ABSTRACT
Traditionally, the task of thinking the leftist project has been given over to critical theory, yet unsurprisingly, Rancière appears highly sceptical of the ability of current critical theory to serve the needs of ‘politics’. Indeed, to the inattentive reader it could appear that recently he has denounced critical theory completely, referring to it as part of the intellectual counter-revolution and suggesting that it employs a suspect mechanism which subverts its proclaimed emancipatory aims. Yet in this chapter I wish to assert that while these claims must not be brushed aside lightly they do not result in the need to reject critical theory in its entirety. Instead, Rancière’s critical historical analysis of the development of the critical theory tradition identifies what it is that has ensnared the emancipatory logic of critical theory and prevented it from bringing about its desired ends of emancipation. Thus Rancière is not rejecting critical theory tout court but calling for a revised practice of critical thinking that enables us to disentangle its potential for emancipation.3 Hence, in this chapter I draw out the implications of Rancière’s critique for a critical theoretical practice that does not succumb to what he sees as this counterrevolutionary tendency. Instead, I wish to think through what it is that he means when he refers to a ‘genuine “critique of critique”’,4 an ‘aesthetic practice of philosophy [that] can also be called a method of equality’.5 I argue that this philosophy requires a practice of reflexivity which helps to ensure that it will function as ‘a space without boundaries … a space of equality’.6
Such a philosophy will be able to respond to the requirements of emancipation without becoming too deeply ensnared in dominatory logics. It can help
us to plan and strategise better police orders while simultaneously serving the emancipatory logic, and offering democratic movements some level of protection against entrenching themselves too deeply in any police ordering. I will proceed by first tracing Rancière’s own critique of the academic dis-
cipline of critical theory, to identify more precisely why he thinks that the critical theory tradition has been hindered in its emancipatory project. This takes us back to the emergence of the promise of emancipation in the Enlightenment era before politics had been categorised into left and right. At this point the leftist project is understood less through its opposition to the right and more as an open commitment to emancipation and equality. Since this point, however, Rancière argues that the logic of emancipation has become entangled with the logic of domination. Hence the task for critical theory today is to attend to this untangling in all areas of thought. In the absence of any further work in this direction by Rancière I will turn to the thought of contemporary Frankfurt School theorist Christoph Menke. I suggest that this can be taken to complement and develop Rancière’s project since it adds a practice of reflexivity to protect this revised critical thinking from disciplinary ethics, while also theorising a way to overcome the teleology and mystification of earlier Frankfurt School critical theory. I will conclude by identifying reflexivity as a perpetual practice of actively reflecting on and reconstructing the grounds of the society in which we live, thus dis-orienting our ways of thinking. This does not counter the traditional left-wing end of revolution but instead transcends any particular instance of revolution, seeing revolution as an open-ended and continual project of perpetual revolutionising, rather than as a one-off momentous and closed event.
