*updatemag

Issue #1
Who let my fish loose?
opens a possibility of exchange
and makes it unavoidable. I give
to the others what I have, and do
not have, and the others give me
what they have and I do not have.
A society of difference, is a society
of commodity exchange, but
also, exchange of communication.
Communication as exchange of
information and also a market
of opinions. We exchange discourses
and information items
as we exchange all other commodities.
This operation leaves
our identities unchanged. So an
act of exchange itself, be it in
the market or within the framework
of communication leaves
our own identity unchanged. We
require freedom of information
and communication and these
are very important goals. But an
actual, initial goal of theoretical
discourse (and i speak now today
as a theoretician) is not merely
to inform the others about what
opinions I personally have. The
scene of theoretical discourse
does not coincide with the scene
of communication. Rather one
stars a theoretical discourse
with a hope that it will change
the attitude of an audience. The
The Critical theory calls for action.
To change the world instead of
trying to understand it. (a very
famous Marxist slogan) To actively
change life instead of wasting time
for contemplation and passively to
live fully and actively instead of
merely surviving. How is theory
formulated? it is not formulated as a
theory, but as a call.
theoretical discourse wants to be not informative,
but transformative discourse. Thus, every
theoretician is necessarily interested in the
transformative power of discourse as such. In
fact, every theoretical discourse can be read
as the description of the conditions of its own
persuasiveness, and of transformative power of
word in general.
So, an explanation of why a discourse can be
transformative and not only informative. Every
discourse offers a scenario, a set of conditions
under which one can expect that a discourse
becomes transformative. Here, a philosopher,
theoretician, a thinker, discovers an uncanny
similarity between his or her own discourse
and the advertisement that calls its listeners to
change and transform themselves. The theoretician
shares, with the advertisement and fashion
a common possibility of a transformative
call. Transformative word. At the same time,
the traditional philosophy attempts to accuse
all the non-philosophical transformative discourses
of being based not on reason and logic,
but exclusively on seduction and manipulation.
So if you look at the history of religion if you
look at the history of philosophy and theoretical
thought it always operates by this kind of
command:
Come now
Change your attitude
Change your life.
If you go back to Christianity to the period of
enlightenment and you read philosophers like
Deleuze of Derrida, even they suggest similar
things; Don’t think in this direction, begin to
think in another direction and so on. It is not so
much an argumentation to call the change of
your direction of attention and your mind.
There is a common ground between all these
beauty contests and reality shows or what ever,
that we experience in our meditated culture
in a very fundamental attitude of any speaker
including the speaker attempting a critique on
this very subject; Let us not believe them, let
us believe to criticise them, Criticise them now.
Do not delay your critique.
The artists answer this call in its ambiguity.
Why would I say that this call is ambiguous?
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