Abstract
In this paper I will argue for the ethical and political virtue of a form of critique associated with the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault’s tryptich of essays on critique—namely ‘What is Critique?’ ‘What is Revolution?’ and ‘What is Enlightenment?’—develop a formulation of critique understood as an attitude or disposition, a kind of relation that one bears to oneself and to the actuality of the present. I suggest that this critical attitude goes hand in hand with a mode of intellectual practice realized rhetorically in the form of the interrogative and methodologically in ‘problematology’. But, in addition to highlighting the habitus of critique suggested by Foucault, I also want to consider the entanglement of this critical enterprise in the conditions of the present that it attempts to diagnose. Specifically, I ask, in what way is a critical enterprise in the interrogative mood itself imbricated in the trope of interrogation that fills so much of our current political and public landscape?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
But on the issue of Butler’s theory of power and resistance in relation to Foucault, see Mills (2003).
Indeed, it raises an interesting question about the proximity of genealogy to the meta-ethical positions of expressivism on the one hand and constructivism on the other, which may be worth exploring in different circumstances.
The term takes inspiration from Shklar (1984).
On the relation of the threat and the perpetration of the violence threatened, see Butler (1997) pp. 10–13.
Deleuze’s comment is made in reference to Nietzsche and reads ‘The point of critique is not justification but a different way of feeling: another sensibility’.
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Absolute immanence. In Potentialities: Collected essays in philosophy, ed. Daniel Heller-Roazen, 220–239. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bagaric, Mirko, and Julie Clarke. 2005. Not enough official torture in the world? The circumstances in which torture is morally justifiable. University of San Francisco Law Review 39: 581–616.
Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 2002. What is critique? An essay on Foucault’s virtue. In The political: Readings in continental philosophy, ed. David Ingram, 212–226. London: Basil Blackwell.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1994. The specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international, trans. Peggy Kamuf. London: Routledge.
Derrida, Jacques. 1997. The politics of friendship. New York: Verso.
Derrida, Jacques. 2002. Force of law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’. In Acts of religion, ed. Gil Anidjar, 228–298. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Allan Lane.
Foucault, Michel. 1981. The history of sexuality. Volume 1: An introduction, Trans. Richard Hurley. London: Penguin.
Foucault, Michel. 1983. The subject and power. In Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, eds. Hubert L Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. 2nd edition. University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1987. The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality. Vol. 2, trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin.
Foucault, Michel. 1997a. What is critique? In The politics of truth, ed. Sylvere Lotringer, 23–82. New York: Semiotext(e).
Foucault, Michel. 1997b. What is revolution? In The politics of truth, ed. Sylvere Lotringer, 83–100. New York: Semiotext(e).
Foucault, Michel. 1997c. What is enlightenment? In The politics of truth, ed. Sylvere Lotringer, 101–134. New York: Semiotext(e).
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, territory, population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-78, Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Foucault on modern power: Empirical insights and normative confusions. In Unruly practices, 17–34. Cambridge: Polity.
Gutting, Gary. 2002. Foucault’s philosophy of experience. Boundary 2 29(2): 69-85.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The philosophical discourse of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The new conservatism, Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lingis, Alfonso. 2007. The torturers and their public. South Central Review 24(1): 91–94.
Mills, Catherine. 2003. Contesting the political: Foucault and Butler on power and resistance. The Journal of Political Philosophy 11(3): 253–279.
Owen, David. 1999. Orientation and Enlightenment: Foucault, Habermas and the politics of critique. In Foucault contra Habermas, ed. Samantha Ashenden, and David Owen, 1–20. London: Sage.
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford University Press.
Shklar, Judith. 1984. Ordinary vices. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard/Belknap.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my interlocutors at the Declarations of Law workshop, who raised provocative questions and helped me to extend and clarify aspects of this paper. I am especially grateful for the comments of Andrew Schaap, along with those of the workshop organizers and editors of this special issue, Juliet Rogers and Peter Rush.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mills, C. A Manner of Speaking: Declaration, Critique and the Trope of Interrogation. Law Critique 21, 247–260 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9073-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9073-y