Whither-ing Critique

Abstract

Critique is a term to be perennially revisited, perhaps re-articulated and rediscovered. In this regard it is necessarily a reflexive notion – one with a built-in tendency to turn back upon itself, tracing its own limits and potentials. This contribution draws upon some past articulations of the notion in order to consider the fate of critique in some contemporary contexts. In particular, it contemplates the fate of critical theory during a time when the basis and uses of theory are themselves called into question by emerging regimes of knowledge and practice. What might it mean to theorize in a time of automated sense-making governed by questions of correlation and prediction? What might it mean to critique the forms of practice associated with this type of sense-making? This article explores the limits of some of the available responses (new materialism and some strands of affect theory) in order to chart the coordinates of a different critical path.

Keywords:

• critical theory
• affect theory
• new materialism
• critique
• data mining

Notes

[1] Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (New York: Seabury Press, 1982), 219

[2] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1984)

[3] Horkheimer, Critical Theory; Paul Lazarsfeld, “Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communications Research,” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9 (1941), 2–16.

[4] Leon Bramson, The Political Context of Sociology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 41.

[5] Fredric Jameson, “The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin's Sociological Predecessor,” Critical Inquiry, 25, no. 2 (1999): 267.

[6] Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction.

[7] Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical inquiry, 30, no. 2 (2004): 228

[8] Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical inquiry, 30, no. 2 (2004): 228

[9] Judith Butler, ‘What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue,” Transversal, 2001 (online journal published by the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics), http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en (accessed 2 March 2013).

[10] Judith Butler, ‘What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue,” Transversal, 2001 (online journal published by the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics), http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en (accessed 2 March 2013).

[11] Judith Butler, ‘What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue,” Transversal, 2001 (online journal published by the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics), http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en (accessed 2 March 2013).

[12] On repressive desublimation, see: Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (New York, London: Routledge, 2002).

[13] Chris Anderson, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Wired Magazine 16.07 (2008), http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory (accessed 2 March 2012).

[14] Slavoj Zizek, How To Read Lacan (London: Granta Books, 2011). David Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

[15] Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology, Or What It's Like to Be a Thing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

[16] Jane Bennett, Vibrant matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)

[17] Jane Bennett, Vibrant matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), xiii.

[18] Jane Bennett, Vibrant matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 11.

[19] Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (London: New Left Books, 1974), 55.