Robert Walser’s Topicality and the Descriptive Turn

In his influential essay “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Bruno Latour famously asserts the untimeliness of critique. According to the essay, the mistrustful and skeptical attitude proudly cultivated and celebrated in academia has today become mainstream, a mindless automatic reaction, and is held hostage by right wing populist forces, e.g. to question the fact of global warming. The essay appeared in 2004. 40 years earlier, Susan Sontag wrote the essay “Against Interpretation” (1964) […]