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Measure, Disrupt, Emancipate! Three Pictures of Critique

Frieder Vogelmann (Bremen University)

‹frieder.vogelmann@uni-bremen.de›

– Draft! Comment welcome, but please do not cite this without asking me first –

Today’s debate about critique is a debate about the normativity of critique: What norms does

critique presuppose, where do they come from, and how can they transcend the contemporary

normative horizon?1 The answers thus enumerate models of critique that are distinguished by

how they relate to norms. Lost from sight is the activity of criticizing although any account of

critique’s normativity must rely on an implicit conception of it. Lost from sight is also the

constructive activity of the theorists themselves although how we criticize is not independent

from the ways in which we talk and think about it.

In order to analyze both blind spots of the debate, I propose to start with an easy question

that has complex implications: What do we do, if we reflect on critique, trying to elaborate the

concept – or rather: a concept – of critique? This question turns our attention to the two

activities already mentioned: the theoretical activity of reflecting on or formulating theories of

critique, and the critical activity in which “doing critique” consists according to those

theories. I will start with the latter and distinguish three “pictures” of critique according to the

description of the critical activity that theories of critique (implicitly) entail (I). I will then

analyse the theoretical activity and, by focussing on its relation to the critical activity, inquire

into the self-reflexivity of the theories of critique: Do they construe their own theoretical

activity as the same critical activity which they are elaborating? (II) Those that do, I will

propose to call critical theories (III).

I. Critical activities: measure, disrupt, emancipate

All (theoretical) talk about critique relies on pictures describing the activity that critique is

supposed to be. These picture are not “mere metaphors” but orient theories of critique because

they subtly predispose how critique is (supposed to be) done and what would not count as

critique. It is not by chance that the three pictures – which I will analyse in some detail below

– are best named by verbs, since they aim to capture the critical activity: measuring,

1 This is easily confirmed by looking at some recent essay collections, e.g. Sinnerbrink et al. (2006), Jaeggi and

Wesche (2009), and de Boer and Sonderegger (2012). For an explicit argument that the debate is structured

around the questions of normativity see Flügel-Martinsen (2010).

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disrupting, emancipating. The list is of course not meant to be comprehensive; other pictures

of critique are ready at hand, like limiting or questioning.2

Before I begin, four methodological remarks are in order. The first specifies the concept of a

“picture” that I take from the first paragraph of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

After citing St. Augustin’s account of how he learned to speak, Wittgenstein makes the

following comment:

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human

language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects – sentences are

combinations of such names. – In this picture of language we find the roots of the

following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is

the object for which the word stands. (Wittgenstein 1986 [1953]: §1)

Obviously, such a “picture of the essence of human language” cannot be painted on a canvas;

it is the (spade-turning) bedrock of reflections on language that is hardly ever thematised in

these reflections.3 Just as Wittgenstein diagnoses a specific picture of language in St.

Augustin’s account which enables his theorizing of language and renders it coherent, I want to

suggest that we can diagnose pictures of critique in the theories of critique available to us.

Secondly, these pictures refer to the critical activity (or the practice of critique) as described

by the theories of critique. To reflect on critique means to reflect on an activity (even if it is a

theoretical activity like the academic practice of philosophical critique), and such a reflection

must operate with a picture of what it is about, although the picture often remains implicit.4

Hence the critical activity on which I will focus must be understood as a construction: it is the

picture of critique’s activity as it is used in the theories of critique.

Making these pictures explicit, thirdly, means interpreting what is implicit in the theories of

critique. Yet what are the criteria of adequacy for such an interpretation? On the one hand, it

must situate the picture of critique on an appropriately abstract level. For example, although

all theories of critique will have to describe what they criticize, they will usually do more than

that and would therefore be inadequately grasped by taking them to work with a picture of

critique as description. Yet neither should a picture of critique be too narrow, prescribing one

and only one way of coloring it– each picture of critique must instead allow for different

2 Critique as a limit-setting activity is prominently exemplified by Kant (1998: A XI f.); conceptualizing critique

as questioning is Flügel-Martinsen’s (2010: 151–153) proposition. 3 My formulation takes up David Egan’s helpful explanation of the notion of a picture in the later Wittgenstein:

“The things that Wittgenstein calls ‘pictures’ tend to be the basis for reflection rather than the result of reflection.

His concern with them is that they frequently escape critical notice because they lie so deep and do not simply

shape the answers we give to philosophical questions, but are the source of the confusions that give rise to the

questions in the first place.” (Egan 2011: 63 f.) However, pictures are not destined to have such devastating

effects, for Wittgenstein’s own philosophy could be interpreted as an attempt to replace problematic pictures by

such he deems less problematic because they produce less confusion – or at least less philosophical questions. 4 Hence I am concerned, in a way, with the relation between theory and practice within those theories of critique

– yet not with the relation as these theories explicate it but with the relation they implicitly put to work.

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models of critique, just as the “picture of the essence of human language” Wittgenstein detects

in the St. Augustin’s account is wide enough to encompass very different theories of

language.

One the other hand, interpretation poses a problem because different readings of a theory of

critique are possible. If we read Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s The Dialectic of Enlightenment

as a world-disclosing critique, we ascribe to them a very different picture of critique than if

we read them as applying external normative yardsticks to the world.5 In the same way,

Foucault’s concept of critique has been interpreted as a genealogical critique that disrupts its

readers’ self-conceptions, as an “art of seeing”, as an archaeological dissection of our

knowledge, or as a virtue – and this is only a small selection of existing interpretations.6

Focusing on the critical activity (implicitly) entailed in theories of critique contributes to these

questions of interpretation and proposes a new way of approaching them. Yet it cannot fix

interpretations any more than other approaches can. My way of dealing with this difficulty is

to focus on the picture of critique which is entailed in the common usage of an author’s theory

of critique. The difference is small but important because it acknowledges that taking Adorno

and Horkheimer to pursue some kind of measuring critique has been quite an effective

interpretation within the debate about critique – a fact we can respect without committing us

to the belief that it is a good or just interpretation of their work.7

Fourthly, my final remark fixes some terminology and explains how I will proceed. All of

the following three pictures of critique will be wide enough to allow the reflections on critique

to elaborate different models of critique which differ in how they manifest the picture of

critique. It depends on that picture of critique according to what aspect of the critical activity

we can differentiate these models of critique: according to their justification of the critical

activity, its mode (how is the critical activity being done?), its object (what is criticized?), its

addressees (at whom is the critique directed?) or its subject (who criticizes?). Hence, I will

first paint the three pictures of critique in very broad strokes and then explain in what aspect

the models of critique within the pictures can be differentiated. Finally, because the pictures

of disrupting and emancipating critique are less well-known than the picture of measuring

critique, I will present examples for these two pictures.

5 Cf. Honneth (2008b) who opts for the first alternative.

6 Cf. Saar (2007), Rajchman (1988), Mahon (1993), Butler (2002) respectively.

7 Habermas’ reads The Dialectic of Enlightenment both in Habermas (1984: 382–390) and Habermas (1998

[1985]: 106–130) as working within the picture of measuring critique. Thus he concludes that Adorno and

Horkheimer must rely on an external normative yardstick which they cannot justify without violating their own

thesis.

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(1) Measuring critique. The dominant picture of critique certainly is the idea of critique

being a measuring activity, thus focusing justifications on normative yardsticks or standards.

Etymology might be enlisted to convince us of this picture: Does not “critique” go back to the

Greek word “kritike”, meaning “judging”, “deciding” or “differentiating”,8 all activities in

need of standards? Thus, in this picture, the critical activity consists in measuring the object of

critique by means of a certain yardstick. And since measuring critique is concerned with

judgments or decisions whether the object being measured is bad, unjust, deceiving, wrong

etc., these yardsticks must not be merely descriptive but normative. Otherwise, the only

judgement would be that the object differs (or not) from the expected measurement but would

not establish the difference to be problematic. Hence the standards of measuring critique must

be normative and the question of measuring critique’s normativity becomes a question of the

yardstick’s normativity.9

Yet normative standards are not only necessary for the critical activity of measuring, they

also determine what can be measured at all – for not any standard is applicable to any object

of critique (relations, persons, practices, institutions, societies etc.). This further heightens the

normative yardstick’s importance and is an additional reason why theories of measuring

critique mostly concern themselves with unearthing, explaining and justifying their normative

yardsticks. After all, the validity of critique depends on the justification of the standards used.

Therefore, models of measuring critique differ mostly in regard to how their yardsticks

function and how they are justified.10

It follows that most statements in the debate about forms of critique are at home in the

picture of measuring critique: for (e.g.) whether a critique is external, internal or immanent is

decided by how the yardsticks of that critique work, how they are come by and how they are

argued for. A brief look at Rahel Jaeggis elaboration of this classification clarifies the point:

How does an internal critique differ from an external one? The general explanation is: in

the latter case, the “yardstick of critique” is not outside of the state of affairs or the object

being criticized but exists within. (Jaeggi 2013: 261, my translation)11

Along the same lines, Jaeggi distinguishes internal from immanent critique: Though it, too,

begins from “given contexts and yardsticks that are internal to the object” (Jaeggi 2013: 277),

immanent critique does not just pick up these yardsticks but “develops its ideal out of the

‘patterns of movement of reality’ itself. Immanent critique thus combines the idea of a

8 Cf. Bormann (1976: 1249), similarly Bittner (2009: 134 f.).

9 Is this a caricature? Perhaps it is – however, like all caricatures, it is based on readily visible facts, in this

instance the ever-present formulations measuring critics use to speak about their own theories of critique as well

as to criticize theories of critique from other pictures. Nothing pervades these formulations like “yardsticks”. 10

Thoughtful and sceptic on this point: Iser (2012 [2004]). 11

Another fine example is set in the first pages of Kauppinen (2002: 479–482). Cf. also Stahl (2013: 30).

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standard internal to its object with the claim of a context-transcending critique.” (Jaeggi 2013:

277 f.) Immanent critique varies the justification and function of its normative yardsticks but

holds on to the picture of measuring critique.

Seen that way, the terrain on which the debate about the justification of critique’s normative

yardsticks takes place is much smaller than usually imagined, and the distinctions drawn

within these debates lose their validity if transposed to another picture of critique. As Martin

Saar (2007: 310–318), for example, demonstrates, genealogical critique cannot be captured by

the distinction between external, internal and immanent critique – because, I would add,

genealogical critique does not belong to the picture of measuring critique but envisions the

critical activity differently: e.g. that of disrupting.12

(2) Disrupting critique. How is the critical activity pictured if not as measuring the

discrepancies between its object and its normative yardsticks? One alternative is to see it as

disrupting the criticized object or practice.

Again, we find different models of critique within the picture of disrupting critique which,

for its lack of yardsticks, cannot be distinguished by their different justifications or functions.

Instead, models of disrupting critique differ according to the objects they disrupt and the

forms that disruption takes. Depending what on what is disrupted – the object of critique –

and how it is to be disrupted – the mode of critique – different activities suggest themselves:

processes can be slowed down, discontinued or cancelled; objects can be destabilized,

sabotaged, or destroyed; and persons can be irritated, disoriented or impeded.13

A host of

possible descriptions is readily available to fill out the picture of disrupting critique. Since it is

less familiar than the picture of measuring critique, I will illustrate this picture of disrupting

critique with a concrete example.

Judith Butler’s work suggests itself, for the picture of disrupting critique announces itself in

the title of the book that made her famous: Gender Trouble. In it, Butler defines critique as

destabilizing disruption – namely: trouble – aiming to “disrupt the foundations that cover over

alternative cultural configurations of gender” and “to destabilize and render in their

phantasmatic dimension the ‘premises’ of identity politics” (Butler 1990a: 147, my emphasis).

The picture of disrupting critique also guides Butler’s description of feminism’s practical

task:

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»The critical aim of genealogy is […] an artificially induced crisis in the subjectivity which is confronted with

an interpretation from the outside that is hard to accept.« (Saar 2009: 253) 13

Neither is the list exhaustive nor the mapping exclusive.

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The critical task for feminism is not to establish a point of view outside of constructed

identities […]. The critical task is, rather, to locate strategies of subversive repetition

enabled by those constructions, to affirm the local possibilities of intervention throu.gh

participating in precisely those practices of repetition that constitute identity and,

therefore, present the immanent possibility of contesting them. (Butler 1990b: 147)

Whether by parody, subversion or destabilization – Butler’s critical activity is a disruption of

the usual, “normal” and even (or especially) naturally-necessary processes. Hence, a theory of

such a disrupting critique must show that these seemingly necessary processes are not as

natural as they are made to be and that they therefore do not have the force to render

disruptions impossible (cf. Butler 1990b: 32–34). By demonstrating the possibility of

disruption, this theory of disrupting critique tries “to make gender trouble” (Butler 1990b: 34).

Tracing Butler’s preferred concepts of “disruption” and “destabilization” through her work14

permits a more general characterization of her model of critique. Critique disrupts or

destabilizes practices or concepts by instigating “an insurrection at the level of ontology”

(Butler 2004b: 33), thereby pulling the rug out from under what is criticized. Reading Butler’s

critique as a model of disrupting critique shows its stark contrast to models of measuring

critique and immediately explains why discussions of her “normative yardsticks” tend to be so

fruitless:15

To understand the normativity of critique within the picture of disrupting critique

one would have to analyse the normativity of disruptive activity, not the normativity of

measuring.

(3) Emancipating critique. My third picture of critique might appear to be even vaguer,

rarer and more prone to misunderstandings than the last one, for is emancipation – letting

someone go – not the goal of the critical activity in the pictures of measuring and disrupting

critique, too? It certainly is – but the picture of critique that describes the critical activity as

emancipating differs in exactly this regard, because it does not picture emancipation to be the

goal of but the critical activity itself. Emancipating critique’s object is neither measured in

order to arrive at a judgment that is one step on the long road to maturity nor is it disrupted in

order to break free from it; instead, critique is itself the activity of letting go, of emancipating.

A brief inspection of emancipation’s etymology helps clarifying this point. The concept

“emancipation” emerged in Roman law, where it meant solely letting a son break free from

the paternal household. It took the concept a long time to liberate itself from this very narrow,

legal definition; only after a self-reflexive usage had sprung to life in the late 17th

century,

14

Butlers exact terms change a bit over the course of her works: After Bodies that Matter, “destabilization” is

mostly replaced with “disruption”. Cf. e.g. Butler (1997: 90, 114, 120), Butler (2004a: 27, 43, 53, 74, 200, 203,

221), Butler (2009: 14, 108, 116). 15

The discussions in Benhabib et al. (1995 [1993]) are a case in point.

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giving rise to the notion of “self-emancipation” – a full reversal of the term’s legal meaning –

could emancipation become the important political term it still is today.16

The legal meaning

embedded in its deeper semantic layers remains important for two reasons: Firstly, because it

hints at a certain negativity of emancipation, relating it to Kant’s definition of enlightenment

as an “exit from […] self-incurred immaturity” (Kant 1996 [1978]: 58). Whether

enlightenment or emancipation, what is important is the movement out of a well-known

dependency into an unknown, but independent future.17

Secondly, emancipation’s etymology

puts the paternal heritage of emancipation in the spotlight: for emancipation remains tied to

the figure of the father – or at least to somebody granting freedom.18

This double-faced

heritage must be borne in mind when operating with the picture of emancipating critique.

From the etymological reminder, emancipation emerges as a specific practice of releasing

someone, of letting someone go. Accordingly, models of emancipating critique differ with

respect to what it is that the addressees shall be emancipated from and how that is to be

achieved. Hence we can distinguish models of emancipating critique according to their object

and their mode of critique. The two examples I will present are a version of ideology critique

and a specific interpretation of Foucault’s theory of critique.

Ideology critique is an easy example because intuitively it clearly must have a picture of the

critical activity as freeing its addressees from ideology’s grip on them – from their “false

consciousness”, as the phrase goes. In The Idea of a Critical Theory, Raymond Geuss

develops a theory of ideology critique that carefully elaborates the idea that critical theory

frees its addressees from their “ideological captivity”19

:

Agents are enlightened and emancipated by a critical theory. The critical theory induces

self-reflection in the agents; by reflecting they come to realize that their form of

consciousness is ideologically false and that the coercion from which they suffer is self-

imposed. But […] once they have realized this, the coercion loses its “power” or

“objectivity” and the agents are emancipated. (Geuss 1981: 60 f.)

The concept of ideology used by such a critical theory is what Guess explains as the second of

his three concepts of ideology: ideology as false consciousness (cf. Geuss 1981: 12–22).

Critique emancipates individuals of their false consciousness by making them realize that they

16

The etymology is based on Greiffenhagen (1972), Herrmann (1974), Grass and Koselleck (1975). Cf. also

Pieterse (1992). 17

To be clear: independent from the former dependency, not from all dependencies. 18

Even the self-reflexive use of “emancipation” cannot quite cut off this heritage, for who emancipates him- or

herself must first have mastered him- or herself. 19

I take this notion from David Owen (2002: 216 f.) who also conceptualizes ideology critique as emancipation,

although his aim is to distinguish it from another form of emancipation by genealogical critique. Both of his

models of critique work within the picture of emancipating critique, but while ideology critique releases us from

“ideological captivity”, genealogical critique emancipates us from “being held captive by a picture or

perspective” (ibid.: 216).

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are held captive by an ideology. To do so, critique “induces self-reflection” (Geuss 1981: 61)

by showing the individuals what hidden (social) processes made them acquire their beliefs

and that, in light of this domination-ridden genesis, these beliefs are not acceptable.

Ideological consciousness, once its origins are exposed to those under its spell, becomes

“reflexively unacceptable” (Geuss 1981: 62). A critical theory therefore emancipates its

addressees by providing them with knowledge that enables them to emancipate themselves. In

this way, the first model of emancipating critique intertwines both aspects to emancipation –

its negativity and its inherent paternalism – so that the critical theorist as the paternal figure

does not emancipate the addressees of her theory directly but provides them with knowledge

to enable their self-emancipation.

My second model of emancipatory critique is an interpretation of Foucault’s theory of

critique that emphasises not the much spoken of “critical attitude”, declaring it to be a virtue

or a specific kind of resistance, but the practice of critique.20

Like Geuss’ ideology critique,

Foucault’s critique takes emancipation to be its own activity, but both models of emancipating

critique differ in how they emancipate their addressees and from what.

The objects of Foucault’s critique are practices (e.g. practices of punishment in Foucault

1977 [1975]) in which a crucial “experience” (like criminality) is formed.21

Foucault analyses

these practices (here: penal practices) along the three axes of power, knowledge and self-

relations, but when it comes to critique, the axis of knowledge takes a certain priority because

critique is intended to facilitate “a transformation of the relationship we have with ourselves

and with the world where, up to then, we had seen ourselves as being without problems” –

which means, Foucault adds, “a transformation of the relationship we have with our

knowledge” (Foucault 1998 [1980]: 244). His critique of certain (e.g. penal) practices

therefore takes the form of a diagnosis along the three axes of power, knowledge and self-

relations that emancipates its addressees from the knowledge reinforcing those practices and

from the knowledge that is produced by them. The example of the prison shows how

demanding Foucault’s model of critique is: For he must not only emancipate his readers from

the knowledge they themselves might have about the prison, but also from the knowledge

20

On this interpretation of Foucault’s critique cf. Vogelmann (2014: chapter 2.1.4). 21

Foucault calls “experiences“ those realities which are produced by practices, like “sexuality”, “madness”,

“criminality”, “politics” or “society”. He conceptualizes them as intersections of knowledge-formations, power

strategies and modes of subjectivation: cf. Foucault (1990 [1984]: 4), Foucault (1997 [1984]), Foucault (2010

[2008]: 2–6).

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produced by it – which amounts, as Foucault argues in Discipline and Punish, to an

emancipation from the knowledge of the human sciences.22

How can Foucault’s critique possibly emancipate its addressees from the specific truths as

well as from the power relations and the modes of subjectivation entangled with them? Only

by producing counter-truths: The diagnosis of Foucault’s emancipating critique must break

the inherent limits of the knowledge-regimes it analyses from within. It must produce

unwieldy knowledge [sperriges Wissen] which does not simply negate the truths being

criticized, showing them to be false, but opposes their conditions of existence, thus opening

up spaces for other regimes of truth.23

For “one escapes from a domination of truth not by

playing a game that is totally different from the game of truth, but by playing the same game

differently, or playing another game, another hand, with other trump cards” (Foucault 1998

[1984]: 295, translation modified).

Like any emancipation, Foucault’s critique is an ambivalent practice that on the one hand

tries to control its inherited paternalism by not declaring new truths, by not prescribing how to

act and to think. Yet on the other hand, this refusal inconveniences those emancipated because

the critique intentionally tries to make “the acts, gestures, discourses that up until then had

seemed to go without saying become problematic, difficult, dangerous” (Foucault 1991: 235)

without providing a ready solution or alternative.24

As in the first two pictures of critique, the criteria differentiating the models of emancipating

critique – the object critique emancipates its addressees from (ideology or truth) and the mode

how it does so (inducing self-reflection or producing unwieldy knowledge) – cannot simply

be transported into the other pictures of critique. Again, to discuss emancipating critique’s

normativity, one must not ask for normative yardsticks and their justifications, but question

the normativity of the critical activity as emancipating.

II. The theoretical activity of theories of critique

Characterizing the three pictures of critique should have made sufficiently clear what I mean

by “pictures of critique” – and that the three pictures presented do not exhaust the repertoire

22

The human sciences are not born in the prison, Foucault argues, but the “carceral texture of society” (Foucault

1977 [1975]: 304) established the conditions of their stable and epistemologically transformative existence (cf.

ibid.: 304 f.). 23

Unwieldy knowledge is, to use the terminology of The Archaeology of Knowledge, knowledge

(connaissances) on the border of discursive formations, knowledge that forces a change in the discursive rules,

like Foucault claims Ricardo’s notion of “work” did (cf. Foucault 2005 [1966]: 273 and 275–286). For more

details see Vogelmann (i.E.). 24

“Criticism consists in uncovering […] thought and trying to change it: showing that things are not as obvious

as people believe, making it so that what is taken for granted is no longer taken for granted. To do criticism is to

make harder those acts which are now too easy.” (Foucault 1998 [1981]: 456)

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of pictures of critique. There is, however, a general objection against this pluralization of

critique ready at hand, a general objection that insists on the necessity of measurements. For

are not yardsticks, which I have limited to the first picture, used in all three of them? Do not

the other two pictures of critique include judgments as well, which are in need of criteria in

order to be justified?

I think the objection is right in pointing out the necessity of judgments but is wrong to

assimilate judging to measuring. Though we obviously judge sometimes by making a

measurement – literally and figuratively speaking – it should suffice to recall Stanley Cavell’s

distinction between standards and criteria to realise the price we would have to pay for

reducing judging to measuring. In his discussion of Wittgenstein’s use of criteria, Cavell

draws an important distinction between, on the one hand, judgements based on criteria, and,

on the other hand, judgements based on standards:

Both criteria and standards are means by which or terms in which a given group judges or

selects or assesses value or membership in some special status; but criteria, we might say,

determine whether an object is (generally) of the right kind, whether it is a relevant

candidate at all, whereas standards discriminate the degree to which a candidate satisfies

those criteria. (Cavell 1979: 11)

We judge something to be of a certain value by measuring it according to the appropriate

standard – but we decide whether this standard is indeed appropriate by using criteria. To

reduce all judgements to measurements, as the general objection does, it must assume fixed

criteria and must therefore affirms unquestioningly the authority of those having decided upon

these criteria – an account of judgements which seems to be of questionable value to a theory

of critique.25

Yet even if we can avert (though not outright disprove) the general objection to the

pluralization of critique, what do we gain from it? After all, the debate about critique surely

does not lack classifications: apart from the already mentioned one between external, internal

and immanent critique we find the classification of constructive, reconstructive and

genealogical critique; further forms of critique are called rescuing, maieutic or world-

disclosing critique – and all this is still only the tip of the iceberg.26

25

Cavell takes his distinction between criteria and standards to come from “the ordinary rhetorical structure of

the ordinary word ‘criterion’” (Cavell 1979: 8). His interest is of course different from mine; he is mostly

concerned with the contrast between the common use of criteria and Wittgenstein’s use, which according to

Cavell does precisely not permit the distinction between criteria and standards (cf. ibid.: 13 f.). 26

The classification of constructive, reconstructive and genealogical critique comes from Honneth (2009 [2000]:

48). Iser (2012 [2004]) instead distinguishes four explicitly normative forms of critique – constructive,

reconstructive, interpretative and world-disclosing – and “descriptive” forms like genealogical or ideology

critique. Rescuing or redemptive as well as maieutic critique are interpretations of Benjamin’s concept of

critique: cf. Habermas (1979), Salonia (2011: Kapitel VII).

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One advantage of my classification is that using the implicit picture of the critical activity to

distinguish forms of critique can explain the limits and problems of the other classifications.

We have already seen that distinguishing external, internal and immanent critique only works

within the picture of measuring critique because the classification differentiates its three

forms of critique according to the justifications and the nature of their normative yardsticks.

Yet outside the picture of measuring critique, e.g. in the picture of disrupting critique, these

distinctions lose their meaning because the critical activity is not pictured as a measuring

activity and thus does not have any “yardsticks”.

Furthermore, distinguishing pictures of critique explains why the classifications of external,

internal and immanent critique, of constructive, reconstructive and genealogical critique or of

constructive, reconstructive, interpretative and world-disclosing critique are uneven

classifications: All of them classify forms of critique with respect to their normative

yardsticks except for the third form of critique which must be distinguished differently –

because, as we are now in a position to see, they must mix criteria to differentiate models of

critique from different pictures.

But the real advantage of distinguishing between different pictures of critique goes far

beyond classifying forms and models of critique, for making explicit the description of the

critical activity implicit in every theory of critique permits a simple yet powerful question:

Can we understand the theoretical activity of theories of critique in light of their own picture

of critique?

In posing this question, I pick up the concept of a “theoretical activity” which I introduced in

the very beginning to refer to the activity of reflecting on or of theoretically elaborating of

critique. If theories of critique implicitly work with a picture of critique that describes the

critical activity, their theoretical activity depends on that picture as well, for it implies what

task must be carried out to theoretically elaborate a model of critique within that picture.27

The first question to ask therefore is: What kind of activity is the theoretical elaboration of

critique in the theories of critique I have dealt with above? Yet instead of just going through

the list and catalogue their theoretical activity, I will also ask how their theoretical activity fits

into their own picture of critique. Are the theoretical activities of those theories of critique

critical activities in light of their own pictures of critique? In other words, are the theories of

critique critical theories according to their own reflection on critique?

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I shy away from using the concept of a “theoretical practice” here because of its complex history and its very

specific place within Althusser’s work (cf. Althusser 1990). The thorough discussion required would therefore

seriously lead away from my concerns with the theories of critique.

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(1) Measuring critique. The theoretical activity of theories of measuring critique is

producing – regardless whether conceptualized as finding, constructing, reconstructing etc. –

and justifying the normative yardsticks used in their critical activity. To ask about these

theories’ self-reflexivity therefore means to ask whether the theoretical activity of producing

and justifying normative yardsticks can itself be thought as measuring – that is, as a critical

activity according to the theories’ own picture of critique.

Due to the activity of measuring itself, this is not the case: Applying yardsticks is not itself a

yardstick-producing or -justifying activity, hence measuring critique must rely on other

activities to produce and justify its normative yardsticks. The most convincing general

argument why measuring is not self-reflexive comes from Wittgenstein’s thought about the

language-game of measuring:

There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one meter long, nor that it is not

one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris. – But this is, of course, not to

ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-

game of measuring with a metre-rule. (Wittgenstein 1986 [1953]: §50)

The last sentence is important: It is not because of some mysterious property that the standard

metre is neither one metre long nor not one metre long but because it serves as a constitutive

criterion of the language-game of measuring and as such cannot be what is measured without

losing its constitutive role.28

Now, the theoretical activity of measuring critique is not the

same activity as measuring with a metre-rule. Yet insofar as theories of measuring critique

use, in their implicit description of the critical activity, the language-game of measuring with

their normative yardsticks, these yardsticks occupy the same grammatical role as the standard

metre and hence they themselves cannot be measured.29

In terms of the models of measuring

critique, this means that as long as theories of measuring critique stick exclusively to the

picture of measuring critique, they cannot criticize (measure) their own normative yardsticks.

The reason is not, to rephrase Wittgenstein’s second sentence, the specific nature of the

normative yardsticks but their functional role within the critical activity as thought of in the

picture of measuring critique. Within this critical activity, they cannot function as yardsticks

for that activity. As a consequence, theories of measuring critique must either acknowledge

their theoretical activity as uncritical, if the critical activity is exclusively thought of as

28

My account of Wittgenstein’s puzzling claim follows Jacquette’s Jacquette (2010) thoughtful explanation; like

Baker and Hacker (2005 [1980]: especially 193–199) he defends Wittgensteins remarks against Kripke’s (1980:

54–63) critique of it being confused. – On the hard question how Wittgenstein understands criteria see again

Cavell (1979: 3–36). 29

Cf. Baker and Hacker (2005 [1980]: 190): “It [the yardstick; F.V.] is always what measures, never what is

measured.” We could of course imagine creating a different normative standard to measure the yardstick used in

the critical activity. Yet then either we can convert our first yardstick into the second standard, and

Wittgenstein’s argument applies again, or we would end up in an infinite regress – for how do we measure the

second standard?

13

measuring, or they must give up the exclusiveness of their picture of measuring critique,

acknowledging other pictures of critique. Yet that would require theorists of measuring

critique to give up their polemics against other theories of critique that use a different picture;

especially, the famous battle-cry “thou shalt identify thy normative yardsticks” – on pain of

being deemed irrational, uncritical or cryptonormativistic – would lose its force. Since this

seems to be an unlikely concession, we have to understand theories of measuring critique as

uncritical theories of critique.

(2) Disrupting critique. Theories of disrupting critique have a different and much more

varied theoretical activity. The reason for this variety is that models of disrupting critique

have more options how to conceptualize the critical activity of disruption than do models of

measuring critique. For those models of disrupting critique that picture disruption as “an

insurrection at the level of ontology” (Butler 2004b: 33) we can continue to use Butler as an

example to learn something about the self-reflexivity of disrupting critique. Her case

demonstrates how the theoretical activity can be pictured almost exactly contrary to the

critical activity. For while Butler envisions the latter to disrupt the ontology of whatever is

criticized, she burdens her theory of critique (especially in her later works) with the task of

providing the foundation of a new ontology – albeit a contingent one – on the basis of which

her theory can demonstrate that and how disrupting the old ontology is possible. Hence

[…] if we are to make broader social and political claims about rights of protection and

entitlements to persistence and flourishing, we will first have to be supported by a new

bodily ontology, one that implies the rethinking of precariousness, vulnerability,

injurability, interdependency, exposure, bodily persistence, desire, work and the claims of

language and social belonging. (Butler 2009: 2)

Her demanding model of disrupting critique rests, in other words, on a theoretical activity that

provides a new, “social” ontology with a foundational function for critique. Of course, Butler

hastens to emphasise that “to refer to ‘ontology’ in this regard is not to lay claim to a

description of fundamental structures of being that are distinct from any and all social and

political organization” (Butler 2009: 2). Yet even as a political ontology, ontology’s function

is to stabilize a critique which pictures its own activity as disrupting.30

If the critical activity is pictured as disrupting, the theoretical activity must, it seems, provide

a firm ground that stabilizes critique so that it can safely disrupt. As we saw in the picture of

measuring critique, Butler’s disrupting critique requires a theoretical activity – founding or

30

Moya Lloyd (2008) takes this thought one step further to demonstrate how Butler’s own ontology contradicts

her concept of critique. Yet here I merely want to highlight ontology’s stabilizing role in the reflections of

disruptive critique.

14

stabilizing – that is markedly different from the critical activity of this theory’s picture of

critique. Hence, Butler’s theory of disrupting critique is not a critical theory – at least not

unless the theory of disrupting critique also accepts other pictures of critique. To put the same

point differently: The destabilizing critique requires conceptual tools to engage in its

destabilization, but the theoretical making of those tools is not conceptualized as a

destabilizing activity in itself.31

(3) Emancipating critique. What is the theoretical activity of theories of emancipating

critique and can we understand it as emancipating? As in the previous picture of disrupting

critique, the theoretical activity is closely tied to the specific model of emancipating critique

and how it conceptualizes the mode of critique. Yet my examples of Geuss’ ideology critique

and Foucault’s critical diagnosis agree in one aspect: Since theories of emancipating critique

must argue that their addresses are captured by the object of critique, their theoretical activity

consists in creating concepts to diagnose this captivity. The theoretical activity of

emancipating critique therefore consists neither in producing and justifying normative

yardsticks nor in providing a foundation from which to disrupt but in forging diagnostic

concepts that enable the critique to render visible the captivity from which it aims to

emancipate its addressees.32

Apart from this commonality, my two examples reveal significant differences in how they

proceed which merit a closer look. Starting again with Geuss’ ideology critique, what

concepts does Geuss require to diagnose ideologies and how they hold us captive? Geuss

begins by clarifying the concept of ideology, explaining it as a reflectively unacceptable

world-picture. Ideology is a “false consciousness” which the individuals only acquired under

conditions of domination and which they would reject were they to learn of its genesis. This

concept of ideology satisfies the second part (B1) of the theoretical scheme which, according

to Geuss, is the blue print for all critical theories. They consist of

31

Is there a general reason why the picture of disrupting critique must demand a theoretical activity that cannot

conceptualize itself as disrupting, and thus a general argument that theories of disrupting critique must remain

uncritical on their own account of what the critical activity is? One might try to argue that in general, disrupting

critique intends to break from a certain normality, and that theories of disrupting critique tend to feel the need to

present another normality instead. Butler’s model of critique disrupts, but her theoretical activity articulates a

(political) ontology designed to build a (contingent) foundation on which the disrupting activity can support

itself. Generalizing from this example, one would have to claim that the negativity within the picture of

disrupting critique necessarily corresponds to the positivity of its theories of critique that do not disrupt

themselves and therefore are (according to their own picture of disrupting critique) uncritical theories. But I do

not see how one could rule out the possibility of a negativistic theory of disrupting critique. 32

The importance of this task might tempt one to speak of “world-disclosing critique” but, firstly, every critique

has the task to show us a new world (cf. Iser 2012 [2004]: 149) and, secondly, I am here concerned with the

theoretical activity of theories of emancipating critique, not with the critical activity itself.

15

(A) A part which shows that a transition from the present state of society (the “initial

state” of the process of emancipation) to some proposed final state is “objectively” or

“theoretically” possible, i.e. which shows:

(1) that the proposed final state is inherently possible i.e. that given the present level

of development of the forces of production it is possible for society to function and

reproduce itself in this proposed state;

(2) that it is possible to transform the present state into the proposed final state (by

means of specified institutional or other changes).

(B) A part which shows that the transition from the present state to the proposed final

state is “practically necessary,” i.e. that

(1) the present state is one of reflectively unacceptable frustration, bondage, and

illusion, i.e. (a) the present social arrangements cause pain, suffering, and frustration;

(b) the agents in the society only accept the present arrangements and the suffering

they entail because they hold a particular world-picture; (c) that world-picture is not

reflectively acceptable to the agents, i.e. it is one they acquired only because they

were in conditions of coercion;

(2) the proposed final state will be one which will lack the illusions and unnecessary

coercion and frustration of the present state; the proposed final state will be one in

which it will be easier for the agents to realize their true interests.

(C) A part which asserts that the transition from the present state to the proposed final

state can come about only if the agents adopt the critical theory as their »self-

consciousness« and act on it. (Geuss 1981: 76)

In addition to the concept of ideology, the schema presupposes (in B2 and B3) a theory of

domination and freedom the validity of which ultimately rests on the judgements of its

addressees (cf. Geuss 1981: 78 f.). That this theory of domination cannot be valid against the

judgements of those it emancipates is the feature that for Geuss marks the structural

difference between traditional and critical theories (cf. Geuss 1981: 79 and 88–95). Still, the

latter belong to social theory or social philosophy: “If a critical theory is not a true ‘scientific’

theory, not a part of empirical social science strictly so called, we might think of it as part of

the wider enterprise of social theory or social philosophy” (Geuss 1981: 95). Ideology

critique’s diagnostic concepts – which enable the critical theorist to render the ideology

visible for those entrapped and thus enable their escape from it – are forged in the “normal” or

“traditional” theoretical activity of social theory or philosophy. The critical activity of

emancipating is therefore supported by a theoretical activity which does not in itself

emancipate but rather consists of analyzing, sorting, and clarifying concepts. This is, for

example, how critical theorists conceive, according to Geuss, of their required theory of

freedom and domination: “The critical theory […] claims that its embedded theory of freedom

and coercion is merely a clearer formulation of views implicit in the action and form of

consciousness of the agents to whom it is addressed.” (Geuss 1981: 78, my emphasis) Thus

Geuss’ theoretical activity is not in itself critical according to its own picture of emancipating

critique.

16

Foucault’s theoretical activity differs, though like in Geuss’ case, it has to forge the concepts

needed to diagnose the captivity from which it emancipates its addressees. Foucault’s most

important diagnostic concepts are power, knowledge and subjectivation – and Foucault

devotes considerable energy to make sure that these concepts break away from social theory

or philosophy. In his second to last lecture at the Collège de France, Foucault gives a pointed

summary of the “shifts” these concepts perform:

Replacing the history of knowledge with the historical analysis of forms of veridiction,

replacing the history of domination with the historical analysis of procedures of

governmentality, and replacing the theory of the subject or the history of subjectivity with

the historical analysis of the pragmatics of self and the forms it has taken, are the

different approaches by which I have tried to define to some degree the possibility of the

history of what could be called “experiences.” The experience of madness, the experience

of disease, the experience of criminality, and the experience of sexuality are, I think,

important focal points of experiences in our culture. (Foucault 2010 [2008]: 5)

Thus, Foucault’s diagnostic concepts do not continue the discourse of social theory or

philosophy but introduce a rupture by “replacing” familiar concepts in order to get a different

– estranged – view of those practices in which the so-called “experiences” of madness,

criminality or sexuality are produced.33

Foucault’s production of unwieldy knowledge through

a diagnosis of contemporary experiences and their formation is aimed at emancipating us

from those truths, those power relations and those modes of subjectivation that form

experiences like madness, criminality and sexuality.34

Yet each of the concepts used to

produce these diagnoses is itself intended to break free from what we usually understand by

power, knowledge and the subject. They are designed “to perform a systematic reduction of

value for the domains to which they refer, let us say, a neutralization concerning the effects of

legitimacy and an elucidation of what makes them at some point acceptable and in fact, had

them accepted” (Foucault 1997 [1978]: 51). They are designed to historicize universals by

showing them to be produced within our practices rather than structuring those practices. And

they are designed to render visible discontinuities where we are used to find continuity.35

Hence, Foucault’s concept of power dispenses with the normative question of

legitimate/illegitimate power, his concept of knowledge dispenses with the normative

question of true or false knowledge, and his concept of the subject dispenses with the

normative question of authenticity. Already the theoretical articulation of Foucault’s model of

33

Here, one might start to begin questioning the temporality of Foucault’s emancipating critique. For can we still

say that his diagnostic concepts interrupt the “normal” theorizing? Has social philosophy not accommodated

Foucault’s discourse? That would imply that we could not simply continue to use his diagnostic concepts as they

have become part of social philosophy but would have to find ways to again how break away from contemporary

social philosophy – whatever that is. These are questions too big to pursue here. 34

Cf. also Foucault (1997 [1984]: 200–202). 35

Foucault (1997 [1978]: 53–57), for a detailed account see Vogelmann (2012).

17

critique emancipates his addresses from those given distinctions that let our practices appear

only as we already know them to be.36

Therefore, Foucault’s model of emancipating critique

is congruent between the theoretical and the critical activity – in short, his theory of critique is

a critical theory. And the picture of emancipating critique is the first picture in which we find

a model of critique the theoretical activity of which actually does what it says.

III. Theories of Critique and Critical Theories

So far, I have presented two theses: The first claims that every theory of critique works with

an implicit picture of the critical activity. To substantiate that claim, I have presented three

pictures of critique which imagine the critical activity as measuring, disrupting or

emancipating. My second thesis claims that the theoretical elaboration of critique is a

theoretical activity of which we can ask whether it conforms to the picture of the critical

activity that it articulates. And I suggested calling those theories of critique whose theoretical

activity can indeed be conceptualized within their own picture of critique critical theories.

On the one hand, this suggestion is a straightforward inference drawn from my two theses:

The first amounts to the claim that every theory of critique entails a description of that activity

which it highlights as “critical”, and the second amounts to the claim that the theoretical

activity might itself be a candidate for fitting that description. Calling those theories of

critique the theoretical activity of which does indeed fit their own picture of critique critical

theories follows naturally. Hence, critical theories are simply those theories of critique which

exhibit a specific kind of self-reflexivity because they already do what their theories say. Thus

we name them critical theories.

In philosophy, on the other hand, no name-giving act is ever simple – especially not if it

concerns the adjective “critical”. For my suggestion introduces a criterion which allows us to

distinguish critical from non-critical, i.e. traditional theories: namely whether a theory’s own

theoretical activity conforms to the picture of critique it implicitly paints. Yet by that

criterion, most theories of critique are uncritical. Furthermore, the criterion is in tension with

the famous criterion for distinguishing critical from traditional theories which Horkheimer

elaborated in his famous essay “Critical and traditional theory” (Horkheimer 2002).

Now, the exact nature of Horkheimer’s criterion is subject of dispute;37

for present purposes

it suffices to interpret it as a combination of a certain form of self-reflexivity and a specific

36

One could strengthen the argument by providing an analysis of Foucault’s style which is intended to help

making the theoretical activity into a form of emancipatory activity. I cannot provide the analysis here but see

Saar (2003: 172–176), Saar (2007: 305–308). 37

Here I mostly follow Wellmer (1974: dt.7–13, 136–147), Menke (1996), Honneth (2008a: 64–66).

18

knowledge-interest. Critical theories have both, traditional theories neither.38

The self-

reflexivity and knowledge-interest in question are both based on Horkheimer’s notion of

“society” or the “society as a whole” (Horkheimer 2002: 219):39

Critical theory is self-

reflexive because it understands its own theoretical activity as a social practice aimed at

understanding the very society it belongs to, and critical theory’s knowledge-interest is not

just to map that society but to overcome it.

The criterion I suggested cuts this constitutive double relation to “society as a whole”. It

replaces Horkheimer’s social totality with knowledge by thinking the self-reflexivity of

critical theory as congruence between its theoretical and critical activity. Switching the

medium of self-reflexivity from society to knowledge does of course not imply getting rid of

social theory. Yet it insists on an epistemological self-reflection of social theory – and in this

instance, as well as in my rejection of an exclusive measuring critique, my suggestion is well

in line with the early Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School.

Switching from society to knowledge has more ramifications than I can elaborate here but I

want to end by highlighting two of them. The first one is that the switch from society to

knowledge answers a demand formulated by Albrecht Wellmer already in 1960. If critical

theory can no longer rely on “class antagonism” as an unproblematic premise, and if science

itself has become a “decisive force of production” (Wellmer 1974: dt. 146) in the managed

world, Wellmer argued,

then obviously the confrontations between “critical” and “traditional” science cannot be

politically interpreted as simply expressing a class antagonism. These confrontations can

and must rather be fought out within science itself, because science has itself become a

“way of life” in industrial societies […]. (Wellmer 1974: dt. 147, my translation)

The first consequence of switching the medium of self-refection from society to knowledge is

precisely to scrutinize and problematize the theoretical activity of reflecting on critique – to

fight out the confrontations between “critical” and “traditional” theories in theorizing critique.

This burdens the participants of the debate on what critique is further by charging them with

the task of minding the repercussions of their own theoretical activity. Thus the second

ramification of the switch – and my hope – is to complicate the flight from critique to its

methodological debate and especially the further step to the debate about critique’s

normativity. Thus I admit that my hope is tainted with a certain amount of skepticism towards

38

Traditional theories do of course have a knowledge-interest even if they sometime do not want to admit it

(sharply: Horkheimer 2002: 222). Yet what, for Horkheimer, distinguishes them from critical theories is that

they have very different knowledge-interests. 39

Cf. e.g. ibid.: 206 f.; on the problematic of Horkheimer’s unquestioningly assumed access to the “societal

whole” see McCarthy (1995: 138–143) who interprets this to as a rest of a subjectivist philosophy, although one

easy to overcome.

19

undertakings such as the one I have been engaged in in this article: further navel-gazing of

critical theories.

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