Low Theory

Discussion

From an interview of McKenzie Wark by Alexander Galloway:

"Low theory refers to the organic conceptual apparatus a milieu composes for itself, at least partly outside of formal academic situations. Both the labor movement and the avant-garde did that. I think it is useful to have that base, even if it is an attenuated and defeated one. It’s useful to have some perspective outside of the criteria of success of academia itself. After all, many of the “greats” of low theory–Spinoza, Marx, Darwin, Freud–they were not philosophers.

AG: So low theory means anti-philosophy? I’ve noticed that some commentators prefer to define anti-philosophy as a kind of anti-rationalism (that being Badiou’s gripe) or even some type of a mystical romanticism. But these definitions of anti-philosophy never made sense to me.

MW: Badiou thinks philosophy has a monopoly on a certain kind of reason, but more out of institutionalized habit than anything else. You could think of low theory as what organic intellectuals do. It’s defined by who does it and why, rather than by any particular cognitive style. I’m interested in how, after the organic intellectuals of labor, there are organic intellectuals of social movements, everyday life, the experience of women or the colonized, and of new kinds of activity that are not traditional labor in fields like media and computation. Concepts get formed differently and are meant to do different things when you are trying to think through your own action in the world rather that when you are a scholar of action in the world." (http://www.boundary2.org/2017/04/alexander-r-galloway-an-interview-with-mckenzie-wark/)