Why the Way We Think Is Broken? Lessons from Cultural Theory

For decades, the intellectual’s primary instrument has been the "debunk." We have been trained to peel back the layers of reality to reveal the social constructions, power dynamics, and projections lurking beneath. Yet, we now find ourselves standing in a landscape of ruins. We live in an age of "instant revisionism," where the smoke of a catastrophe has barely settled before conspiracy theories—mimicking the very language of academic critique—rise to cloud the horizon. The tools once used to emancipate the public are now wielded by extremists to dissolve hard-won evidence, from the reality of climate change to the bedrock of historical fact.

The modern critic has become "clever" to the point of sterility. We have perfected the art of destruction, but in our efficiency, we have left nothing standing. To move beyond this quiescence, we must look to the insights of Roland Barthes and Bruno Latour, and to a new generation of researchers who are trading the urge to destroy for a new kind of care. The mission is no longer to subtract reality, but to assemble and protect it.

1. The Trap of "Speech": Why Authority Is a Performance

The crisis of modern thought begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium. Roland Barthes drew a sharp line between "Speech" and "Writing," placing the teacher—the traditional figure of authority—firmly on the side of Speech. In Barthes’ topography, speech is the domain of the Law. It demands clarity, a regulated speed of delivery, and a performance of mastery that brook no hesitation.

But speech is inherently irreversible. You cannot erase a spoken word; you can only append another utterance to "correct" it—a process Barthes likened to Penelope’s weaving, a chain of augmentative corrections that only serves to reveal the speaker’s unconscious. This creates what he termed the "odor of speech"—a narcissistic remanence where the speaker’s body and ego remain persistently attached to their words. Writing, by contrast, is "atopical." It falls like a meteorite, traveling far from the body of the author, pure and detached from the "smell" of the speaker’s self-regard. For the intellectual, the choice is a precarious one:

"The choice is gloomy: conscientious functionary or free artist, the teacher escapes neither the theatre of speech nor the Law played out on its stage: the Law appears not in what is said but in the very fact of speech."

To truly subvert authority, we must move away from the sententia—the act of penal speech—and toward the "Text," a space where the Law is dismissed and polysemy is allowed to flourish.

2. Stop Debunking, Start Gathering: Latour’s Pivot

If Barthes identifies the trap of authority, Bruno Latour identifies the exhaustion of the "critical spirit." Latour argues that the traditional critic—the "Zeus-like" figure who prides himself on lifting the rug from under the feet of the naïve believer—has finally run out of steam.

Latour exposes the "Critical Trick": a maneuver where the critic is an unrepentant anti-fetishist toward beliefs they dislike (treating them as mere human projections) while remaining a rigid positivist toward the "facts" they favor (treating them as indisputable causalities). This approach has created a desert where critics rule over nothing. The solution is to shift from "Matters of Fact"—cold, objectified, and used to shut down debate—to "Matters of Concern." These are the rich, fragile gatherings of humans and non-humans.

The task of the modern intellectual is not to debunk but to protect and to care. This requires a "stubbornly realist attitude"—not the realism of the rock-kicker, but the realism of the "Gathering." The critic must become an assembler and a protector of things that are inherently fragile, offering an arena where all participants can be held firmly in place.

3. The "Sunrise" Thesis: Making Research Matter

Theory is only as potent as its application in the "conjunction"—the intersection where global forces meet local lives. Engaging in "cultural research" means identifying these "matters of concern" in the visceral reality of the field. Consider the sites where theoretical fragility manifests:

• Border Security: In Malaysia, the identity card is a site of biopolitical power that dictates community belonging. It is not just a card; it is a point of affective contestation. During the Ramadan season, it manifests in the gaze of the community: Are you allowed to eat? Who questions you when you do? The card becomes an instrument of affective control.
• Food Sovereignty: In Jakarta, food security is not merely a biological metric but an "ecology" of performance. It is a negotiation of family identity across a triad of ethnicities: Javanese, Eastern Indonesian, and Chinese Indonesian.
• Alternative Pedagogy: Among Rohingya refugees, the development of "alternative knowledge systems" is a radical act of identity formation against a backdrop of displacement and exclusion.

To make such research effective, one must apply the "Sunrise" metaphor. In an era of neoliberal instrumentalization, researchers often chase "High Noon" topics—issues that are currently trending. But by the time a rigorous study is complete, those topics are at "Sunset," their relevance faded. The visionary researcher chooses a "Sunrise" topic, ensuring that their work will reach its "High Noon" precisely when it is finished.

4. Writing as a Political Act: The Ethics of the Intellectual

Writing is the researcher’s primary tool, but it must be understood as a "mass gesture" against fixed social symbolics. Because to speak is always to exercise a will for power, the writer must use their craft to dismiss the Law and allow for a "dispersion of desire." This requires navigating two distinct forms of discourse:

• Terrorist Discourse: This is a lucid violence of language that expresses the inherent force of the word. It is only salvaged when it allows for the "gap" of the unconscious, refusing to be a simple, closed message.
• Repressive Discourse: This is the discourse of the "good conscience" or the "liberal." It is characterized by an equilibrium of "neither/nor" and motions of balance that ultimately serve to maintain the status quo.

The intellectual’s ethical duty is to engage in research as writing—an adventure of the signifier that refuses to be shrunken into a mere "result" or a secularized summary.

5. From Ruins to Mansions: The Super-Critical Mind

In the ruins of critique, we must revisit Allan Turing’s "atomic pile" analogy. Turing noted that most minds are "sub-critical"; an idea injected into them gives rise to less than one idea in reply, eventually dropping into "quiescence" like a piano string no longer struck. The goal of the researcher is to be "super-critical."

A super-critical mind takes a single neutron of thought and generates a whole theory of secondary, tertiary, and remote ideas until the entire pile is transformed. The debunker is sub-critical; they kill the neutron. The writer who assembles is super-critical; they provide "mansions for the souls."

In an age characterized by critical barbarity and the destruction of truth, the challenge is clear. We cannot remain sub-critical, watching our reality be subtracted by the very tools meant to explain it. We must become the gatherers, the composers, and the caretakers of our world.

In an age of destruction, are you a critic who subtracts reality, or a writer who assembles it?

References

• Barthes R (1977). “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers.” Image Music Text (trans. S

Health). New York: Harper Perennial/Fontana, 190–215.

• Marx K (1990). “The Working Day.” Capital: A Critique of Political Economy

(trans. B Fowkes). London: Penguin, 340–416.

• Latour B (2004). “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to

Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004), 225–48.