ABSTRACT

This third and final instalment in the genealogy of critique reflects upon how sacralisation predetermines the secular hermeneutics of critique. Following Giorgio Agamben, the chapter approaches secularisation as a signature that operates in the conceptual system of modernity by referring it back to theology. It focuses on the transition from the religious paradigm of obedient subject to the modern model of critical subject. Its exploration of the critical dispositions of modern subjectivity paves the way for the archaeological reconceptualisation of critique conducted against the backdrop of the operation of governmental power. The chapter demonstrates how the tensional polarity of our contemporary critical imperatives as well as today’s uncanny persistence of the concept of critique are the result of a series of historical perversions of the originary critical imperative outlined in Chapter 1. What is central in this respect is its conceptualisation of secular critique as an instrument of the manufacture of docile one-dimensional subjectivity that glorifies the dominant order. Conceptualising this critical paradigm as a ‘duty-to-critique’, the chapter positions it at the point of intersection of morality, politics and economics, contending that it engenders a reactive assemblage of affect which generates nihilism and blocks the imperative to social change.