At Cambridge, critique is something constantly drilled into you, thrown at you and encouraged from you. And I've noticed in my everyday life that I'm much more critical of things, I'm 'very much more political', as my mom would have it. It's something I'm grateful to have gained from my time at Cambridge, so far, and an aspect of my course that keeps me going when I've got sixty dense pages of reading notes to get through in one afternoon for the umpteenth supervision essay of the term and I'd really rather not read about the historiography of milk consumption. Genuinely.
Critique to me is a form of analysis, engagement, a means of reading and interpreting the world that expands upon the black and white frame given to you. But I think there's a limit to critique, and a backbone to it. Critique is an Achilles heel. It's necessary, but it's often essentialist, and I think there's a point to be made about critiquing critique: its application, its point and its context.
I'm sat in the Victoria and Albert museum in a room that I stumbled upon accidentally, filled with giant canvasses of religious artwork, on a bench in the middle of the floor, glasses magnifying, in awe of one particular piece. The colours; the complexity of the scene; the reactions people have as they walk past. Some pause and look for a few blinks, scanning the painting from top left to bottom right, as if it were something to check off a list to-do. Some remark upon the painter, and the broader collection, or how large it is. One person sits fixed like me, but they leave before I do. My friend takes this picture of me totally oblivious to the world. I've always loved religious artwork, for the way people interpret and translate particular scenes or narratives, and the richness of effort in the details of colours, muscles, light, shadows. But I don't know how to critique it. I could look at the piece of artwork in the V&A - I could see it, analyse it from a very base understanding and position - but I could not critique it. I lack the grounding in Art History or the broader knowledge of its many contexts and, most especially, I have no alternatives to offer. And isn't that the heart of critique: the desire, or implication, of an alternative?
French philosopher Michel Foucault (1988:154-155) described a critique as 'not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are' but 'a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest'. He goes on to suggest that we 'must free ourselves from the sacralisation of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as superfluous something so essential in human life and in human relations of thought', noting that 'criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such'. He concludes: 'practising criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult'. Foucault is one of my favourite critical thinkers, in the company of John Berger, Edward Said and George Orwell, most especially for the way in which he is critical of his own critique. It often makes for a dense and circular read, but Foucault deconstructs and analyses his own arguments as a means of providing not only contextual justification, as is necessary for any successful or grounded critique, but also comparable exploration. That is: he uses critique as a means of exploring (the potential for) alternative. And I think that's what he's getting at in his description of critique; that it is pointless, essentialist, ungrounded, to simply deconstruct something without justifying this with a contingent suggestion.
I've found this most keenly in some lectures I've sat through, avidly engaged with the critique offered only to find that the lecture ends without an offered alternative to what has just been thoroughly undermined and deconstructed. What now? Or I write a critical essay and hint conclusively that alternatives are necessary, but what are they? Where are they; who are they; when are they? What is their potential? Some of my friends are critical of this lack of critical triangulation, complaining of its essentialism in making such lectures or study 'pointless' or 'ungrounded' if they can't offer or imagine an alternative. Capitalism is a big one; neoliberalism a contentious one; development an implicit one. I also find it when I subconsciously mentally berate someone for something they've said, done or written, which I deem totally ignorant or obnoxious, or xenophobic etc. And I have to ask myself: where does my critical opinion come from? Why do I think this of it? Is this constructive and how, should, I address this? What is, if there is, the alternative?
I hate unjustified critique. I want to know why you disagree with the point I've just made, or why that essay structure wasn't so effective; what is the alternative to what I've just argued, what is a better essay structure for future use? I think the same can be said for a lot of people. So I think we should hold ourselves and the critiques that we counter, or engage with, to the same demands of a critical Why. There are so many platforms for critical discussions today, and as we go into 2017, a political climate full of contentions, debates and tensions, an array of critical thought from a myriad of sources. So what I argue is not the rebuttal or dislocation of critique, but a critical engagement with it, whether you're the critic, the critiqued, or the audience. In this sense, not only is necessary critique triangulated with transformative potential, but essentialist critique is more easily avoided. Sometimes, I just don't think critique is completely necessary. I'm quite happy sitting engrossed on a wooden bench, lost in the middle of the V&A, looking at a huge piece of religious artwork without critiquing it. Were I a student of History of Art, I'd likely feel different. Sometimes critique is expected, or construed as a sign of intellectual rigour or intelligence. Questioning the worth of critique, however, shows that it's not always necessary. Often, critique is constructive for improvement in the abstract, in performance, production, understanding etc. But! That is constructive criticism; criticism that explains itself with a comparable alternative. Not criticism for the sake of critique.
I wouldn't say to avoid criticism, so I don't want to end with that. I want to end with the sentiments of Foucault: to be critical of critique.
'Critique by creating' - Michelangelo
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