masquerading as critique

“Remember the good old days when

Revisionism arrived very late, after the facts had been thoroughly established, decades after bodies of evidence had accumulated? Now we have the

benefit of what can be called instant revisionism. The smoke of the event has

not yet finished settling before dozens of conspiracy theories begin revising

the official account, adding even more ruins to the ruins, adding even more

smoke to the smoke. What has become of critique when my neighbor in

the little Bourbonnais village where I live looks down on me as someone

hopelessly naıve because I believe that the United States had been attacked

by terrorists? Pg 228

I have not been Latour’s biggest supporter throughout this semester but after reading this paper I have taken a new liking to what he is saying due to that fact that he even critiques his previous work and takes responsibility for maybe being wrong. Latour poses the question, what exactly has happened to critique? Latour caught my attention of how critique has changed (run out of steam) when he used the example of 9/11 and the Twin Towers as Jean Baudrillard claimed in her published book that acts of terrorism did not occur (how ridiculous) and posed a conspiracy theory in replace of 'facts'. This is a great example of what Latour meant by saying that critiquing has started to go down the wrong path, a dangerous path. "What has critiquing come to when you are thought to be naive because I believe the United States had been attacked"

Although conspiracy theorists like Baudrillard are usually seen in a negative light they often spread fear among their audience and give "facts" in support of their one-sided argument, this enacts fear of the world around them. Latour makes the monumental point that Critical Theory died a long time ago. He states in his concluding paragraph that we need to get back to becoming critical again in a way that generates more not less, being associated with multiplication and not subtraction. In a nutshell (mom) Latour is stating that Critique should be helpful and not add negativity to ideas or in his example of 9/11, an event. I agree that critique needs to get on the right path and off this dangerous path of destruction because I was a 'victim' myself of dangerous critiquing recently when I was discussing the events that unfolded on 9/11. "Bush planned it are you crazy, we went after the wrong guy".... I am the crazy stupid one for believing in fact and not these conspiracy theories that masquerade as critique.