Critique and education under new climatic and digital conditions from a logic of division to a logic of gathering

Abstract

In this article we argue that the critical paradigm can be understood in terms of a logic of never ending division. As such this paradigm is highly inadequate to help us dealing with two major societal challenges, viz. the digitization of our world and the ecological crisis. We first analyze in greater detail the today dominant critical way of looking, based on a brief historical overview. Then we develop our understanding of the growing impact of digitization in terms of an ontological shift in how we relate to ourselves, others and the world and, hence, in terms of a profound change regarding what it means to inhabit the world. This is because we no longer relate to things, but to information or what Han calls ‘non-things’. This situation, we go on arguing, comes with a radical fragmentation of the world into many personalized private ‘worlds’. This implies the impossibility of experiencing to belong to a shared world. It becomes, then, clear that if we want to address this issue, the critical paradigm won’t suffice. Instead we need a response that is postcritical and that focuses on how we can gather again people around some-thing they have in common. In essence this is an educational gesture. Therefore, we advocate for the importance of practices of collective study, and we conclude this article by arguing that this is also what we are in need of to give an appropriate response to the ecological challenges we are faced with.