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Title: The Critical Theory of Technology by Andrew Feenberg ISBN: 0-19-506855-6 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Super....if you're a Marxist
Comment: For many, Stalinism is proof that even the most utopian philosophies cannot survive the technical imperatives brought on by technological society. This book represents a powerful challenge to that view. After engaging a wide range of Marxist, existentialist, post-structuralist, Weberian, and post-modernist positions on the relationship of technology to politics and culture, Feenberg ultimately formulates a new and optimistic way of understanding this relationship. This is his Critical Theory of Technology.

Since technology (and technological rationality) are his book's subject matter, Feenberg often appears to think that technology (and the ways in which we think about it) are all that matter. While I'm sure he is well aware that this isn't the case, his exclusive focus on technology fails to adequately put its significance into perspective. Furthermore, Feenberg seems to analyze technology's "significance" almost exclusively in terms of its implications for Marxist goals. This doesn't detract from the quality of his analysis, but it renders his challenge to Heidegger somewhat moot since he fails to engage technology's ontological relationship to the individual. Feenberg never seriously engages Heidegger's critique of technology; he merely brushes it aside as being "overly deterministic."

In fact, Feenberg seems to have some difficulties engaging thinkers that are not part of the tradition of Marxism and/or Critical Theory. For example, the section on Michel Foucault presents a pitiful misreading of Foucault's thought. Whereas Foucault's methodological approach casts serious doubt on Marcuse's utopianism, Feenberg seems to want to lump these two thinkers together. The results are embarassing. For Marxist ideologues looking to be told what they want to hear, this book is excellent. However, for readers of Heidegger and Foucault (or for the general public) who are looking for a book that challenges their assumptions about technology, this book isn't that great.

Overall, Critical Theory of Technology performs an excellent study of the relationship of technology and technological rationality to Marxism and Marxist politics, but while it claims to settle the questions raised by Ellul, Heidegger, and Foucault, its responses to these questions are largely nonexistent.