The Art of Not Being Quite So Governed: An Examination of the Work of the “Critical” Journal

Abstract

Michel Foucault in his lecture “What is Critique?” argues that criticism offered a response to the state's developing art of governing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Instead of accepting the state's way of governing, critics presented alternative visions of not being quite so governed or of not being governed thusly. Similarly, in the latter half of the twentieth century, factions within academic disciplines also rejected their disciplines' mode of governing and created alternatives. In response to the desire to make political science more relevant and visible, the Caucus for a New Political Science formed as an alternative to the American Political Science Association. A similar trend occurred in other disciplines. Over the next few decades a number of academic journals were founded that included the word “critical” in their titles or explicitly stated a “critical” aim or approach. However, even dissenting academic groups, like the Caucus for a New Political Science, began to be reabsorbed within their disciplinary homes. With time, many of these groups succumbed to a degree of professionalization that perhaps inhibited their larger aspirations. As Foucault argues, the critical attitude does not reject governing altogether; it is not a call for anarchy. Rather, it demands an alternative to the current governance. The question becomes how to maintain the critical attitude while also building alternative institutions. Does institution building attenuate critique? And what then is critique? This article reflects on these questions by providing a brief study of “critical” disciplinary reorganizations, with greater attention to the Caucus for a New Political Science and its journal, New Political Science.

Notes

An earlier draft of this article was presented at the Western Political Science Association's 2013 meeting. I would like to thank my fellow panel members and discussant, as well as the journal's blind reviewers, for their thoughtful responses, which I have tried to address here.

¹ Martin Parker and Robyn Thomas, “What is a Critical Journal?,” Organization 18:4 (2011), pp. 419–427, p. 422.

² Ibid., 426.

³ John Fekete, “Telos at 50,” Telos 50 (1981/82), pp. 161–171, p. 169.

⁴ As Vilém Flusser writes, “If we translate it with the words ‘to judge,’ ‘to decide,’ or ‘to perpetrate,’ rather than with the words ‘to divide,’ ‘to separate,’ or ‘to break,’ we come closer to its true meaning. It signifies an action that splits oneness. This is not a comfortable doubt, but rather the sort of doubt that makes judgments, decisions, and perpetrates crimes.” Vilém Flusser, “Criteria—Crisis—Criticism,” in Writings (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), p. 42.

⁵ Koselleck's observation of the high usage of “criticism” in the eighteenth century likely referred to texts appearing in Continental Europe. He quotes J.G. Buhle who in 1790 in Göttingen remarked, “Our age deserves credit to have examined … explained and enlightened more critically than previous ages; therefore some have rightly called ours the critical age.” Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), p. 102.

⁶ Michel Foucualt, “What is Critique?,” in Sylvére Lotringer (ed.), The Politics of Truth (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext (e), 2007), p. 44.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid., 44–45.

⁹ Foucault remarks on the fact that Kant's essay “What is Enlightenment?” appeared in a newspaper, an example of the relationship between philosophy and journalism which he feels should be explored further. “It is very interesting to see from what point on philosophers intervene in newspapers in order to say something that is for them philosophically interesting and which, nevertheless, is inscribed in a certain relationship to the public which they intend to mobilize.” Ibid., 48.

¹⁰ Immanuel Kant, “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Berlinsche Monatsschhrift, September 30, 1784.

¹¹ Foucault, “What is Critique?,” p. 50.

¹² Ibid., 51.

¹³ Ibid., 67, 75.

¹⁴ Koselleck, Critique and Crisis; see also Jürgen Habermas, in T. Burger (trans.), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991); and Raymond Geuss, “On Bourgeois Philosophy and the Concept of ‘Criticism,’” in Politics and the Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 167–186.

¹⁹ Ibid., 185.

¹⁵ This is not to argue that radical critique began with Karl Marx any more than it is to argue that bourgeois critique began with Immanuel Kant. It is easy to point to earlier radicals such as the Levellers and Diggers in seventeenth-century England, for example.

¹⁶ Drew Milne (ed.), “Introduction: Criticism and/or Critique,” in Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists (London, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 1–22.

¹⁷ These are questions that require much more time and space than I have here. The questions themselves require further elaboration as “radical,” “critique,” and “capitalism,” all function as empty signifiers.

¹⁸ Derrida writes: “The critical idea, which I believe must never be renounced, has a history and presuppositions whose deconstructive analysis is also necessary. In the style of the Enlightenment, of Kant, or of Marx, but also in the sense of evaluation (esthetic or literary), critique supposes judgment, voluntary judgment between two terms, it attaches to the idea of krinein or of krisis a certain negativity. To say that all this is deconstructible does not amount to disqualifying, negating, disavowing, or surpassing it, of doing the critique of critique (the way people wrote critiques of the Kantian critique as soon as it appeared), but of thinking its possibility from another border, from the genealogy of judgment, will, consciousness or activity, the binary structure, and so forth.” Jacques Derrida, in Elizabeth Weber (ed.) and Peggy Kamuf (trans.), Points: Interview, 1974–1994 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 357. Geuss writes: “Even if one could assume that history had allowed us to see through the claims of bourgeois optimism, two very serious questions would still remain unanswered. First, what would a contemporary non-bourgeois form of philosophizing look like? Second, what results would the abandonment of the bourgeois philosophical project have for the possibilities of radical social criticism? I have no answers to either of these two questions …” Geuss, “On Bourgeois Philosophy,” p. 182.

²⁰ While the focus of this article is on the social sciences and humanities, other disciplines such as the “hard” sciences and engineering also experienced critical turns. For example, Scientists for Social and Political Action began in 1969; its name later changed to Science for the People, which founded an eponymous magazine in 1970 that published until 1991. Matt Wisnioski, “Inside the ‘System’: Engineers, Scientists, and the Boundaries of Social Protest in the Long 1960s,” History and Technology 19:4 (2003), pp. 313–333.

²¹ There are of course many differences across these reform movements. For example, the Union for Socialist Geographers was almost entirely comprised of graduate students, while the Caucus for a New Political Science contained some more established academics. I hope to make a more thorough study of these critical movements in the future. In the meantime, here are a number of published chronicles in different forms on the various radical turns. This is by no means an exhaustive list. However, these lend support to my ideal type. Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic Books, 1987); see also Clyde W. Barrow, “The Intellectual Origins of New Political Science,” New Political Science 30:2 (2008), pp. 215–244; B. Nelson Ong, “Radicals Reflect: The First Twenty Years of the Caucus for a New Political Science,” Academic Questions 1:3 (1988), pp. 55–59; Michael Burawoy, “The Critical Turn to Public Sociology,” Critical Sociology 31:3 (2005), pp. 313–326; Noel Castree, Jaime Peck and Jane Willis, Linda McDowell, Dick Walker, Joe Doherty, Eric Sheppard, Neil Smith, Phil O'Keefe, Richard Peet, and Ben Wisner, “Past Editors' Reflections,” < http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291467-8330/homepage/editor_s_past_reflections.htm>; George E. Marcus, “American Academic Journal Editing in the Great Bourgeois Cultural Revolution of Late 20th-Century Postmodernity: The Case of Cultural Anthropology,” Cultural Anthropology 6:1 (1991), pp. 121–127; and Mayer N. Zald, “Spinning Disciplines: Critical Management Studies in the Context of the Transformation of Management Education,” Organization 9:3 (2002), pp. 365–385.

²² I recognize that some disciplines and fields experienced “critical turns” much later than the 1960s. For example, critical management studies arose in the 1990s. While every field and discipline now appears to have a critical journal, there still may be some that have not yet experienced a “critical turn.”

²³ The professed aims of the Caucus for a New Political Science were not reformist but revolutionary, at least according to a collection of the Caucus papers published in 1970. In the introduction to that book, the editors argue that “because the only political science permitted in America today is that defined and determined within the existing paradigm, and because only those ‘responsible’ critics who are content to remain within the established pluralistic mold are tolerated, we conclude that the only option now available to critics and reformers is an end to political science. This will entail a negative act but also a positive commitment. It will require, at the same time, denouncing the current paradigm and moving toward the creation, along with other radical caucuses, of what Andre Gunder Frank has called a social science that is political. This means the continuation of criticism and the analysis of where power exists in America, how it functions, and the elaboration of concrete ways to change the existing power relations.” Marvin Surkin and Alan Wolfe (eds), An End to Political Science: The Caucus Papers (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1970), p. 7.

²⁴ At the same time, there are fewer tenure-track jobs, scholarship is increasingly professionalized, and higher education faces performativity demands that belong better in the business sector. Obviously, the need for critical reform, or even revolution, still exists.

²⁵ I performed a title search within Ulrich's using the search term “critical.” This returned results that included journals with the word “critical” in the title but also journals with the word “critical” in the description of the journal. I narrowed the periodicals search by only looking for “journals” and “magazines” that are classified as “academic/scholarly” and in English. This first search returned 385 results. I then narrowed it further by eliminating all publication formats except for “print” and “online.” This returned 362 results. I then refined the search further by eliminating subject areas within mathematics, medicine, and the hard sciences. The subject fields I retained included: “social science and humanities”; “arts and literature”; “government, law, and public administration”; “philosophy and religion”; “business and economics”; “education”; and, “ethnic studies, gender, and lifestyle.” This returned 221 results. I then eliminated journals that were no longer actively publishing. Finally, I eliminated, by hand, any titles that appeared twice in “print” and “online” mediums to avoid redundancies. The final total was 142. The search is not without its flaws. Ulrich's may not contain listings for every journal published. More importantly, the descriptor “critical” may mean very different things across the 142 journals listed. I repeated this process with the search term “radical.” There does not appear to be any overlap between the two lists, but I may have overlooked something.

²⁶ Martin and Parker, “What is a Critical Journal?,” p. 423.

²⁷ Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals, pp. 156–157. Jeffrey C. Isaac reproduced similar figures in the 1990s when he noticed that the mainstream political science journals had failed to pay attention to the events of 1989. Between 1989 and 1993, Political Theory published only one article out of 108 on the subject; Polity published one out of sixty-one; and APSR published zero out of thirty. Jeffrey C. Isaac, “The Strange Silence of Political Theory,” Political Theory 23:4 (1995), pp. 636–652, p. 637.

²⁸ Barrow, “Intellectual Origins,” p. 238.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ This double issue on “The Politics of Cyberspace” was also sold in book form, published by Routledge, as a New Political Science Reader. It straddled the publication deal with Carfax Publishing Ltd, as the next issue would be the first published by Carfax. Perhaps due to the new publishing deal or the sale of the special issue as a book, this issue cannot be found in the electronic archive of the journal. It is the only issue not to appear.

³² Ibid.

³¹ Victor Wallis, “The Caucus at a Turning Point,” New Political Science 1:1 (1979), pp. 89–92, p. 92.

³³ Carl Lankowski, “Report to the Membership, 1981: Goals and Strategies for the 1980s,” New Political Science 2:1–2 (1981), pp. 98–110, p. 98.

³⁴ Ibid., 103.

³⁵ John Rensenbrink, “CNPS and NPS: Pitfalls and Prospects,” New Political Science 2:4 (1982), pp. 93–98, p. 93. The relationship between the journal and the caucus continued to be a question for the organization as late as 2000, as revealed by meeting minutes. Perhaps the relationship is still not clear.

³⁶ Ibid., 96.

³⁷ The 2011 editors' report for NPS reported that there were discussions to possibly change the name of CNPS and the journal, along with potential cover and design changes for NPS. Nancy Love and Mark Mattern, “New Political Science Editors' Report for the Period September 1, 2010 to August 31, 2011,” APSA 2011—Seattle, WA, August 31, 2011.

³⁸ The journal's numbering changed at this time. Where before the journal only had an issue number, sequentially from Issue 1–42, with the new publishing arrangement, the journal appeared with a volume and issue number. So, Volume 20, Number 1 would have been Issue 43 under the old system (see asterisk in Table 1).

³⁹ This became the practice around 2006 after encouragement from the publisher. Prior, individual subscriptions were low and only about 10% of caucus members subscribed. Total subscriptions hovered around two hundred throughout the 2000s and then reportedly doubled in 2010. Current subscription figures are unavailable.

⁴⁰ Barrow, “Intellectual Origins,” p. 244.

⁴¹ John Ehrenberg, “History of the Caucus for a New Political Science,” New Political Science 21:3 (1999), pp. 417–420, p. 419.

⁴² John S. Dryzek, “Revolutions without Enemies: Key Transformations in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 100:4 (2006), pp. 487–492, p. 491. Dryzek bases his criticism on the fact that the journal did not appear in a 2003 ranking of 115 journals in political science compiled by Garand and Giles. NPS's absence from the Social Sciences Citation Index may also contribute to its invisibility within the discipline.

⁴³ Love and Mattern, “New Political Science Editors' Report.”

⁴⁴ Karl Marx, “For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing,” in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978), pp. 12–15.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (London, UK: Routledge Classics, 2006), pp. 110–111.