Process Philosophy and the Possibility of Critique

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence into prominence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciations of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty. The moral element is derivative from the other factors in experience. For otherwise there is no content for duty to operate upon.

--Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas

Critical social theory has a long and diverse heritage. It is as old as Heraclitus or Plato, as new as Horkheimer or Baudrillard. It rises up from within a wealth of different philosophical visions, from idealism to pragmatism to hermeneutics to feminist theory, wearing a different face in each, expressing its particular concerns. It treats of language and culture, ideology and race theory, education and economics. It takes on forms of expression ranging from the analytical to the aesthetic to the mythological. However the social-critical vein is the "family resemblance," if you will, between these historical and theoretical manifestations, and it is this vein that I will examine in the pages that follow. I wish to explore how and why critical social theory, in a multitude of its forms, has been accused of possessing a certain structural weakness, and I wish to suggest a philosophical framework that can lend support to, or perhaps even repair, this weakness and that might, in so doing, call into question the validity of the accusation itself.

The weakness to which I refer is generated by the possibility of performative contradiction and is particularly accute in post-Kantian modern and contemporary social-critical theory. The crux of the difficulty is as follows: the social-critical position frequently consists of a diagnosis of the domination, alienation, discipline, or manipulation of human consciousness. If the critical theorist performing this diagnosis is among those whose consciousness is so dominated, alienated, disciplined, or manipulated, then she may be unable to account for her ability to provide the critique itself, or she may be forced to admit that her critique itself, because constituted by such undesirable social influence, should be looked upon with epistemic suspicion. In other words, the critical theorist may be caught in a performative contradiction, tacitly claiming to hold a position outside of her own manipulated consciousness.

An alternative might be to allow only those who are not members of the diagnosed group to provide such a diagnosis. This alternative, however, produces two particularly unsatisfactory results. First, it forces us into a position whereby we do not allow members of manipulated groups to diagnosis their own manipulation. But would we really want to say that a woman may not present social critique regarding the subjugation of women's consciousness? ¹ Second, it makes it impossible to diagnose a condition of general human alienation, as there would remain no stance from which to launch such a diagnosis. The real problematic posed for critical social thought has been this: How can one articulate a position of critique if the critique itself appears to undermine the possibility of a position from which it is articulated?

The modernist critique of postmodernism on these grounds is certainly well known by now and, perhaps, too well rehearsed. But even modernist and "critical modernist" versions of critical social theory are not always immune from this difficulty. More often than not, they fall prey to some of the very same philosophical difficulties of which they accuse postmodern theory. A few examples of the different ways in which the problem of internal inconsistency manifests itself in critical thought will show what diverse forms it can take: How can a person of a given race and/or gender and/or sexual preference and/or economic class adequately articulate a theory of the ways in which her race and/or gender and/or sexual preference and/or economic class is determined by dominating discourses from within that domination? How can citizens whose consent is manufactured by limited...