Postcritical Thinking Seminar
Instructor: Laurent de Sutter, PhD
Schedule: Mondays in October at 1pm New York time
Session 1 (Oct 3 at 1pm New York time): The Problem with Critique
Reading: Rita Selski, The Limits of Critique, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2015
Session 2 (Oct 10 at 1pm New York time):
A Very Short Genealogy of Critical Thinking
Reading: Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, MIT Press, 1988
Session 3 (Oct 17 at 1pm New York time): The Anti-Critical Tradition
Reading: Giambattista Vico, On the Study Method of Our Time, transl. Elio Gianturco, Cornell UP, 1990
Session 4 (Oct 24 at 1pm New York time): Postcritical Proposals
Reading: Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, transl. Michael A. Greco and Daniel W. Smith, Univ of Minnesota Press, 1997
Description: In 2004, Bruno Latour published a curious article, whose title (“Why Has Critique Ran out of Steam”) seemed at the time like a provocation. It was so much so that Latour himself buried it in his bibliography and barely mentioned it again afterwards. However, this piece was read – especially by literary scholars, who found resources in it in order to attempting to save their discipline, that had transformed itself into a dubious machine of suspicion tearing everything into useless pieces. Indeed, in most fields of study (and practice), the triumph of critique has led to a new definition of theoretical work: is considered theoretically valid that which denies – that which refuses to accept that things are only what they seem to be. The general movement of critique has become the one of a judge observing what is to be judged from the untouchable seat of his (or her) higher critical power – a power which what is to be judged is in no position to escape from, or even to question. But was it not to be expected? From the point of view of its philosophical history, as well as its theoretical tools, has critique ever offered anything else than the exercise of superior lucidity and the strategic organization of the victory of thought over what there is? During this series of classes, I will try and answer this question by going back to the very roots of critique (the development of biblical exegesis, the birth of taste and the emergence of the figure of the spectator at the time of theatrical absolutism) and show the link that exists between critique, paranoia, crime, law, enlightenment, conspiracy, literature, and a certain political and aesthetical regime, originating in Late Renaissance Europe and finding its masterpiece (and tombstone) in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. And I will trace back the long journey that has led from these days to the present era – and the agonizing situation in which critique as put us (of which the current state of art (Institutional Critique, Critical Architecture, Critical Design) is perhaps the most visible symptom). Finally, I will outline not so much a program as a mere set of proposals for envisaging a post-critical way of engaging with thought – a way which would take into account the unquestionable successes of critique while trying to overcome its terrible flaws and give us a key allowing us to escape the mental prison within which it has confined our mind and, more importantly, our imagination.