Critique, Democracy, and Power

Critique plays a fundamental role in radical political theory, as well it should. The critical impulse helps us identify the injustices of a given political order. But critique can also paralyze the imagination, suspend the development of an alternative political vision, and engender despair. If leftist critique becomes hyper-critical, smelling power and injustice everywhere, it can lead to a politics of reaction where everything the Left stands for is posited as good while everything about the Right is evil. As Nietzsche claimed in his essay on the relationship between history and life, critique is an indispensable aspect of the regeneration of life but it must be held within strict limits lest it become life-denying: "it is difficult to set limits on this negating of the past." What is critique, how much of it is enough, and for what ends? Two new books contribute to the conversation about the future of radical political theory and how critique ties into this project.

In Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future (2006), Nikolas Kompridis wants to rescue the critical project from itself because it has exhausted its energies and placed us in a situation of normative disorientation and despair. He puts forth a bold vision of a new critical theory that promises to stimulate utopian energy and hopefulness. The fundamental goal of critical theory has always been to bring about "social conditions free from fear and domination…and conducive to human flourishing" (20). For Kompridis, this mission has been blocked by the thought of Jürgen Habermas, the current monarch of critical theory, whose reign must come to an end if the project of critical thought is to advance. Effective critique, for Kompridis, must "meet the challenge of reopening the future, enlarging the space of possibility and thereby restoring cultural confidence" (254). Habermas has failed on all three of these counts as a result of his narrow conception of reason and reformist politics. Similarly, the notion of critique as total unmasking has also "exhausted itself" (252) and failed to meet these challenges because it only unmasks power and lacks a sufficiently affirmative dimension. For Kompridis, an affirmative vision of a better political world must be articulated to restore hope. New meanings must be opened to renew both the past and future, new possibilities illuminated to enlarge the sphere of political options. Critique newly conceived must aim at the "self-decentering disclosure of meaning and possibility" (255). This will allow us to recover a joy for the world and renew our sense of freedom in the face of infinite possibilities.

Kompridis turns to a wide variety of authors to pump the critical juice and utopian zeal back into critical theory: Arendt, Cavell, Emerson, Gadamer, Hegel, Koselleck, Marcuse, Putnam, Taylor, Thoreau, Tully, and others. Kompridis summons Heidegger, though, as the thinker most able to put the critical back into critical theory. Apparently, it is time to move beyond critical theory's allergy to the "magician from Messkirch." The result is "neither a 'Heideggerian' critical theory nor a total break with the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory" (xi). For Kompridis, the fusion of certain aspects of Heidegger with a selective mobilization of critical theory will lead to a new way of thinking about our most pressing problems. Combining these competing traditions will activate "the disclosure and realization of possibilities for going on with our practice more reflectively, cooperatively enlarging the space of freedom as we cooperatively enlarge the space of possibility" (170). On its own, the work of Habermas has not pushed critical theory far enough forward in this respect.

Even though Habermas's ideals of reason, linguistic inter-subjectivity, and mutual understanding are appealing to Kompridis, they are insufficient to "facilitate new cultural beginnings, initiate new practices, and found new institutions" (202...