The Emancipatory Force of Critique: A Radical Proposal

A Time for Critique, 2019

What does it mean to think about critique as a political practice? The answer to this question may seem at first obvious: insofar as critique aims at exposing forms of unjust power, critique is political. Is critique political, however, if it arises not in public spaces and in relation to different and often conflicting points of view but in private or institutional spaces where opinions tend to converge? Thinking about such questions, I aim not at an analytic definition of critique, as if critique meant one thing or happened in one kind of space. Rather, my goal is to retrieve the origins of critique in the public space as a practice of freedom, that is, of speaking and acting with citizens and strangers about matters of common concern. A political genealogy of critique is all the more important today, when the practice of critique in advanced capitalist liberal democracies such as the United States seems to be mostly restricted to the activity of "professional thinkers" and the space of the academy, which is at once charged with preserving the tradition of critical thought and maligned for harboring an arrogant intellectual elite. But the academy, as both Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt in their different ways will show us, is not the original home of critique; it is the place to which critique retreats when it loses its footing in the political realm. Critique was born not inside the relatively sheltered intellectual spaces of the academy but in this public space, where it took the form of opposition to the tenacious idea of politics as rule, according to which the few have natural governing authority over the many. Grasping this inaugural task of critique can help make sense of our contemporary predicament, in which even the more limited <i>A Time for Critique</i>,

For some time now, a certain strand of contemporary critical theory has understood its task not in terms of providing a substantive critique of real world power relations, let alone an alternative normative conception of what social relations might be, but of how to justify critique as such: how to " justify those elements which critique owes to its philosophical origins " (Habermas), albeit in a nonfoundationalist manner. This focus on —if not obsession with—the theoretical problem of how to ground one's own critique arose largely as an intervention into the now longstanding debate over positivism and scientism in figurations of the relation between theory and practice. As important as this intervention has been for exposing the dangers of, and social/political philosophy's implication in, a purely technocratic order, it has not been without cost to the very idea of critique itself: the crucial connection between critique and social/political transformation. Seyla Benhabib has characterized the two tasks of critical theory as " explanatory-diagnostic " and " anticipatory-utopian. " In this seminar we explore what each of these tasks might be and how they are connected in various understandings of critique. Central to our discussions will be: (1) an examination of how critique can become moralistic, unrealistic, and apolitical; (2) how this apolitical idea of critique fails to fulfill the task of critically analyzing our current social and political predicament; and (3) what it would mean to figure and practice both tasks of critique in a " realistic spirit. " How might we rethink critique by means of its capacity to posit " new forms/figures of the thinkable " (Castoriadis) that remain connected to the contingent and limited realities of politics? Required Texts: With the exception of the following books, all readings (and some recommended readings) are on CHALK. The books are available on Amazon.com.

Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2009

Philosophy, Politics, Critique , 2024

Tentative answers to the questionnaire for the inaugural issue of the newly launched journal Philosophy, Politics, Critique (PPC)

IWM Junior Visiting Fellows' Conferences, Vol. 30., 2011

In the following synoptic text I discuss some of the most crucial pitfalls that arise when we talk about critique. Confronted with the proclaimed death of history, metaphysics and the subject, the project of emancipatory critique seems to have been in trouble for quite some time. Deprived of a single metanarrative which could provide a solid foundation for transformatory critique, recent debates on this subject have reopened an interesting field of discussion. By first discussing two different but strongly interconnected aspects of critique (the more theoretical and the more social dimension), I reflect on the necessity to treat critique as an epistemological problem within the paradigm of " Situated Knowledges. " Against this backdrop I then discuss certain selected aspects of the aforementioned contemporary debates, which nail down a few important dilemmas like the immunization effect, or the local-versus-global problem. In my conclusion I argue for the urgent need of transdisciplinary communication between the Humanities and the Social Sciences when dealing with critique. In my opinion a meta-critical perspective on critique has to be combined with a sociological analysis of the social conditions (of both scientists and agents) which allow, encourage or frustrate transformatory critique.

All theories of critique rely on a – often implicit – description of the activity that doing critique is supposed to consist in. These “pictures of critique” frame all further distinctions and justifications in the debate about critique and critique’s normativity. After distinguishing three pictures of critique – measuring, disrupting and emancipating critique – I ask whether the theoretical reflection in which a certain conception of critique is elaborated is itself accurately captured by the picture of critique it employs. In other words: Is the theoretical reflection of critique a critical activity according to its own picture of critique? I propose to call only those theories of critique critical theories the theoretical activity of which is a critical activity on their own picture of critique - which are surprisingly few. Most critical theories are thereby revealed to be rather traditional when it comes their own theorizing of critique.

Every reflection in which we theorise what critique is and how to justify it includes an – often implicit – picture of the activity that doing critique is supposed to consist in. A picture of critique presents us with a (very broad outline of a) description of the critical activity which frames all further distinctions and justifications. The most dominant picture of critique is certainly the idea of critique being a measuring activity, thus focusing its justifications on the criteria employed. Yet I am also interested in two alternative pictures of critique which portrait the critical activity not as measuring but as disrupting or as emancipating.

I]deology is the thought of my adversary, the thought of the other. He does not know it, but I do." 1 According to this quotation from Paul Ricoeur, talk about ideology seems to structurally imply a rather problematic understanding of oneselfthe critic -and of one's relation to the other(s) -the agent(s) one is talking about. One's own perspective is strictly separated from the other's. The other is caught in ideology whereas my perspective is that of critique, of science, of a knowledge the other does not and cannot have. As Terry Eagleton notes, with ideology as with bad breath it is always the other that has it. This strict separation of perspectives manifests itself in the conceptual repertoire of the critique of ideology as it has traditionally been understood. "False consciousness," "illusion," and "distortion" characterize the inside of ideology, the naïve condition of those who are subject to it. Their deplorable situation is then opposed to the "unmasking" critique that comes from a position outside ideology. Thanks to its sober character, this critical perspective makes possible a scientific understanding of what is really going on in social reality. What is really going on is then most often explained in terms of socio-economic structures, hidden interests, and power relations that take place behind the agents' backs and condition what they are able to think and do.

Although what is commonly called the 'humanities' is known for its celebration of differencesexual, racial, linguistic, and ontological difference, for exampletheir method of communicating these differences is surprisingly singular. Though oftentimes professors in this area of studies often speak many languages, their discourse is unifiedtheir speech is dominated by the methods of critique. Now though, we have finally come to a point in which both the need and possibility of "critiquing critique" has come around. Though critique has undoubtedly been useful for thinking through many social problems in the 20 th century, does it still serve as an adequate vehicle for the 21 st ? Does it still have its scathing force and political relevance? And if it has lost its edge, what could possibly come after? Must this 'post-critique' sacrifice all the progress of its predecessor? This essay plans to take up these questions in the following way: it will first examine an environment where critique undergoes apoptosis, where its own logic destroys the possibility of reaching its intended goal; (2) it will then go on to examine a way out of the problems of critique by looking at the works of Bruno Latour and Elizabeth Grosz.