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Praise the Web

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

David Theo Goldberg
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Extract

Toward the end of his opening lecture in the hermeneutics of the subject (17–19), Michel Foucault draws a distinction between ancient and modern modes of philosophizing. He bases the distinction on differing conceptions of determining the grounds of the true and the false and the subject's access to them. The distinction and shift are well-trodden ground, as we'll see, even if Foucault marks them in characteristically provocative ways. I will argue, though, that with the advent of the World Wide Web the distinction is incomplete, not least in regard to the religious implications of the three modes and their underlying theological considerations. The World Wide Web, in short, signals the emergence of a new way of being and thinking to rival the ancient and the modern, even as it draws on elements of both.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 2 , March 2011 , pp. 448 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

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References

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