Spectres of critique: The nostalgia of social transformation

Abstract

A century on from the foundation of the Frankfurt School with its slow institutionalisation of Critical Theory, almost every perspective in academia, activism and beyond is more or less implicitly critical and promises transformation. Traditional bastions of critique, socialism, feminism, post-colonialism have not only diversified to address a plethora of issues, but have been imitated by counter-critiques on the right, the back-lash and so forth. Beyond explicitly politicised variants, neo-liberalism, governmentality and rationalistic science all demonstrate a critical animus. The suffusion of pop culture, consumerism and everyday life with critique is also evident. All this critique promises social transformation partially by declaring the success of past emancipation, revolution, and even incomplete triumphs. In short, we are haunted by the spectre of critique past, yearning for the possibilities of future critiques, but meanwhile stuck in the contemporary predicament of omnipresent critique. Facing existential ecological crises, critique becomes nostalgic for social transformations, hoping to reiterate the critiques of the past, to deliver on the always as yet unfulfilled promises. Perhaps today, the spectre of critique and the promise of social transformation must be refused and rethought, to make radical political change possible.

Introduction

Perhaps the most negative text of the Frankfurt School is the Dialectic of Enlightenment, mostly taken up for its critique of the ‘culture industry’, but beginning with a critique of enlightenment, implicitly a critique of critique itself: ‘Enlightenment is totalitarian’ (2002: 4). Describing Enlightenment as a form of mythology which promises a pure, true, complete vision, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest this perspective undermines itself: ‘every definite theoretical view is subjected to the annihilating criticism that it is only a belief, until even the concepts of mind, truth, and, indeed, enlightenment itself have been reduced to animistic magic’ (2002: 7). In this paper, we set off to replay Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of enlightenment as a critique of critique, engaging in what may seem as reinscribing the original against itself.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment ranges from ancient philosophy to religion, especially Judaism and Christianity, and suggests that enlightenment is roughly equivalent to magical thinking. Enlightenment here means the control of nature, creating technology and engineering society so that knowledge not only understands but recreates reality. The idea that knowledge, particularly critical insight is transformative – of our vision, our subjectivity and our society – is examined herein. Building on Adorno and Horkheimer's array of historical references, it might be simplest to identify this culturally specific notion of transformative critique with Zoroastrianism or Gnosticism (Cohn, 2001). However, such a historicist manoeuvre is equally critical, not just a recognition of genealogical continuity, but implicitly a revelation that critique is ‘just a narrative’, and thus, replays the ‘unending process of enlightenment’ already elaborated. Indeed, critical genealogy can be as reductive and sterile as the forms of ‘ideology critique’ which Foucault sought to escape (1980).

While critique seems primarily negative, demanding that ‘every definite theoretical view is subjected to the annihilating criticism that it is only a belief’ (2002: 7) it is also hopeful and utopian, envisaging transformations. The values of critique are approximated in the French Revolutionary slogans of liberté, egalite, fraternité – albeit that this last, solidaristic demand has become mired in the problem of nationalism. Transforming society through personal freedom is partly a liberal conception, but equally pursued by contemporary feminists and activists of various stripes. So too, the egalitarian world, pursued by socialists, anarchists, post-colonial and anti-racist thinkers begins by freeing oneself from limiting social constructions. Such possibilities are imagined but inspired by times past.

Through this critique of critique, we ironically move towards theorising critique through some classical concepts of Critical Theory, identifying its nostalgic, managerial, absolutizing, reified and commodified qualities. Yet, repeating classic texts and manoeuvres within the tradition, ironically or even parodically, indicates that Critical Theory still animates contemporary thought, not quite exhausted, or not yet. This leaves us to close with some considerations of the animus of critique.

Nostalgia for critique

Today, if a spectre is haunting the world, it is the spectre of critique. It promises change, transformation and revolution even. The historical pedigree of critique is extraordinary, comprising at least the American and French revolution, socialism, feminism, de-colonialism, with further roots in the reformation, the English civil war which used to be described as the ‘Puritan revolution’. Of course, as the range of events associated with critique is expanded, the possibility of disagreement rises, and even singular events, such as the American case, are interpreted in very different ways – 1776 is remembered very differently by brocialists and proud-boys.

Nevertheless, the idea of critique as a powerful force for liberty is remembered and redeployed, most recently and most successfully by LGBT-rights movements, albeit these are beset by counter-critiques (Nash & Browne, 2020). Again, such critiques are deployed across the political spectrum, by Trump supporters for instance, in a nostalgia for the imagined liberties of the past and in a critique of the state (Davies, 2018). Beyond the proliferation of critiques, what emerges here is a nostalgia for the revolutionary force of discourse, largely imagined as powerful and persuasive in itself. Thus, revolution is reduced from a complex, confused, violent affair to a cinematic narrative. Similarly, protracted social struggles are telescoped into a potted history – the long decades between the suffragettes and the suffrage are elided by a narrative of ‘awakening’.

Collective memories of critique are political projects like any other, not neutral histories (Lorenzini, 2020). In remembering revolution and transformation, discourse and critique are given central place, with the assumption that emancipatory ideas were invented and spread, changing hearts and minds. Other more mundane factors are displaced, for instance, regarding post-colonial revolts, the weakness of European powers after successive World Wars or even technological inventions like photography which made reporting on violence and social suffering more vivid. Rather than haphazard change, an implicit model of truth-telling leading to transformation emerges. If only more truth were told, so it goes, then social transformation would finally follow.

Such practices of ‘truth-telling’ have a very broad and complex genealogy, traced particularly by Foucault to parrhesia in ancient Athens (2011). This historical term is even beginning to be adopted into academic discourse, often without regard for its multiple resonances and registers, political, philosophical and cynical, much like Weber's borrowing of ‘charisma’ became adopted as a technical term for persuasiveness, shorn of its religious connotations. Thus, parrhesia now rendered as ‘speaking truth to power’ in public – rather than the limited agora – is taken as an ideal of truth-telling, but with a specifically modern critical twist whereby the test of truth-telling is that it must also reveal the ideologies of others. Only if it encounters opposition can discourse be transformative, even if the result is just as likely to be counter-critique.

Between Ancient Greece and modern critique, parrhesia is significantly involved in confessional modes of truth-telling. These are particularly associated with Christianity, but also present in Athenian philosophy as spiritual exercises to rid oneself of unfounded opinions (Ramelli, 2016). While moving historically from public professions of faith by revealing one's sins to the congregation to monastic and lay-confession in private, to Protestant examination of conscience, confession is variable and adaptable. Today, most evidently, confession persists in therapy and self-help. However, contemporary critique also operates in a confessional mode.

Generally, confession is marked by an individual telling the truth about themselves, usually to another, with whom they share some normative or moral commitments. They relate their acts, words and deeds, which are posited as sins, accretions to the soul, weighing it down, in need of shrivening (Foucault, 2014). The more difficult it is to tell the truth, the worse the sin, and furthermore, such confessions are interminable. Just as for Augustine living in the world continuously risked sin, for critics, living in an unjust society leads to constantly partaking in ideology and oppression. Thus, contemporary critics demand their audiences recognise and repudiate sexism, racism, homophobia and so forth, not just as exterior ideas, but as incorporated parts of subjectivity.

While self-help style handbooks exist for these purposes (Boland and Ponce, 2023), generally such discourses are articulated in public. We stand accused and accuse each other of ideology and complicity with oppression. In this, the critic figures their audience as sinners who need to confess, and whose refusal is taken as a symptom of deep indoctrination. This is particularly the case around critiques of prejudice – for instance, of class snobbery rather than institutional critiques of capitalism. Of course, most critiques address the collective subject of ‘society’ rather than individual readers, who may well enact a ‘negotiated reading’ of the message (Hall, 1980), whereby the critique is relevant for others, not themselves. Indeed, most readers who choose to attend to a critique are likely already sympathetic to its message. Nevertheless, the orientation of critique towards conversion emerges clearly here, a proselytising attempt to change minds and transform society.

Qualifications and caveats notwithstanding, an ontological model of society and discourse emerges clearly here. Critique is a discourse about society and culture which assumes it holds the potential to conjure away certain elements of ideology and oppression, if only it were heard and recognised by a sufficient number of people, who might transform their lives and conduct collectively, spontaneously. In short, words are revolutionary, provided they reveal the truth and enough people accept their difficult message. Beyond personal confessional transformation, critique proceeds on the wish to transform others, not just oneself. It implies over-riding the consciousness of others, obviously in the case of ‘cultural dopes’, the agency-less fools fooled of Bourdieusian sociology, but also, convincing and converting opponents – who are styled as ideologues, not critics.

In critical terms, critique is colonial, cancelling the discourses of others and replacing them with particular perspectives (Argyrou, 2013). From a pessimistic and tragic point of view – the crypto-theology commonplace within Critical Theory (Yair and Soyer, 2008), such rationality not only cancels meaning, but replaces it with nothing but a void. Perhaps, but what emerges most strongly here is that critique is logocentric, not just in the sense of prioritising the written word and its claims to reason, but in that beliefs, thoughts and social organisation are mainly considered in terms of words. Politics and social debates are posited as a battle over truth, over words. With the assumption that afterwards the word is made flesh. Such narratives are commonly embodied in dystopian fiction, introductory theory courses, political activism and beyond. Clearly, words matter, discourse has consequences, yet these are often unintended and problematic consequences.

Critique begets critique

The first consequence of critique is the proliferation of critical discourses and practices. Communicating critically can inspire others to adopt and adapt critical forms of discourse, whether with or against the grain of the political or normative standpoint of the original critic. Examples of this abound, for instance, Nagle's digital ethnography of the alt-right (2017), which traced how leftist critique was re-weaponised by its opponents. Similarly, Davies has observed the eclipse of the possibility of critique leading to consensus as imagined by French Pragmatic School (2021), because no agreement is possible where all ‘orders of worth’ are critiqued. For instance, today a majority of white Americans consider that white people are a racial minority subject to racial discrimination (Lowery, 2023). Thus, decades of anti-racist critique have become adapted into a peculiar counter-critique (cf: Diken, 2012).

Secondly, the proliferation of critique gives way to a critical recoil, for instance, in the emergence of the backlash against feminism, which presents feminism as an oppressive social ideology (Faludi, 2009). Rather than always provoking enlightenment or awakening by convincing others, critique can lead to opposition or entrenchment. This is traced in detail in Nash and Browne's Heteroactivism (2020) which concerns opposition to LGBT rights and acceptance. The emergence of social movements against queer critics, along lines of confrontation as varied as marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples to trans-visibility emerges here not as the retrenchment of ideology, but as a counter-critique. For the authors, contemporary ‘heteroactivists’ have learned to side-step simple accusations of ‘homophobia’ or ‘transphobia’ and present themselves as caring for all citizens, especially children, and protecting free speech and especially religious values, including minorities. Heteroactivists are not simply ideologues, howsoever we disagree with their perspectives, they clearly deploy critical tropes. Unfortunately, critique often provokes opposition rather than conversion.

Thirdly, critical discourses and practices do not simply occur within the public sphere, but are articulated by critics. Thus, critique as it diffuses throughout the polity tends to form critical subjectivity. For critical thinkers, for instance, Judith Butler, critical subjectivity is generated when subjects are threatened with abjection, which can lead to compliance or to resistance and the transformation of the subject into a critic (2004). For Foucault, critique was generally figured as a resistance to power, identified as counter-conduct to governmentality for instance, and eventually situated within the tradition of parrhesia or ‘speaking truth to power’ (Foucault, 2011). However, it is also possible to see how critics are governmentally formed, compelled to reiterate certain critical discourses as liberal subjects (Stypinska, 2020). A plethora of arenas, from education (Felski, 2015) to social media serve to instruct subjects in various critical routines (Stypinska, 2022), and there are even popular handbooks and guides which offer to remodel their readers as better critics (Boland, 2019).

A fourth consequence of critique is the re-direction or redeployment of critique, often described as the ‘co-opting’ of critique – for instance, Boltanski and Chiapello's work on how capitalism reuses artistic or ‘hippy’ critiques (2007). Similarly, research has long drawn attention to how critical ideas of standing against the ‘status quo’ or being authentic or individualistic have been used by advertising (Frank, 1997). Indeed, the whole arena of the ‘culture industry’ decried by Adorno and Horkheimer is less the arena of dreams and ideology than it is a windmill of critique, where ‘dissent is the system’ (Heath, 2001: 16).

As identified by Horkheimer and Adorno, a consequence of critique or enlightenment is the displacement of meaning: ‘On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning’ (2002: 3). The contemporary post-critical turn in literary and aesthetic studies elaborates this more precisely, tracing how critical discourse reduces meaning to a smokescreen for power (Felski, 2015). Alternatively, critical discourse celebrates the discourse of marginal or unusual figures, but generally gives a voice and platform only to those whose work and words can be welded to a critical narrative (Pels, 1999). Thus, a fifth consequence of critique is the reinscribing of other discourses in a critical idiom, displacing all others, because critique, like enlightenment, is totalitarian – if that is not too critical!

There are many more consequences to critique, intended and unintended. Such consequences generate changes within society, but are not always transformational in the sense that critics hope or imagine. Indeed, the most impactful revolution of our times is the neo-liberal revolution, which has transformed economy and society through critique of the welfare state and market regulation, promoting ‘liberty’ (Foucault, 2008). Strikingly, neo-liberal critique represents individuals as self-serving utility-maximisers, a cynical view wherein culture and society are ‘mere constructs’. Of course, for its critics, neo-liberalism is ideological, but suchlike positions tend to assume a monopoly over critique on the left and fail to grasp the numerous consequences elaborated above.

Nursery tale of critique

In the preamble to the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels spoke of a ‘holy alliance’ forged between the powers of ‘old Europe’ in order to exorcise the Spectre of Communism that haunted them (2004). This Spectre of Communism, alike that of critique today, carried the promise of transformation. Unlike contemporary critique, however, it proved itself utterly unbearable to those in positions of power, constituting a radical threat to the status quo, which the latter could not pass over. So much so, that at that time ‘the branding reproach of communism’ (Marx and Engels, 2004) took on the status of a general discursive trend, extending beyond the attempts at the foreclosure of radical ideas and encompassing many routine efforts to decry one's opponents. This, according to Marx and Engels, attested to the fact that ‘Communism [was] already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power’ (2004). Their objective in writing the Manifesto was to ‘meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism’ head on, by making Communist views, aims, and tendencies, plain to the world (2004).

Today's spectre – that of critique – comes with its own nursery tale. Critique, this tale tells us, is good, and the more of it, the better. Critique, it maintains, is the pursuit of courageous heroes, who dare to know and speak the truth, which – as if by magic – brings about ever more progress. Thereby painted as the eternal bastion of social transformation, critique is seen as unequivocally enlightened and enlightening, as are, of course, its proponents.

The fact that this nursery tale of the spectre of critique does not discriminate is far from surprising. After all, as is the case with all children's stories, it is meant to be both narrative and narrativizing, and hence, totalized and totalizing. It would be a mistake, however, to simply dismiss the branding commendation of critique that it installs as an innocuous fairytale. In fact, as we intend to demonstrate, the tale of the spectre of critique operationalizes the status quo, breeding, what Marcuse refers to as, one-dimensionality, that is, an attitude of conformity ‘to existing thought and behaviour’ characterized by a lack of ‘a critical dimension of potentialities that transcend the existing society’ (2007: xxvii).

For the most part, in a somewhat uncanny rendition of Adorno's and Horkheimer's diagnosis of Enlightenment (2002), critique today appears to be reduced to nothing more than a procedure – a procedure giving way to manifold discourses and practices, but scarcely trans-forming anything or anyone. To be sure, amidst the growing (post)political polarisation, whirlpools of ‘culture wars’ and ‘social media frenzies’, critique today denotes less of a change than stasis. As demonstrated above, critical endeavours are increasingly countermandable, if not, indeed, fungible. Critical register, in short, for all its disruptive tendencies, appears, above all, to be the one of business as usual, where quantifiable (and mostly economic) effects, rather than qualities and meanings, rule the roost.

Faced with such a critical impasse, one would expect the nursery tale of critique to proclaim the current state of affairs to be a bastardisation of the noble ‘Critical Project’, and to rally us to embrace its timeless coordinates. But it stays silent, for, as mentioned already, it is but a tale and not capable of differentiation. This does not, however, render it inconsequential to the current critical predicament. To the contrary, its silence provokes two opposite – yet non-dialectically unified – tendencies: the nostalgic and the managerial.

Firstly, the nursery tale induces nostalgia, a retreat from reality into longing for an idealized, totalized version of the past critique. ‘Nostalgia’, argues Lasch, ‘evokes the past only to bury it alive’ (1991: 116). It ‘obscures the connections between the past and the present’, giving us ‘a one-dimensional view of history in which a wistful pessimism and a kind of fatalistic optimism are the only points of reference’ (Lasch, 1991: 14). Failing to recognize the ongoing significance of the past within the present, the nostalgic embrace of the ahistorical nursery tale of critique offers us no way out of the critical impasse, effectively entrapping us within it. Hence, it exorcises the potential to actualize the power of the spectre of critique, turning particular, historically contingent practices of critique into atemporal magical spells, which, for some mysterious reasons, can no longer be cast, only longed for.

Crucially, in buoying up the nostalgia for critique, the tale of the spectre of critique provides a counterbalance to the disenchantment (cf: Weber, 1958) and demythologization (cf: Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002) accomplished by the positivistic rationality – a counterbalance that paradoxically secures the persistence of the latter. The desire for the magical power of truth is the mirror image of the fetishization of positivism. Whilst the former forsakes the present for the sake of total transcendence, the latter forsakes the future for the sake of pure immanence. The nostalgia for critique constituted by the totalizing narrativization is therefore nothing but, to borrow Lasch's expression, ‘the other side of the ideology of progress’ (1991: 14).

Secondly, the nursery tale of critique provokes the drive towards utility. We hence encounter various administrative measures aimed at the management of forms of critique that do not conform to the dominant one-dimensional outlook (see Stypinska, 2020). Fully embracing the ideology of progress, they warn against critical subtraction and ‘overcritique’ (Kilminster, 2023), advocating positivistic multiplication (Latour, 2004), and reducing critique to a regulatory mechanism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). The nostalgic retreat from the present is substituted here with the total validation of the actual. The yearning for the magical power of truth is replaced with instrumental knowledge, that is, the one that, in repeating the actual, turns thought into tautology (cf: Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002: 20).

Marx and Engels set out to dispel the ideological narrative of the nursery tale of the spectre of communism in order to embrace, and bring into being, the revolutionary potential of that very spectre. Today's capture of the spectre of critique by its own nursery tale, however, seems to be so effective, that we find ourselves incapable of conceiving the radical spirit of critique outside of it. Neither nostalgia nor managerialism offer a transformative direction. In fact, they both prevent us from pursuing one. United in a disjunctive synthesis – that is, ‘a synthesis whose binary poles are mutually exclusive but nevertheless presuppose […] each other and are interlocked within the same classificatory scheme’ (Diken, 2009: 4) – nostalgia and managerialism both exemplify a totalizing and totalitarian approach towards critique, ritualizing it. Whereas nostalgia turns critique into an impotent magical spell, managerialism turns it into a regulatory procedure bent on fine-tuning the status quo. In short, the first reacts to instrumental rationality, whilst the second embodies it.

Mythology of critique

Accordingly, today, it is not only critique that is totalitarian. The dominant approaches towards it exemplify the same tendencies. Enlightenment, as dissected by Horkheimer and Adorno (2002), thus features not only as the condition of possibility of contemporary critique, but also of the prepotent ways of relating to it. Crucially, for all the negativity attributed to Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002) – one, admittedly, amplified by our analysis so far – the text does not confer the totalitarian traits as inevitable. On the contrary, the critique it puts forth is that of historical tendencies of Enlightenment, which are by no means innate to the concept itself. The impossibility of fundamental change – which Adorno and Horkheimer reveal as characteristic of both ancient myths of fate and modern positivism (2002) – is so forcibly stressed only so that it can be revoked. Recognition of mythological tendencies, in short, opens up a possibility of dispelling the myths.

Likewise, any transformation-oriented analysis of contemporary critique ought to begin with unpacking the mythology inherent to the tradition from which today's critique emerged. That is to say, to paraphrase Horkheimer (1982), the task at hand is to give voice to the mystery of the existing reality of critique. In what is to follow, we shall focus on three interrelated aspects of this mystery: absolutization, fetishization and reification.

Enlightenment, argue Adorno and Horkheimer, ‘amputates the incommensurable’: ‘only what can be encompassed by unity has the status of an existent or an event; its ideal is the system from which everything and anything follows’ (2002: 9, 4). The same is the case with contemporary critique: it is both absolutized and absolutizing. Today's overabundance of critical subjectivities, truths, narratives, discourses, positions, etc., is but a sign of a dictatorship of positivistic reason, of its endlessly multiplying reign. Everything is turned into critique – or, it does not register as in existence. Within such a system, there is no need for differentiation. After all, positivistic criticality only concerns itself with knowing what it can manipulate. As such, it strives to flatten everything out, portraying all entities – be they, phenomena, concepts, or ideas – as interchangeable.

Absolutization of critique positions equivalence as the only recognizable quality. It therefore renders the distinction between critical phenomena, conceptions of critique, and the idea of critique redundant (see Stypinska, 2020). In circumscribing our perception within the horizontal plane of fungibility, absolutization exorcises the need for philosophical concepts, whose purpose, according to Benjamin, is ‘the salvation of phenomena in ideas’ (2003: 33). Concepts carry a two-fold mediating function: they ‘enable phenomena to participate in the existence of ideas’ and allow for ‘the representation of ideas through the medium of empirical reality’ (Benjamin, 2003: 34). Without concepts we lose the connection to ideas, and hence the ability to transcend the status quo and break the taboo of the pure immanence of positivism.

Absolutization is a correlate of the fetishization of critique, which prevents problematization of the coordinates of the existing society, restricting critique to techniques (cf: Adorno, 2005: 160). Here too we encounter the separation of the critical imperative from the objective of fundamental change. Fetishization denotes domestication of critique, that is, its reduction to a mere method ‘accustomed to asking questions about the nature of discourse, of mutual understanding, respect, and recognition, and concerns about justification and human rights’ (Thompson, 2016: 2). Such domesticated critique is no longer in radical tension with the status quo, but, rather, in taking on a ‘pragmatic’ orientation, becomes its dynamo. It rejects dissensus (Rancière, 2010) for the sake of disputes (Boltanski, 2011), fixating on, and affixing itself to, the existing social reality. Its discursive attempts are easily co-opted, oftentimes reversed, and frequently commodified. The deficit of fundamental critique of growth as an ideological category in the policy arena, which reduces sustainability to ‘a watchword for compromise’, positioning greenwashing as one of its core tools (Miller, 2017), is but one example. Another one is that of the increasing focus on representation, rather than the systemic roots of racism, within the analyses of media, which, in prompting critiques of whitewashing and calls for ‘colourblind casting’, produces a backlash against so-called blackwashing. And, to give one more, the foregoing of the structural analysis of gender inequalities, manifested so boldly within the critiques put forth by the postfeminists, initiated ‘commodity feminism’ (Goldman, 1992), culminating in an apolitical post-critique (Lazar, 2009). As evident in these examples, fetishized critiques are part and parcel of governmentality, which they operationalize. Furthermore, due to their commendable aura, critical techniques are increasingly embraced as a duty (Stypinska, 2020).

Last but not least, the existing reality of critique is underpinned by reification, that is, the abstraction of critical labour. In short, our critical activities become estranged from ourselves. Featuring as something objective and independent, critiques confront us as mysterious forces that generate their own powers – forces that exert control over us (cf: Lukács, 1972). At the most basic level, this is evident in the general way in which we tend to approach critique: we focus on the product, rather that the producer (see, for instance, Latour, 2004). Consequently, to borrow Lukács’ expression, critic features as a mere ‘mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system’, which functions independently of her and demands conformity to its laws (1972: 89). Examples of this abound, from the routine employment of academic methods such as critical discourse analysis, to the proliferation of critic careers (ranging all the way from art critics to conspiracy theorists). Here, the products of critical labour are the outcome of following a pre-designated process, on which the critics have very little to no purchase. More often than not, critiques end up functioning independently of them in the wider market (of academic publications, for instance, or the media). The social relations between individuals assume the form of a relation between critiques. The forces of the critical market – or, rather, the market of critiques – appear to exist independently of any individual critic, with each desiring their critique to dominate the field, much like a brand.

‘Reification’, argues Lukács, ‘requires that a society should learn to satisfy all its needs in terms of commodity exchange’ (1972: 91). Marcuse shows that it achieves this requirement by implanting false needs, which ‘are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression’ (2007: 5). The mythology of critique establishes one-dimensional criticality precisely as such a need, entangling critique with (the desire for) domination to the point of turning it into an instrument of oppression. The duty to critique is hence a correlate of the ‘despotic imperative’ (Diken, 2019) whereat critical impulse is captured and turned into power over the critic. Here we encounter the key paradox of today's critique: its promise to emancipate us from domination culminates in our reduction to cogs in the despotic machine.

Conclusion

Already in the Dialectic of Enlightenment the problem of transformative thought emerges; a self-destructive stasis, whereby critique undermines itself. Yet for almost a century since then, critique continues, unabated, sometimes creating social change, for better or for worse – both feminism and neo-liberalism are critical formations. Today, we live amid a surfeit of critiques, in the plural sense of a super-abundance of discourses which claim both special insight into reality and to unmask the ideology of their opponents. Not inertia or entropy, but stasis – the stalemate between opposed forces – characterises our times. Admittedly, the political pieces move a little occasionally like the lines of trench warfare but meanwhile the main targets of Critical Theory – capitalism and its hand-maiden states and international order – appear to remain undisturbed.

Yet, critique still proliferates. It has its animus, its desires – for autonomy in its anarchic and liberal modes, for equality in its socialist mode, for care, community and the good life in many different and frequently conflicting visions. Perhaps above all, the longing for critique designates the want for words to be powerful, for truth-telling to matter and to be transformative. This is not just a crude will to power, but a desire for a public sphere where debates and dialogue matter decisively and reality can finally be seen clearly, by everyone, where ideology and oppression are banished. A desire, in short, for a transformative force of critical reason capable of bringing about qualitatively different socio-political arrangements.

In the cacophony of contemporary antagonistic pluralism across multiple platforms, this critical imaginary is a dream, less a vision of the future, than a nostalgic simplification of the past. Yet, even under the spell of its nursery tale, critique still has the power to animate politics, and is still claimed by numerous, divergently political actors. This animus, we contend, is as much a part of the mystery of the existing reality of critique as are the various critical tendencies we examined.

Crucially at this point, it is worth stressing that the negativity inherent in our assessment of today's critique is not a mere matter of pessimism, but, rather, a reflection of the negative character of the empirical reality of critique with which we are faced. As we hoped to demonstrate, dominant contemporary incarnations of critique negate the possibility of radical transformation. This, in turn, requires our approach towards them to replay this negation, as it were. Or, to put this differently, the act of negation of the potential for radical socio-political change inherent to the status quo, calls for negative thinking, defined by Marcuse as, the type of thinking that can bring to light ‘the conflict between actual forces and capabilities in the society’ (Marcuse, 2007: 146). In this sense, our critique of critique is not a sign of resignation, but rather, the upshot of the desire for critique that resists both nostalgia and managerialism, exposing potentialities excluded by our present condition.

‘Critical thought’, argues Marcuse, ‘strives to define the irrational character of the established rationality (which becomes increasingly obvious) and to define the tendencies which cause this rationality to generate its own transformation’ (2007: 231–232). What if, we posit, today's critical stasis is both the expression of the irrational rationality and source of such a tendency? What if, that is to say, the true mystery of the existing reality of critique resides in the paradoxical coexistence of the means of containment of radical transformation and the way of breaking out of it?

It is not without consequence that stasis denotes both stagnation and civil strife. Derived from the ancient Greek verb istamai or istemi, meaning ‘either to stand up, or to be standing, to be waiting’, the notion of stasis destabilizes the opposition between presence and absence (Vardoulakis, 2009: 127). As such, it encapsulates the contradictory nature of our contemporary critical predicament marked by the paradoxical coincidence of the presence of the critical animus (the desire for emancipation) and the absence of radical socio-political transformation (the reality of domination).

The approaches inherited from Critical Theory allow us to adopt such a two-dimensional perspective: to discern the irrational rationality at the heart of the empirical reality of critique and to expose the persistence of the desire for qualitatively different socio-political arrangements. Concomitantly, they offer us a way out of critical stasis by enabling us to conceive the critical impetus as something irreducible to its current effects – something that expresses the longing to transcend the status quo and thus presents a possibility of actualising different outcomes.