Abstract

The Misadventures of Critique. Reflections from the Work of Jacques Rancière The article puts forward an argument which has two stages. It begins by an acknowledgement of the criticism addressed by Rancière to a postmodern mode of social critique which basically explains that if social critique is no longer effective, it is because the system subjected to the critique has the capacity to digest all the various types of criticism which can be levelled against its actual mode of operation. The conclusion to be drawn from this can only be that the status of such a discourse is a paradoxical one, insofar as it denounces the illusions of critique while preserving its own position as a lucid agent of critique. The article then seeks to formulate its reservations concerning the position of Rancière, when the latter argues that the paradox or contradiction exposed in this respect is in fact inscribed in social critique from the beginning, in other words since Marx. The article demonstrates that the critical procedure, as envisaged by Marx, in no sense posits a hierarchical distinction between the lucid critic and the mass of those to whom the social critic addresses a discourse explaining the causes of the illusions of which they are inevitably the victims