The dire need [and current] lack of a critique of "system", i.e. not a
critique of one system (operating system, financial system, political
system), but of the very notion of system itself that obscures more than
it clarifies. System as a speculative, un-empirical [scholastic]
proposition that is a signifier without an empirical signified; a claim
that certain entities or phenomena can be summarized under the same
concept without any objective backing.
What we are experiencing now is not the collapse of systems or
ideologies, but the collapse of the ideology of systems. [Bertalanffy,
General Systems Theory, cybernetics, structuralism, media theory,
Heidegger's philosophy of technology.] "System" as the empty signifier
having replaced the older empty signifier of "God". A vehicle of
suspending/postponing individual agency and responsibility, with "the
system" as a general excuse. If there is something to
unite "systems", it is this very fiction (permeating structuralism,
anthropology, sociology, economy, science and computing, media studies).
What would a culture - a politics, economy, humanities and science,
engineering and technology - be that would radically do without a
fiction of "system"?
