Every researcher, whether in the fields of science or technology, should legitimately ask themselves what the outcomes of their discoveries will be, what their applications will be, what use will be made of them by those for whom they work, and what harm they may cause. Celia Izoard, who also translated the new 1984 edition of George Orwell published by Agone in 2021, believes she can see a major problem here that should concern everyone. That of “acting without conscience” that has taken hold in the globalized capitalist world order where the demand for profit prevails, at the expense of all other priorities. The “division of labor” has certainly facilitated this abandonment of all ethical reflection on the fruit of one’s labors, whatever the ultimate damage may be. “It’s not me, it’s not what I wanted, and I had nothing to do with it…” Well, whose fault is it then?
In 1969, the terms of what we have a contemporary illustration of in this little book were already being laid down. With, however, a complementary element that has become, so to speak, universal: assumed irresponsibility.
In the same way that industry, intended to free people from work by machines, has so far only alienated them to the work of machines, science, intended to liberate them historically and rationally from nature, has only alienated them to an irrational and anti-historical society.
A mercenary of separate thought, science works for survival and can therefore only conceive of life as a mechanical or moral formula. Indeed, it does not conceive of man as a subject, nor of human thought as action, and that is why it ignores history as a deliberate activity, and turns men into “patients” in its hospitals.
Based on the essential lie of its function, science can only lie to itself. And its pretentious mercenaries have retained, from their priestly ancestors, the taste for and the need of mystery. A dynamic part in the justification of states, the scientific body jealously guards its corporative laws and the secrets of the “Machina ex Deo” that make it a despicable sect.
(…) The current impossibility of research and scientific application without enormous resources has put knowledge, dramatically concentrated, in the hands of the powers that be and directed it towards the objectives of the State. There is no science today that is not at the service of the economy, the military and ideology.
And the Science of ideology shows us its other side, the ideology of Science.
Internationale Situationniste No. 12 – 9/1969
Celia Izoard
Merci de changer de métier
Lettres aux humains qui robotisent le monde
Rebound:
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.