas acknowledges not only the modern differentiation of reason but also what J. F. Lyotard calls the "dispersion of the genres of discourse" (Le Differend [The Dispute], Paris, 1983). Communicative rationality is then caught in a contradiction that it can only escape by turning back to positions which it has refused: the a priori of a transcendental communicative community or a philosophy of history underlying interaction. If it seeks to satisfy its own requirements, the quasi-transcendental validity of norms is abandoned to the agonistics of pragmatic encounters. Modified AA

Mit Bezug auf vorhandene Literatur beschreibt der Autor unter ideologie- und methodenkritischen Aspekten die postmodernen Philosophieansätze im historischen Kontext. Die Leitfrage richtet sich auf das Verständnis von Postmoderne als Bruch mit der Vergangenheit oder als dialektische Krise. In den verschiedenen Gesellschaftstheorien wird überwiegend die totalitäre Ablehnung der Vernunft der Moderne sichtbar. Sie führen jedoch teilweise in der Weiterentwicklung des Anspruchs an das Mensch-Natur-Verhältnis zu einer neuen Rationalität, die sie als dialektische Krise relativiert. (HD)

An interview concerned marginally with poststructuralism but more often with Michel Foucault's views on French intellectual history since WWII. Topics discussed include: Nietzsche, Marxism in conjunction with other schools of thought, Foucault's books, & the notion of postmodernism. Structuralism is interpreted as merely one aspect of a broader twentieth-century tendency toward formal thinking. The interrelation between phenomenology & structuralism is briefly noted, & it is suggested that the major intellectual currents of the 1960s occurred as a result of dissatisfaction with the phenomenological theory of the subject. Foucault's own central problematic is revealed to be the problem of wahr-sagen (saying the truth), & the attempt of the subject to speak the truth about itself. The history of reason & rationality is pondered, & the recent history of the French Left is considered. The question of the continued validity of the Marxist paradigm is posed, & it is noted that French thought after WWII involved repeated attempts to integrate Marxism with other philosophical positions, including phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, & Nietzschean theories. J. Weber.

An investigation of the reception of critical theory (CT) in France requires a hermeneutical reconstruction that cannot be restricted to its effects or to factual quotations. It must rather sketch the theoretical horizon conditioning its validity within the French context as well as the reasons that may motivate its disqualification. Such an inquiry shows that CT has been blockaded by three historical circumstances: the existential trend, Louis Althusser's theory, & (in the late 1960s & 1970s) a methodical destruction of historical materialism. This hermeneutical reconstruction of the reception simulates collisions that did not actually happen insofar as the reception could not take place; but CT is, by these means, confronted with theoretical evolutions that call it radically into question. AA.

The deep economic crisis that Europe has been facing for several years can be seen as both a cause and a consequence of the political indecision with which the European Community or European Union has been living for so long now. The end-goal of this unique political project has never been clarified. While its objective - to guarantee peace, security, justice and wealth - was certainly explicit from the start and has been repeated in the various treaties underlying the Community or Union, the institutional and political means necessary to attain these goals have so far remained undetermined. I