critique

academia

graduate school

capitalism

marxism

materialism

Madonna

is best come to through admiration, through rediscovering the problem one poses and the machinery through which one poses it.

Kant, for example, is the perfect incarnation of false critique: that's why he fascinates me. But when you're facing such a work of genius, there's no point saying you disagree. First you have to know how to admire... you have to rediscover the problems he poses, his particular machinery. It is through admiration that you will come to genuine critique. (Delueze 2002 'Desert' : 139)

is concerned with the occlusive constitution of the field of categories themselves rather than with how, as with judgement, particulars are subsumed into already constituted categories.

While judgments tend to 'subsume a particular under an already constituted category, . . . critique asks after the occlusive constitution of the field of categories themselves' (Butler 2002: 2).

is, in its best sense, the critique of forms, not contents. That is, not of the 'mistakes' of capitalism, but of capitalism itself.

As long as we're content with criticizing the 'false,' we're not bothering anyone (true critique is the criticism of true forms, not false contents. You don't criticize capitalism or imperialism by denouncing their 'mistakes'). (Delueze 2002 'Desert' : 138)

is not about pointing to any lack of knowledge... it is about referring to the limits truth regimes impose on autonomy and equality.

The second reversal replaces the focus on 'deficit' by an interest in 'rarity.' According to Foucault, critique does not refer to a lack of knowledge but to the limits truth regimes impose on autonomy and equality. It does not rely on the difference between truth and ideology, but follows the principle of rarity by stressing the distinctiveness of a particular historical ontology. This critical perspective generates a series of questions: Given the present ontological order, how do I have to be in order to be' Wha t conditions do I have to meet in order to be recognized' Or to put it simply: 'what, therefore, am I'' (1997: 46)

is not about showing us ugly things, but about giving the object of criticism a new beauty.

When Jerry Lewis or Tati 'criticize' modern life, they don't have the complacency, the vulgarity to show us ugly things. What they criticize, they show as beautiful, as magnificent, they love what they criticize and give it a new beauty. Their critique is only the more forceful. . . . . . . separating the one from the other is the task of those who know how to love, the real destroyers and creators of our day. Good destruction requires love. (Delueze 2002 'Desert' : 139)

is not being against something (which amounts to chit-chat) but rather involves being inspired and visited by the very genius that one denounces.

The mania of people today is not knowing how to admire anything: either they're 'against,' or they situate everything at their own level while they chit-chat and scrutinize. That's no way to go about it. You have to work your way back to those problems which an author of genius has posed, all the way back to that which he does not say in what he says, in order to extract something that still belongs to him, though you also turn it against him. You have to be inspired, visited by the geniuses you denounce. (Delueze 2002 'Desert' : 139)

is not being against something but being inspired to extract something that still belongs to the author, though you also turn it against him.

is not criticism of false application, false knowledge, or false knowledge, but the encountering of morality, faith, an ideal knowledge in the pursuit of something new, a new image of thought.

On the one hand, you criticize 'false applications': false morality, false knowledge, false religions, etc. This is how Kant, for instance, thinks of his famous 'Critique': ideal knowledge, true morality, and faith come out perfectly intact. On the other hand, you have this other family of philosophers who subject true morality, true faith, and ideal knowledge to comprehensive criticism, in the pursuit of something else, as a function of a new image of thought. (138)

critique, n.Definitions

critique