Critique is a thing of this world: Towards a genealogy of critique. (February 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boland, Tom
• Is Part Of: History of the human sciences. Volume 27:Number 1(2014:Feb.)
• Page Start: 108
• Page End: 123
• Publication Date: 2014-02
• Subjects: critique -- cynicism -- discourse -- Michel Foucault -- power/knowledge; Social sciences -- History -- Periodicals; 300.9
• DOI: 10.1177/0952695113500972
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0952-6951

Abstract

Although Foucault was clearly a critical thinker, his approach also provides for the possibility of a genealogy of critique. Such an approach problematizes critique, and I trace the emergent problematization of critique in Foucault's later works, and briefly in Latour and Boltanski. From this I move on to the 'critical problematic', that is, how critique operates as a form of power/knowledge, as a discourse that creates subjects through a critical regime of truth and critical truth-games. Specifically, I argue that critique is a discourse which transforms and unmasks other 'truth-claims', replacing them with a starker vision of reality, which in the end is also a specific cultural vision. To elaborate this view, I return to Foucault's discussion of Kant, his late lectures on Cynicism and also on ordo-liberalism. The wider circulation of critical discourses is demonstrated through an analysis of 'cool' or critical consumerism. In conclusion, the relationship between critique, crisis and modernity is considered.