sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bruno Latour

Criticism

Volume 54 | Issue 4 Article 8

2012 Postcritical Theory? Demanding the Possible Jeff rP uchnic Wayne State University, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism

Recommended Citation Pruchnic, Jeff (2012) "Postcritical Theory? Demanding the Possible," Criticism: Vol. 54: Iss. 4, Article 8. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol54/iss4/8 Postcritical “Post” indicates a very particular condition of afterness in which what Theory? is past is not left behind, but, on the Demanding the contrary, relentlessly conditions, even Possible dominates, a present that neverthe- Jeff Pruchnic less also breaks in some way with this past. In words, we use the term “post” only for a present whose past Walled States, Waning Sovereignty continues to capture and structure it. by Wendy Brown. New —Wendy Brown, York: Zone, 2010. Pp. 168, 10 Walled States (21) illustrations. $25.95 cloth. If learning to think is learning to Cosmopolitics I by Isabelle resist a future that presents itself as Stengers. Translated by Robert obvious, plausible, and normal, we Bononno. Posthumanities Series, cannot do so either by evoking an 9. Minneapolis: University of abstract future, from which every- Minnesota Press, 2010. Pp. 310. thing subject to our disapproval has $75.00 cloth; $25.00 paper. been swept aside, or by referring to a distant cause that we could and Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea should imagine to be free of any by Alberto Toscano. London: compromise. Verso, 2010. Pp. 304. $26.95 cloth. —, Cosmopolitics I (10) Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright. London: Verso, 2010. Pp. 288/416. $95 cloth; Popular reports of the demise of $26.95 paper. in the humanities and social sciences during the first decade of the new century were far from the first time the “death of theory” had been pronounced. However, they may have been the first in which the enterprise was presented as a victim of its own suc- cess. The first influential argument of this type may have been Michael Hardt and ’s depic- tion of postmodern and postco- lonial theory as little more than “symptoms of passage” toward new

Criticism Fall 2012, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 637–657. ISSN 0011-1589. 637 © 2012 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309 638 Jeff Pruchnic forms of social power that appro- hands of climate-change deniers, priate the generic goals and tech- libertarian-influenced conspiracy niques of leftist thought. As they theorists, and conservative culture write in 2000’s Empire, much like warriors of almost all stripes as they left-oriented critical theorists, in- had previously been for science and ternational capitalism is also “bent technology studies scholars such as on doing away with those modern Latour.3 Latour’s focus on the ama- forms of sovereignty and on setting teur theorizing of republican image to play across boundar- consultants was to become only one ies,” the key difference being that of the first in a long series of such the latter has been much more suc- ironic appropriations documented cessful in the endeavor.1 in the coming years; indeed, by The more specific co-opting of the end of the decade, it was in- analytical and rhetorical forms na- creasingly hard to feign surprise tive to critical theory by right-wing at reports that and ideologues was perhaps most poi- Félix Guattari were required read- gnantly outlined by Bruno Latour ing for members of the Israeli De- in his contribution to a 2004 issue fense Force or that Jean-Francois of Critical Inquiry themed around Lyotard’s writings were becoming the journal’s colloquium on theo- as popular with advertising and ry’s future and, in particular, the marketing students as they once rather discouraging coverage of the were with English Lit graduates.4 same by the New York Times (an As always, however, the most article with the memorably blunt revealing description comes from title “The Latest Theory Is That the loyal opposition. In a recent Theory Doesn’t Matter”2). In ad- interview, the conservative online dressing the titular question of his media mogul Andrew Breitbart essay “Why Has Run Out discusses the initial confusion he of Steam?” Latour concludes that experienced when taking courses it is not so much the operation in American studies as a Tulane of critique itself that has become University undergrad—“I don’t moribund, but that the method- understand what this deconstruc- ologies long associated with the tive semiotic bullshit is. Who the practice—the analysis of truth fuck is ?”—before claims in reference to the ideologi- he realized the real lesson of critical cal dispositions of its claimants, theory.5 Arguing for a fairly straight the presumption that no institu- line running from the emigration tions of any real social influence of intellectuals are innocent of the effects of social to the United States in the 1930s to power—had been shown to be the election of the “radical” Barack equally (more?) successful in the Obama to the US presidency over ON Postcritical theory? 639 a half-century later, Breitbart em- against ideational propriety as they phasizes the universal appeal of are of an outright theft of intellec- identifying one’s political leanings tual property. as oppositional to dominant culture And it is the visibility of this and, more generally, the power of kind of appropriation that makes skepticism as a populist messaging the most recent proclamations of strategy. For Breitbart, the Ameri- the death of critical theory all the can Left have historically been more hard to bear. If the problem more capable at using this strategy is not that critical theory’s reliance to their advantage, putting Ameri- on categories of oppositionality, re- can conservatives at an extreme dis- sistance, and skepticism is in need advantage. (Who knew that during of bolstering, but rather that these the same time center-left voters categories have turned out to be were crowing about the need for so powerful that they work even a “Democratic Rove,” at least one in the service of highly retrograde conservative was hoping for the ap- causes, those of us interested in the pearance of something like a “Re- progressive possibilities of what we publican Adorno”?) have come to call critical theory Breitbart is only one of the more over the last several decades are left vocal members of a larger group in something of a quandary. that seemed to have learned a simi- The popular response by the crit- lar lesson and been eager to close the ically attuned humanities and social lead that progressives had suppos- sciences to this dilemma was ably edly gained in the area of cultural summarized by critique; from the populism-baiting in 2002; emphasizing that although of the Tea Party, to the by-now- one of the major triumphs of criti- clichéd of the “liberal cal theory was “to have discredited media,” to outright conspiracy ‘philosophy’ in the traditional disci- theory, skepticism, particularly on plinary sense,” Jameson notes that the level of whatever is defined as in the early twentieth-first century the consensus of “the elites” or of a reversal had begun, an emergent “dominant culture,” has become as “return of traditional philosophy all much, if not more so, the domain over the world, beginning with its of the mainstream conservatism hoariest subfields, such as ethics.” than of intellectual progressivism. Perhaps more striking today, a de- Combine this shift in the discursive cade after Jameson’s writing, is the turf of public politics with interna- prediction disguised as a question tional capitalism’s ability to thrive that follows this observation: “[C] in a market of niche identities, and an be far behind, one the academic Left seem to be the wonders (there are New Age spec- victims not so much of a backlash ulations about physics that suggest 640 Jeff Pruchnic it), if not itself (of which radical and which is really the least negative theology had promised radical of all: the question of being the undermining)?”6 (Sein) itself.”7 Jameson’s speculation here is Indeed, if there remains a guid- one we have seen roughly fulfilled ing principle to politically attuned in the recent past of the critical- philosophy and critical theory theory market. The return of ethics today, it is what Carsten Strathau- seen in the ascendency of thinkers sen calls “neo-left .” For such as and Strathausen, although ontology has around the time returned in a big way in the work of of Jameson’s writing quickly gave pivotal philosophers and theorists, way to the closest we might come it is one in which the traditional to a return to theology within criti- goal of determining categories of cal theory, the so-called postsecular transhistorical essence has notably turn in theory (one that perhaps given way to imagining the “his- found its most charismatic texts in torically contingent construction of the late writings of , a different ‘nature’ from the one we but is also clearly present in the im- presently inhabit” that may, in turn, brication of theology and politics by map potentials for political change.8 writers as , Alain Strathausen presents a compelling Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek). If that case for how this objective forms movement seems to be running at least a family resemblance if not out of steam as of late—Agamben’s a coherent group identity between 2007 Il Regno el la Gloria (The King- a diverse range of recent work by dom and the Glory), which in part Ernesto Laclau, William Con- suggests that politics is not so much nolly, Jacques Rancière, the “late secularized religion but religion Derrida,” and Fredric Jameson, “fulfilled” through its own disap- in addition to those of more obvi- pearance, like a snake eating its tail, ous candidates such as Jean-Luc might be a fitting if not necessary Nancy, Agamben, Negri, Badiou, bookend—this has only made it all and Žižek. However, it is really the the more clear that the middle term latter two—Badiou and Žižek— under review here, metaphysics, has who most exemplify the return to really been the connecting thread ontology as both critique of, as well behind recent critical-intellectual as replacement for, the major intel- work all along. More precisely, we lectual trends of the “big theory” might say that after the “death” of error of the humanities and social theory, theorists have returned to sciences (which is to say, theory as it what Adorno called, in one of the was commonly understood since at founding texts of critical theory, least the early 1980s). Despite sig- “that question which today is called nificant divergences on a number ON Postcritical theory? 641 of other points, Badiou and Žižek of identity and rupture, as well as share an approach to bridging the their shared emphasis on, if not ontological and the political that is outright fetishization of, the power perhaps best summarized by the of revolutionary moments whose title of Simon Critchley’s Levinas- historical rarity is inversely pro- and Badiou-influenced work, Infi- portional to their refiguring of so- nitely Demanding.9 On one side, the cial potentialities. subject is “riven,” “called,” or even Although this blend of the “constituted” by a particular event metaphysical and the political has or course of action; on the other, its for many had the highly salutary concrete involvement in the politi- effect of explicitly (re)emphasizing cal, or at least the involvement we how the work of critical theory or are aiming for, then emerges in a philosophy does or should intersect necessary opposition to the “natu- with actual politics, as many critics ral” or apparent conditions of pos- have pointed out, it also seems to sibility in the contemporary social ignore the incremental, quotidian, environment, a demand that ex- or pragmatic vectors of political ac- ceeds what is offered by the domi- tion in favor of the revolutionary, nant institutions of social power. the quirky, and the ideal. In other In this sense, as Adrian John- words, by presenting the relatively ston suggests in his excellent analy- rare revolutionary event and the sis of Badiou’s and Žižek’s theories equally exceptional subjects com- of political transformation, it is mitted to these events as their privi- useful to consider their work on leged examples of political change, this question in relation to the old Badiou and Žižek often seem to saying often associated with May neglect the process through which ’68: “Be Reasonable: Demand the people are motivated to participate Impossible!” Although the in- in such actions, as well as the steps creasing co-option of postmodern that must occur between the static or post-structuralist strategies of present and the hoped-for future. critique and resistance by domi- In this sense, when radical trans- nant institutions of social power formation is not actively happen- would seem to make radical and ing, Badiou and Žižek’s ontological revolutionary change ever less of engagement with politics can also a possibility, “Badiou and Žižek look much like an advocation of tirelessly remind their audiences spontaneous commitment (volun- that conceptions of realistic possi- tarism), nonengagement (quiet- bilities are themselves historically ism), and the relentless critique of transitory constructions.”10 Such a strategies and movements that fail focus undergirds both their inter- to meet the rigid criteria of what ests in unpacking various logics counts as change (absolutism). 642 Jeff Pruchnic

The books under review in this around and inside the borders of essay might be taken as representa- various nation-states—forms the tive of a countermovement to the centerpiece of her investigation above, an incipient and collective into the paradoxes of contempo- rethinking of critical theory for rary social power. The upsurge the present that acknowledges the of interest in such old-fashioned, co-option of many of the strategies rigid mechanisms of defense would associated with leftist theorizing, seem, Brown suggests, rather pain- but attempts to rethink the generic fully out of step not only with objectives of critical theory itself the ostensibly cosmopolitan and with stricter attention to questions self-assured ethos of the countries of human motivation (rather than building them, but also with the ideation), and that places a higher real capabilities and tendencies of priority on strategies for seizing on the two forces they are most com- the constrained possibilities pres- monly built as bulwarks against: ent within existing systems of social immigration and terrorism. power than on critique as tradi- In addressing the latter, for in- tionally understood. In this sense, stance, Brown finds it particularly the theorizing they offer might be puzzling that “in a time featuring called postcritical in the way that capacities for destruction histori- one of the authors, Wendy Brown, cally unparalleled in their combined glosses the term in her foregoing potency, miniaturization, and mo- epigraph: their ethos and angle of bility” we find “these deadly but approach are created through a incorporeal powers are perversely necessary engagement with, rather answered by the stark physical- than dismissal of, the dominant ism of walls” (20). The disconnec- vectors of recent critical theory. tion between perceived threat and Concerns over the current state proleptic defense is only part of a and future direction of critical broader series of troubling contra- theory as a politically meaningful dictions marking contemporary enterprise is ostensibly a side issue political economy and international to Brown’s Walled States, Waning relations that Brown finds embod- Sovereignty but one inextricably ied in border walls. Most generally, bound up with the book’s sharp, the walls under review in the book exceedingly engaging analysis of appear to Brown as structuring not state power inside what she codes only the barriers between countries, “the post-Westphalian world” of but the antinomical gap between the present (21). Brown’s analysis the idealization of a “world without of the walled states of the book’s borders” by humanitarians and neo- title—namely, the increasing num- liberal politicians alike versus the si- ber of physical barriers being built multaneous upholding of segratory ON Postcritical theory? 643 procedures for entrance by coun- these barriers are taken to serve: tries that pay the greatest lip service “Iran is walling out Pakistan. Bru- to openness and ecumenicity (20). nei is walling out immigrants and Brown finds a partial resolution in smugglers from Limbang, Ma- emphasizing what is new about cur- laysia. China is walling out North rent instantiations of the traditional Korea to stem the tide of Korean technology of border walls: whereas refugees, but parallel to one sec- walls historically were used by sov- tion of this wall, North Korea is ereign nations as defenses against also walling out China” (19). Her other sovereign nations, nowadays most consistent examples, however, they instead “target nonstate tran- are the “separation barriers” in the sitional actors” (21). The specific West Bank and similar Israeli-built forces they are intended to protect structures, as well as various real against—“migration, smuggling, and proposed walls along the bor- crime, terror”—are only in excep- der between the United States and tional circumstances state spon- Mexico. These cases do an excellent sored or easily aligned with the job of demonstrating the central specific interests of a nation-state point Brown returns to in Walled (21). If walls used to symbolize the States—that we are currently wit- authority and stability of a sover- nessing the migration of “key char- eign nation, they now instead sym- acteristics of sovereignty” away bolize anxieties over the declining from the traditional location in the stature of nation-states as the pri- the nation-state and toward “the mary political actors of the present, unrelieved domination of capital the role they have formally held in and God-sanctioned political vio- the West since the 1648 Peace of lence” (23). Indeed, one of the par- Westphalia. More and more today, ticularly compelling components of Brown says, the walls have a “Wiz- Brown’s argument is the creeping ard of Oz quality” about them, similarity between the US and Is- staging “an image of state intelli- raeli barriers. Although arguments gence and control in the face of its in the United States for the urgency opposite” (25). of fortifying the US–Mexico bor- Brown references a variety of der have long been discussed via such walls, both old and new, and reference to the economic impact photographs or blueprints or ten of undocumented immigrant la- different national barriers are pre- borers, more recently debates over sented in the book’s introduction; border fortifications to both the the mere listing of the variety of South and the North have increas- these structures at various points ingly referred to the possibilities bears its own persuasive import of “Islamic” terrorists exploiting about the ambiguous purposes inadequately defended entryways. 644 Jeff Pruchnic

Similarly, whereas the West Bank (56) while also attempting to “de- barrier and its predecessor struc- tach political life from the demands tures have long had theocratic im- or imperatives of the economic” plications, more recently its role as (58). If Westphalian sovereignty a barrier to the flow of goods and was shaped by the subordination services has gained much atten- and regulation of the religious and tion. The 2007 documentary film the economic, then we should not 9 Star Hotel (by Ido Haar), for in- be surprised to see its decline result stance, follows a group of young in the redistribution of powers to Palestinian men who cross illegally both of these other domains. This into the Israeli city of Modi’in to history also helps explain a recent work construction jobs. (Brown resurgence in attempts to position also mentions the striking example nation-state sovereignty in theolog- of a complaint by the member of ical terms. As Brown writes, “[A]s an illegal Israeli settlement against it is weakened and rivaled by other the proposed path of the barrier’s forces, what remains of nation-state extension; she was worried that it sovereignty becomes openly and might block the route taken by her aggressively rather than passively Palestinian maids in reporting for theological” (62). Or, as she puts it work.) more bluntly elsewhere, “[S]over- Interrogations of the relation- eignty needs God more as its other ship between these three forces— sources and powers thin and its ter- theopolitics, capitalist economics, ritorial grip falters” (63). and sovereignty—center each chap- The admixture of the religious ter of Brown’s relatively slim vol- and the political that emerges when ume. After an outlining of the sovereignty is threatened, Brown paradoxes symbolized in our con- suggests, most often appeals to temporary “passion for wall-build- the “decisionist” or “exceptional” ing” (“Waning Sovereignty, Walled power of the sovereign entity as Democracy”), the second chap- sovereign entity, a concept now ter, “Sovereignty and Enclosure,” popularly associated with the work traces the emergence and refine- of , and one very much ment of the concept of sovereignty opposed to the tradition of popu- in the West through the works of lar legislative power prominent in such figures as Hobbes, Jean Bodin, the works of Locke and Rousseau. Locke, and Rousseau. Here, Brown (Brown does not have to expend presents a concise, compelling read- much more effort than quoting the ing of nation-state sovereignty as second President Bush, who often the political force that marks “the appears as something like a vaude- temporal end and spatial limit of villian Carl Schmitt in Walled States, the sovereignty of nature or God” to emphasize the recent return of ON Postcritical theory? 645

“absolutist” power in American dis- the book’s reading of sovereignty cussions of sovereignty in the recent might have aged rather abruptly past.) However, even a monarch in light of the events now known seems outperformed by the mar- as the Arab Spring, populist up- ket in these times; after all, there risings that started about a month are few examples of “sovereignty after the text’s publication. These without the sovereign” better than clashes seemed to bring back to global capitalism, a force that often the forefront the more procedural appears, Brown suggests, to ap- legacies of Westphalia (including proximate “a god’s power to make policies of noninterference between the world without deliberation or nation-states), as well as the power calculation” (65). The uneasy inter- of at least the idea of popular sov- action between the waning nation- ereignty, one consistently invoked state and the rising theopolitics by participants in the Arab Spring and global capital is detailed in and one that might seem too easily the third chapter of Walled States, dismissed by Brown as, in her own which takes up the ways in which words, “if not a fiction, something walls alternately demonstrate the of an abstraction with a tenuous effects of state-generated discourses bearing on political reality” (49). of fear and danger, as well as the However, if the discourses and ac- popular desires and fantasies of its tions of the citizenry seemed to citizenry (“States and Subjects”). suggest a great viability of popular The concluding chapter (“Desir- sovereignty as a motivating factor, ing Walls”), presents an even more one could equally point to the ac- sustained (and psychoanalytically tions on behalf of sovereign figures inclined) focus on the latter, map- themselves—warnings that theo- ping the “psychic reassurances or cratic or terroristic groups were palliatives” that walls offer mod- behind such uprisings or would fill ern subjects suffering the anxieties the void created by the absence of attendant to the decline of nation- a strong ruler, invocations of anar- state sovereignty. Here, Brown chy or disappearance of the nation- draws extensively on Freud’s study state, frequent references on behalf of religion in The Future of an Illu- of all parties to how such incidents sion (1927), leaving readers with a might disrupt the “global economic depiction of nation-state walls as an recovery”—as confirming Brown’s inversion of that book’s title, “not larger analysis of the psychic econ- the future of an illusion, but the il- omy surrounding questions of lusion of a future aligned with an sovereignty and the impositions idealized past” (133). of global capitalism and theopoli- Several early responses to tics onto its territories. Perhaps Walled States questioned whether the more interesting question on 646 Jeff Pruchnic this score is the more generic one: prior to Walled States on similar What relationship do we expect (or subject matter, she suggests that desire) between such phenomena much “left and liberal theoreti- and Brown’s text as an instance of cal sovereignty talk” may be little theorizing (and thus itself an ab- more than “a search for a kind of straction) and critique (and thus Viagra for the political.”11 If critical an analysis into the often hidden theory has devoted the majority of conditions and consequences of the its intellectual efforts to teaching us forces behind such phenomena)? about the immaterial and elusive This question is itself one also symbology of power as it functions very much under review within in language, science, the psyche, Walled States; in addition to re- etc., perhaps it has prepared us less flecting on her own methodologi- well to deal with such obvious and cal approach multiple times in the material manifestations of social text—“[W]hat does it mean to treat power as the literal walls expand- nation-state walling as a theoretical ing across the globe. object when it does not emerge and In this sense, it might be said exist in the world as such?” (27)— that the psychoanalytic analysis Brown also wonders whether much that forms the final chapter of of recent critical theory in general, the text, though perhaps the best with its focus on the discursive, the example of Brown’s reliably pow- contingent, and the hidden, can ad- erful argumentation and phras- equately address such obvious and ing, undercuts the book’s more physical manifestations of social consistent strengths. Comparing power as border walls (80). Indeed, the walls under review to Anna contemporary walled states seem to Freud’s study of ego defense—in function, Brown writes, as a rebuke both cases the defenses thrown up not only to “every liberal hope for against fear of external threats end a global village”—the low-hanging up (re)defining the very thing they fruit for any leftist critique of this are meant to protect—is undoubt- type—but also to “every post-struc- edly appropriate, but in some ways turalist theorization of power” (81). detracts from Brown’s suggestion While Brown references Derrida, that the paradoxes of contemporary Foucault, and Deleuze amongst sovereignty reside in plain sight; in others as examples of participants other words, the same point seems in the latter endeavor, more recent to have been already made without critical work on the question of needing the help of a psychoanalytic sovereignty, specifically by the likes detour such as this one. Although of Agamben and Hardt and Negri, the walls discussed in Brown’s hardly fairs better in her estima- text reside physically between na- tion; indeed, in a piece published tion-states, she also suggests they ON Postcritical theory? 647 mark an “in-between” of modes Sovereignty in conjunction with of power, “a global interregnum” recent works by Alberto Toscano, that designates a “time after the Isabelle Stengers, and Erik Olin era of state sovereignty, but before Wright. If Brown’s text can be read the articulation or instantiation as a diagnostic of the transitional of an alternate global order” (39). moment of global social power and Though it is the great benefit of a concomitant reconsideration of this text to encapsulate this transi- the role of critique and left-theoriz- tion moment within its analysis, we ing, these texts similarly combine might also posit Brown’s approach these objectives while pushing to- here as itself marking a transitional ward more specific rethinkings of moment in critique of its type. If the role of intellectual abstraction paradox is the rule rather than ex- in politics as a whole (Toscano), the ception in the contemporary poli- formation of attachments between tics of sovereignty, its exposure or people and new constellations of revelation seems to not so much thought and knowledge (Stengers), inhibit or negate its power but offer and the appropriate strategies for lessons regarding its “uses” in vari- forwarding egalitarian political ous contexts. Thus for instance, in goals (Wright). interviews around the time of the Alberto Toscano’s Fanaticism publication of Walled States, Brown is a far-reaching study of the vari- has more explicitly addressed the ous ways that its title subject, one “huge space for the Left” opened Toscano cleanly defines, follow- by renewal of populist anger and ing Hegel, as “enthusiasm for the ad hoc organizing, even if most abstract,” has driven intellectual recently these areas have (on the history and populist politics (xi). American scene at least) been Emphasizing the identification of dominated largely by conservative fanaticism with a commitment to and reactionary groups.12 In this abstract principles, as opposed to sense, then, the contribution Brown our knee-jerk associations with makes via Walled States may be to religion or the irrational, allows mark off a transitional moment not Toscano, on the one hand, to em- only in the concept of sovereignty phasize the historical flexibility of within the political imaginary but the term, notably the role of osten- also within the movement of left- sibly “anti-fanatical” or “neutral” political theorizing and critical discourses, such as secularism or praxis. the “free market,” to function as fa- On this score, and in regards naticisms in their own right. On the to the larger question with which other, it also allows Toscano to un- we began, it was highly enlighten- derscore the long history of fanati- ing to read Walled States, Waning cism as a concept within political 648 Jeff Pruchnic philosophy and cultural theory, related concepts within the think- disciplines that have consistently ing of key Enlightenment figures. attempted to identify the relation- Chapter 4 (“The Revolutions of the ship between ideational abstraction East: Islam, Hegel, Psychoanaly- and concrete action, as well as to sis”) expertly rereads Hegel’s writ- sort out fanaticism from its more ing on Islam as part of a broader benevolent cousins: enthusiasm, consideration of the religion’s use as partisanship, and commitment. the reliable default image of fanati- The former of these objectives cism for the West. Finally, chapter is well served by Toscano’s wide- 5 (“The Cold War and the Messiah: ranging survey of the “uses of the On Political Religion”) engages the idea” of fanaticism from the En- postsecular turn in recent critical lightenment onward. And Fanati- theory and the general resurgence cism’s topics and sites are indeed of popular interest in the relation- expansive; the first chapter (“Fig- ship between politics and religion ures of Extremism”) alone moves in recent times. from a consideration of American As mentioned, part of the value abolitionist struggles, to revolts of such a broad, diverse inquiry against British colonialism, to the into discourses “of” and about fa- emergence of the “politics of pas- naticism is its emphasis of the am- sion” as a sticking point in twen- biguity of the term; readers may be tieth-century political thought (as surprised to discover, for instance, seen in the works of Francis Fu- the consistent depiction of antislav- kuyama, Michael Walzer, Peter ery activists prior to the Civil War Sloterdijk, and Badiou, amongst as fanatics, a charge memorialized, others). Chapter 2 (“The Birth of amongst other places, in the title of Modern Politics Out of the Spirit William Drayton’s 1836 The South of Millenarianism”) takes up the Vindicated from the Treason and legacy of the German Peasants’ Fanaticism of the Northern Aboli- War of the early sixteenth century tionists. Similarly, though Enlight- and considers how its historical enment philosophes may reside in condemnation influenced twenti- the popular imagination as help- eth-century radical thought (and, ing to usher in the age of reason, in turn, largely set the stage for cri- Toscano is quick to remind us of tiques of fanaticism within revolu- Edmund Burke’s accusation that tionary political strategy generally). their own “horrible fanaticism”— The third chapter (“Raving with their application of atheistic and Reason: Fanaticism and the En- abstract philosophizing to social lightenment”) presents a striking questions—was “a thousand times reading of the centrality of debates more dangerous than that inspired over fanaticism, “enthusiasm,” and by religion” (quoted on xvii). ON Postcritical theory? 649

However, it is important to the outside of reason, the persistent note that Toscano’s main objec- threat of pathological partisanship tive in this survey is not simply to or clerical irrationality” and the suggest that the concept has been other that takes “some uncondi- bankrupted by ambiguous and tional and unyielding abstract pas- contradictory use over several cen- sion as intrinsic to a universalizing turies (yesterday’s fanatic is today’s rationality and emancipatory poli- arbiter of reason), nor to forward tics” (xvii). It is not hard to guess some weak version of cosmopoli- which of these two positions, which tanism to counter our predisposi- Toscano aligns roughly with the re- tions to dismissing others under spective endowments of Voltaire’s the name of fanaticism. Rather, Lumières and the Aufklärung of Toscano argues that we need not Kant, has received the most support so much resist claims of fanaticism in contemporary populist politi- as to understand the crucial role, cal thought. Indeed, Toscano finds perhaps the necessary one, of it as many contemporary representa- a force in political change and to in tives of the “bad” Enlightenment turn become better at finding ways marking various corners of current direct its energies for strategic pur- political debate, notably those who poses. Thus, for instance, Toscano participate in the West’s long reli- does not deny that American abo- ance on Islam as our default image litionists were fanatics; rather, he of fanaticism and thus forward emphasizes how their fanaticism “the widespread belief that we are emerged from an understanding of experiencing the repetition or con- the weakness of deliberative politics tinuation of that struggle between on this issue and “was thus both a reason and unreason, freedom and matter of passionate conviction and subjection, knowledge and igno- mediated strategy, combining the rance which was first played out attractions of symbolism and affect in the seventeenth and eighteenth with the instruments of power and centuries in Europe” (101). calculation” (10). Although Toscano finds simi- Toscano’s intervention here is larly problematic invocations of perhaps best understood via his fanaticism-as-dismissal in some con- careful tracing of the legacies of En- temporary critical theory (Sloterdi- lightenment thought on fanaticism. jk’s recent “psychopolitical” writings As Toscano writes, one can roughly and Žižek’s rather depressing take discern two philosophical perspec- on Islam come under fire), he iden- tives on the subject that emerged tifies the turn to religious ideas of from debates over enthusiasm and redemption in the works of Der- fanaticism in key Enlightenment rida and Badiou as more salutary thinkers: one that positions it “as attempts “to evade the critiques of 650 Jeff Pruchnic universalism as fanaticism while favor of an uncompromising devo- not giving up an iota of the radi- tion to abstract principles (xxi). On cality demanded by a transforma- the other, however, it cannot have tive, oppositional and emancipatory a disruptive effect without also re- political thought” (245). Derrida’s lying on a conception of history as effort in this regard in Specters of “a naturalized dimension of pre- Marx (1993) is found lacking, how- dictable combinations” to which it ever, largely due to his allergy to- can be opposed. Badiou’s approach ward the ontological and historical to this dilemma largely works to- materialist dimensions of his own ward abstracting the elements of subject matter. Although, for To- radical change from its occurrences scano, Badiou fares much better in in recorded history: searching for this regard, his understanding of a transhistorical formulation that political commitment and its role captures the emergence of world- in revolutionary changes seems to changing events within history. elide considerations of strategy and Toscano might be taken as work- context. Or, as Toscano phrases ing in the opposite direction, to- it, “[A] certain passivity functions ward a historicizing of abstraction here as an antidote to the censures and placing a greater emphasis on that inevitably greet a Promethean precisely the pull or allure of ab- subjectivity that seeks to change straction and its role in the poli- the world on the basis of a truth it tics of various historical contexts. claims to possess” (246). Importantly, this difference in ap- Thus, although he is broadly proach saves Toscano from having sympathetic to Badiou’s writings to determine a method for sorting on ontology and commitment, To- out “good” and “bad” instances of scano’s handling of these topics in radical commitment that might Fanaticism is, at least for this reader, seem to follow the same formulist much more patient and pragmatic. pattern, and to instead focus on the This may be because Toscano’s ap- possible “uses” of not only the “idea proach is in many ways a reversal of fanaticism” but how more gen- of that taken by Badiou in regards eralized force fields of enthusiasm, to the historical dimensions of po- affective attachment, and commit- litical change. As Toscano explains ment might be used in shaping the early in the text, the relationship politics of the present. between fanaticism and history is In Toscano’s final analysis, inherently paradoxical. On the one then, our anxieties about fanati- hand, the disruptive force of fanati- cism are themselves a symptom of cism is out of necessity tied to its “ex- a larger problem we have with ac- plicit refusal of history as a domain cepting radical commitment to the of gradualism and mediation” in abstract as a component of political ON Postcritical theory? 651 thought and as a motivator of po- immense responsibility projected litical praxis. As he writes near the by that position and our need to book’s closing, “[A]ttempts to as- recognize the role of belief in sci- sert some abstractions (such as po- entific investigation and discovery. litical equality) against others (such Cosmopolitics I also begins with an as monetary equivalence), require invocation of what Stengers calls that we find ways of connecting a “nonrelativist sophists,” but she politics founded on the refusal of shifts ground somewhat in clarify- compromise with the openings or ing more specifically the distinc- closures provided by contemporary tion between what she calls “the capitalism” (251). Only by find- politics constitutive of the sciences” ing ways to work on and through as opposed to “a general politics of the forces of fanaticism, to “tune” power.” The former designates the our own and others’ devotions to identification of scientific inven- various abstractions, can we hope tion via its separation from myth to respond effectively to times of and opinion, what Stengers refers crisis wherein such commitments to as the “event constituted by the proliferate. creation of a measurement.” Such Determining precisely how an event, Stengers reminds us, is such attachments occur and the different than its reduction as “an underpinnings of abstraction itself illustration of the right and general within human cognition and sense- obligation to subject all things to making is a major focus of Isabelle measurement” (11). Framed more Stengers’s Cosmopolitics I, the Eng- generally, Stengers’s overarching lish of the first three concern is not so much to question books of a seven-volume series the validity of any specific aspect of that has already been published in modern science as it is to ask after French. In this text, Stengers largely how such validation within science, picks up from where her previous which here might be only our most work, The Invention of Modern Sci- obvious category of thought systems ence, left off.13 In the final chapter of that claim universality, often comes that text, Stengers argued for a “re- at the expense of discrediting claims turn to the sophists” via a rereading and practices outside of itself. of the sophist Protagoras’s famous Stengers has two primary ap- statement declaring that “man is proaches to this problem through- the measure of all things”; contra its out Cosmopolitics I: a rethinking of popular interpretation as advocat- the nature of scientific production ing a certain necessary (so that it might obtain an identity in regards to our understanding of that is not reliant on the disquali- the world, Stengers suggested we fication of the “nonscientific”) and might do better in considering the a relatively more novel attempt to 652 Jeff Pruchnic thematize the role of “symbiosis” in be also best understood in contrast not only scientific practice but so- to another thinker who has many cial life (specifically the accidental of the same objectives. Much like or strategic ways in which the in- Bruno Latour, Stengers tends to terests of different actants intersect emphasize the creative power of or complement each other). If the scientific discoveries—the ways in first of these maintains Stengers’s which the naming of a substance position as one of our most bril- or recognition of the relationship liant practitioners of science stud- between different properties have ies scholarship, the second is what their own material consequences gives an unusually broad reach to and in a sense concretely change the politics of the book’s title and our contemporary reality. Latour’s Stengers’s more general cosmopo- emphasis, however, has most often litical, as opposed to cosmopolitan, been on the ostensible epistemolog- approach. If pre- ical novelty of this viewpoint. For sumes the possibility of a shared instance, Latour has emphasized common world, Stengers proposes the “backward causation” of scien- instead political strategies based on tific discoveries, the ways in which, the manipulation or creation of op- to use one of his most popular ex- portunities for symbiosis between amples, although airborne germs individuals and collectivities that can’t be said to have an identity do not rely on ideational consensus prior to Pasteur’s work in 1864 or the synthesis of disparate goals made them “known” to humans, or beliefs. it is possible to say that, after 1864, These two objectives—a cri- “airborne germs were there all tique of the conceptual imperi- along.”14 Stengers, too, follows the alism of modern science and a novel logic of scientific “discover- thematization of the politics of so- ies,” as well as the ways in which cial symbiosis—might not seem to some more pivotal instance of the naturally complement each other, same give birth to entirely new but one of the great accomplish- fields that in turn not only “add” ments of Stengers’s work in Cos- to reality, but shape the ways in mopolitics I is to demonstrate how which we are intended to order or the same process of reconceiving understand reality “itself.” Thus, science as an “ecology of practices” for instance, Stengers turns more rather than an exclusively episte- than once to the discovery of the mological or metaphysical domain neutrino as a pivotal moment in can also be leveraged to rethink the formation of a “revolutionary the formalisms that limit our po- physics” in which contradictory litical imaginations. As with To- observable phenomena can be jus- scano, Stengers’s approach might tifiably discounted. ON Postcritical theory? 653

Stengers’s more urgent concern, Pignarre, Capitalist Sorcery: Break- however, is the way in which such ing the Spell.15) changes in what “counts” and what Rather, Stengers suggests that can be contested in science tend to recognizing the material and pro- become delocalized and imported cessual nature of modern science into other domains, impacting might also lead us toward political what counts in society as a whole or strategies that require neither nihil- crowding out other disciplines and ism nor “the recognition of a more less formal forms of cognition and powerful interest before which di- abstraction. Stengers’s stand against vergent particular interests would the becoming-generic of science, have to bow down” (34). This, however, is no call for a prophylac- then, is perhaps the most succinct tic skepticism or general advoca- connection between Stengers’s de- tion of relativism. In regards to the piction of science as an “ecology former, she continually identifies of practices” and her forwarding the need to “escape from a general- of dynamic ecology as a political ized polemic that puts every prac- model. As Stengers writes, despite tice in a position of disqualifying our tendencies to personalize and and/or in danger of being disquali- formalize ecology, it does not “un- fied” as the unique problem that derstand consensus but, at most, guides her critique of modern sci- symbiosis, in which every protago- ence (58). The possibility of relativ- nist is interested in the success of ism or pleas for simple tolerance as the other for its own reasons” (35). viable alternatives are also concisely Such a perspective, not despite but dismissed in a provocative aside in because of its depersonalization, Cosmopolitics I in which Stengers may actually be a better model for wryly identifies capitalism as “the crafting social change because it only truly tolerant and relativist does not require us to “enlighten” undertaking that I know of”: “It oppositional groups toward our alone is capable of radically align- epistemological or ethical correct- ing disparate practices and value ness, but instead gives us the bur- only to turn against those whose den of creating novel and strategic destruction would be of interest to alliances that capitalize on the over- it; for it is radically indifferent to lap of respective desires. whatever binds them and is itself Despite their large differences bound by nothing” (74). (Anyone in their ostensible subject matter, who might mistakenly think this the same general strategy, and the association is meant to speak well concept of symbiosis as a model, of relativism need do no more than is very much the driving force of read the title of Stengers’s more Erik Olen Wright’s Envisioning recent collaboration with Phillipe Real Utopias, a work that, like all of 654 Jeff Pruchnic the works reviewed in this essay, is the creation of alternative models profitably considered as an attempt of social and economic life. These to rethink the possibilities of criti- are the “real utopias” of the book’s cal theory given the challenges of titles, case studies of “actually exist- the present. Wright, however, is by ing” socialist forms of cooperation, far the most systematic in his ap- such as participatory budgeting proach to this endeavor, and a great practices in Porto Alegre and the strength of his work in this text is to cooperative governance structure simultaneously place great faith in of the Mondragón Corporation. the power of “emancipatory social Wright’s turn to “real utopias” science” to make positive change in here is meant as a way to preserve the world while at the same time many of the objectives of Marxist insisting on pragmatic, some might social theory while jettisoning any even say modest, goals for it in the remaining teleogical visions of the near future. failure of capitalism and its replace- The general framework of En- ment by collective ownership of visioning Real Utopias follows what the means of production. Instead, Wright stipulates to be the three Wright draws our attention to essential tasks of emancipatory so- the hybrid forms of socialism and cial science of any era: “elaborating capitalism that already exist within a systematic diagnosis and critique contemporary economies; subse- of the world as it exists; envision- quently he suggests that eman- ing viable alternatives; and under- cipatory scholars should switch standing the obstacles, possibilities, their emphasis to designing what and dilemmas of transformation” Wright calls a “socialist compass,” a (10). Wright gently suggests at metric for determining, first, what many moments in the text that the potential changes in the political first of these activities—critique economy will take us closer to our itself—has traditionally received emancipatory goals and, second, the highest priority and claimed which strategies are viable within the lion’s share of ink from critical the specific contexts of different theorists over the last half-century. countries and existing economic Thus, while acknowledging the systems. necessity of the diagnostic vector Wright’s careful attention to of “emancipatory” scholarship, as context leads him to suggest, for in- well as providing a lucid, concise stance, that forwarding of a guaran- example of the same in a chapter teed basic income might ironically with the almost-charming title “be more sustainable in a society “What’s So Bad about Capital- with a strong consumerist culture, ism?” Wright’s fundamental focus since people in such a society are is on the second of these three tasks: likely to have strong preferences ON Postcritical theory? 655 for discretionary income” (221). is certainly true that Wikipedia has Envisioning Real Utopias is full of emerged as a striking example of counterintuitive, but ultimately the productive power of unremu- persuasive arguments such as these, nerated collective labor—but it most of which preserve an un- seems a bit much to hold it up as doubted optimism about potential “profoundly anti-capitalist,” partic- solutions to economic injustices but ularly, as Wright reminds us many focus on incremental, short-term other times in Envisioning Real Uto- goals as starting points. At the same pias, as capitalism is too diverse and time, however, this tempered ap- protean a system to be identified proach is likely to disappoint read- (and one might then also suggest, ers who, understandably, might be opposed) in its “pure” form. have less patience about the pace of In the final analysis, however, the proposed changes under review, what makes Wright’s book so pro- as well as Wright’s more specific vocative is not so much the examples suggestion that some socialist goals he forwards as “viable alternatives,” are decidedly “off the table” given as his unwavering insistence on via- the political orientations of some bility itself as a criterion for emanci- countries and communities (147), patory thought. Wright’s strongest or his insistence that, “in order to statement on this score is in the final gain the virtues latent within a section of Envisioning Real Utopias, capitalist organization of economic covering the third and final task of structures,” some version of capital- “transformation” that he assigns ism may be a necessary part of any to emancipatory social science. In sustainable economic system (162). four brief but compelling chapters, Similarly, many of Wright’s Wright details the role of theories key examples—Mondragón, Porto of structural change in political Alegre—will already be familiar to thought and three generic models readers of left-oriented , of the same. Although Wright gives and others might be found wanting. a fair hearing to the strengths of the In the latter category, it is particu- first two, more traditional, forms— larly hard to accept Wright’s con- coded as the “ruptural” and the tention that the open-author online “interstitial”—both are eventually encyclopedia Wikipedia demon- dismissed for, respectively, pre- strates “a profoundly anti-capitalist suming they can “smash the state” way of producing and disseminat- as the locus of social power or for ing knowledge” and is based on the ignoring its importance altogether. egalitarian principle “to each ac- Instead, Wright proposes “symbi- cording to need, from each accord- otic transformation” as a guide for ing to ability” (3). It is not so much emancipatory programs, strategies that Wright is incorrect here—it that “seek to create the conditions 656 Jeff Pruchnic for positive collaboration” between to those who would dismiss his vi- groups with opposing interests sion of emancipatory action as al- (306). ready “compromised,” his approval As one might expect given of “hybrid” economies, baby-step Wright’s large amount of previous socialism, and class symbiosis as research on class and the general corrupt from the start. However, (post-)Marxist bent of Utopias, two it is precisely Wright’s out-of-step key “opposing interests” here are relation to more militant egalitarian those of capitalists and those of the theories of the past, and the “revo- working class. Specifically, Wright lutionary fetish” of current progres- proposes a particular kind of “class sive thought as seen in the works of compromise” in which “the asso- writers like Badiou and Žižek, that ciational power of the working class might make his work one of the and the material interests of capital- more radical entries into contempo- ists” can be combined in actions rary critical theorizing. As already that benefit both in the short term suggested in this review, Wright’s and lead to greater social equality in work in this regard might be taken the long term (338–39). Although as only the most explicit statement not entirely restricted to strategic of an undercurrent at work in all overlaps of this type, Wright’s gen- of the texts reviewed here, with his eral notion of symbiotic strategies real utopias and symbiotic strategies relies on designing solutions to con- only a more systematic articulation crete social problems that generally of the thinking behind Brown’s di- increase the power of the working agnosis of the transitional state of class in some way and thus take us contemporary social power, Tosca- in the direction of more egalitarian no’s recuperation of abstraction and social arrangements even as they fanaticism as necessary rather than serve the immediate needs of an abject components of contemporary often unjust capitalist society. Com- politics, and Stengers’s own sugges- ing at the end of the book, Wright’s tion of the symbiotic as a postcritical proposal includes a brief rereading rejoinder to the impotence of rela- of economic history to emphasize tivism and the ubiquity of opposi- the ways in which such symbiosis tional claims and interests. All find has served progressive aims in the their power in a certain beleaguered past and also gives us a lens for re- acceptance that the traditional tools reading the more contemporary of leftist critical theory have been examples of “real utopias” covered co-opted by the right, but also in a earlier in the book. rededication to finding immanent Wright’s frequent use of the modes of engaging the problems word “compromise” (class-based or of contemporary politics despite otherwise) gives easy ammunition the potential compromises it might ON Postcritical theory? 657 entail. Or, as Stengers phrases it, 6. Frederic Jameson, A Singular Moder- they are all joined in a “gamble that nity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London: Verso, 2002), 1–2. the present still provides substance 7. Theodor W. Adorno, “The Actuality for resistance, that it is populated by of Philosophy,” Telos 31 (1977): 121–33, practices that remain vital even if quotation on 121. none of them has escaped the gen- 8. Carsten Strathausen, “A Critique eralized parasitism that implicated of Neo-Left Ontology,” Postmodern them all” (10). Culture 16, no. 3 (2006): 1–38, available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pmc/ v016/16.3strathausen.html. Jeff Pruchnic is an assistant professor of Eng- lish at Wayne State University. His writings 9. Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demand- on the intersections of rhetoric, critical the- ing: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of ory, and have appeared most Resistance (London: Verso, 2007). recently in the journals Rhetoric Society 10. Adrian Johnston, Badiou, Žižek, and Quarterly, JAC, and Configurations. He Political Transformations: The Cadence of is currently working on a book manuscript Change, Northwestern University Stud- entitled “The Transhuman Condition.” ies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwest- ern University Press, 2009), xvii. Notes 11. Wendy Brown, “Sovereignty and the Return of the Repressed,” in The New 1. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Pluralism: William Connolly and the Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Contemporary Global Condition, ed. University Press, 2000), 142. David Campbell and Morton School- man (Durham, NC: Duke University 2. Emily Eakin, “The Latest Theory Is Press, 2009), 250–72, quotation on 235. That Theory Doesn’t Matter,” New York Times, 19 April 2003, available at 12. Wendy Brown, “Rights, Tolerance & www.nytimes.com/2003/04/19/books/ Waning Sovereignty: Interview with the-latest-theory-is-that-theory-doesn- Wendy Brown,” by Illan Rua Wall, t-matter.html. podcast, 17 September 2010, available at Human Rights in Ireland, www. 3. Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run humanrights.ie/index.php/2010/09/17/ Out of Steam?” Critical Inquiry 30, no. rights-tolerance-waning-sovereignty- 2 (2004): 225–48. interview-with-wendy-brown/. 4. See, for instance, Eyal Weizman’s “Le- 13. Isabelle Stengers, The Invention of thal Theory,” Log 7 (2006): 53–77; and Modern Science, trans. Daniel W. Smith, A. Fuat Firat and Nikhilesh Dhola- Theory Out of Bounds, 19 (Minne- kia, “Theoretical and Philosophical apolis: University of Minnesota Press, Implications of Postmodern Debates: 2000). Some Challenges to Modern Market- ing,” Marketing Theory 6, no. 2 (2006): 14. Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on 123–62. the Reality of (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 5. Rebecca Mead, “Rage Machine: 173. Andrew Breitbart’s Empire of Bluster,” New Yorker, 24 May 2010, 15. Phillipe Pignarre and Isabelle Stengers, available at www.newyorker.com/ Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell, reporting/2010/05/24/100524fa_fact_ trans. Andrew Goffey (New York: mead. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).