Johanna Drucker

The General Theory of Social Relativity Johanna Drucker

Literary Nonfiction. THE GENERAL THEORY OF SOCIAL RELATIVITY deploys quantum theory, which has been used to describe the physical universe for a century, to the social world, and in so doing presents a radically innovative framework for thinking about social processes. In the early 20th century, theories of quantum physics and general relativity exposed the limits of Newton's classical, mechanical, approach to explaining the forces at work in the physical world. But the social sciences, including critical aesthetics rooted in 19th century political theory, remain caught in a mechanistic paradigm. The formulation of the GTSR offers a non-mechanistic approach to the understanding workings of the social world and the affective forces at work in non-linear politics and aesthetics.