post-critique . . .

Since the enlightenment, the notion of ‘critique’ has been central to conceptualizations of what science constitutes. This segment of my research agenda explores the dilemmas and challenges facing the centrality of critique (or ‘critical thinking’) for science at large. It does so by inquiring into the nature of critique and, more precisely, the current position of academic critique in relation to its manifestation in other social spheres. The intuition behind the project is that it is possible to conceive of self-declared ‘critical’ approaches to exploring social phenomena as now ‘following’ rather than ‘leading’ the critique of social life. This raises troubling questions as to whether or not such approaches are indeed truly ‘critical’ in any meaningful way and how critical approaches in academia require to reinvent their ways of ‘doing’ critique. As part of these inquiries, a series of workshops have been convened drawing together leading figures at the forefront of exploring the relationships between critique and social science, as well as a series of important interventions in key publications.