If I understand what you are saying the following is necessary though not sufficient: We must understand our own situation, how we come at this with values we have internaized from other sources, how Orthodoxy revived itself after the war into a church militant, the role religion pays in the formation of our selves, the place we occupy in the larger Jewish society and in the world and on and on…all of which you call self reflexivity.

Second we must try to investigate the optimal conditions for developing change from within….how to make the relevant attitudes acceptable without generating new defenses and counter movements.

All moralizing from above, from some absolute position of reason and rationality is both non-dialectical and a failure to understand what you call the immanence of values…how they are tied to existng social and economic structures.

I could go on , but I would first like to know if what I am saying, my reading of your comments reverberates with anything you have in mind.

First: I have strong objections to what I have tended to call “context shattering” visions of critique (which, to be honest, I tend to think of “abstract negations”, and, without trying to speaking for him, I suspect are some of what Sinthome has in mind when speaking about critique as a “being against”). In other words, if by terms like “emancipation”, or “transformation”, or “critique”, we think that we’re constituting something that breaks fundamentally from what currently exists (and if we therefore, for example, aim critique at anything that is currently associated with social reproduction, and see as “progressive” only those things that we identify as somehow not involved in any way in social reproduction), then I think we are tacitly or explicitly appealing to a non-immanent notion of emancipation.

To me, the form of theory that does this is often – tacitly or explicitly – bound together with what in the Frankfurt School context tends to get called a “one dimensional society” thesis: with the notion that the reproduction of existing society is a linear, unidirectional process.

An immanent social theory attempts to thematise social reproduction in a different way – as non-linear, and not unidirectional – but also not random. What this means is that social reproduction points in more than one direction, generates different kinds of potentials that don’t entirely coincide with one another – and therefore immanently constitutes what I sometimes call “irritations” that point toward paths that are both socially “available”, socially “plausible”, but also not taken.

A common way to thematise this two dimensionality is to set up a contrast between two existent dimensions of society – the forces and relations of production, for example, or the proletariat as world-historical-subject and the capitalist class. I share what I suspect is a fairly common allergy to these sorts of conceptions, as they endorse some element of what is, elevating it into a fixed vision of what ought to be.

I’m trying, among other things, to see whether it’s possible to rethink the concept of immanent critique so that it’s capturing something more “virtual” – something that exists, that has already been and is actively continuing to be constituted within the process of social reproduction – but that does not align fully with any existing social group or institution, such that critique is not aiming for the more complete realisation of something that already exists, but is instead pointing to the potentials embodied in a more diffuse set of available shapes of consciousness, habits of practice, material resources, and other things, and asking: what might we do with such things, that we cannot do, so long as social reproduction continues to unfold in its current form? What sort of world would be more adequate to the sorts of creatures we have shown ourselves that it might be possible for us to become?

So I do conceptualise theory as “lagging” the constitution of potentials (or, I see theory as potentially part of a process of collective recognition of the implications and potentials of what we have constituted, and therefore as part of a process in which it is both product and producer). But since the potentials I’m trying to identify have a “virtual” character to them – they are both real, and unrealised – I don’t think this inevitably places us in the “owl of Minerva flies at dusk” situation.

I did note the “owl of Minerva” issue recently – but I often do – in order to complain about it: I don’t see this as an inevitable dimension of theory, but as an avoidable practice – this is in spite of the case that I also tend to treat theory as something that lags the constitution of potential (which, in turn, I tend to see as something that often happens inadvertently and unintentionally).

I tend to think that it’s easy to fall into a kind of trap when an historical transition takes place that shakes loose or makes more attainable certain critical insights – that we tend, instead of examining the connections between these new insights and our own moment, we are vulnerable often to doing something I call “fighting the last war”: we often – without thinking about it – aim emergent critical sensibilities “backward”, to criticise elements of social or intellectual movements that suddenly seem clearly flawed, without asking where this sudden gift of insight has come from.

To me, this situation is analogous to gaining a new perspective from which to view a situation because we’ve moved to a new place – by all means we should enjoy the stunning view of the surrounding territories to the fullest. But as well as gazing critically at these now-distant lands (”did you ever notice that ugly feature over there?”, etc.) – instead of just applying new insights to older forms of social and intellectual movements whose flaws now seem painfully clear – we do at some point also need to look down at the ground under our feet and ask, “Whoa!? When did I wander over here? Where the hell is this place? What’s this stuff I’m standing on, that I can suddenly see all these new things?”

I find it endlessly frustrating when we don’t at least try to do this – or we do this in a manner that treats ourselves somewhat asymmetrically to what we criticise. Unfortunately, the most common way to criticise outgoing positions is still simply to treat them as “mere” errors – and therefore to treat the ground we’re standing on as truth and, tacitly, to treat truth as a causal factor – for us, at least – we tend to be happy to look for other causal factors for the points of view of which we’re critical…

I’m obviously shorthanding here, and unfairly so. I’m also, if this is unclear, not trying to suggest a relativistic position: there’s a difference between suggesting by the form of an argument that “truth brings itself being”, and saying “we accidentally taught ourselves something with really interesting implications and potentials” – the latter, to me, is more adequate to notions of immanent critique, and treats newly emergent forms of thought symmetrically with outgoing ones.

At any rate: as you can probably tell by now, I often write about this – but as a rant in relation to things I find frustrating, not as a notion of the intrinsic limitations of critique.

So now that I’ve introduced a largely off-topic rant into the middle of the discussion (you’ll know now never to raise that “owl of Minerva” thing when I’m around… ;-P Sorry – I find it amusing when I react to things like this – sorry to drag the conversation so far off track) – what were we actually talking about?

The basic idea is: yes, theorising socially immanent potentials does entail (in any version of immanent social critique with which I’m familiar) that those potentials be “in the past”. I’m suggesting, however, that this past can be a Benjaminian one – and here I’m thinking about the distinctions Benjamin draws between “the past” as we intuitively think of this term, and Benjamin’s strange Leibnizian monadic conception of the past as a present moment within the present time. Or Derrida’s notion of the present as haunted. Or Marx’s notion (which, as it happens, I was just writing about) of dead labour – of a kind of historically sedimented potential that, due to determinate characteristics of social reproduction, continue to be reanimated in the present time, because their reanimation is integral to reproduction.

All of these are notions of a past that has not passed – appeals to a very strange vision of social reproduction that somehow manages to drag a specific kind of past along in its wake, such that the present is perpetually non-identical with itself in a very unusual way, haunted by images of potentials it has not allowed to be. Some sort of notion like this, I think, is required for an immanent critique, if that critique is not aligning itself with some already realised dimension of the present moment. For this kind of theory, transformation is redemption or fulfillment – it is a waking of the dead – our dead, whom we recognise as ours because they have haunted us for so long. This is, I think, what Benjamin was after with the mystical-sounding terms in which he cloaked his materialism.

In terms of whether someone like Adorno had a framework adequate to this – I don’t personally believe he did, but this isn’t because I think phrases like “the whole is the untrue” are intrinsically self-undermining. I just don’t think that Adorno’s understanding of the social would allow him to “cash out” this kind of statement in immanent terms. (I’d like to add a pile of caveats here, about myself, about Adorno, and about forms of critique that are not seeking to be immanent to the social, but I’ll leave them aside for present purposes, and just register the existence of various twinges of guilt…)

I should note, though, that I’m not operating within a framework that understands emancipatory potentials as something primarily oriented around the constitution of some macro-sociological Subject. A child of my time like we all are – and perhaps making this mistake along with the rest of us ;-P – I tend to be more “spontaneist” in my inclinations, and also to be trying to thematise decentred patterns of contestation. On another level, I’m probably not as worried as some other theorists about the prospect of whether we might be “past” the time of large-scale global transformation: to me, this perception both seems to focus on very specific parts of the world, and also to “exceptionalise out” the massive transformations that periodically cascade through capitalism as a global social relation. In other words, I think we have large-scale mobilisations and dramatic structural transformations all the time. I think the issue that confronts us is more one of the kinds of large-scale transformations we will have, than of whether we will have them – and, since the context itself is already “in motion”, the task is more one of tilting the direction of a dynamic process. All of which opens up onto the importance of smaller-scale and diffused contestations – which are the daily tremors that shake loose our awareness of the potentials haunting our time, constituting resources – “subjective” and “objective” – and helping us show ourselves what might be possible.

Anyway, my basic worry, I guess, about critical theorising amounts to something like the following: there may actually be a limit to how immanent an immanent critique can be. I take it that Benjamin’s invocation of theologico-transcendent elements hints at such a problem. But before I get carried away on a Benjaminian riff, let me try to articulate the problem a little more precisely.

Insofar as it is possible to theoretically account for one’s ability to theorise one’s contemporary situation, and account for the historical developments that makes such a self-reflective, or self-reflexive theorisation possible, we seem to be caught between two basic problems. On the one hand, there’s the oft-noted problem that theory is always already too late (if i’m not mistaken, you mentioned this feature of theory recently, but I can’t remember where). But this is tantamount to saying that the potentials for transformation that a theory identifies are themselves potentially something of the past, something lost to everything but an historical effected consciousness, or are actualized, used up, by the very act of theorising them. On the other hand, while identifying certain potentials within a given historical moment seems to be an immanent process, applying the labels, ‘emancipatory’ of ‘transformative’ seems to require what Habermas is fond of calling a ‘context transcending move.’ That is, we seem to require a non-immanent, speculative or transcendental, frame from which these potentials can be evaluated. As an example, consider Agnes Heller’s remark about Adorno’s aphorism, “The Whole is the Untrue [Unwahr].” She asked, “where was Adorno when he made this comment.”

So I guess my concern is, as you say, “just that you [alexei] can’t see a way to conceptualise such potentials without it equating to some closed vision of the kind of society this would entail” — with the added proviso that I can’t see how one can do this immanently.

So with this said, maybe i should answer your other question, “what other purpose would you see the identification of a standpoint of critique to have?”

Well, I’m not terribly sure, to be honest. But since I’ve managed to overdose on Adorno, I tend to think these days that perhaps the very idea of coordinated action at the macro level (i.e. social movements, demonstrations, and the like) might not be effective at all. The eye opener, of course, was the global demonstrations/protestations concerning the invasion of Iraq. They were impressive indeed, but absolutely ineffectual. Same with the protests against the WTO, etc. while these might fall under the category of what you’ve called abstract negation, or what Sinthome calls merely ‘being against,’ I think they might also highlight the very impossibility of large scale action coordination in general.

And perhaps like those who participated in May ‘68 (I’m thinking in particular of Kristeva), I’m beginning to think that something more like individualistic interventions, or some kind of moral perfectionism — or even, if I may phrase it this way, a rehabilitation of Heideggerian Authenticity — is what is needed.

Again, though, I’m not trying to offer a worked out alternative, but just a few thoughts I’m tinkering with, when I have a spare moment. hopefully, they give you an idea of my basic worries about contemporary critical theory. One the one hand, we seem to be constantly bound to some variety of context transcendence (just to name a few: the Universal validity necessary for the formal pragmatics of communicative action, the theological moment of redemption that theories of the Exception require, or the speculative identity of thought and action that recognitive theories need, etc.), which remains, as it were, a fact of reason. On the other hand, we seem to be faced with the guilty conscience of the ineffectuality — if not the perniciousness — of large scale coordinated action.

But, before I leave off on this pessimistic note, I would like to call attention to Sinthome’s claim about the enunciation

we risk falling into theoretical pessimism so long as we fail to take self-reflexivity into account, for we come to see ourselves as passive sufferers of these social forces. [...] That is, this proposition forgets that the minimal condition for the possibility of enunciating the proposition that we are effects of structure is a marginal distance from structure, a minimal deterritorialization from structure, a small crack or line of flight within structure.

My guess is that I mean something much “weaker”, if this makes sense, by theory seeking to orient actions – I’m thinking something more Benjaminian – a theoretical approach that enables the recognition of endangered potentials, more “secret heliotropism”, less theoretical avant garde… ;-)

I’d agree with the notion that critical standpoint shouldn’t be equated with a specific substantive endpoint – whether a vision of the subject, or a vision of society – with a closed character. I’m trying to develop some kind of vocabulary (and I should admit that I’ve probably only been phrasing this in terms of “orienting action” for about a month, so I’m not hugely wedded to this particular formulation… ;-) But I shifted to this expression because earlier expressions were irritating people in different directions – and so the terminological juggernaut continues for me…) that both expresses this point, but that also expresses that critique still expresses something determinate – that (and this to address some concerns Sinthome has raised in other places) critique is not a simple “being against” or an abstract negation.

On the other hand, though, before I move too quickly from my recently-adopted phrase, I do think that we’re looking for certain forms of practical orientation from a critical theory – precisely due to the sorts of issues you raise in your example of the Soviet Union above: the issue isn’t some sort of voluntarist valorisation of action for action’s sake, but the ability to thread our way through the likely consequences and implications of mobilisations (intellectual and social) within a complex, dynamic social context.

I might need to hear more about why you’re hearing the discussion of emancipatory potentials as non-immanent? Is it just that you can’t see a way to conceptualise such potentials without it equating to some closed vision of the kind of society this would entail? I tend to be Benjaminian in how I think of emancipatory impulses – not that I think Benjamin provides more than a set of gestures toward an immanent grounding (and, as it happens, I don’t tend to like how he thematises capitalism), but I think such a grounding is possible – just very complex to provide in a rigorous sense (and therefore, among other things, easy to lose in the shorthand that can sometimes happen in the back-and-forth of discussion). But as I said, I may need to know more about what’s striking you as non-immanent in how I’m approaching the issue.

I might also need to know, when you ask how the awareness of a potential could guide action: what other purpose would you see the identification of a standpoint of critique to have? I’m asking this in an open-ended way as, even in conceptions that are quite careful to position the standpoint of critique as a counterfactual, what is expressed by the standpoint of critique is still a set of ideals intended to orient practice (even if the practice in question is only the enactment of a continuous critical process)? I’m suspecting we may just need to spend a bit more time going back and forth on the terms we’re using for particular concepts – I’m sure there’ll be substantive differences, but my guess would be they aren’t quite as substantial as this discussion is suggesting.

In terms of the “if-question” above, I wouldn’t actually aim this sort of thing at someone else as a criticism: my main intention above has been to clarify standards that I’ll need to meet myself. I’m not trying to establish standards for telling someone they aren’t a critical theorist (in my opinion or theirs ;-P), but rather to explain (in response to Nate’s question) that I am not trying to extrapolate from the existence of people who call themselves “critical theorists”, to conclude that particular kinds of social potentials exist. I’m also saying that I don’t take for granted – as some kind of a priori claim about social contexts as such – that a social context will generate transformative potentials. And I’m saying that, if I can’t thematise the social context in a way that can identify such potentials, then I am not a critical theorist, in the way that I am using that term. :-)

Apologies that this is very rough, and probably talking past your concerns to a large degree. I’m much more tired than normal – perhaps I can do a better job in later rounds. (And apologies as well that I’m just posting without editing – too tired to edit!)

Take care…

I’m happy to see that this discussion is still moving in ever more interesting directions. And I thought I might throw in my own two cents (again). First off, N.P., I’m wondering whether a critical theory should understand itself in action orienting, or action guiding terms. While I realize that this has typically been the programmatic goal of those theories that are generally characterised as, ‘critical theory,’ do you think it may actually be the case that such an ideal over-reaches itself?

For example, as any ‘citizen’ of a former communist country could tell you, the five year plan was a critical theory that was action orienting. And it was a plan devised to determine the various critical potentials within a given societal organisation, and to actualize them. What’s more, they worked to a certain extent. The Soviet Union brought itself from a largely agrarian, ‘backwards’ country to roughly to the same level of industrialization as western countries in a matter of years by building railways to better disseminate its (primary) resources, etc. But, clearly, the five year plan — even under ‘honest’ conditions — isn’t the kind of emancipatory, action-guiding theorisation that you’re looking for.

This is not to say, of course, that (critical) theory needs to remain pessimistic. But maybe that the very idea of action orienting critique itself needs to be rethought. I mentioned to Sinthome that perhaps what is need is transformative insight, rather than transformative action, and I think I had something like the above question in mind. Or, to phrase the matter slightly differently, perhaps the very idea of what is to constitute an emancipatory potential needs to be shifted in a particular way — i.e. away from some kind of model of (re)distributive justice, utopian cornuopia, etc. But such a shift might mean taking immanent social critique for granted, at least as an initial assumption to be (sic) critically unfolded.

In a sense, I got the impression that you might be asking a very similar to these questions/issues, when you wrote,

my impulse is precisely to ask “_if_ there is critical theory – if there are no potentials identifiable then the critical-ness of any existing theory is questionable as well.” This is part of what I was trying to get at in suggesting that I don’t believe we can’t take the model of immanent social critique for granted – that we can’t automatically, in a sense, extrapolate back from the observation that there are folks who call themselves “critical theorists”, to the claim that the social field is systematically generative of some kind of determinate (and therefore theorisable) potentials for emancipatory transformation.

but i still got the feeling that you’re conceiving the category of emancipatory potential in something like transcendental, or structural terms. That is to say, I felt (and I’m sure i’ve missed something here), that there is some non-immanent criteria for what an emancipatory potential would look like. And I can’t seem to find how the identification of such a potential would lead to something that could be action guiding. Would it be too much to ask for some clarification?

I’m also curious about how one can ask your if-question concerning critical theory without someone already being engaged in critical theorising. In a sense, the question provokes a positive reply, “Yes, there is a critical theory — mine,” precisely because the question needs to be posed within a given theoretical framework. Simply put, it needs to be posed either within the context of someone else’s theorisation (i.e., immanently) or within the context of one’s own theorization (which presupposes that what one is doing is ‘critical theory’ in our sense of the term. But in either case, the question becomes somethign like a performative tautology, no?

Ok, normally I would pause for a moment and re-read what i’ve just written to see if i’m talking nonsense, but dinner is about to burn, so i need to run. If it turns out that what I’m asking is incoherent, you have my apologies. Though i do expect an explanation as to why it’s incoherent! ;-)

Cheers,

Alexei