The Value of Critique

PrefaceThis book is based on a conference that took place on January 18th 2017, a date that was overshadowed by Trump's inauguration. It shouldn't come as a surprise that this historical turning point finds an echo in many of the contributions in this volume. The title of the conference The Value of Critique connects two different modes of judgment which are often understood as being fundamentally different: critique and value (or evaluation). While judging is in itself an act of critique that implies a decision between right and wrong in the name of a rule , it can also be conceptualized and performed differently as an evaluation that generates and presupposes values.The process of judging is thus deeply interconnected with critique and value. But what is at stake in the juxtaposition between 'value' and 'critique'? When described schematically their relation would unfold as follows: critique is the enlightenment strategy of judgment whereby a subject establishes itself and declares its autonomy as an independent judge above and distant from the matter of its consideration. To criticize in this sense means: to gain freedom over and against an object, a situation, a condition, in short: over and against the world by claiming that the world is contradictory in itself. The concept of value, on the other hand, refers to an act of evaluation which is openly and avowedly partial and perspectival-the act of measuring, in which a living being expresses the utility of something in the world for it, i.e. its survival or its flourishing. Evaluation is about the enhancement of the evaluating living being, about increasing its life-forces, its ability to live. Understood in this way, critique and value are antagonistic. From the perspective of value, critique is a strategy used by the subject to empower itself, merely pretending to let "the thing itself" speak. From the perspective of critique, the model of value has surrendered from the start to the endless circle of the

ContentsPreface 9Isabelle Graw and Christoph MenkeI. Critique of Critique Against Critique, For Critique 15Bruno LatourThe Hammer of the Gods: Critique, after all 31Benjamin NoysTwo Ways of Understanding the Politics of Nature 44Dirk SettonII. The Power of CritiqueDiderot, or The Power of Critique 53Beate SöntgenLetting ourselves be determined 73Martin SeelActualizing Affirmation 75Kerstin StakemeierCritically Affirming Affirmation 81Beate SöntgenIII. Criticize Your Life Criticism and its Discontents-In Defense of an Immanent Critique of Forms of Life 87Rahel JaeggiOn Internal, External and Immanent Critique in Rahel Jaeggi 111Eva GeulenGoing Further: Lebensformen, Politics, and Critique 120Thomas LemkeIV. Social CritiqueCritical Sociology and Sociology of Critique 129Luc BoltanskiThree Questions-An Inquiry into the Sociology of Critique 139Juliane RebentischV. Labour and Value(Un-)Doing the Capitalist Self 145Sabeth BuchmannWorking hard for what?-The Value of Artistic Labor and the Products that result from it 155Isabelle GrawArt and the Reproduction of the Value-Form 162Christoph MenkeArt, Value, and Value-Form Theory 171John RobertsAbout the Authors 185

Isabelle Graw ist Herausgeberin der Zeitschrift Texte zur Kunst. Sie lehrt Kunsttheorie an der Städelschule Frankfurt. Christoph Menke ist Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Frankfurt am Main.