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I just finished Langdon Winner’s The Whale and the Reactor. By finished, I mean: “I skimmed the last three chapters to see if he had anything interesting to say.” While the first two chapters were pretty groovy, especially his treatment of Wittgenstein (which isn’t quite as groovy a discussion of technology as Bruno Latour’s definition of technology as a “swerve”), Winner soon fell into the common trap of people doing dialectically inflected social philosophy that I like to refer to as “empty hand-wringing.” This is the same problem I have with Adorno and Horkheimer’s (rather classic) essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In it Adorno (sort of the quintessential cranky old man), spends quite a few pages discussing why movies and jazz are destroying society. While I might be inclined to agree, so what? Sure, it was pretty amazing in the 1930s for Marxists to start worrying about culture as a battleground of class warfare, but why are we still reading it today? I would suggest the fact that we are still reading it today is why I have such a problem with Winner’s book.

Rather than offer any sort of program, Adorno and Horkheimer author an essay that basically lambastes the culture industry as dirty and dangerous for the entirety of the piece. While that’s all well and good, they never get around to any kind of suggestion as to what might be done. Is it enough to not go to the movies? Or listen to jazz? As Winner smartly points out in The Whale and the Reactor:

But given how central television has become to the content of everyday life, how it has become the accustomed topic of conversation in workplaces, schools, and other social gatherings, it is apparent that television is a phenomenon that, in the larger sense, cannot be “turned off” at all. Deeply insinuated into people’s perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors, it has become an indelible part of modern culture (Winner 12).

So, of course Adorno doesn’t want to suggest that we can (or even should) merely not go to the pictures. What is he suggesting though? Further, what is Winner suggesting? He offers that we should strive for “a process of technological change disciplined by the political wisdom of democracy,” but what does that even mean (55)? Rather, at the end, as with Adorno, Winner leaves with the feeling that we are all really and truly fucked. I mean, end of the world fucked. People are waking up and realizing that nuclear testing poisoned the air, chemical dumping poisoned the water, and food additives poisoned our bodies and minds. Great. Thanks.

No, seriously, though, that’s the same shit that Adorno pulls. You can’t leave your audience there. It’s not enough to call out scientists and business executives. Everyone knows they are up to no good (whether they mean to or not). What can I do? It’s like that scene in Network: after reading this book, I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. That’s not a place to end. But, sadly, that’s all cultural studies ever seems to do. While I’m not saying that all works in this vein should end with some sort of program for revolutionary praxis, why do all of them always seem to end just before? I suppose the more “generous” readers would say that Adorno and Winner want you to figure out what to do. Fuck that. People having been trying to figure out what to do for generations. It doesn’t seem to be working. It’s very easy to find fault. I think people need to start finding hope.

Image Credit: Socialism by the Backwater by tidsrom