Journal articles on the topic 'Critique'

PurposeTo elaborate the nature of critique presented in the models and concepts of human information behaviour (HIB) research by identifying the issues to which the critique is directed and the ways in which the critique is conducted.Design/methodology/approachConceptual analysis focusing on 58 key studies on the topic. First, the objects and ways of conducting the critique were identified. Thereafter, three levels of depth at which the critique is conducted were specified. The conceptual analysis is based on the comparison of the similarities and differences between the articulations of critique presented at these levels.FindingsAt the lowest level of depth, critique of HIB research is directed to the lack of research by identifying gaps and complaining the neglect or paucity of studies in a significant domain. At the level of critiquing the shortcomings of existing studies, the attention is focused on the identification and analysis of the inadequacies of concepts and models. Finally, constructive critiques of research approaches dig deeper in that they not only identify weaknesses of existing studies but also propose alternative in which the shortcomings can be avoided, and the conceptualizations of HIB enhanced.Research limitations/implicationsAs the study focuses on critiques addressed to HIB models and concepts, the findings cannot be generalized to concern the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) as a whole. Moreover, due to the emphasis of the qualitative research approach, the findings offer only an indicative picture of the frequency of the objects critiqued in HIB research.Originality/valueThe study pioneers by providing an in-depth analysis of the nature of critiques presented in a LIS research domain.

In The Christian Faith Schleierrmcher offers three critiques of miracles—a pragmatic, an epistemological, and a metaphysical critique. Of these three critiques, by far the most important is Schleiermacher's metaphysical critique. In his own day, it was this critique that decisively distinguished Schleiermacher's account of miracles from the traditional orthodox account. In contemporary theological debates over contingency and divine action, it is this critique that underlies much of the continued skepticism towards miracles. Now as then, Schleiermacher's metaphysical critique of miracles continues to be a live issue

Drawing on published feminist literature, this essay deconstructs developmentalism as a metanarrative that contributes to the oppression and exploitation of women and underpins educational practice. First, I examine feminist critiques of developmentalism, distinguishing between ‘insider critiques’ formulated by feminist psychologists evaluating and trying to improve traditional theories of human development and ‘outsider critiques’ articulated by feminists, both within and outside psychology, challenging science itself. Second, I address educational implications of the insider and outsider critiques of developmentalism. Educational reforms spawned by insider feminist critiques consist largely of efforts to make curriculum and pedagogy more ‘girl-friendly’. Reforms aligned with outsider feminist critiques call for ‘critique-friendly’ schooling that provides opportunities for reconceptualizing gender dualisms, critiquing school practices that strengthen dualisms and ongoing critique of educational reforms initiated in the name of such critiques. Following the outside critiques, I argue for feminist learning communities with authentic relationships between teachers and students whose diverse and changing identities and ideas are respectfully and compassionately acknowledged.

Prompted by the ever‐increasing cesarean rate, this paper considers the interpretive disjunct between two significant strands of feminist analysis that have arisen in the last four decades as a consequence of the phenomenon of medicalized birth. In contrast to the dominant paradigm of bioethical “Principalism,” both modes of analysis, understood as “the critique of industrialized labor” and “the critique of idealized labor,” are attentive to the way in which social discourses inform bioethical deliberation and practice, but significantly diverge in the nature of their accounts. The “industrialization critique” understands the culture of medical intervention to be impelled by an “obstetric desire” to appropriate women's reproductive potency, whereas the “idealization critique” relates new mothers’ “low childbirth satisfaction” to a pernicious normative ideal propagated by the natural childbirth movement. This paper will explore the anatomy of both critiques and interrogate their fidelity to the phenomenological insight of the body as chiasm between material and ideal. I will argue that while the insights of the idealization critique are well grounded, we must exercise caution about the critique's tendency to reductively understand the embodied experience of labor as entirely discursively produced, a gesture that risks re‐performing the dematerialization of women often effected through obstetric intervention itself.

Parce qu'il se situe au confluent des deux principales traditions critiques québécoises, la critique savante et la critique esthète ou esthétisante, André Brochu représente un cas intéressant aussi bien du point de vue épistémologique qu'institutionnel. Le présent article vise à montrer comment se constituent ces deux traditions et de quelle façon Brochu y inscrit sa problématique propre. Autour de la figure centrale de ce critique se dessinent certaines oppositions paradigmatiques qui structurent en profondeur le champ littéraire québécois : entre autres, les dyades écriture/ savoir et essai/ recherche.

Abstract Henri de Lubac’s treatment of the relationship between nature and grace will be critiqued by Herman Bavinck’s ‘grace restores nature’ theme. In two significant addresses, Bavinck critiqued a Roman Catholic approach to nature and grace. De Lubac’s influence upon Roman Catholic thinking addressing nature and grace occurred post-Bavinck and has altered Catholic thinking on the subject. Neo-Calvinist scholar, Wolter Huttinga admits that Bavinck and de Lubac offer similar critiques of Roman Catholicism (Huttinga 2014). The question remains then, do Bavinck’s critiques still hold? I propose that Bavinck’s account of grace restores nature still makes valid critiques of a post-Vatican II construction of nature and grace. The paper is broken into three sections: (1) an exploration of de Lubac’s nature and grace theme, (2) the framework of Bavinck’s ‘grace restores nature’ theme, and (3) a Bavinckian critique of de Lubac’s nature and grace theme.

Christianity was the religion of spirit (and freedom), and critiqued Islam as a religion of flesh (and slavery); later, Christianity was the religion of reason, and critiqued Islam as the religion of fideism; later still, Christianity was the religion of the critique of religion, and critiqued Islam as the most atavistic of religions. Even now, when the West has critiqued its own Chris- tianity enough to be properly secular (because free, rational, and critical), it continues to critique Islam for being not secular enough. In contrast to Christianity or post-Christian secularism, then, and despite their best ef- forts, Islam does not know (has not learned from) critique. This sentiment is articulated at multiple registers, academic and popular and governmen- tal: Muslims are fanatical about their repressive law; they interpret things too literally; Muslims do not read their own revelation critically, let alone literature or cartoons; their sartorial practices are unreasonable; the gates of ijtihād closed in 900CE; Ghazali killed free inquiry in Islam… Such claims are ubiquitous enough to be unremarkable, and have political traction among liberals and conservatives alike. “The equation of Islam with the ab- sence of critique has a longer genealogy in Western thought,” Irfan Ahmad writes in this book, “which runs almost concurrently with Europe’s colonial expansion” (8). Luther and Renan figure in that history, as more recently do Huntington and Gellner and Rushdie and Manji.Meanwhile in the last decade an interdisciplinary conversation about the stakes, limits, complicities, and possibilities of critique has developed in the anglophone academy, a conversation of which touchstones include the polemical exchange between Saba Mahmood and Stathis Gourgouris (2008); the co-authored volume Is Critique Secular? (2009), by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Mahmood; journal special issues dedi- cated to the question (e.g. boundary 2 40, no. 1 [2013]); and Gourgouris’s Lessons in Secular Criticism (2013), among others. At the same time, the discipline of religious studies remains trapped in an argument over the lim- its of normative analysis and the possibility of critical knowledge.Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Mar- ketplace seeks to turn these debates on their head. Is critique secular? Decidedly not—but understanding why that is, for Ahmad, requires revising our understanding of critique itself. Instead of the object of critique, reli- gion here emerges as an agent of critique. By this account, God himself is the source of critique, and the prophets and their heirs are “critics par ex- cellence” (xiv). The book is divided into two parts bookended by a prologue and epilogue. “Formulation” comprises three chapters levying the shape of the argument. “Illustration” comprises three chapters taking up the case study of the South Asian reformer Abul-A‘la Maududi and his critics (es- pecially regarding his views on the state and on women) as well as a fourth chapter that seeks to locate critique in the space of the everyday. There are four theses to Ahmad’s argument, none of them radically original on their own but newly assembled. As spelled out in the first chap- ter (“Introduction”), the first thesis holds that the Enlightenment reconfig- uration of Christianity was in fact an ethnic project by which “Europe/the West constituted its identity in the name of reason and universalism against a series of others,” among them Islam (14). The second thesis is that no crit- ic judges by reason alone. Rather, critique is always situated, directed, and formed: it requires presuppositions and a given mode to be effective (17). The third thesis is that the Islamic tradition of critique stipulates the com- plementarity of intellect (‘aql, dimāgh) and heart (qalb, dil); this is a holistic anthropology, not a dualistic one. The fourth thesis is that critique should not be understood as the exclusive purview of intellectuals (especially when arguing about literature) or as simply a theoretical exercise. Instead, cri- tique should be approached as part of life, practiced by the literate and the illiterate alike (18).The second chapter, “Critique: Western and/or Islamic,” focuses on the first of these theses. The Enlightenment immunized the West from critique while subjecting the Rest to critique. An “anthropology of philosophy” approach can treat Kant’s transcendental idealism as a social practice and in doing so discover that philosophy is “not entirely independent” from ethnicity (37). The certainty offered by the Enlightenment project can thus be read as “a project of security with boundaries.” Ahmad briefly consid- ers the place of Islam across certain of Kant’s writings and the work of the French philosophes; he reads their efforts to “secure knowledge of humani- ty” to foreclose the possibility of “knowledge from humanity” (42), namely Europe’s others. Meanwhile, ethnographic approaches to Muslim debates shy away from according them the status of critique, but in so doing they only maintain the opposition between Western reason and Islamic unrea- son. In contrast to this view (from Kant through Foucault), Ahmad would rather locate the point of critical rupture with the past in the axial age (800-200BCE), which would include the line of prophets who reformed (critiqued) their societies for having fallen into corruption and paganism. This alternative account demonstrates that “critical inquiry presupposes a tradition,” that is, that effective critique is always immanent (58). The third chapter, “The Modes: Another Genealogy of Critique,” con- tests the reigning historiography of “critique” (tanqīd/naqd) in South Asia that restricts it to secular literary criticism. Critique (like philosophy and democracy) was not simply founded in Grecian antiquity and inherited by Europe: Ahmad “liberates” critique from its Western pedigree and so allows for his alternative genealogy, as constructed for instance through readings of Ghalib. The remainder of the chapter draws on the work of Maududi and his critics to present the mission of the prophets as critiquing to reform (iṣlāḥ) their societies. This mandate remains effective today, and Maududi and his critics articulate a typology of acceptable (tanqīd) and unacceptable (ta‘īb, tanqīṣ, tazhīk, takfīr, etc.) critiques in which the style of critique must be considered alongside its object and telos. Religion as Critique oscillates between sweeping literature reviews and close readings. Readers may find the former dizzying, especially when they lose in depth what they gain in breadth (for example, ten pages at hand from chapter 2 cite 44 different authors, some of whom are summarizing or contesting the work of a dozen other figures named but not cited di- rectly). Likewise there are moments when Ahmad’s own dogged critiques may read as tendentious. The political purchase of this book should not be understated, though the fact that Muslims criticize themselves and others should come as no surprise. Yet it is chapters 4–6 (on Maududi and his critics) which substantiate the analytic ambition of the book. They are the most developed chapters of the book and detail a set of emerging debates with a fine-grained approach sometimes found wanting elsewhere (espe- cially in the final chapter). They show how Islam as a discursive tradition is constituted through critique, and perhaps always has been: for against the disciplinary proclivities of anthropologists (who tend to emphasize discon- tinuity and rupture, allowing them to discover the modern invention of traditions), Ahmad insists on an epistemic connection among precolonial and postcolonial Islam. This connection is evident in how the theme of rupture/continuity is itself a historical topos of “Islamic critical thinking.” Chapter 4 (“The Message: A Critical Enterprise”) approaches Maududi (d. 1979) as a substantial political thinker, not simply the fundamentalist ideologue he is often considered to be. Reading across Maududi’s oeuvre, Ahmad gleans a political-economic critique of colonial-capitalist exploita- tion (95), a keen awareness of the limits of majoritarian democracy, and a warning about the dispossessive effects of minoritization. Maududi’s Isla- mism (“theodemocracy”), then, has to be understood within his broader project of the revival of religion to which tanqīd (“critique”), tajdīd (“re- newal”), and ijtihād (“understanding Islam’s universal principles to de- termine change”) were central (103). He found partial historical models for such renewal in ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Ahmad Sirhindi, and Shah Wali Ullah. A key element of this critique is that it does not aim to usher in a different future. Instead it inhabits a more complicated temporality: it clarifies what is already the case, as rooted in the primordial nature of humans (fiṭra), and in so doing aligns the human with the order of creation. This project entails the critique and rejection of false gods, in- cluding communism, fascism, national socialism, and capitalism (117). Chapter 5 (“The State: (In)dispensible, Desirable, Revisable?”) weaves together ethnographic and textual accounts of Maududi’s critics and de- fenders on the question of the state (the famous argument for “divine sov- ereignty”). In doing so the chapter demonstrates how the work of critique is undertaken in this Islamic tradition, where, Ahmad writes, “critique is connected to a form of life the full meaning of which is inseparable from death” (122). (This also means that at stake in critique is also the style and principles of critique.) The critics surveyed in this chapter include Manzur Nomani, Vahiduddin Khan, Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, Amir Usmani, Sadrud- din Islahi, Akram Zurti, Rahmat Bedar, Naqi Rahman, Ijaz Akbar, and others, figures of varying renown but all of whom closely engaged, defend- ed, and contested Maududi’s work and legacy in the state politics of his Jamaat-e Islami. Chapter 6 (“The Difference: Women and In/equality”) shows how Maududi’s followers critique the “neopatriarchate” he proposes. Through such critique, Ahmad also seeks to affirm the legitimacy of a “nonpatri- archal reading of Islam” (156). If Maududi himself regarded the ḥarem as “the mightiest fortress of Islamic culture” (159)—a position which Ahmad notes is “enmeshed in the logic of colonial hegemony”—he also desired that women “form their own associations and unbiasedly critique the govern- ment” (163). Maududi’s work and legacy is thus both “disabling” and “en- abling” for women at the same time, as is borne out by tracing the critiques it subsequently faced (including by those sympathetic to his broader proj- ect). The (male) critics surveyed here include Akram Zurti, Sultan Ahmad Islahi, Abdurrahman Alkaf, and Mohammad Akram Nadwi, who seriously engaged the Quran and hadith to question Maududi’s “neopatriarchate.” They critiqued his views (e.g. that women were naturally inferior to men, or that they were unfit for political office) through alternative readings of Islamic history and theology. Chapter 7 (“The Mundane: Critique as Social-Cultural Practice”) seeks to locate critique at “the center of life for everyone, including ordinary sub- jects with no educational degrees” (179). Ahmad writes at length about Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (d. 1988), the anticolonial activist who led a massive movement against colonial domination, and whose following faced British brutality with nonviolence. The Khudai Khidmatgār movement he built was “a movement of critique” (195), Ahmad writes, composed of or- dinary men and women, peasants and the unlettered. The brief remainder of the chapter suggests that the proverbs which punctuate everyday life (for example, in the trope of the greedy mullah) also act as critiques. By the end of Religion as Critique it is difficult not to see critique na- scent in every declaration or action. This deflates the analytic power of the term—but perhaps that is one unstated aim of the project, to reveal critique as simply a part of life. Certainly the book displaces the exceptional West- ern claim to critique. Yet this trope of exposure—anthropology as cultural critique, the ethnographer’s gaze turned inward—also raises questions of its own. In this case, the paradigmatic account of critique (Western, sec- ular) has been exposed as actually being provincial. But the means of this exposure have not come from the alternative tradition of critique Ahmad elaborates. That is, Ahmad is not himself articulating an Islamic critique of Western critique. (Maududi serves as an “illustration” of Ahmad’s ar- gument; Maududi does not provide the argument itself.) In the first chap- ters (“Formulation”) he cites a wide literature that practices historicism, genealogy, archeology, and deconstruction in order to temper the universal claims of Western supremacists. The status of these latter critical practices however is not explored, as to whether they are in themselves sufficient to provincialize or at least de-weaponize Western critique. Put more directly: is there is a third language (of political anthropology, for example) by which Ahmad analytically mediates the encounter between rival traditions of cri- tique? And if there is such a language, and if it is historically, structurally, and institutionally related to one of the critical traditions it is mediating, then what is the status of the non-Western “illustration”? The aim of this revision of critique, Ahmad writes, is “genuinely dem- ocratic dialogue with different traditions” (xii). As much is signalled in its citational practices, which (for example) reference Talal Asad and Viveiros de Castro together in calling for “robust comparison” (14) between West- ern and Islamic notions of critique, and reference Maududi and Koselleck together in interpreting critique to be about judgment (203). No matter that Asad and de Castro or Maududi and Koselleck mean different things when using the same words; these citations express Ahmad’s commitment to a dialogic (rather than dialectical) mode in engaging differences. Yet because Ahmad does not himself explore what is variously entailed by “comparison” or “judgment” in these moments, such citations remain as- sertions gesturing to a dialogue to come. In this sense Religion as Critique is a thoroughly optimistic book. Whether such optimism is warranted might call for a third part to follow “Formulation” and “Illustration”: “Reckoning.” Basit Kareem IqbalPhD candidate, Department of Anthropologyand Program in Critical TheoryUniversity of California, Berkeley

Introduction au 10e numéro de la revue Cygne noir, sous le thème « Sémiotique et critique », digiré par Simon Levesque, Fabien Richert et Emmanuelle Caccamo. L’esprit dans lequel le rapprochement entre la critique et les études sémiotiques a été effectué est précisé. La part intrinsèquement critique de la sémiotique est examinée. Une question dirige ensuite la réflexion : comment concilier critique et rationalité ? Puis, les articles composant le dossier sont présentés un à un. Enfin, un constat est posé qui concerne la réflexivité dans les sciences interprétatives. Dans l’ensemble, ce numéro montre que les études sémiotiques peuvent servir au développement d’une, voire de plusieurs perspectives critiques sur le contemporain.

La journée d’étude La critique musicale. De la théorie à la pratique organisée par l’Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM) s’est déroulée le 13 mars 2015 à la Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal. Six conférenciers (Michel Duchesneau, Valérie Dufour, Marie-Thérèse Lefebvre, Emmanuel Reibel, Pascal Lécroart et Timothée Picard) y ont présenté les résultats de leurs recherches sur la critique musicale en pays francophones. Ce texte, qui consiste en un compte rendu critique de cette journée d’étude, se concentre autour de trois axes de réflexion : 1) théorisation et pratique de la critique musicale ; 2) critique musicale et statut socioprofessionnel des critiques ; 3) critique musicale et individualisme méthodologique.

This article investigates the similarities between different critiques towards the international human rights system from academia and state-actors. On the one hand, there are the critiques from scholars of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement. On the other hand, there are critical points raised towards the international human rights system by China, Cuba, and Egypt in the reports from the first three cycles of their respective Universal Periodic Review (UPR) within the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Through a literature review, the TWAIL critiques were first categorized and then worked into a framework of three basic pillars: the culture critique, the rhetoric critique, and the model critique. This framework was subsequently applied to the reports by way of a simplified Qualitative Content Analysis in order to extrapolate the similarities of the critiques from these two unlikely groups of actors.

AbstractThis paper offers a new account of Leo Strauss's critique of historicism inNatural Right and History. According to the general view of this critique, Strauss tries to show that historicism wrongly denies the possibility of knowledge of universal and unchangeable principles of right. I argue that this view only reflects Strauss's exoteric critique of historicism, and that, apart from it, he gives an esoteric critique. According to this esoteric critique, historicism ignores the necessity of prudence, in the sense of making “concrete decisions” which suspend universal and unchangeable principles of right. In this light, I also show that Strauss's critique of historicism depends on Carl Schmitt's concept of the “decision,” but that Strauss simultaneously critiques Schmitt inNatural Right and History.

How and from where can power be criticized and resisted? The advent of new managerial forms of power has brought the question once more to the fore. One of the salient issues is whether the ubiquity and apparent omnipotence of contemporary forms of managerial power renders critique and resistance difficult. This article compares the critical potential of French pragmatic sociology and Foucauldian-inspired genealogy. We argue that both approaches offer viable critiques of contemporary forms of power. Yet, whereas the critique of pragmatic sociology hinges on the position (locus) of those who exercise critique and/or resist, genealogical critique depends on the concrete form (modus) of power that is being scrutinized. We argue that even though we see critique as modus as more convincing than critique as locus, the two approaches can inspire each other in order to advance effective critique.

Cet article essaie de mettre en évidence la dualité constitutive auteur/critique, principal embrayeur de la modernité antonionienne. La critique des films d’Antonioni s’avère difficile, car il s’agit de juger une oeuvre qui véhicule un message imprégné de multiples thèmes socioculturels, tout en rompant avec la tradition classique du récit filmique. Un panorama de critiques sur L’Avventura suivi d’un survol des opinions du cinéaste permettent ici de mieux cerner la problématique visée.

Third World Approaches to International Law (twail) may serve as an apt critique for examination of international economic governance from a Third World angle, given its intimate concern for the welfare of these States in international law. twail’s critique has improved significantly in terms of quality and quantity. Nevertheless, the critique continues to be plagued by a fundamental shortcoming, namely, it merely critiques international law systems and fails to provide suggestions for reforming them to suit the needs of Third World States. This is particularly true in relation to its critique of international economic governance. While twail has produced numerous critiques of the foreign investment and international trade regimes since its emergence, these have failed to provide any constructive suggestions for improvement in these areas. twail should therefore aspire to be more than a tool of system criticism and offer practical solutions to improve Third World States’ place within this system.

AbstractDrawing on field research principally from contexts of medical blood donation in North India, this article describes how gifts that are given often critique—by obviation—those that remain ungiven: the care not provided by the Indian state for Bhopal survivors, the family members unwilling to donate blood for their transfusion-requiring relative, and so on. In this way, giving can come to look like a form of criticism. The critiques that acts of giving stage are of absences and deficits: we present cases where large paper hearts donated by survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster to the prime minister of India signal his lack of one, where donated human blood critiques others' unwillingness to do so, where acts of blood donation critique and protest communal violence, and where similar acts of giving over simultaneously highlight a deficit in familial affects and an attempt to resuscitate damaged relational forms. We thus illustrate how critique can operate philanthropically by way of partonomic relations between the given and not-given.

This essay goes through Frederick 2015 (the critique) in some detail, responding to the various paraphrases and criticisms therein. It is argued that in each case the critique is mistaken about what Lester 2012 (Escape from Leviathan: EfL) says, or about what the critique presents as a sound criticism, or both. Introduction: the three problems with the critique and the philosophical problem that EfL is attempting to solve. “Abstract”: the critique’s confusion about EfL’s aprioristic theory of instrumental rationality. There are then detailed replies (too many and too diverse to summarise) to quotations from the critique’s confused interpretations and criticisms under the following headings (quoted from the critique): “2. Instrumental Rationality”; 3. Weakness of Will”; “4. Desires and Values”; “5. Free Will”; “6. Self-Interest”; “7. Maximisation”; “8. Morals”. Finally, in “9. Conclusion”, the philosophical problem for economics is briefly restated. The philosophical interpretation of homo economicus in EfL (as with its overall philosophical theory of libertarianism) has yet to be given adequate critical consideration.

Abstract This paper seeks to analyse the role played by the various formal dimensions of a critique in its effectuation. In order to do so, we draw on a set of different fieldwork studies, coordinated by a framework of typologies of these dimensions. On the one hand, we explore the critiques made by residents of a Rio de Janeiro favela concerning the power company that began to operate more intensively in the local area after installation of a Police Pacification Unit (UPP). On the other hand, we analyse how critiques can be operated in a joking way, both modulated - that is, continuously adjusted to avoid critical moments - and accusatory, as observed primarily in posters from the 2013 and 2014 political demonstrations that employed humour to mock the political situation of the country. This approach allowed us to understand the key elements of the critique-form, which in turn enabled us to design a typology of 15 relevant dimensions for the critique to be realized,- distributed between metamoral, aesthetic and logical dimensions.

Participatory methods for conservation and development have been critiqued on practical, political, and theoretical grounds. In this article, we address these critiques but move beyond critique to propose ways to improve participatory techniques with local communities. We discuss a customary model of communication used by Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya (the enkiguena, meeting) as a starting point to begin thinking about ways to improve participation on the ground with Maasai and potentially others. We discuss the value of the enkiguena ideals as a theoretical model to build dialogues across, within, and between multiple knowledge expressions and power relations.Key words: Maasai, enkiguena, participatory techniques.

Avec le foisonnement de recueils d’essais critiques, entre 1928 et 1937, un retournement du commentaire littéraire sur lui-même s’opère, qui entraîne une remise en question de la critique et de ses fondements. L’analyse de cette « métacritique » effectuée dans cet article met en lumière le conflit entre trois logiques distinctes, trois « modèles » de critique et de socialisation : ceux de l’École, des médias et des réseaux. Or, un des acteurs clés de ce tournant critique, du passage vers la contestation des maîtres, fut Louis Dantin. Par sa trajectoire, son rapport aux oeuvres et sa correspondance, ce dernier incarna alors, pour plusieurs de ses pairs, l’idéal d’une amitié critique, exigeante et franche.

RÉSUMÉ Les hommes sont-ils sujets ou assujettis à la structure objective du monde naturel et social ? Est-ce l’idéologie ou la critique de l’idéologie qui les fait sujets ? Les deux, selon Marx, car les hommes ne sont pas libres mais le deviennent à travers l’histoire, dialectiquement, en se libérant de la nécessité qui les conditionne. Depuis, le marxisme s’est scindé, un matérialisme objectif y affrontant un idéalisme subjectif, et aujourd’hui Althusser retourne le socialisme scientifique contre l’utopie communiste, à l’inverse d’Habermas. Une critique scientiste de l’humanisme idéologique s’oppose alors à une critique humaniste de l’idéologie scientiste. Et s’il fallait plutôt critiquer ensemble humanisme et scientisme comme les deux versants contraires mais complémentaires d’un même rationalisme métaphysique et idéologique ?

FROM THE CRITIQUE OF THE HEAVENS TO THE CRITIQUE OF THE EARTH - A CONTRIBUTIONTO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF KARL MARX'S UNFINISHED CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL THEOLOGYThis article presents a reconstruction of Marx’s unfinished 1843 critique of political theology. In the preparatory notebooks for Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx identified Hegel’s political philosophy as an expression of “political theology,” which was to be the subject of his projected critique. However, he never completed nor published the manuscript. This article presents a detailed analysis of the manuscript and its intellectual context in order to reconstruct this incomplete critique of political theology, conceived as the conception of the state as a sovereign subject that transcends and determines society from without that remains predominant in contemporary political thought. The distinctly (post-)Hegelian conceptual resources of Marx’s critique allowed him to overcome the contradiction between state and society issuing from this political theological conception of the state without resorting to abstract negation as most prior critiques have done. Marx instead proceeds to show that it is the social significance of this political theology and the associated practices that constitute the earthly existence of the modern state within civil society as a whole.

Cet article vise à analyser le filmDans la vallée d’Elahà partir d’une perspective théorique féministe de la sécurité internationale, afin de déceler les rapports de genre et de « race » qui sous-tendent la construction de différentes masculinités au sein des discours et des narrations sur la sécurité internationale, la guerre et la militarisation, notamment dans le contexte de la guerre en Irak et des productions culturelles s’y référant. En effet, si le film est critique de plusieurs aspects de la guerre en Irak, il est à se demander si ces critiques ont entraîné une véritable déconstruction des discours genrés et racisés qui légitiment et rendent possibles la militarisation et les guerres, ou si ceux-ci, même critiqués, sont reconduits par la narration du conflit. L’article soutient que la masculinité hégémonique du personnage principal est construite en opposition à une masculinité pervertie par la guerre en Irak chez les jeunes soldats y ayant combattu, limitant la critique à cette guerre spécifique et non à la guerre en général.

The “God of the gaps” critique is one of the most common arguments against design arguments in biology, but is also increasingly used as a critique of other natural theological arguments. In this paper, I analyze four different critiques of God of the gaps arguments and explore the relationship between gaps arguments and similar limit arguments. I conclude that the critique of the God of the gaps is substantially weaker than is commonly assumed, and dismissing ID´s biological arguments should rather be based on criticizing the premises of these arguments.

Résumé Il s'est publié au Québec une trentaine de livres de critique de 1926 à 1937. Ces livres sont dus à une nouvelle génération d'écrivains-critiques / qui traitent de littérature 'Canadienne" et qui se réclament presque tous de Louis Dantin et de M? Camille Roy. Alfred DesRochers et Albert Pelletier se démarquent d'un groupe d'une douzaine de critiques par le ton et l'originalité de leurs articles, par la pertinence de leurs choix et la modernité de leur vision critique dans Paragraphes et Carquois, deux recueils parus en 1931- De ¡a formation des écrivains à l'avenir de la littérature canadienne-française en terre d'Amérique, du rôle de la critique à la place que doivent occuper les femmes dans une jeune littérature, les textes de DesRochers et Pelletier abordent toutes les questions avec l'audace et la fougue de la jeune génération des années trente.

Empirical critiques of human rights have reached a crescendo. Despite their centrality in late modernity, human rights face claims of irrelevance and predictions of demise. These social science–inflected assessments follow a familiar repertoire of critique. Concerns surrounding sociological legitimacy, material effectiveness, and distributive equality are foregrounded and undergirded by a growing body of empirical evidence, especially in sociology, political science, and anthropology but also in economics and social psychology. However, the critique has also catalyzed a counter-critique. A contending body of evidence accompanied by mid-level theorizing suggests that the turn to human rights has been more successful than imagined. This paper argues that it is difficult to reach any definitive conclusion given the role of normative biases in the research and a failure to agree on common benchmarks for evaluation. Nonetheless, with an emerging postliberal order, and a deepened concern over respect for human rights in both democracies and autocracies, critiques and counter-critiques deserve consideration in ensuring that the political project of human rights is both effective and equitable.

AbstractIn her celebrated study The Limits of Critique (2015), Rita Felski asserts that literary criticism during the past 40 years or more has been beholden to “the hermeneutics of suspicion,” a paranoid approach to interpretation that seeks to uncover concealed or repressed meanings without due appreciation for the texts as it appears. Felski believes that “critique” is necessarily implicated in this suspicious reading, and she argues instead for a postcritical approach to literature that would eschew interpretation in favor of description, affect, and enjoyment. Felski’s argument draws upon related critiques of critique, including calls for “surface reading,” “reparative interpretation,” “thin description,” a “new formalism,” and “ordinary language.” In recent years, the advocacy for a postcritical approach and the critical resistance to that approach, and thus the affirmation of the value of critique itself, have formed one of the more animated debates within literary and cultural studies in the United States and elsewhere. At the same time, perhaps ironically, critique seems more necessary and desirable than ever in confronting contemporary reality in the U. S. In this presentation, Robert T. Tally Jr. will discuss current debates over postcritical approaches to literature, and he will argue for an empowered understanding and employment of critique suited both to literary studies and to the world we live in today.

Dans cet article nous examinons la réception suédoise de l’œuvre de Marguerite Duras, en comparant la critique professionnelle et la critique non-professionnelle. Le corpus est constitué de vingt comptes rendus professionnels publiés dans la presse, et vingt comptes rendus rédigés par des amateurs et publiés sur des blogs et des sites web personnels. La critique non-professionnelle des blogueurs représente un nouveau phénomène dans le paysage littéraire : une réception souvent subjective et sans prétentions intellectuelles, caractérisée par son ton personnel et parfois intime. Cette critique présente de nouvelles perspectives – celles des lecteurs ordinaires qui, avant la démocratisation de l’Internet, n’avaient pas accès au débat littéraire public. Les critiques amateurs de notre corpus sont en majorité des femmes. Elles rédigent des comptes rendus succincts qui traitent d’un grand nombre d’ouvrages durassiens et non seulement des publications les plus récentes. D’un point de vue commercial, les avis formulés on-line par ces blogueurs amateurs deviennent tout aussi importants que ceux qui sont exprimés par les critiques professionnels dans la presse traditionnelle. Il s’agit là d’un aspect de la culture dite « de convergence » (Jenkins 2006) et « de participation » (Jenkins et al. 2015) qui est la nôtre.

AbstractSeveral recent critiques of theodicy have incorporated some form of moral objection to the theodical enterprise, in which the critic argues that one ought not to engage in the practice of theodicy. In defending theodical practice against the moral critique, Atle O. Søvik argues that the moral critique (1) begs the question against theodicy, and (2) misapprehends the implications of the claim that it is inappropriate to espouse a theodicy in certain situations. In this paper I suggest some sympathetic emendations for Søvik's theodical apologetic, but I argue against Søvik's claim that the moral critique of theodicy is altogether irrelevant.

Jamais Blanchot n'a écrit autant de critiques littéraires que pendant les années de guerre. Or ces textes, pour la plupart, restaient inconnus du public. Ils sont désormais accessibles sous le titre Chroniques littéraires du Journal des débats, 1941-1944 (Paris: Gallimard, 2007). On y trouve des pages sur Dante, Rabelais, Descartes, Montesquieu, Blake, Hoffmann, Jarry ou Joyce: autant d'auteurs sur lesquels Blanchot, ensuite, n'écrira plus. On y voit revenir quelques idoles: Giraudoux, Mallarmé, Valéry, les surréalistes français et les romantiques allemands. La critique de Blanchot n'est pas une critique universitaire. C'est d'abord une critique de jugement, qui ouvre la voie à une critique d'interprétation. C'est aussi une critique d'écrivain, qui se tient au plus près de l'acte de création. Et ce sont déjà les théories que Blanchot développera parfois bien plus tard, de La Part du feu à L'Entretien infini, qui se trouvent esquissées. Non sans contradictions ni pas de côté, et dans la certitude fiévreuse d'une oeuvre qui commence.

Au moment de prendre sa retraite (le 1er juin 2011), Guy Laflèche propose une autobiographie critique de son travail d’éditeur, depuis l’établissement de la Relation de 1634 de Paul Lejeune (parue en 1973) jusqu’à son édition critique en cours sur Internet des Chants de Maldoror de Lautréamont [Isidore Ducasse] (http://singulier.info). Il ne s’agit pas d’un parcours exemplaire : au contraire, car les éditions critiques de Guy Laflèche sont de plus en plus développées sur des textes toujours plus courts (exception faite des Chants de Maldoror). Mais cela n’empêche pas d’en dégager une définition de l’édition critique qui soit à la fois critique (comme sa désignation l’implique) et polémique : foin des fameux « protocoles d’édition » qui ont aseptisé depuis des décennies l’édition scientifique, savante, définitive et, bien entendu, subventionnée. Tout au contraire, l’édition critique obéit, certes, à un protocole immuable (étude bibliographique, établissement du texte, étude des sources, genèse et réception), mais produit chaque fois, par définition, une réalisation incomparable, à nulle autre pareille.

La critique cinématographique a fort à faire lorsqu’il lui faut parler du cinéma actuel. Au plan de la technique, on ne produit plus de mauvais films et l’objet-film a une tendance à devenir neutre au plan esthétique. Il doit s’adapter à trop de normes, à trop de médias de diffusion. Il ne reste plus que l’histoire, le récit qu’il faut critiquer sans le dévoiler. Les grandes maisons de production accompagnent leur diffusion de dossiers étoffés sur les films qui fournissent à la critique tout ce qu’il faut savoir sur le produit sans avoir à faire de recherche. La critique publique est condamnée à l’inefficacité et elle doit chercher du côté de la critique spécialisée, universitaire ou non, un complément de savoir. Or, même la critique universitaire est obnubilée par les procédés narratifs. Aussi faut-il consentir un effort particulier pour redonner à la critique un rôle, une fonction à l’endroit du cinéma. La question est discutée à travers l’analyse d’un cas particulier, mais exemplaire, Schindler’s List de Steven Spielberg. C’est à travers une forme de variation critique que ce film peut éveiller chez le critique et le spectateur un jugement qui va au-delà de l’histoire racontée. Il y retrouve alors un film inquiétant, étrange malgré les prix et les distinctions dont il a été inondé.

AbstractPhilosophical critiques are prone to relapse into a sort of entrenchment in which the basic elements of a philosophy are kept from exposure, so that instead of advancing, philosophy easily becomes compartmentalized into specific trends. This article thus seeks the conditions of a non-entrenched, open-field philosophical critique in general and, in particular, of an open-field critique of Harman’s OOO (object-oriented ontology). For that purpose, the idea of precariousness is introduced, which is then confronted with some ideas concerning philosophical critique and practice, in particular those of François Laruelle. Since we can find in Harman’s OOO an outline of what we call here an open-field critique, the field of combat against Harman will be the one concerning the idea of an open field itself.

The history of theatre criticism in Quebec- as in the rest of Canada, for that matter- has not yet been written nor has it received any critical scrutiny.1 Clearly this prevents no one from doing criticism, nor does it prevent criticism from expanding. Historians and theoreticians of Quebec national theatre tend to draw on a heterogeneous body of secondary literature on theatre, which consists in large part of reviews of productions, to furnish accounts of past or even recent theatre activity, to distinguish among various currents, or to determine what is or is not significant. But these texts are not neutral, far from it : they are not merely slanted, marked by their origins and ideological positions, they are an integral part of a socio-cultural space and historical context. The mechanical or uncritical use of such a corpus will only contribute to the alienation of current and future audiences, not to mention the misjudgements of theatre activity that could result unless some basic precautions are taken.

AbstractThis article reconsiders Marx’s thinking on religion in light of current preoccupations with the encroachment of religious practices and beliefs into political life. It argues that Marx formulates a critique of the anticlerical and Enlightenment-critique of religion, in which he subsumes the secular repudiation of spiritual authority and religious transcendence into a broader analysis of the ‘real abstractions’ that dominate our social existence. The tools forged by Marx in his engagement with critiques of religious authority allow him to discern the ‘religious’ and ‘transcendent’ dimension of state and capital, and may contribute to a contemporary investigation into the links between capitalism as a religion of everyday life and what Mike Davis has called the current ‘reenchantment of catastrophic modernity’.

À partir d’une réflexion sur le concept de « contemporain », vu à la fois comme temps présent mais aussi comme période littéraire, je propose dans cet article une lecture métacritique, à la fois méthodologique et exploratoire, du discours critique qui se consacre à la production littéraire québécoise actuelle. Il s’agit, plus précisément, de présenter quelques pistes et quelques hypothèses sur l’état présent de la littérature québécoise contemporaine, non pas tant à partir des propos que la critique, au sens large, tient sur elle, mais bien plutôt en cernant comment, par une méthodologie et une rhétorique propres, les critiques construisent un discours sur la littérature contemporaine susceptible d’en déterminer la réception. C’est ainsi une forme de portrait « réfléchi » de la littérature actuelle qui permettra de mettre en lumière certains topoï du discours critique, tout autant que les enjeux complexes de la mise en récit du contemporain (questions d’histoire littéraire, bornes temporelles, influences critiques, etc.).