Spectres of critique: The nostalgia of social transformation

Abstract

A century on from the foundation of the Frankfurt School with its slow institutionalisation of Critical Theory, almost every perspective in academia, activism and beyond is more or less implicitly critical and promises transformation. Traditional bastions of critique, socialism, feminism, post-colonialism have not only diversified to address a plethora of issues, but have been imitated by counter-critiques on the right, the back-lash and so forth. Beyond explicitly politicised variants, neo-liberalism, governmentality and rationalistic science all demonstrate a critical animus. The suffusion of pop culture, consumerism and everyday life with critique is also evident. All this critique promises social transformation partially by declaring the success of past emancipation, revolution, and even incomplete triumphs. In short, we are haunted by the spectre of critique past, yearning for the possibilities of future critiques, but meanwhile stuck in the contemporary predicament of omnipresent critique. Facing existential ecological crises, critique becomes nostalgic for social transformations, hoping to reiterate the critiques of the past, to deliver on the always as yet unfulfilled promises. Perhaps today, the spectre of critique and the promise of social transformation must be refused and rethought, to make radical political change possible.