I’m reading Bruno Latour’s “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” I’m not sure what to make of his critique of critique yet, but I do like his style, which he calls “mean” (228).
Do you see now why it feels so good to be a critical mind? Why critique, this most ambiguous pharmakon, has become a potent euphoric drug? You are always right! When naïve believers are clinging forcefully to their objects, claiming that they are made to do things because of their gods, their poetry, their cherished objects, you can turn all of those attachments into so many fetishes and humiliate all the believers by showing that it is nothing but their own projection, that you, yes you alone, can see. But as soon as naïve believers are thus inflated by some belief in their own importance, in their own projective capacity, you strike them by a second uppercut and humiliate them again, this time by showing that, whatever they think, their behavior is entirely determined by the action of powerful causalities coming from objective reality they don’t see, but that you, yes you, the never sleeping critic, alone can see. Isn’t this fabulous? Isn’t it really worth going to graduate school to study critique? “Enter here, you poor folks. After arduous years of reading turgid prose, you will be always right, you will never be taken in any more; no one, no matter how pwerful, will be able to acuse you of naïveté, that supreme sin, any longer? Better equipped than Zeus himself you rule alone, striking from above with the salvo of antifetishism in one hand and the solid causality of objectivity in the other.” The only lose is the naïve believer, the great unwahsed, always caught off balance. (238-239)
Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 225-248.
I’ve never really known what to make of Latour, so I’ve pretty much just avoided reading him.
When reading the quote, I just kept thinking, “What’s so bad about that?” Plus, I think critique is a productive activity, rather than destructive. One produces a new understanding of something. I guess I’m just partial to Marx’s goal of “a ruthless criticism of everything existing.” Why not criticize? Even if it’s just a game — is there a better game worth playing?
I was just writing about something kind of similar today, criticizing Richard Dawkins and Noam Chomsky for unkind things they had to say about “theory.” It’s shameless self promotion, but I think it’s worth reading, if for no other reason than Dawkins mentions Latour as one of the abusers of scientific jargon in the text I’m criticizing. It’s almost sort of tangentially related! 😉
Also, congrats on escaping Corvallis and getting published. I managed to do one of those at least.
Latour doesn’t come out against critique in general in the article (to do so would be to say all of his work was for not), but thinks that critique needs to be changed, in a way that I’m not sure I completely understand yet. I’m going to re-read the article sometime.
Thanks for the link to your post. It was a good read.
I just found something that actually directly relates to your post. From blogger academic Steven Shaviro, whose writings I often enjoy,
This comes from his response to Zizek’s review of 300.
Thanks, Chris! Interesting read.
“If there is one thing not to set up from the onset. it is the choice of a privileged locus..” (Latour, in reassembling the social)
i dont think Latour says not to critique, but rather than this is good, that’s bad and I’m right vs you’re wrong, he suggests an appreciation of a wider picture, and not to collapse the point of tension. Not to presume a moral higher ground. In suggesting there’s a puppet master at work pulling strings maybe the suggester needs to look at themselves also. If the blame for a state of affairs is to be blamed on a nebulous entity such as economics or any ism, that connections need tracing not excusing.
In provoking a look at critique running out of steam, I think that the critiques he eludes to as problematic are because they stop thinking rather than encouraging thinking; this would be to run out of steam.
Admittedly i have dared to post without going back to the article, which from recall was a good one, and have instead based my comments on current understandings of other texts he has written.
In provoking a look at critique running out of steam, I think that the critiques he eludes to as problematic are because they stop thinking rather than encouraging thinking; this would be to run out of steam.
Thanks, Alisa. This seems pretty true to his article, from what I got out of it. He argues that critique needs to assemble rather than take away, needs to pull people and networks together rather than strip away. This seems, in a way, like encouraging rather than stopping thinking.