Η κριτική θεωρία στην εποχή της μεσοποιημένης επικοινωνίας

Abstract

According to traditional patterns of critical thought, the validity of practical claims can be established through the public use of Reason by autonomous subjects who at the same time constitute themselves as members of a political community. This model has been attached to the discursive modes of intersubjectivity that characterize the public sphere of bourgeois society: face-to-face discussion in common with reading fragments of print culture. Today the above model is heavily criticized in terms of the major transformations brought about by the mass media and information technologies. The writer aims at reviving the argumentative armory of the traditional model through the establishment of a necessary interconnection between the discourses of autonomy, the critical and public use of Reason, on the one hand, and media theory on the other. Televisual as well as informational publicity do not set aside but simply complement the critical powers of the subject; however, the latter has to adopt a reflective stance on the question of modes of interaction that re-mediate the public sphere and the linkages between nature, society and technological culture. And this notwithstanding the increasing contestation of the cognitive background of communicative action, the decentralization of moral consciousness and the radical permutations of critical thought.