Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 22:07:09 -0500 (EST)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Re: Dialectics


On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Paul Bryant wrote:

> TMB--
> 
> TMB--
> 
> This strikes me as a very narrow view of critique

Maybe it is. I don't know.

.  How are you
> conceptualizing the notion of critique such that you are led to this
> conclusion?  What would it mean for a critique to have purely negative
> consequences?

I'm not suggesting that critique has purely negative consequences.

  Which is to say, what would it mean for a critique to
> have no positive outcome?

I don't know. I'm not indicating that this is the case for "critique".

  The distinction I'm making is between
> argument and critique, though it would be incorrect to say that
> critique involves no argument.  As I see it, argument plays an all or
> nothing game whereby one attempts to show that a position reduces to
> some sort of logical absurdity or contradiction, thereby allowing them
> to dismiss the position altogether.  On the other hand, critique
> attempts to determine the conditions and limits embodied in a certain
> position, thereby making room for an entirely different realm of
> thought.

That's precisely what I meant. By playing on the etymological relationship
between "critique" and "crisis", I simply meant to emphasise hos things
are pushed to limits, conditions are determiined in their qualities and
roles, etc, and yes, at that point there can, indeed, be a making room,
but often (thought not always), this "making room" is through an excession
of the thing critiqued. Sometimes it isn't. What that other thing is is
another matter, of course. Critique is, aparently, a kind of
"revolutionary" relationship to the thing critiqued. As such it can bring
about many things. It can lead to breakdown, to a suring up, openings,
extraparadigmatic advent/openings, etc. You name it. But critique as such
does appear to entail a kind of embodiment of the thing critiqued in the
manner of pushing crisis, but *not* in the manner, for example, of
deconstruction. A critique can just as well bring about the greater
fruition and security within the thing critiqued, like stirring up the
embers in a fire may spark a log, lying in the back of the fire are, to
flame. Or, it may put the fire out, etc. Blah...

  This has been the standard definition of critique since
> Kant, and has continued on in one form or another through both
> analytic philosophy and continental thought.  For instance, Foucault
> can be seen as engaged in a form of critique insofar as he attempts to
> determine the conditions under which a certain form of discourse
> arose. 

In its Nietzschean sweep, historical emphasis, nihilistic slant, etc.,
what you are talking about is better called genaeology, I think. Critique
is perhaps a bit more focused and bound to a specific thing in its already
being what it is. THe description, for example, of the emergence of a
given episteme, or a socio-cultural institution, free even of the motive
of positive history in the usual senses, isn't really critique, nor is it
even simply critique of an age or power/knowledge situation as a whole.
There are elements of critique, of argument, of history, thought,
synthesis, analysis, etc. but this all just refers us then to Foucault's
particular *artistry*. The genaeologist, like Nietzsche's *philologist* is
either working a bland category or else, if really brilliant, working a
vast range and pallete, that, again, *includes* critique simply as one of
its brushes, or even as a *prerequisite* for obtaining the freedom for the
kind of "impartial" or broad view Foucault develops.


> Similarly, Quine is engaged in a form of critique when he
> attempts to dissolve the analytic/synthetic distinction, thus bringing
> about the so-called "web of belief".  In the absence of that
> definition, I'm at a loss in trying to describe this sort of practice.
>  But if you prefer to define terms arbritrarily in terms of what you
> hear in your ear, then by all means do so; but please, tell me what it
> is that you're hearing.

Well, actally I dont' quite see how the "web of belief", thought in
contradistintion to the analytic/synthetic distinction, constitute
critique, but that doens't appear to be what you are pointing to anyhow.
You simly want to say that critique of Kant's categories enables a kind of
"wriggling out of them" that can make room for another view. Tat seems
fine to me. I don't know if there can be a determinate name for such a
thing. Critique is certainly part of the process, perahps some moments of
deconstruction, too, and some *positive* moments that would have to have
some nomination (phusis as emergence, what I call "enconstruction",
construction in the usual sense, etc.)

TMB