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Modernist, Postmodernist, and Feminist Critical Practices University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1999 Criteria in crisis : modernist, postmodernist, and feminist critical practices. Mary Ann Sushinsky University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Sushinsky, Mary Ann, "Criteria in crisis : modernist, postmodernist, and feminist critical practices." (1999). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2320. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2320 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CRITERIA IN CRISIS: MODERNIST, POSTMODERNIST, AND FEMINIST CRITICAL PRACTICES A Dissertation Presented by MARY ANN SUSHINSKY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherest in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 1 999 Philosophy Copyright by Mary Ann Sushinsky 1999 All Rights Reserved CRITERIA IN CRISIS: MODERNIST, POSTMODERNIST, AND FEMINIST CRITICAL PRACTICES A Dissertation Presented by MARY ANN SUSHINSKY Approved as to style and content by: Ann Ferguson, Chair Bruce Aune, Member ABSTRACT CRITERIA IN CRISIS: MODERNIST, POSTMODERNIST, AND FEMINIST CRITICAL PRACTICES FEBRUARY 1999 MARY ANN SUSHINSKY, B.A. KENT STATE UNIVERSITY M.A., CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Ann Ferguson I examine a problem or dilemma of legitimation faced by the critical theorist who takes as the object of his or her critique a totality of which she or he is a part. The dilemma is that the theorist must either illegitimately exempt her critical theory from the determining influences of the totality or lose normative authority. The critics I examine in detail are: Adorno and Horkheimer; Kant; Hegel; feminist standpoint epistemologists, in particular, Sandra Harding; Irigaray; Foucault; and Arendt. I conclude that a purely theoretical or epistemic ground for the legitimacy of totalizing critique is impossible; philosophical critique must involve an extra-rational faith or a political commitment. However, I also argue that the project of theoretical grounding should not be abandoned. I continue this project by drawing out of the critical theorists I examined some preliminary concepts and strategies (such as mimesis, hysteria, free action, and psychoanalytic practice) that may, after further development, serve to provide a theory of the legitimacy of critical philosophy. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT jv Chapter 1 . THE CRISIS OF REASON AND THE DILEMMA OF CRITIQUE 1 The Crisis of Reason 4 The Structure of Critique and the Critic's Dilemma 8 The Epistemological Form of the Dilemma 12 Critique as Practical/Political 15 The Dilemma as a Dialectic of Theory and Practice 20 The Critique of Enlightenment 22 2. THE DILEMMA OF THE KANTIAN CRITICAL SUBJECT AND THE HEGELIAN ALTERNATIVE OF IMMANENT CRITIQUE 45 Authorization and Limitation in the Critique of Pure Reason . 49 The Reflexivity of Consciousness in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 54 Immanence and Transcendence in the Refutations of Idealism 59 Bad Faith as a Strategy of Avoidance 67 Enter Hegel 77 Kant's Transgression 81 Analytic Entailment as Another Strategy of Avoidance 86 Other Commentators 91 Strawsonian Discipline 92 The Transcendence of Theory: Deleuze 97 Oscillation: Howard and Hutchings 101 Hegel: Phenomenology as Immanent Critique 104 The Dialectical Experience of Consciousness and Immanent Critique 107 The Phenomenological Consciousness as Transcendent to its Object Ill The Ground of Hegelian Transcendence 117 The Oscillation of Immanence and Transcendence in Kant and Hegel 1 20 FOR A FEMINIST STANDPOINT? 122 3 . IS THERE A GROUND 1 24 The Ground of Standpoint Theory The Standpoint of the Proletariat 126 Object Relations Theory 135 The Conflictual Nature of Feminist Empiricism 142 Harding's Strategy of Immanent Critique 151 The Terrestrial Fulcrum" of "Strong Objectivity" 156 Subject and Object in Feminist Critique 1 60 4. IS POSTMODERN FEMINISM THE ANSWER? 167 Immanence and Transcendence in Irigaray's Postmodern/ Difference Feminism 169 The Platonic Womb of Theory 175 Freud's Libidinal Economy 178 Irigaray's Strategy of Mimesis 183 Miming Metaphor for Metonymy 187 An Alternative Economy 195 5. THE CRITIC'S GROUND IN THE POLITICAL: FOUCAULT AND ARENDT 201 The Ground of Critique in Political Power: Foucault 202 Genealogy as Immanent Critique 207 Power as the Real Ground 210 The Foucaultian Gap 213 The Ground of Critique in Political Freedom: Arendt 222 The Critic's Immanence in "The Human Condition" 224 The Immanence and Transcendence of Political Freedom . 228 The Defetishization of Freedom 229 The Dual Nature of Free Action 232 Freedom as Mimesis 234 Storytelling, Rather than Theory 237 Forgiving and Promising as Aspects of Critique 244 6. PRAXIS, MIMESIS, TRANSCENDENCE 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 VI CHAPTER I THE CRISIS OF REASON AND THE DILEMMA OF CRITIQUE According to Gilles Deleuze, "Philosophy is at its most positive as critique. I agree. Certainly a critical attitude toward received views has been a moving force behind much of the philosophical thought of the entire western tradition 2 in philosophy . In this dissertation, I will focus more specifically on critique as it has been manifest in the modern period. is This not because I fail to recognize the critical attitude and method inherent in the philosophies of the Ancients (especially Socrates and Plato, whose reliance on the distinction between reality and appearance informed all of their philosophical thought), but because the modern period in philosophy, in its unique preoccupation with questions of methodology and epistemology, can be seen as offering self-conscious and sophisticated reflection upon the capacities and problems of critique itself. Furthermore, the modern period in philosophy can be seen to differ from a premodern philosophical Weltanschauung in its extension of the powers of critical reason to all spheres of human functioning, including those areas of life which the premodern tradition had left to the authority lilies Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy . (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), page106. 2 For a study which focuses on critique as fundamental to philosophical thought throughout the tradition, where it has been instantiated in various analyses of alienation, see Trent Schroyer, The Critique of Domination, (New York: George Braziller, 1973). 1 of religious and political institutions. 3 Modern philosophers threw off the yoke of authority and insisted upon autonomously exercising their own critical faculties in order to gain scientific (i.e., systematic, certain, reliable) knowledge and to determine practical questions about society, politics and law, 4 and ethics. Motivating the critical philosophies of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, to name a few, has been the assumption that knowledge could be achieved only by means of a process of critical inquiry. The most prominent voices of philosophical modernity have taken up the task of revealing received views, traditional practices, and institutions to be illegitimate. is There another reason that I am concerned with modernity's employment of critique. Many prominent philosophers have argued that 5 the modern period is coming to an end. This state of affairs gives rise to 3 The 18th century Enlightenment was known for this confident extension of reason in the rise of modern science and in bourgeois political revolutions. 4 — Kant's famous three questions 'What can I know?,' 'What ought I to do?,' 'What can I hope?' can be seen to incorporate this attitude of critical autonomy in all spheres. 5 Many philosophers have recently either made this claim or attempted to explore its legitimacy. See, for example, Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition for the paradigm statement. According to Lyotard, the basic characteristic of postmodernity is a lack of faith in "metanarratives," or large- scale theories which purport to explain all of physical or social reality (e.g., Marxism, Christianity, Psychoanalysis). I am, for the moment, leaving the question as to whether there is a qualitative difference between modernity and postmodernity open. I do believe that a large number of current thinkers seem to have a more cynical view of the value and capabilities of reason to improve the general quality of human life than did most thinkers of even a century ago. Whether it would be reasonable to draw a sharp distinction, however, between modernism and postmodernism on this point, I tend to doubt. (Would we have 2 an apparent paradox. For it is by making use of various forms of the concept of critique that the so called "post-modern" thinkers are claiming to have transcended, surpassed, outgrown, or deconstructed philosophical modernity. Critique therefore appears to be one modern concept which has transgressed the boundaries of its place of origin and to have survived the "paradigm shift" out of philosophical modernity and into post-modernity. Thus, the concept of critique itself entails paradox, for it is both immanently embedded in the tradition to which it applies itself, and at the same time, as critical of that tradition, it transcends its place of origin
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