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 other 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. —Isabelle Stengers, 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. critical theory 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 Antonio Negri’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 difference 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 Gilles Deleuze 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 Critique 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 Michel Foucault?”—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 Frankfurt school 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 Fredric Jameson 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 critiques 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 metaphysics 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 theology 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 ontology.” For such as Emmanuel Levinas and Strathausen, although ontology has Maurice Blanchot 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 Jacques Derrida, 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 Giorgio Agamben, 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.