“great” critique, “little” critique, and “the” revolution

“Great” critique, “little” critique, and “the” revolutionToward a non-normative understanding of criticism

Elsa RambaudIn Revue française de science politique Volume 67, Issue 3, 2017, pages 469 to495Translated by Cadenza Academic Translations

ISBN 9782724635119

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“GREAT” CRITIQUE,

“LITTLE” CRITIQUE, AND“THE” REVOLUTIONTOWARD A NON-NORMATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF CRITICISM

Elsa RambaudTranslated by Cadenza Academic Translations

This article addresses the difficulties presented by a brand of scholarly common sensethat is propagated through an acceptation of critique shared (often tacitly) by pre-dominant currents in the philosophical and sociological tradition.

To outline the problem, it is useful to take a brief initial detour via the explicit definitionsof critique given in the Lalande and Petit Robert dictionaries. According to these authorities,“critique” pertains to what seem at first sight to be two entirely distinct worlds of meaning:it can imply some relation to crisis, or it can refer to a normative evaluation. In the firstcase, we note the stubborn persistence of a conception of critical activity that sees it asinvolving some crucial decision with momentous consequences. In the second, critique pri-marily designates the examination of some kind of intellectual work, generally in order todiscriminate the good from the bad, the true from the false, and is then secondarily consid-ered, in a “restrictive” [sic] and/or pejorative sense, to imply a “negative judgment”.1

As we shall demonstrate, the imaginary of critique operates via a double movement ofconflation and hierarchization that tends to thwart any possibility of rendering these criticalpractices fully intelligible. Firstly, the two initial senses of critique—as an action with radicalconsequences and revolutionary affinities, and as an intellectual critique associated withemancipation—are conflated into one single sense that more or less coincides with thestandard representation of “social criticism (la critique sociale)”.2 Here we have a critiquethat aims upward from the lower ranks of the social scale, and is radical, lucid, theoreticallyrobust, emancipatory, and also constitutive for the political heritage of the Left. We shallcall this “great” critique, because of the greatness of its forms, driving forces, and effects,

1. André Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France,1991, vol. 1, pp. 196-7; Alain Rey and Josette Rey Debove, Petit Robert. Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogiquede la langue française, Paris, Le Robert, 1983.

2. Translator's note: Somewhat like “social criticism” in English, “la critique sociale” in French refers to a criticismthat has society for its field and for its object (a critique at work in society and a critique of society); but it alsorefers to the state of leftist contestation (a critique of the society worked out in leftist social movements and/orin the academic leftist reflection on social issues). For the word “critique” itself, there are two possible trans-lations: critique and criticism. Criticism–which has no exact equivalent in French–in placing the emphasis on thepractice or action of critique, rather than on ideational content or intellectual work with grand “radical” pre-tentions, corresponds more closely to the reorientation the author proposes in the text. English “critique” islargely applicable to the conventional perspective under discussion in this article. It is the reason why, forconvenience, we have predominantly used the term critique throughout this translation.

❘ REVUE FRANCAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ❘ ENGLISH ❘ VOL. 67 No 3 ❘ p. I-XXVIII

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but above all to signal that it is perceived as “great” from the normative point of view ofthe social scientist. What we will recommend is that a more careful distinction be madebetween intellectual critique and revolutionary activity, so as to think of these two figuresof dissent more realistically.

Secondly, this “great” critique becomes the yardstick for any critique carried out by socialactors, so that different critiques (those carried out by dominant actors, those with modest,unclear, non-intellectual, and/or right-wing claims and effects), if they are perceived as cri-tiques, are basically considered to be “small” critiques—even in cases where their circum-stances, mainsprings, or effects are far from small. This is why, having become the last refugeof these discredited critiques even though it could well apply to all critiques great and small,the third sense of critique, “negative judgment”, is seen as being narrower—and always froma moral point of view. In contrast, we would like to make a case for the benefits of retainingthis last definition as the preferred one if we want to think of critiques both great and small,to rethink them, and, ultimately, to dispense with the division altogether.

All in all, the principal issue at stake here is to introduce a little doubt—methodicaldoubt—into our tendency to take it for granted that (true) critique must always be “great”critique; and to question the propensity to truncate our understanding of critical practiceswith the blade of our own normativity.

Finding the Traces of a “Conventional Perspective” on Critique:Scope of the Discussion

Our thinking here owes a great deal to Michael Walzer’s corrosive essay “The Practiceof Social Criticism” (in which the latter is understood as a “critique of society” thattakes place within society). We take up his invitation to consider the force of critics

who are not necessarily always “intellectually” or “emotionally detached” and are not nec-essarily moved by altruistic considerations.1 But it seems to us that Walzer, in his own way,still ambiguously concedes too much to the “philosophically respectable”—that is to sayidealized—representation of criticism that he helps to destabilize. This leads us to demarcateour analysis from his on three main points. Firstly, we do not think that critique can belocated solely on the side of the “interpretation” of a common set of values; we should beopen to the possibility that critique might (also) be a manifestation of common sense, devoidof any interpretation in the exegetical sense.2 Moreover, although we entirely agree that

1. Michael Walzer, “The practice of social criticism” in Interpretation and Social Criticism, Cambridge, MA, HarvardUniversity Press, 1993, pp. 33-66, here p. 40.

2. In Walzer's essay “Three paths in moral philosophy”, the idea of interpretation is brought in to remind us ofthe fact that criticism rarely (if ever) consists in inventing or discovering a new morality, but usually involvesthe interpretation of an already existing morality. On the other hand, if we are to avoid reducing criticism toan exercise in moral philosophy, as Walzer tends to do in “The practice of social criticism”, it would seem usefulto take into account, alongside criticism that interprets common sense, criticism that manifests common sensewithout intellectualizing it. The French version of Walzer's Tanner Lectures seems to decide in favor of thisapproach, choosing to translate “Interpretation and Social Criticism” as “Critique et sens commun [Critique andCommon Sense]”. It makes another choice in adding the subtitle “Essai sur la critique sociale et son interpré-tation [Essay on Social Criticism and its Interpretation]”, implying that this interpretative task is solely that ofthe researcher, and not that of the social critic himself. In relation to this reading, the non-normative approachdefended here does not privilege any one of these forms of criticism to the detriment of the others, nor doesit seek to “interpret” them, at the risk of metamorphosing them, but only to exhibit their content and their ownlogic (whether more or less theorized–or not at all).

❘ REVUE FRANCAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ❘ ENGLISH ❘ VOL. 67 No 3

II ❘ Elsa Rambaud

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criticism cannot be a question of pure exteriority, it seems ill advised to then suggest thatcritique is a question of being “really marginal”.1 Drawing the full consequences of Walzer’ssuggestive comparison of the critic to a judge, we would like to create an opportunity toconsider that criticism might (also) be a matter of centrality. Finally, one last inflection, moreexternal to the framework of Walzer’s analysis, but which we believe chimes with his wishto avoid projecting his own morality into others’ criticism: in our view, right-wing critiquebelongs to the unthought of what is still described, in his wake, as the “conventional per-spective of critique”—even if, from where we stand, its boundaries have shifted noticeably.

Along with its persistent presence in even the most original analyses, one sure sign of the“conventional” nature of this acceptation of critique is the fact that it crosses intra- andinterdisciplinary frontiers. In order to interrogate its blind spots, although we will put themin perspective with some of the most central works of political philosophy, we have thereforechosen to concentrate principally on just two sociological programs which disagree in every(other) respect but which, precisely, converge on this point: the “standard” or “critical soci-ology” formalized by Pierre Bourdieu,2 and the “sociology of critique” or “pragmatic soci-ology” introduced by Luc Boltanski. Cross-analyzing these two models, whose orientationsare schematically summarized below (see box), will allow us to address, through two systemsthat have spawned separate schools of thought, the contemporary French variant of theopposition between an objectivist-type knowledge and a more subjectivist- or phenomeno-logical-type knowledge.

Two Sociologies of Critique, One (and the Same) Critique: Introductory Remarks

Sociology of Tacit Consent Versus Sociology of Explicit Dissent

Bourdieu’s sociology aims to understand actors’ practical sense, the regularities of prac-

tice, and the legitimacy of a largely undisputed social world.3 It insists that in order to do

so, what is imperative is an epistemological break: a break with common sense, with spon-

taneous theories of practice, and with scholastic bias. It objectivates the social structure

by studying the way in which actors’ dispositions and position-takings are shaped by the

space of social positions. In doing so, it “unveils” the arbitrariness of the established

order—meaning its historical constructedness, but doubtless more besides—with particular

attention to processes of domination and reproduction. Critique—of the indigenous

variety—rarely appears in this program, except in critical moments where the ordinary

harmony between objective and subjective structures breaks down.4

Boltanski’s sociology aims to understand actors’ sense of justice, the uncertainty of social

worlds, and the various legitimacy requirements that allow disputation to arise.5 Careful

1. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 38.2. These are the terms used by Luc Boltanski, respectively in “Sociologie critique et sociologie de la critique”,Politix, 3(10), 1990, 124-34 and On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation [2009], trans. Gregory Elliott, Cam-bridge, Polity, 2011, 18. We adopt them here for convenience of exposition.

3. For a summary see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice [1972], trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1995, 3-86.

4. Bourdieu's well-known phrase has almost become an adage: “Indeed, essentially, what is problematic is thefact that the established order is not problematic [.. . ] except in crisis situations [.. . ]”. Pierre Bourdieu, PracticalReason: On the Theory of Action [1994], Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1998, 56.

5. This program is initiated in Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, Les économies de la grandeur (Cahiers ducentre d'études de l'emploi no. 31), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1987; presented in more popularform in Boltanski, “Sociologie critique et sociologie de la critique”, and systematized anew in On Justification:Economies of Worth [1991], trans. Catherine Porter, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2006. For a


“GREAT” CRITIQUE, “LITTLE” CRITIQUE, AND “THE” REVOLUTION ❘ III

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to “take their [social actors’] arguments seriously”, it reduces the dissymmetry

between sociologist and actors. It “clarifies” the moral conventions underlying their

exchanges via the “second-degree construction” of ideational referents (“cities” or

“grammars”) that are appealed to during “tests” with uncertain outcomes.1 This socio-

logical enterprise therefore involves an attention to “action as it happens” in plural

situations that open up possibilities for emancipation.2 Critique is located at the very

heart of this model, where it supposes, schematically speaking, three conditions:

“access to an exteriority” made possible by the coexistence of worlds with different

or even antagonistic values (condition of possibility),3 the actor’s use of his “free will”

for critical purposes (condition of effectuation),4 and the operation of generaliza-

tion—that is to say, recourse to a bedrock of ideas that can be shared by a third party

(condition of legitimacy).

Ultimately, we cannot enter into the space of the debate between these two programs withoutrethinking it, in the sense that their polarity, which is the basis of a surprisingly obstinatedivision of labor, conceals the convergent conception of “critique” (that is, “great critique”)that underlies it.

Critical Sociology: The Rarity of Everyday CritiqueAt first sight, it may seem incongruous to expect a program that has paid little attention toprofane or lay critique to give an account of the imaginary associated with critical activity.But it is precisely because this imaginary is at work that critique seems from this perspectiveto be such a rare thing.

Ordinary critique can be perfectly well apprehended by a sociology that locates explanationof practices (and critique is a practice) in the state of social relations; so it is not its methodthat prevents it from addressing more everyday forms of critique, but its morality.

Another reason why indigenous critique is rarely seen is the tendency to assume that critiquemust be lucid, while actors are supposed to be afflicted by various forms of blindness to thesociological truth of their practice. In this sense, it is not by chance that the critique to whichthis program does grant its imprimatur is an epistemological one: the critique of the socialdeterminations that bias the understanding of the processes it studies.

Ambiguously, this sociology also contains a political or militant critique—but here again,not an indigenous one—conveyed in the idea that such authentically sociological knowledgemay be liberatory in some way.

In summary, if this sociology can be described as critical, it is not because it is incapable ofthinking the “autonomy—even relative—of mental structures?assumed to be] the basis of

summary of this trajectory see Luc Boltanski, Love and Justice as Competences [1990], Cambridge, Polity, 2012,18-27.

1. See the synthesis of the two programs in Philippe Corcuff, Les nouvelles sociologies, Paris, Armand Colin,2007, 103.

2. On what marks out this model from Bourdieu's sociology, and for a pragmatic summary of the same socialinteraction envisaged from the two points of view, see Nicolas Dodier, “Agir dans plusieurs mondes”, Critique,529/530, 1991, 427-58.

3. Boltanski, Love and Justice as Competences, 52.4. Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification, 232-3.


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the formulation of a social critique”.1 It is rather because it persists in considering critiqueas a kind of “autonomy of the mental”, and, as such, as something rarely met with.2 Neitheris it because it leaves no place for the “free will” of actors, or because it disenchants theworld (which is only a critical effect). It is rather because it would be too disenchanting toconsider socially bounded critiques as critiques.

Sociology of Critique: The Everydayness of Rare CritiqueWith the abandonment of “critical sociology” for “sociology of critique”, the place and statusof lay critique seems to be radically altered. De facto, everyday critical practice, which appearsonly implicitly in Bourdieu as a sort of exception that proves the rule, becomes subject toa more profound systematic analysis.

Yet although in principle this new sociology envisages critique as an everyday practice ratherthan as extra-ordinary practice, it does so only to rediscover the same critique, synonymouswith emancipation. What is more, if sociology of critique no longer considers moral theoriesof practice as a hindrance to sociological analysis but as its principal concern, this is because,just like standard sociology, it tends to consider only intellectualized or intellectual critique.Its analysis may insist not on the break between scholar knowledge and militant knowledgebut on their circularity, but this is because, once more, it is this model against which priv-ileged critical activities are measured. Finally, if critique does indeed become a field of studyfor this sociology of critique, it is no less critical for all that, just otherwise critical.

Each in their own way, but sharing the essential orientation of the philosophical traditiontoward Marxist and Enlightenment ideals, these two sociologies both conceive critique as“great”—or else as nothing. When all the elements are on the table, this critique will be greatfrom the point of view of its target (the established order), its effects (radical and emanci-patory), its mainsprings (the distance between actors), its authors (marginal or dominated),its ideological content (that of the Left), and its forms (lucid, furnished with a theory ofpractice)—great, from the sociologist’s point of view. Whether or not any critique couldpossibly boast all of these forms of greatness, this narrow conventional focus stamps out theunderstanding of “little” critiques, while compounding the difficulty that sociologies of cri-tique have in analyzing the social substantification of critiques both great and small.

To analyze this series of difficulties, we will firstly examine the revolutionary amalgam andthe consequences of the assimilation of critique to class struggle (the distinction between“call to order” and reformist/radical critique, the expulsion of right-wing critique and thatof elites). Secondly, in an extended reflection on the opposition between ideational criticaldetachment and acritical social rootedness, we will challenge the privilege conferred uponintellectual (theorized, clear-sighted, tolerant) critique and its status (as objective rather thanas object of study). Finally, we will detail the analytic benefits, when rethinking these differentcritiques, of beginning with a non-normative definition of critique.

1. Albert Ogien, “L'antinomie oubliée: ou la critique sociale a-t-elle besoin d'une théorie de la pratique?” in MichelDe Fornel and Albert Ogien (eds), Bourdieu, théoricien de la pratique, Paris, Raisons pratiques, 2011, pp. 135-54,here p. 136. “From the perspective of a theory of practice founded on the triptych habitus/field/practical sense,it becomes difficult to think the autonomy–even relative–of mental structures, even though we may supposethis autonomy to be the basis of the formulation of a social criticism.” (Our translation.)

2. Ogien, “L'antinomie oubliée”, p. 136.


“GREAT” CRITIQUE, “LITTLE” CRITIQUE, AND “THE” REVOLUTION ❘ V

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Emancipated and Emancipatory Critique, or the Revolutionary AmalgamThe most ordinary or lay critique appears almost everywhere in the work of Bourdieu; never,however, as a critique—a true critique, that is—but first and foremost as “agreement indisagreement”.1

On numerous occasions Bourdieu describes with great subtlety what we have summarizedin broad brushstrokes: actors coming into conflict because they endow the same thing withdifferent meanings, depending upon the positions to which they aspire or which they cur-rently occupy in social space.2 But this “praxeological knowledge” fails to fully deliver on itspromises as far as critical practices are concerned, because Bourdieu sees these critiques,which, according to him, “risk [...] never discussing what is essential”, or which (even moredebatably) he assumes to “agree on the essential”, as “fictitious or formal [...] oppositions”.3

This disqualification is all the more regrettable in that he demonstrates how a critique mustnecessarily take on its world’s established schemes of perception and, more generally, thebenefits of “falling into line with rules”.4 There are therefore good reasons to think that, ifa critique demonstrates the force of the instituted in this way (which after all is what Bourdieuis interested in), that alone does not necessarily make it a weak critique—still less the oppositeof a critique.

This applies even if we see it not only as a reflection of its being “the only game in town”,but also as a reflection of the actor’s profound belief in the values of the game in question.We may accept that “the heretic remains a believer who preaches a return to purer formsof the faith”5—but we cannot deduce from this that, just because he is a believer or behaveslike a believer, he poses no threat to representatives of the Church or representations offaith. To put it crudely, if churches have tended to burn their heretics rather than theirmiscreants, this is likely because they felt more threatened, and above all more directlyaddressed by the former than by the latter. If it makes sense to speak of it in such terms,this “disagreement in agreement”, remains a disagreement nonetheless.

And if Bourdieu is so reluctant to concede that it is authentically critical, this is becausecritique, real critique, deep critique, is that which turns the tables and/or breaks the cycleof reproduction. Hence its rarity and the fact that, in this sociology, it is confined to criticalstates alone. It takes place only within a “cleft habitus”,6 as if only a cleft habitus couldproduce division; or in “impossible” situations,7 as if the actor must necessarily hail froman “exotic world” in order to be capable of critiquing the world in which he is integratedor, more exactly, in which he would, from that point on, no longer be integrated.8 Above

1. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations [1997], trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge, Polity, 2000, 98. This notionindicates the importance of shared classificatory schemes that make it possible for the same conduct to becomethe object of disagreement (e.g. described as “shameless” versus “unaffected”) between actors situated inopposed positions.

2. For a systematization, see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction [1979], trans. Richard Nice, London, Routledge Classics,2010.

3. To put it in terms of reproduction. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, The Inheritors: French Studentsand Their Relation to Culture [1964], trans. Richard Nice, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979, 47.

4. Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 100sq., and Outline of a Theory of Practice, 22.5. Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 102.6. Pierre Bourdieu, Sketch for a Self-Analysis [2004], trans. Richard Nice, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,2008, 100sq.

7. Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 92 and 157.8. Ibid., 147.


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all, beyond being a mere personal crisis, this critique is essentially understood as both theindex and the accelerator of a general crisis, the only one which can dislodge the ordinarycomplicity that unites mental structures with social structures. It is a “critical moment”,then, in which “subversive discourse” must contend with the “resistance of orthodoxy”.1

On first glance, the “sociology of critique” seems to follow a different path. In the first stageof the model, characterized by its interest in the ideational—stabilized—conventions thatactors make use of to bolster their “ordinary sense of justice”,2 bringing down the establishedorder is not a criterion for authentic critique. But then this may be because (to exaggeratethe case a little) everything that is constraining in the social world has so to speak disap-peared.3 In other words, whether the possibility of critique is considered to be hindered bythe alignment of mental representations with the reduced set of possibilities allowed by asocial system, or whether it is supposed to be “always open” because of the latitude offeredby the coexistence of different ideational systems,4 in any case we are talking about the same,emancipated and emancipatory, critique. Apart from its enlightening nature, it is this accept-ation of critique that is found in one of the main foundational arguments of sociology ofcritique:

If people lived in a world that is accepted as self-evident, if they were worked and dominated byforces without knowing it, then it would be difficult to understand either the eminently problematiccharacter of the social environment, as revealed by the permanent concern for justice, or the verypossibility of questioning and critique.5

Indeed, nothing prevents us from thinking that, for example, actors might be “worked bysuperior forces” yet might also be critical—at least, nothing apart from the conception ofcritique invoked here. And this is why critical sociology, when it pays attention to domina-tion, pays no attention to critique; and why sociology of critique, when it pays attention tocritique, believes it needn’t pay any attention to domination.

This also explains why, having reintegrated this theme long abandoned by standard sociology,sociology of critique only continues, in the end, to oppose domination to critique.6 EvenMichel Foucault, despite being a fine thinker of the “double” dynamic of “subjectivation”or rather of its totality (i.e. becoming-subject and being subjected) and sensitive to the affinitybetween critique and power, does not manage to fully get beyond this representation.7 Wecan see how he hesitates, defining critique as “the art of not being governed”, “the art ofnot being governed like that and at that cost”, and then “the art of not being governed quiteso much” or “not wanting to be governed”.8 Also because he has in mind the Kantian model

1. Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus [1984], trans. Peter Collier, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1988,159-93, and “Dire et prescrire”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 38, 1981, 69-73.

2. Claudette Lafaye, “Situations tendues et sens ordinaires de la justice au sein d'une administration municipale”,Revue française de sociologie, 31(2), 1990, 199-223. This notion is a current one in pragmatic works.

3. On this critique of the model, see Claude Gautier, “La sociologie de l'accord”, Politix, 54, 2001, 197-220; PhilippeJuhem, “Un nouveau paradigme sociologique?”, Scalpel, 1, 1994, 115-42; Elsa Rambaud, “L'organisation socialede la critique à Médecins sans frontières”, Revue française de science politique, 59(4), August 2009, 723-56.

4. Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification, 353sq.5. Boltanski, “Sociologie critique et sociologie de la critique”, 129. (Our translation.)6. See for example Boltanski, On Critique; Cyril Lemieux, Le devoir et la grâce, Paris, Economica, 2009, 177-201.7. Michel Foucault, “The subject and power”, Critical Inquiry, 8(4), Summer 1982, 777-95.8. Michel Foucault, “What is Critique?” in Michel Foucault, Sylvère Lotringer, and Lysa Hochroth (eds), The Politicsof Truth, New York, Semiotext(e), 1997, pp. 23-82, here p. 29. For a commentary see Judith Butler, “What isCritique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue” in David Ingram (ed.), The Political, Oxford, Blackwell, 2002, pp. 212-28.


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of critique, and his “What is Critique?” could just as well have been called, as it often is,“What is Aufklärung?”1 And, more broadly speaking, because this approach to critique is soconventional that it persists even in this (other) non-conventional philosopher. As it doesin this second pragmatic sociology, where critique rises up once more, “confronting theinstitutions”, remaining “the only bulwark against [...] domination”.2 Along the same lines,on the rare occasions when the spotlight is turned on critical institutions—those whichgovern themselves by way of critique or are responsible for critical missions3—it is essentiallyto point out the limited nature of their critique or to insist upon the way in which they“digest” critique—forgetting that (to follow this unfortunate metaphor) far from being evac-uated in this movement, it is being assimilated.

For we must also keep in mind that, within this imaginary, critique is radical and nothingbut; and not only liberatory but effective. This means that the difficulty in accepting thatnon-emancipatory critiques may deserve the name of critique is compounded by a difficultyin accepting—and this is not quite the same thing—that ineffective critiques are still critiques,just ineffective ones. From this point of view, a critique that does not silence violence is acritique that “violence will silence”, making it disappear even when it still exists.4

The Alignment of Critique with the Model of Class StruggleThe Marxian and indeed Marxist acceptation of critique as a “struggle against the [...] statusquo” that aims not to “refute” but to “destroy” its enemy, and “no passion of the brain”but “the brain of passion”,5 is liable to tell us more about the (intellectual) revolutionaryideal than about concrete social critiques whether great or small. Boltanski’s proposed syn-thesis of critical sociology and sociology of critique in the significantly named On Critique:A Sociology of Emancipation is a good summary of these distortions.

In its own way—more attentive to the ideational structuring of discourses than to the socialstructuring of representations—the picture it paints is regrettable for the same reason asBourdieu’s outline: because it (dis)qualifies critique on the basis of the presence within it ofa supposedly liberatory revolutionary or subversive index. This revolutionary index is itselfsought in three criteria, which we will distinguish here, but which, within this perspective,are not separated. Critique is only real critique if (1) it is displaced as much as possible fromthe existing order, (2) it operates from the bottom to the top of the social scale, (3) it issupported by a theory of practice, or at least some exegetical initiative that seeks to relateaction to a rule. Not only are these criteria cumulative (although empirically speaking theyall pull in opposite directions), but also each of them reveals serious biases in method. For

1. For an explicit debate on this point, see the original (French) verbatim of the conference “Qu'est-ce que lacritique? Compte-rendu de la séance du 27 mai 1978”, Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, 84(2),1978, 35-63. For an overview of the interlacing of critique/Aufklärung, see for example Boltanski, On Critique,19 and 27.

2. Ibid., 98 and 83.3. See for example Luc Boltanski and ’ve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism [1999], trans. Gregory Elliott,London, Verso, 2017; Thomas Angeletti, “(Se) rendre conforme: les limites de la critique au Conseil d'analyseéconomique”, Tracés, 17, 2009, 55-72.

4. Dominique Cartron and Michel Gollac, “C'est quand même un peu violent! Le désarmement de la critique dansles entreprises néo-libérales” in Marc Breviglieri, Claudette Lafaye, and Danny Trom (eds), Compétences cri-tiques et sens de la justice, Paris, Economica, 2009, pp. 333-43.

5. Karl Marx, “A contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of right: introduction” in Critique of Hegel'sPhilosophy of Right, trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O'Malley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982,pp. 129-42, here pp. 133-4.


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this classificatory operation amounts to discriminating what can be called critical from whatcannot on the basis of (1) its content and/or results (there is a continual confusion betweenthe two) (2) its social factors and/or its authors (again conflated) and whether they are moreor less sympathetic to the sociologist; and (3) its forms, depending on whether they are moreor less convincing, again from the sociologist’s point of view.

The Weakness of the Radical/Reformist “Hit Parade” Versus the Call to OrderA first symptom of this obstinate reference to the revolution is that it suggests that the moreit is distanced from the “institution”, the stronger a critique will be—and indeed the morenoble it will be, in so far as the distinction between the contents of critiques coincides witha sort of scale of critical dignity. At the top of this scale, we find the critique that goes thefurthest, as far as it can go, even, when the “work of liberation” begins: this is the “radical”critique functioning by means of an “existential test” (i.e. critique in the name of anothersystem of tests).1 In the middle, we have critique that does not go all the way and remainsincomplete: the “reformist” critique operating via the “reality test” (i.e. denunciation of theimpurity of the framework of the existing test).2 At the bottom of the scale, or rather entirelyoutside it, we find non-critique and, even more so, the critical obstacle: the call to order,significantly described as “confirmation”, which is what is at play in “truth tests” (i.e.reminding us that whatever was, must be).3

Although On Critique instigates the normalization of critical activity, “reformist critique” isnevertheless considered as critique here (and no longer as “fictitious”). But aside from thislabeling, its separation from “radical” critique remains fragile—and problematic. The impli-cation seems to be that any critique that is radical in its claims is necessarily radical in itseffects.4 Does it make sense to consider the most marginal critique (or perhaps a critique bythe most marginal actors—the point remains unresolved) as not only the most central butalso the most effective? This is to forget that the most subversive discourses and actors byno means have the monopoly on strong critique with a fundamental purchase. Witness theicy silence that sometimes greets the radicalism of these “uncompromising types”, and thefact that, often for pragmatic and sometimes for moral reasons, they are frequently enjoinedto be more “diplomatic”.

From this point of view, actors are more realist, sociologically speaking, than social scientistswho tend to posit the equivalency strong critique = effective critique = emancipation. What ismore, as Walzer insightfully notes, the most radical and most external critique is probablythe one most likely to end up relying on coercion—even more so if its critique has to beeffective.5 We therefore find ourselves far from an emancipatory critique, assuming that aneffective critique may not have been simply one that leads to the manifestation of forms ofobedience. This is one of the many reasons why we have suggested that the constituent

1. Luc Boltanski, “Institutions et critique sociale: une approche pragmatique de la domination”, Tracés, 8, 2008,17-43, here 34.

2. On this distinction, see Boltanski, “Institutions et critique sociale”, 30-32, and On Critique, 103-10.3. Boltanski, On Critique, 61-2 and 98-9. (Translator's note: Confirmation is part of Boltanski's conceptual con-struction, but the word confirmation, in its usual meaning in both French and English, is the antonym of disa-greement, disapproval, opposition, etc.)

4. See for example Boltanski, On Critique, 108: “But precisely because they are situated on the margins ofreality–reality as it is ‘constructed’ in a certain social order–these existential tests open up a path to the world”(defined as “everything that happens”, 87).

5. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 55-6.


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elements of conventional critique, once they are no longer thought of as a given whole,ultimately add up rather badly.

As we have now begun to suspect, if the dichotomy between the “call to order” and “critique”may seem entirely self-evident, it is a dualism paralyzing to a full understanding of criticalpractices. First of all, even if we wish to keep in view both sociology of critique and eman-cipation (which would imply that we do not regard them as synonymous), we should notconsider the call to order to be intrinsically alienating. It all depends on what order—and,as always, for whom. Above all, we cannot help but observe that this activity of “confirma-tion”—confirming [confirmer] what has been and must be—often goes by way of an activitythat invalidates [infirmer], and thus critiques, that which should not have been. By applyingnothing more than a principle of symmetry,1 we also obtain the wherewithal to add somesignificant nuances to the idea that “[t]he main orientation” of the call to order is “to preventcritique” (the implication being, true critique).2 Rather than subscribing to this proposition,we instead want to open up an opportunity to see that the call to order is one possibleorientation of critique and, on occasion, one of the factors in the escalation of that critiqueamong others, the most subversive one. And although the call to order can oppose itself tothe critique of order, one cannot deduce from this, as Boltanski suggests, that it is the oppositeof a critique.3 In a pinch, provided that critique is placed on both sides, it would be betterto stick with the orthodoxy-heterodoxy couple, which is less saturated with normativity.

As to the last, and principal, argument justifying this division between call to order andcritique by a difference in critical substrate, it is hardly convincing. It runs as follows: thecall to order is pronounced in the name of, or even in favor of, reality as it is, whereas thecritique of order is pronounced against reality as it is, in the name of and for ideals that arenot yet real.4 Never far away, testifying to a certain propensity to deduce the cause of thepractice from its words alone, the call to order would be the pure product of reality, thecritique of order the pure product of pure ideals. Consequently, Boltanski gives free rein toa representation against which Bourdieu had already battled, with limited success, when hemoved from the marginality of heretical discourse to its disconcerting “novelty”.5 In short,the call to order would still be attached to the viscosity of the world it defends, whereas thecritique of order would be detached from the world against which it fights and, for thatreason, would alone have a critical status. There may be differences, sometimes empiricallysubtle ones, between the critique of transgression and the most transgressive critique. Butboth of them, without ceasing to anchor themselves in reality as it is, do indeed invoke realityas it should be. Both have a social support and normative references—not necessarily thesame ones—to which they are consubstantially linked.6

1. David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery [1976], Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1991, 7.2. Boltanski, On Critique, 62.3. On these “symmetrical and converse” qualities, see ibid., 72.4. See the passages on the confirmation of “what has already occurred” as (rhetorical?) acritique (ibid., 99) andthose on how radical critique emerges from existential trials without any “pre-established format”, “often called‘subjective’” (ibid., 108). Here we use the words “reality” and “world” in their current sense and not in theconceptual sense that Boltanski gives them.

5. For a glimpse into this tension, see Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond andMatthew Adamson, ed. John B. Thompson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991, 128.

6. Within the international Médecins Sans Frontières, for example, there are two ways of critiquing a “poormedicine for poor people”. The first, coincidentally adopted by the parent company MSF-France, consists indefying the authorities by substituting its own protocols for those validated by the authorities and declaringthat it is doing so. The second, favored by the more peripheral sections of the movement, pleads for closer


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From this point of view and above all, rather than opposing critique to the call to order, itwould no doubt be wiser to consider critique as a kind of call to order—and then try toidentify precisely what kind. This would allow us to better understand its social mainsprings;that is to say, it would help us to avoid locating the explanation of critique in forms ofexteriority to the societal order, as if it were a matter of an “asocial” practice or of “deso-cialized individuals”.1 And, rather than judging for them, it would help us to find out whatactors themselves consider to be a true critique.

Along with the Rejection of the Call to Order, the Rejection of “Right-Wing” CritiqueIt would also give us a better grasp of the diverse content of critiques, if only because thecall to order – reformist critique – radical critique scale is a suggestive symbol of the divisionof the political gamespace from right to center to left. For the other symptom of the con-ventional definition of critique is that it endorses only left-wing critique, supposedly con-cerned with social progress, to the exclusion of critical activities which, because they areeither soft and “reformist” or frankly “reactionary”, cannot properly speaking be describedas critiques. This is part of the explanation for the notable imbalance between the socialsciences literature dedicated to left-wing critique and that dedicated to right-wing critique(a term rare enough to have something of the oxymoron about it).2 As if the right, unlikethe left, did not have its critiques, its theoretical developments, its revolutions. All of this isanother way of signaling that this penchant for distinguishing critiques according to theirideological coloring is no more helpful in addressing “great” critique than “small” critique.3

As an overview of the field of these practices usually considered not to be critiques, we couldcite among other salient examples: the repertoire of the French anti-gay marriage movementLa Manif Pour Tous, the intellectual work of Charles Maurras, the doctrine of the ChicagoBoys, the “conservative revolutions” (whether Thatcher, Reagan, or the French variety), andother less peaceful “counter-revolutions”.

In short, if the opposition between “call to order” and “critique” and its refraction in thedistinction between “reformist critique” and “radical critique”, and then between right-wing(a)critique and left-wing critique remains stubbornly in place even when the empirical factsoverflow this hit parade on every side, it is because it comes down to distancing good critiquefrom bad.

collaboration with the authorities. But both manifest the close integration of these collectives into the spaceof politics and the will to demarcate themselves from it in order to improve the quality of the care given. If wechoose to consider only the first, on the grounds that it is more radical, we would be forced to observe that it,also, inseparably, is understood as a humanitarian call to order–that of non-governmental organizations. Inother words, trying to bring real critiques–which are difficult to triage–into this triptych, far from allowing themto be grasped more clearly, risks clouding their intelligibility.

1. According to the respective expressions of Michael Walzer (Interpretation and Social Theory, 56) and EdwardPalmer Thompson in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London, Merlin Press, 1978, 172-5.

2. For convergent remarks on this normative orientation of the sociology of militancy, see Frédéric Sawicki andJohanna Siméant, “Décloisonner la sociologie de l'engagement militant: note critique sur quelques tendancesrécentes des travaux français”, Sociologie du travail, 51(1), 2009, 97-125, here 99sq.

3. A tendency that Albert Otto Hirschman manages to escape with his “map [of the] rhetorics of intransi-gence”–which can quite well be seen as critical rhetorics before asking whether they serve the quality of dem-ocratic debate–when he shows that the three topics of reactionary rhetoric (perversity, jeopardy, futility) havetheir exact counterpart in progressivist rhetoric. See Albert Otto Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction, Cam-bridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1991.


“GREAT” CRITIQUE, “LITTLE” CRITIQUE, AND “THE” REVOLUTION ❘ XI

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The Disqualification of Critique on the Basis of its Driving ForcesThe other sign of the persistence of this acceptation of critique is to be found in the disap-pearance of all critiques whose dynamic does not seem to comply with the imagery of classstruggle. For the second criterion allowing the identification of a (true) critique is that of its(revolutionary) driving forces—often presumed on the basis of the social identity of itsauthors, as if their social position mechanically dictated their dispositions and theirposition-takings.

Thus, critiques reflecting antagonistic positions in the social space are more willingly con-sidered as critiques than those that operate between similar, scarcely distinguishable posi-tions. This even when, in a luminous passage, Bourdieu signals how minimal distance canoffer a favorable terrain for the expression of disagreement: “what is closest’ presents thegreatest threat to social identity”.1 But, perhaps because this structuralism does not knowwhat to make of this cumbersome empirical finding, and doubtless also because the revo-lutionary analogy is at work, critical sociology has largely considered these critiques betweenalter egos to be symptomatic of the alignment of subjective hopes with the objective chancesof seeing them becoming concrete, guarantor of the preservation of social hierarchies—and“therefore” as a brake on critique. In other words, this narrow focus prevents itself fromseeing that here we might have one of the fuels of critique and, prior to that, one of its mostordinary forms.

In On Critique we rediscover a difficulty that crops up here and there in Bourdieu’s workin the coupling “opposed position-takings = opposed social positions”: a difficulty inthinking, as such, critiques that consist in “turning against those nearest”.2 The task is madeall the more difficult in that these miniscule competitions have been exclusively locatedamong the most “dominated” actors—as if they were the only ones unable to join forces,in contrast to the dominant, who of course always have an objective sense of their interest,to the point of knowing how to systematically silence the threat of those closest to them inorder to guard against that of the most distant.

“Fragmentation”, understood here as both a lack of solidarity on the part of the dominatedand an absence of any systematized moral alternative,3 is deemed to pose a (twofold) obstacleto critique and is expelled from the table of critiques. As if, with the wrong opponent andthe wrong motives, these critical exchanges necessarily lost not only any significance but alsoany critical quality. But there is something problematic in dismissing a critique based onwhat motivates it and to whom it is addressed—imagine if we were to proceed in this wayto decide what qualifies as a partisan organization. What is more, if we are absolutely toprioritize only critiques that achieve good results, we would have to remember that the“mediocre” factors of this kind of critical exchange—examples of which can easily be foundin the most dominated and the most dominant actors alike—do not necessarily presage anunhappy outcome. Must critique, as well as achieving good results, and in order to achievethem, be driven by noble motives on the part of good people? This is asking a lot of critique.4

1. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice [1980], trans. Richard Nice, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press,1990, 137.

2. Boltanski, “Institutions et critique sociale”, 42.3. Boltanski, On Critique, 42±4 and 119±24.4. Since it is ultimately a question of emancipatory revolution rather than of critique, we will limit ourselves torecalling that processes of democratization–including those precipitated by crisis situations–are not entirely theprovince of fervent democrats. See Adam Przeworski, “Some problems in the study of the transition to democ-


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So it is understandable that, in order to save the full critical authenticity of this kind ofcritical activity—which could be described as a “narcissism of small differences” if the termhad fewer negative connotations1—there is a strong temptation to distort its explanation.Namely, to find more elevated factors for it by analyzing the social competition betweenthose nearest each other from the angle—exclusively from the angle—of the most extremeopposition of principles possible. It is largely this common sense of critique that leads actorsstruggling with the imperatives of justification to try to broaden their grievances.2 But, inour view, it is this common sense that researchers must make sure to disabuse themselvesof. And this, in order to understand not only how actors legitimate a critique (which comesback to being interested only in “legitimate” critiques without ever really knowing who isthe judge of this legitimacy) but also what it is urges them to deliver a critique, besides thevalues to which they are attached and/or which they advocate. It would be a shame, forinstance, to reduce the explanation of certain humanitarian exchanges about the scope ofaction of non-governmental organizations to a conflict between two irreducible options,“emergency” or “development”, like a collision between two planets, without seeing that thisopposition is never more salient than within the “Sans Frontières” family. The point illus-trates, if need be, that the most acute institutional competition does not in any way preventexchange on matters of principle.

The Blind Spot of the Critique of the DominantContinuing with the list of social forces and authors that disqualify critique, but now at theother extreme of the social field, in virtue of the stubborn idea that the dominant have nointerest in critique, the conventional acceptation tends to disregard any critique prosecutedby elite actors—even when the critique it endorses is itself of a rather elitist genre.

To begin with the most obvious case, if we wish to study critique that appeals to a greatvalue system, if not the universal, in support of its grievances, we would have to admit, asDominique Memmi has capably demonstrated on the subject of the Ethics Council, that“the paths of ethical generalization” are narrow and socially selective.3

If we want to endorse only the most transgressive critique of the existing rules, we can nolonger reserve it for the dominated alone. Here we would benefit from dispensing with thesomewhat hasty equivalence between “dominant ideology” and “ideology of the domi-nant”—which, moreover, is made without ever really knowing for sure which dominant weare talking about.4 The “dominant” (i.e. prevailing) ideology may well lean in their direction,that is to say in the objective sense of something like a class interest. But what we find—andBourdieu and Boltanski alike say it perfectly well—is that the dominant actors have the

racy” in Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (eds), Transitions from AuthoritarianRule: Comparative Perspectives, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 47-63, and GuyHermet, Aux frontières de la démocratie, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1983, 207sq.

1. Sigmund Freud, “The virginity taboo” [1918] in The Psychology of Love, trans. Shaun Whiteside, London, Pen-guin Classics 2006, pp. 262-78, here p. 268.

2. On this correlation between the construction of (social and ideal) generality of a grievance and critique receivedas legitimate, see Luc Boltanski, Yann Darré, and Marie-Ange Schiltz, “La dénonciation”, Actes de la rechercheen sciences sociales, 51(1), 1984, 3-40.

3. Dominique Memmi, “Celui qui monte à l'universel et celui qui n'y monte pas” in Bastien François and ÉrikNeveu (eds), Espaces publics mosaïques, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1999, pp. 155-66.

4. Bourdieu, Practical Reason, 129; Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski, “La production de l'idéologie dominante”,Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 2(2-3), 1976, 3-73; Luc Boltanski, Rendre la réalité inacceptable,Paris, Demopolis, 2008.


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ability to “bend the rules”, not to apply them to themselves, not to take them to the letter,to freely interpret them, not to endow them with a proper force. 1 Treated as a mark ofsocial excellence, this “distanced relation”, or rather close relation to rules appears just asundeniably as a critical manner and, doubtless even more so, as one of the driving forces ofcritique—which perhaps helps explain why Bourdieu consigns it to a footnote.2 For we needonly observe what critique owes to power to have an uneasy presentiment that it will notnecessarily come from below to upset the top of the social scale. It is this disappointed hopeto which Jürgen Habermas refers, reproaching Michel Foucault for his “contradictions” inwanting to hold together critique and power, demonstrating a discrete cruelty that hasnothing epistemological about it.3 Following Boltanski this time, we can easily believe thatthe propensity of the dominant to exonerate themselves from the rules in force, or to considerthat the rules mean nothing more that they can make them say, raises the price of contest-ation for those who are in no position to “make the rule”.4 But this elitist art of critiqueneed not necessarily be harmful to the greater number. There is no reason why the criticalactivity of the dominant should necessarily be any less preoccupied with social progress thanthat of the dominated, nor why it should be any less effective from this point of view—giventhat, according to the conventional perspective, it must be effective.

This is another way of saying that, even if we address only the critique of domination, wewould find it rather difficult to place it solely in the camp of the most disadvantaged actors.As an illustration of this difficulty we might invoke the fierce critique of gender discrimi-nation in the university by female students at the prestigious French École Normale becauseof their gender “disability” but also (at least as much) their social and scholarly excellence.And to counteract a conventional reading of this kind of critical practice by a dominantgroup sensitive to the lot of the less fortunate as (nothing but) the doing of a “dominated(fraction of a) dominant (group)”, we must remember that, for powerful people, there isno need to share, by homology of position, a part of the misfortune of the most oppressedin order to be able to take up the stance of denouncing it.

Furthermore, even in the case where leaders are the principal object of criticism, we observethat, far from always aiming to “contain and limit the critique”, they sometimes have an interestin rendering such critique possible, because, like the Roman senators who surrounded them-selves with counselors capable of pointing out their errors, they want to deserve their authority.5

1. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 298 n.12 (“liberties with the rule”); Boltanski, On Critique, 147 (“bend therules”).

2. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 298 n.12.3. As Michael Kelly summarizes: “Habermas argues that Foucault's paradigm of critique is self-refuting becauseof his theory of power: if critique itself is a form of power, then either it cannot be used to criticize power orif it is used it undermines itself”. Michael Kelly, “Introduction” in Michael Kelly (ed.), Critique and Power: Recastingthe Foucault/Habermas Debate, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1994 (2nd edition 1987), pp. 1-13, here p. 5. See, inthe same volume, Ju?rgen Habermas, “The critique of reason as an unmasking of the human sciences: MichelFoucault”, and “Some questions concerning the theory of power: Foucault again”, pp. 47-77 and pp. 79-107.

4. Boltanski, On Critique, 147-152. To extend the example of non-governmental organizations used above, theprincipal leaders and intellectuals of humanitarianism, following the “King René” of Médecins Sans Frontières,Rony Brauman, have formalized a sophisticated theory of practice rationalizing the preference for emergencyand the necessity of leaving the terrain when aid is being diverted. And indeed this is what makes them themost capable of denouncing the “dogma” of all emergency and the imbecility of such a humanitarian exit, tothe chagrin of those who, within their non-governmental organization and within the humanitarian space,thought they were following their precepts.

5. See Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism [1976], trans. Brian Pearce,London, Penguin, 1990, 403-4. We have known since Max Weber that the exercise of domination would benothing without the conviction that one deserves it; it is therefore a singularly impoverished conception of


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Finally, even if the critique of the great does not converge with the cause of the dominatedbut only complicates it, it seems troublesome to deny its critical nature because of its effectson other critiques that are believed a priori to be more worthy. In short, there are noreasons—other than moral reasons—to believe that a critique attesting to the emancipationof the dominant should, on account of a change in style but above all a change of author,have its critical “nature” rescinded. An intriguing prospect would open up were the critiqueof the dominant no longer only a critique aimed at the dominant but also—and there isnothing incompatible in this—a critique prosecuted by the dominant.

The Return of the Polarity: Social Rootedness Versus Ideal DetachmentFinally, the last trace of this revolutionary amalgam is to be found in the abandonment of“critique” in the sense of “socially rooted, contextual forms of criticism” in favor exclusivelyof “metacritique”: the critique that consists in convoking.. . rules.1 Are we to believe thatthis “metacritique” is not “socially rooted”? And that a “socially rooted” critique cannot beemancipatory? Although Boltanski rapidly passes over this distinction, it is reiterated whenhe locates critique not in “practical moments” but in “metapragmatic registers”, all of whichare critical apart from the call to order. Exaggerating the functionalist zest of Bourdieu’ssociology by imbuing it with a scholastic bias, this classification raises three series ofdifficulties.

Firstly, critique, detached from “practical moments” governed by the “taken for granted”, isonly critical on condition that it breaks with the order of practice.2 Like reflexivity in criticalsociology, critique is what happens when the “automatisms have broken down”—and is onlythis.3 If we were to keep to this conventional acceptation, we would necessarily end updisregarding “resident critics [critiques de service]”4 and dismissing from the field of critiqueall those critiques characterized by their strong routinization and/or weak explanations.5

Secondly, located in “metapragmatic” moments, (true) critique consists in convoking rules:in showing how rules have been abused but deserve to be retained (“reformist critique”), orhow they should be abandoned for new and better rules (“radical critique”). In view of ourearlier discussion of the exegetical capacities of certain dominant—in particular those mostinclined to forms of interpretative virtuosity—this makes it even less tenable to exclude elitecritiques.

Above all, this perspective does away with all critiques that function on some other basisand take forms other than that of a test of coherence, one of its most legitimate forms withinthe intellectual milieu. It forgets that the expression of disagreement, even when radical,

domination to believe that it consists in “contain[ing] and limit[ing] [the] critique” of the governed (Boltanski,On Critique, 117).

1. Boltanski, On Critique, 6.2. Boltanski, On Critique, 62sq.3. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 91 and, along the same lines: Emmanuel Bourdieu, Savoir faire. Contributionà une théorie dispositionnelle de l'action, Paris, Seuil, 1998, 166.

4. By analogy with the idea of “resident reflective” put forward by Wilfried Lignier and Nicolas Mariot in “Laréflexivité comme second mouvement”, L'Homme, 203-4, 2012, 369-98.

5. Significantly, most work in “standard sociology” has addressed these critical practices only when they offersome empirical material to demonstrate the faltering and faulty nature of the institution. For an overview seeChoukri Hmed and Sylvain Laurens, “Les résistances à l'institutionnalisation”, and Yann Raison du Cleuziou,“Des fidélités paradoxales: recomposition des appartenances et militantisme institutionnel dans une institutionen crise” in Jacques Lagroye and Michel Offerlé (eds), Sociologie de l'institution, Paris, Belin, 2010, pp. 131-48and pp. 267-89.


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does not always and everywhere reside in an operation that consists in identifying or dem-onstrating a contradiction between practices and rules.1 More exactly, in disregarding vaguecritiques—which are deemed insufficiently robust—this acceptation not only prevents usfrom considering them, but also from gauging the critical efficacy of the vagueness.2 Herewe are thinking, on one hand, of suggestive critiques, ironic gestures, jokes, puns, quips andother forms of wordplay that are capable of getting an amused audience on side, leavingthem to come back to the chain of argument at their own convenience. Thus the mischievouslittle hand that signaled the shaky future of a commercialized French post office by alteringits sign from “banque postale [post office]” to “poste bancale [wobbly post]” has a real criticaldepth, noticeably different but no less corrosive than the more conventional mode of explicitargumentation on the incompatibility between commercial logic and the exigencies of publicservices. Similarly, the fake report on satirical news website Gorafi revealing the “discoveryof an endless queue”, again at the post office, has a comico-critical power sufficient in itselfto signify a dysfunctioning in the institution. On the other hand, we are thinking above allof critiques that invoke, at the same time, contradictory practices, discourses, views and/orrules—such as the “lay” critiques of politicians as “all rotten, but not all bad”, or professionalpolitical critiques that mix up the most diametrically opposed registers, references, and/orsymbols.3 Now, against a conception of (true) critique delivered as an ideational pure sol-ution,4 it is possible that, far from short-circuiting and rendering themselves inaudible bynot being more precise as to their aims and better organized in their articulation, theseambivalent critiques, precisely because of the operational misunderstandings they favor, maybe propagated by the most heterogeneous actors.

Finally, this conventional acceptation makes it impossible for itself to completely understandthe only critique that really matters to it: exegetical critique. Because it prevents itself fromseeing that this critical reflexivity, whatever position it may espouse, does not, as if by itsvery essence, escape the domain of the reflex.5 As Wilfried Lignier summarizes, on the subjectof the teacher who with his colleagues takes up “his usual accusatory tone”, it misses the“practical character of practical distancing” and the critiques that, even when they convokerules, are “taken for granted”.6 One must therefore go beyond this narrow focus so as totake the opportunity to consider whether critique—even the most “radical” critique, the“adoption of a standpoint situated apart from reality”, this “thought experiment” that mayassume “a fictional character”7—might be above all a sensible and practical—in a word,real—experience.

1. For a paradigmatic illustration, see Lemieux, Le devoir et la grâce, 29.2. On this “art of separation” (Walzer) that manifests and takes place in the ordinary jumble of principles andofpractices, see Eva Illouz, “Critiquer le talk show: le cas Oprah Winfrey” in Jérôme Bourdon and Jean-MichelFrodon (eds), L'˙il critique. Le journalisme critique de télévision?, Bruxelles, De Boeck Université, 2003, p. 159.

3. Daniel Gaxie, “Les critiques profanes de la politique. Enchantements, désenchantements, réenchantements”in Jean-Louis Briquet and Philippe Garraud (eds), Juger la politique, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes,2001, pp. 217-40.

4. On this “reckless proposition” postulating of the greatest solidity of “pure montages” (Dodier, “Agir dansplusieurs mondes”, 457), see the study of the fragility of “composite setups” (Boltanski and Thévenot, OnJustification, 225-8 and 336-8) or the hypothesis of the “incompossibility of grammars” (Lemieux, Le devoir etla grâce, 164 and 191).

5. François Héran, “La seconde nature de l'habitus: tradition philosophique et sens commun dans le langagesociologique”, Revue française de sociologie, 28(3), 1987, 385-416, here 411.

6. Wilfried Lignier, “Comment pratiquer la critique des institutions?”, Critique, 756, May 2010, 421-34, here 427-8.7. Namely the capacity of actors to “act as if” they did not belong to the world judged and could project them-selves into another to present a critique advocating a new order of trials. See Boltanski, On Critique, 42.


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Further still, in positing the equivalence critique = removal from practice = ideational detach-ment, this narrow focus proves heavy with consequences as far as analysis is concerned. Forit amounts to postulating—to sum it up in a phrase of Gaston Bachelard’s familiar to thereader of Bourdieu—that “[t]he world in which we think is not the world in which we live”.1

Which means that, when asked which world we can think in, if not the one in which welive, sociology is condemned to answer: in an other world that offers an ideational alternative.2

And here it becomes entirely clear: if critique must be radical in its content and its effects,if it must be driven by the great social divides, prosecuted by the dominated against thedominant, if it must explode contradictions and relate itself to something like a theory ofpractice which alone can gauge the injustice of reality, if it must be all of this at once or elsenot be critique, it is because it is being thought on the exact model of the Marxist revolution.

Enlightenment Critique: Theoretical, Lucid, and Generous

We will continue our discussion by addressing this question of the place granted totheories of practice in the activity of critique. Here we will touch more directlyon the other filiation of this conventional acceptation of critique, of which its

Marxist heritage is the extension: the legacy of the Enlightenment.

Critique as Theoretical Generalization: The Forgetting of Local CritiqueWe will now concentrate more on sociology of critique because, as opposed to critical soci-ology’s tendency to consider indigenous theories as an obstacle to the analysis of practice,3

the pragmatic program considers them to be a legitimate object for the analysis of practice,but also—via a succession of slippages—sees them as inseparable from a legitimate or effec-tive critique, and ultimately from critique tout court. For it envisages critique principally, oreven exclusively, as a mobilization of great, systematized (and, what is more, coherent) moraltheories. Now, assuming that these theories, these “cities” or “grammars”, are indeed thoseof actors, it is as reductive as it is normative—in a word, it is scholastic—to count as critiquesonly those vast argumentative elaborations that lay out the framework of their principles.For not only does this reduce critique that rises in generality to critique that rises in ideality,4

but any critique that does not follow the path of rising in generality through ideality willfind itself dismissed from the field of studied criticism.

In these studies, the local, as opposed to the globality of “principles” (and to the elsewhereof “worlds”) is deemed incapable of supporting critique. For example, the proposal whereby

1. Here we take free inspiration from Bourdieu's dialogue (Pascalian Meditations, 49-52) with Gaston Bachelard,The Philosophy of No, New York, Viking, 1968, 95.

2. Elsa Rambaud, Médecins sans frontières. Sociologie d'une institution critique, Paris, Dalloz, 2015, 38-48.3. For a critique of this rigid understanding of the “epistemological break” and of the reduction of true socialscience to a “science of the hidden” (Bachelard), see Luc Boltanski, “La cause de la critique. I”, Raisons politiques,3, 2000, 159-84, here 169sq, and Philippe Corcuff, “Pour une épistémologie de la fragilité. Plaidoyer en vue dela reconnaissance scientifique de pratiques transfrontalières”, Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 41 (127),2003, 233-44.

4. See for example the contrast between the passage on the resources of “rise in generality” (titles and socialqualities, relations with the already “worthy” person, play on the forms) in Boltanski, Darré, and Schiltz, “Ladénonciation”, 31sq, and their principally discursive or ideational character in Boltanski, Love and Justice, 34sq;and Lemieux, Le devoir et la grâce, 190sq.


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the “return toward the circumstances demands efforts to suspend the question of justice”,1

misses the possibility that this return could be a way of making the question of justice heardfor actors who do not have the capacity and/or desire to theorize their grievances. Is it sodifficult to understand that the reference to singular circumstances, or “relativization”, mightbe a way of engaging in critique by signifying what is important here and now, rather thana way “of escap[ing] from a clash” by agreeing that “nothing matters”?2 Saturated with bothcritique and details, humanitarian Sitreps (Situation Reports), military “after action reviews”,and other methods of detailed (self) evaluation remind us that, although it may not be the“all” of a principle, the local is not “nothing”.

When it does not exclude them, this conception of critique can lead to an understanding ofeven the most theory-averse critiques as full operations of critical theorization. Above all itleads us to consider that critiques devoid of all theory are equipped, in the last instance, witha theory of practice deemed to be present in so many “atom-words”, to use Nicolas Dodier’sterm.3 All in all, the focus here amounts to considering that critiques must indeed have,somewhere in mind, and in the best case on their lips, a theory of practice that can beunearthed with some extra reflective effort—the effort that is made by the sociologist inclarifying this rather unusual sense of justice.4 Note that the double sense of the word“grammar”, designating both the immanent rules of discourse and, in the most persistentsignification, the discipline of language, offers a particularly welcoming cradle for this imag-inary of critique.5

Along the same lines, when local critiques have not been understood as pertaining to prin-ciple (at the price of considerable distortions, since the absence of principle continues to beconsidered as a “flight from justification”)6 these critiques, deemed “fragmentary” (with“fragmentation” once again meaning an absence of mass movement, theoretical this time),“fugitive” or, essentially, emotive, have been considered at best as “testimonies”. Or even asthe index of a “crisis of critique”,7 although they are one of the most common and mostsignificant forms of critique. Because, in this optic, (true) critique must be a critique ofsociety at large and of power in particular, and one that rivals its target in scale.

However, even if one is only interested in this social critique—and if so it would be helpfulto explicitly say so8—the privileging of the most theoretically sophisticated critiques is hardlydefensible. First of all, a critique of society can perfectly well be patchy, approximate, or

1. Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification, 340.2. Ibid., 339.3. Nicolas Dodier, “L'espace et le mouvement du sens critique”, Annales, 60(1), 2005, 7-31.4. On this “extra reflective effort” of the sociologist, see Yannick Barthe et al., “Sociologie pragmatique: moded'emploi”, Politix, 103(3), 2013, 175-204, here 186-7.

5. See Michel Foucault's observations in “La grammaire générale de Port-Royal”, Langages, 7, 1967, 7-15, here8, and, for a reflection on the linguistic heritage of this notion in matters of moral grammar, Elsa Rambaud, ““propos du Devoir et la Grâce (Lemieux 2009): réflexions sur les usages de la grammaire dans la sociologie despratiques morales”, Working Papers du CESSP, 6, 2016, 1-38, online.

6. Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification, 339.7. Dominique Cardon and Jean-Philippe Heurtin, “La critique en régime d'impuissance: une lecture des indigna-tions des auditeurs de France Inter” in François and Neveu (eds), Espaces publics mosaïques, 108. On thisdifficulty in considering ineffective critiques as critiques, and the tendency to see them as a crisis of critique,see Boltanski and Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism; and Damien De Blic, “La cause de la critique. Lasociologie politique et morale de Luc Boltanski”, Raisons politiques, 3, 2000, 157-81.

8. If only to “transform an indecisive and floating impression into a distinct notion” (Marcel Mauss, “La sociologie:objet et méthodes” in Marcel Mauss and Paul Fauconnet, Essai de sociologie, Paris, Seuil, 1971, pp. 30-2).


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sentimental (for lack of words with fewer negative connotations!)—in short, as distant aspossible from being a theory—without this authorizing us to consider it as non-existent.1

Further, there is nothing (apart from a tenacious intellectualism, once again) to dictate thata social critique must be totalizing and/or explicit in order to be, by virtue of this very fact,effective. While amalgamating critique into the figure of the Marxist revolution, this under-standing of criticism neglects one of Karl Marx’s principal contributions to sociology, namelythe idea that “[t]he weapon of criticism certainly cannot replace the criticism of weapons”with weapons, whatever they might be.2 It is probably always difficult for us to acknowledgethat the dynamics of revolutions often have no significant relation whatsoever to a theoryof social justice. Far from being an affair of a “[w]hole [that] is poorly distributed”,3 thesegreat upheavals operate via little pornographic libels and other miniscule banter exchangedillicitly or in close-knit communities,4 and are “also, and perhaps especially, the results ofproblems with overcrowded housing and taps running dry”.5 This is what leaves us thinkingthat “small” critique is not necessarily “small” in its consequences, and “great” critique notnecessarily any better armed.

The Critique of Common Sense in Defiance of Common-Sense CritiqueThe scope of critique, already reduced to theorized critiques alone, is reduced yet further ifthey have to be thought on the model of a sociological competence.

Following Bourdieu, to consider profane critical theories as the production of a “point ofview [...] that is no longer that of action, without being that of science” has the advantageof reminding us that we cannot expect the actor to be his own sociologist. 6 But it has theunfortunate consequence of placing the accent on what is missing from these critical theories,rather than addressing what they are made up of: namely, a practical logic (even if it doesnot yield a precise reflection on the practice it rationalizes) sometimes rich in fragments ofsociological knowledge. This last angle is therefore the most appropriate from which to studythe hybrid knowledge mobilized in these enterprises of normative rationalization,7 withoutreducing them to a “form of lacunary [...] consciousness”8—which would still be a way ofcomparing them to a pure and whole sociological knowledge.

1. It must once again be clarified, in regard to the polarity reason/affect, that one must have an idealized con-ception of what a “(critical) intellectual work” or a “critical mind” is, to think that the “brain of passion” cannotalso be a “passion of the brain”.

2. Marx, “Critique of Hegel's philosophy of right”, p. 137.3. “Revolutions do not break out when the social Whole is poorly distributed (for in that case, there would bepermanent revolution) but when our lot, such as we perceive it, becomes intolerable”. Paul Veyne, Le pain etle cirque, Paris, Seuil, 1976, 318. (Translator's note: Our translation here, as this passage is omitted from theabridged English translation.)

4. Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, Durham, NC andLondon, Duke University Press, 1991.

5. Jean-François Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity, trans. Steven Rendall et al., London, Hurst and Company,2005, 184. Similarly, the maintenance of a regime–even an oppressive one–is also explained by the many “trivial”advantages that it affords a certain segment of those governed. See Béatrice Hibou, “Économie politique de larépression: le cas de la Tunisie”, Raisons politiques, 20(4), 2005, 9-36.

6. See Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 91. We never know too well whether Bourdieu speaks of the effects ofscholarly interrogation or the effects of indigenous interrogation in itself.

7. For such a framework, see Johanna Siméant, “Friches, hybrides et contrebandes”, and Brigitte Gaïti, “Lascience dans la mêlée” in Philippe Hamman, Jean-Matthieu Méon, and Benoît Verrier (eds), Discours savants,discours militants, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2002, pp. 17-53 and pp. 293-309.

8. Bourdieu, Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, Paris, Seuil, 2000, 305. Our translation.


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But in countering this sometimes too rigid conception of the epistemological break, onemust not bend the stick too far in the other direction by considering that ordinary critiquesare “similar in every way” to the denunciations of injustice contained in “critical sociology”.1

Rather than being the exact opposite of the sociologist afraid of constructing the actor inhis own image, indigenous critique tends to be understood—on terrains amenable to it—ashis almost perfect double, validating the conviction that the researcher need do no morethan clarify what he says of himself and of the world.2 If it is a matter of attributing thisfaculty to him and no longer depriving him of it, here we find the same tendency to considercritique as sociologically equipped or, since this is not always enough, as philosophicallyequipped.

On this point, we can well accept that one of the ordinary topics of denunciation consistsin relating (for the purposes of critique) position-taking to social positions, as happens (forthe purposes of knowledge) in “standard sociology”. But it would be unfortunate to envisagethis reduction to smallness (“of course, it’s X’s son who got promoted”) as a tacit referenceto some great theory of justice when, far more prosaically, it simply signals a practicalcomprehension of situational logics.

Above all, the critique in question here, far from being generic, is of a very particular genre.Since the “exercise of superior forces upon actors” no longer takes place “without theirknowing it”, it is conscious, and even critical, of its determinations.3 Yet critical reflectiondoes not suppose knowledge of the effective driving force of their practice on the part ofactors, although we may observe that they are not always ignorant of them.

If we have dwelt on the way in which the precepts of both of these opposed methods harboran acceptation of critique as conscious of the objective functioning of the social world, it isbecause all this amounts to is a professional (in this case, sociological) declension of animaginary—the Enlightenment imaginary—that can only conceive of critique as lucid (andas intellectual, but from this conventional perspective these are more or less two words forthe same thing). Critique (true critique) is an affair of Reason, but also of good reasons. Itis a critique of common sense, not a common-sense critique. It is a critique of prejudices,not a critique based on prejudice. Significantly, it is the Dreyfus affair that, in France, isdeemed to have precipitated the emergence of the “critical intellectual” and is taken not onlyto symbolize a critical ideal, but also to symbolize what critique should be in the name ofideals. As if the critical intellectual, in the literal sense of the term, must necessarily espousethe stance of tolerance.4 The exact historical dating may be the subject of fierce debate (Plato?

1. Boltanski, “Sociologie critique”, 124; see also Boltanski, Love and Justice as Competences, 18-9.2. This will to rethink the “disymmetry between actor and sociologist” tends to forget that a critique, even asociologized one, is not driven by the will to “understand for understanding's sake”, that indigenous critiquessometimes have only a vague family resemblance to a sociological theory, and that these are not “just any”indigenous actors. For an exemplary illustration of these three problems, see François Dubet, “Principes dejustice et expérience sociale” in Marc Breviglieri, Claudette Lafaye, and Danny Trom (eds), Compétences cri-tiques et sens de la justice, Colloque de Cerisy, Paris, Economica, 2009, pp. 297-308.

3. Boltanski, “Sociologie critique”, 129. One of the difficulties with the above argument is that it confusedlyconsiders–and this indistinction runs through Bourdieu's sociology, in particular its analysis of symbolic vio-lence–that the forces that “traverse and dominate actors” are exerted upon them “without their knowledge”,as if these were just two words for the same thing.

4. The study of this genesis, understood (at least from the point of view of its reception) as an essence, runsthrough a whole historiographical tradition. See Christophe Charle, Naissance des “intellectuels”, 1880-1900,Paris, Minuit, 1990; Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les intellectuels en France. De l'affaire Dreyfus ànos jours, Paris, Armand Colin, 2002.


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Voltaire? Zola?), but today it seems unthinkable to separate “intellectual” from “critical”,and it is accepted as a given that these two figures of dissent emerge together in a “publicspace” that supposedly constructs itself on the basis of frictions, but especially against thepower of the state, the blind faith of religion, and the obscurantism of tradition.1 Anotherindex of the force of this representation is that we find it again in the strategies of “democracybuilding” that privilege the “empowerment” of “civil society” through support of its com-munity “leaders”, that is to say the non-governmental lay intelligentsia. This perspective,blind to other no less concrete paths of democratization, is also fuelled by the silent con-viction that the people, enlightened by a superior brain, will begin to think (well), to critique(well), that is to say to critique for the good (that of the greatest number), ensuring thehappy passage from “the critical intellectual to intellectual critique”.2 Behind this, in moreor less nuanced forms, we find a whole representation of critique as an intellectual enterprisethat must help the dominated to outgrow their “immaturity”, and which is liable to forgetthat “courage” is not just a matter of “understanding”.3 For it seems to be a given—to believeotherwise would, for an intellectual, be too wretched—that if up until now men have notrevolted against oppression, it is because they do not know how to think, since one can onlythink well. This is demonstrated in striking manner by Isabelle Delpla when she destabilizesthe thesis of the “banality of evil” popularized by Hannah Arendt on the basis of the (decep-tive) case of Adolf Eichmann: if evil “does not think, then thinking is saved”.4 Better yet,thinking can save, especially when, as if to definitively do away with evil (the FrankfurtSchool’s thoughtlessness), it is “critical thinking”. 5 We therefore have to call on the surrealistforce of Ylipe to convince ourselves that, just as “even stupid people think”6 even the mostunpleasant critiques can sometimes be very carefully considered, and may prove resistant tothe temptation to consign them to the wastebasket of acritical practices.

Critique as Objective Rather Than ObjectWe now understand that sociology, the science of the social, especially in one of the (French)birthplaces of Enlightenment philosophy, tends to take an interest only in a certain genre ofcritique (i.e. “social critique”) and to make it, above and beyond an object of study, an aimin itself.

Even Bourdieu does not entirely escape the belief, or at least the longing to believe, that the“truer” a critique is, the more effective it will be, that the more it is based upon objectivedata, the more emancipatory effects it will have. And yet we know of his repugnance forthinking in terms of “becoming conscious of”, and his insistence on reminding us that this

1. Élisabeth Claverie, “Procès, affaire, cause: Voltaire et l'innovation critique”, Politix, 26, 1994, 76-85. For aglimpse of these debates, see Arnaud Fossier et al., “Où en est la critique?”, Tracés, 13, 2007, 5-22.

2. Vincent Descombes, “De l'intellectuel critique à la critique intellectuelle”, Esprit, 262, March-April 2000, 168.We adopt this association because it gives a good summary of the conventional imaginary of critique–fromwhich the author, in fact, distances himself, recusing all mentalism to instead seek “institutions of sense”.

3. We refer of course to Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” [1784] in H. S. Reiss (ed). Political Writings,trans. H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

4. Isabelle Delpla, Le mal en procès, Paris, Hermann, 2011, 17.5. Essentially, then, from this perspective, thoughtlessness is irrationality, inhumanity, and immorality, i.e. theopposite of what thought is. For an overview, see Géraldine Muhlmann, “Pensée et non pensée selon H. Arendtet T. W. Adorno. Réflexions sur la question du mal”, in the special issue of Tumultes edited by Michel Abensourand Géraldine Muhlmann, “L'École de Francfort: la Théorie Critique entre philosophie et sociologie”, Tumultes,17-18, 2002, 279-319.

6. Ylipe was a surrealist author and artist. See Bizarre 45 (special issue on Ylipe), Paris, Jean-Jacques Pauvert,1967, 17. (Our translation here. Original wording in the French: “Les gens idiots n'en pensent pas moins.”)


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“becoming conscious” is not sufficient in itself for a dynamic of emancipation.1 But, nodoubt because he had to gloomily acknowledge his sociology’s failure to yield the key to amore egalitarian world—although perhaps it also reflects the limits of his permanent struggleagainst the intellectual in himself2—Bourdieu does not entirely let go of this conception ofliberatory knowledge.3 The unveiling of determinations in all their arbitrariness can accom-pany an experimentation with lateral possibilities, on condition that it is upheld by a “Real-politik of reason” whose “realism” is questionable, even “for intellectuals”.4 Or else—no lessscholastically, for who better than the intellectual to find his freedom and pleasure in knowl-edge for knowledge’s sake—the sole fact of knowing them can make of the actor “somethinglike a subject”.5 Addressing critique, then, comes down to addressing “the misadventures ofcritique”;6 and understanding the world is “understanding the world to change it”, to takeup the phrasing that sums it up best, beyond the arena of research advocating a “criticalsociology”.7

Similarly, contrary to what is suggested by the label “sociology of critique” and its critiqueof “critical sociology”, this program does not seek to bridle its own normativity in order tobetter account for the normativity of actors—otherwise we would get exactly what we bar-gained for. This is not to say that in his sociology, Bourdieu conceded too much to hismilitancy—as we are inclined to think—but rather that he did not concede enough to it: inrefusing to see how deeply his critical sociology was shared, in underestimating the marginsof freedom available to actors, and in prohibiting himself from exposing the underlyingmoral motives of his analysis, particularly in regard to inequality.8 It is therefore no longera matter of fuelling critique by suggesting that the world does not march to the ideals itadvocates, but of clarifying which ideals it should call upon in order to work better. Toexaggerate the case somewhat, the objectivation of grammatical structure, a theory of justideas, has taken up the critical office formerly occupied by the objectivation of social struc-ture, a theory of true ideas.9 We can also understand that the first critique would come downto belittling the critique of actors by attaching it to its social determinants, while the secondwould raise it up by relating it to its moral imperatives.10 It is therefore not critique under-stood as a militant objective that the pragmatic sociologists propose to abandon, but acritique they judge to be unfortunate, in both senses of the word. To the point of regrettingthat calling it “sociology of critique” does not do sufficient justice to the normative ambitionsof their “moral sociology” which, in recent years, has forcefully reaffirmed its “critical

1. Pierre Bourdieu with Loïc J. D. Wacquant, Réponses. Pour une anthropologie réflexive, Paris, Seuil, 1992, 166-8;Jacques Bouveresse, Bourdieu, savant et politique, Paris, Agone, 2003, 174-5.

2. Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 7-8.3. Jacques Bouveresse and Daniel Roche (eds), La liberté par la connaissance. Pierre Bourdieu (1930±2002),Paris, Odile Jacob, 2004.

4. Here we rediscover critique as test of coherence, in this case a test of Kantian universalizability, see Bourdieu,Practical Reason, 144.

5. Bourdieu's preface to The Logic of Practice, 21, and the conclusion of the Sketch for a Self-Analysis, 111-3.6. Franck Poupeau, Les mésaventures de la critique, Paris, Raisons d'agir, 2012.7. Pierre Favre, Comprendre le monde pour le changer, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2005.8. Yannick Barthe and Cyril Lemieux, “Quelle critique après Bourdieu?”, Mouvements, 24, 2002, 33-8. Along thesame lines see Boltanski, Love and Justice as Competences, 23sq.

9. To give only one example, excluding systems of values that do not allow access to “common humanity” inexchange for a formula of investment, the model of cities systematizes a set of meritocratic ideals (commercial,domestic, civic, etc.), and only those.

10. Boltanski, “La cause de la critique. I”, 182-3.


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vocation” and made a number of ameliorative recommendations.1 In this respect, these worksincarnate a postulate that overflows them: the idea that “critique’s dependence on sociologyhas as its corollary sociology’s dependence on critique”.2 Within this perspective, whichhenceforth wants to believe in a certain critical efficacy of “critical sociology”, a place isbeginning to be made for “power relations”, principally considered as hindering factors tobe overcome.3 Their reconciliation with the themes of “standard” sociology appears to beoverdetermined by considerations of a militant order, as was their opposition to the samethemes.

Subsequently, exchanges between these two currents rapidly develop into a reciprocal exami-nation for critical ineffectiveness.4 The question, significant in itself, of whether critiquerequires a theory of practice, is only posed so as to find out which—a “determinist” theoryof practice or a moral theory of justice—would be most profitable for it. To question theplace of constraint in the activity of critique comes down to asking oneself whether it isdiscouraging to dwell on it or inconsequential not to do so; and whether, to awaken somecritical tendencies in an actor, it is better to paint him as being already free, or as not yetfree. If the problematic nature of the elitism of both programs begins to surface in thesedebates, it is not to wonder which (uncommon) critiques these works accede to, but whichof these works, up to and including its style, is most accessible to the common people. Andon occasions when it is not a matter of saying that the competing model is devoid of criticalconsequences—which is just a way of saying that it should have some—it seems to be amatter of showing that it only has disastrous consequences, as if it were impossible that itcould have none. What follows is a list of contradictions—which are only contradictory ifwe think that the objective of knowledge and that of struggle must go hand in hand—indi-cating the inability of the competing alternative to guard against the forms of dominationit seeks to combat. How is it possible that this “critical sociologist” could be the only sightedman in the world of the blind? And if its sociology applies to itself, doesn’t it reproduce thesame undisputed authority from which it was supposed to liberate the actors? Isn’t it a shamethat the pragmatic sociologist of critique, in returning to “free will”, echoes a conservativepolitical philosophy and even legitimates it?

On the other side of the Atlantic, and on that other side that is philosophy—though theborders of these national and disciplinary territories are not so solid when it comes tocritique—debates are startlingly similar. Thus we hear Habermas accuse Foucault of self-refuting his own theory, and even of abdicating by persistently pointing out the affinitiesbetween critique and power without sufficiently teaching the principles that he advocates.5

It is therefore principally from the angle of their respective contribution to “social critique”,rather than to the comprehension of social actors’ critique, that these epistemologies areinterrogated.

1. Y. Barthe et al., “Sociologie pragmatique”; Pascale Haag and Cyril Lemieux, “Critiquer: une nécessité” in Emma-nuel Désveaux et al., Faire des sciences sociales, vol. I: Critiquer, Paris, Éditions de l'EHESS, 2012, pp. 13-27.

2. Boltanski, On Critique, 6.3. Apart from the works cited above, we also find this interest in Nicolas Dodier, in his invitation to consider the“respective embedding of trials and powers” (“Le laboratoire des cités et les biens en soi” in Breviglieri, Lafaye,and Trom (eds), Compétences critiques et sens de la justice, pp. 55-67), or–although this author's reflection onthe “asymmetries of grasp” (1999) goes back further–in Françis Chateauraynaud, Argumenter dans un champde forces, Paris, Pétra, 2011.

4. For a glimpse of these two arguments, one could cross-reference Poupeau, Les mésaventures de la critique,with Ogien, “L'antinomie oubliée”, who respond to each other as if point by point.

5. Habermas, “The critique of reason as an unmasking of the human sciences: Michel Foucault”.


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It will therefore come as no surprise that they pay most of their attention to those critiquesthat most resemble sociological critiques (or the ideal of sociological critique), and aboveall that, in essentializing this conception, they define and recognize as (truly) critical onlythis type of critique.

A Change of Perspective: Rethinking “Social Critique” and the Criticismof Social Actors

At this point in our argument, it may of course be objected that sociologies, underother terms and above all under the polysemic term “critique”, have addressed oneaspect of this activity, and that they were quite within their rights to do so. Agreed.

But it would doubtless be beneficial, at least for the purposes of clarity, if this preferencewere spoken, maybe if it were acknowledged.1 If only to prevent the belief that this socialcritique is the (only) critique and the risk of putting all critiques through the mill of thisvery particular one. The discussion would at least have the advantage of showing, let us hopeconvincingly, that the social sciences are interested almost exclusively in one critique, greatcritique—assuming that we can still call it critique—when it passes over critique in its “little”form and in some of its most ordinary forms. We will therefore sum up this twofold dis-tortion before setting out the interest of a (generic) acceptation of critique capable of sus-pending this attribution of greatness and thereby refreshing the scope and orientation of theinquiry.

The Unthoughts and Overthoughts of “Great” CritiqueNot only does this conventional perspective retain only one type of critique—“social cri-tique”—it probably retains something else: emancipation—and even something else: the(intellectual) ideal of emancipation, that is to say, confusedly, emancipation by intellection.

Here we touch upon the first series of difficulties raised by this conventional definition ofcritique. In positing that (great) critique is equivalent to emancipation, that is to say inconflating “intellectual work” and “crucial decision”, this narrow focus neglects all critiquesthat do not lead to emancipation, while suggesting that emancipation is necessarily an affairof great critique. Now, as we believe we have demonstrated, this is a naïve sociologicalconception of the dynamics at work not only in criticism but also (since this is what is atissue) in revolutionary processes. To work at these different projects will therefore in alllikelihood require that we untangle the different threads of “great” critique which, althoughthey may form a coherent whole for one seeking to formulate a political theory of liberation,are somewhat chimerical: a forced cohabitation of social realities that are probably not par-ticularly convergent. It is to err on the side of irenism and/or mechanism to see a relationof perfect refraction between the (great) forms, the (great) factors, the (great) authors, andthe (great) results of critique. It is hardly sociologically realist to suppose that a critique

1. It is possible that the absence of any explicit definition of critique in the sociology dedicated to this activity,apart from the fact that it fuels all sorts of misunderstandings (leading one to believe that it embraces alltypes), may, like the absence of definition of loyalty in Hirschman's trilogy and owing to the same distaste forthe (supposedly) docile silence, testify to this poorly controlled normativity. On this point, see Patrick Lehingue,“L'éclipse de la loyalty dans la trilogie conceptuelle d'A.O. Hirschman” in Josepha Laroche (ed.), La loyautédans les relations internationales, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2010, pp. 59-86.


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could be both radical and emancipatory in its claims and in its effects, while being carriedout by the most dominated actors and in the most intellectualized way possible.

Furthermore, the very division between great and little critique does not stand up to empir-ical examination, so that it would seem impossible to predict the respective and as if pro-portional amplitude of the effects of great critique and little critique. What is more, there isno reason to think that they must result from singularly different social processes, as if theiressence dictated it. Ultimately, even if little critiques had nothing in common with greatcritique, they would nevertheless still be critiques—provided that we ceased to invest themwith all the weight of critique’s own normativity, and instead considered the normativity ofactors in all its diversity.

Small and Acritical: The Unthoughts of “Little” CritiqueHere we touch upon the second series of difficulties. The stamp of social critique (these twoacceptations of critique conflated into one) does away with all little critiques, or leads totheir disqualification. Critiques that, rather than attacking the foundations of the existingorder in the name of another yet to be invented, repress, as if lacking great courage orcreativity, the beginning of a disorder. Those that, supposedly narrow, limit themselves toadvocating marginal improvements and, in doing so, supposedly scuttle themselves. Thosethat, indifferent to the emancipation of others or of the dominated, are inseparable fromthe emancipation of the dominant who espouses them. Those that are not wholly and entirelyclear-sighted, fully aware of social determinations, or even detached from every social deter-mination. Those that are not backed up by a sociological and/or philosophical theory ofpractice, a theory of unjust inequalities or a theory of just equalities. Those that, rather thandemonstrating a contradiction between practices and rules, reveal the ordinary confusion ofpractices and rules. Those that, because they express emotions and not reasons, assessmentsand not judgments, impressions and not arguments, singularities and not generalities, aredeemed to speak only of superficial froth, or of nothing at all. Those that, far from the greatdebates on ideas and the great social divisions, play out in miniscule, even “petty” compet-itions—for this perception is not unrelated to their disqualification. And finally, those that,whether devoid of ideology or saturated with a distasteful one, are not, not really, or insuf-ficiently left-wing.

Just like the great critique whose exact counterpart they are, these critiques are “small” fromthe point of view of their forms, their ambitions, their results, and their driving forces, whichare often conflated—but always from a moral, if not a moralizing, point of view, that ofnone other than the sociologist himself. The sociologist who, blurring critique’s many facesinto the figure of “the” revolution and ultimately never thinking of them for themselves,judges these critiques to be so “small”, so inconsistent, that he denies them any criticalconsistency, denies them even their own critical consistency. Except when, in those placeswhere the ground of the imaginary of the revolution begins to slide, in order to save theidea he has constructed of the good mainsprings of good critique, he has to distort theexplanation of them: to transform a marginal critique into a critique of the marginal, anemancipatory critique by the dominant into a critique by the dominated, a social competitionbetween actors in strong proximity into an ideational exteriority.

Beyond these deformations, as if summarizing them, this imaginary of critique is not withoutits effects, as we have seen, on sociology’s difficulty in enquiring about its social rootedness.


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It explains the stubborn survival of two variants on the thesis of the social underdetermi-nation of critique. That of critical sociology, which locates its explanation in forms of socialdisorganization—the only thing that could have allowed the accession to other ideationalpossibilities. And that of sociology of critique, which locates it in ideational forms of organ-ization that are certainly social, but are thought independently of any social organization.

Thinking Critique as “Negative Judgment”: A Non-Normative AcceptationIf we are to better understand what constitutes critique, there are therefore a number ofadvantages in retaining as our (preliminary) definition of critique the final one to appear:that is, “negative judgment”.1 Recall that the issue is not to use the order of definitions toinvert the hierarchy between great and small critique, but to escape from this hierarchy bythinking both of them and thinking them otherwise, by way of a definition that is indifferentto their worthiness.

To sociologize it a little more, it is acceptable to study as “critique” any practice whatsoeverthat consists in publicly manifesting a negative judgment on someone or something. We usethe word “practice” to maintain ourselves in the idea that critique is a practice, even whenit seeks to break away from the order of practice. We say “publicly” to escape the conceptionof critique as a “decision” taken in the actor’s innermost depths, and to protect against therisk of the overinterpretation of practices too narrowly descended from “intellectual works”.We say “manifesting” because—as annoying as this may be for our intellectualist tenden-cies—critique is not always expressed by way of the Word, and even when verbalized is notentirely expressed by way of the Word. Experience has taught us that a mere sigh, in theright context, can sometimes say more than many a lengthy speech. Finally, we say “onsomeone or something” to remind ourselves that critical ideas are incarnate.

In this respect, then, a critique is a negative judgment. We have become so habituated toanother acceptation of critique that this one risks seeming terribly loose and frightfullyimpoverished, to the point of not really designating anything. On the contrary, we believeit more rigorous because it is non-normative, and richer in terms of what it allows us toobserve. It enables us to avoid reducing critique to just one of its forms (the most intellec-tually sophisticated form), to one of its political orientations (Leftist critique), to one of itstargets (the most consecrated norm), to one of its authors (the most dominated), to one ofits factors (social and/or ideational distance) and, finally, to one of its outcomes (the mostpositive). More exactly, when looking at practices of dissent, it allows us no longer to dis-criminate between what belongs to critique and what does not on the basis of the abovecriteria. It would suffice to replace “critique” with some other term designating anothersocial practice—“contestation” or “conformity” for example—to remove any lingeringdoubts as to the well-foundedness of this methodological orientation.

Abstracting from the different forms of critique allows us to make of intellectual critiquewhat it should have remained: just one critical form among others, and an object of study.At the same time it makes room for critiques that have not been theorized, or very little:the most circumstantial types of critique. Suspending the question of their ideological tenoralso allows us to take a look at the burgeoning field of right-wing critiques, from which wecan no doubt learn a great deal not only about these critiques themselves but also, by

1. For a concrete application, we allow ourselves to refer to Rambaud, Médecins Sans Frontières, 54-60.


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comparison, about those opposed to them. To break away from the hit parade of “call toorder” versus reformist critique and radical critique gives us a chance to no longer confusecause and effect, form and substance.

Above all—and this important point bears repetition—it comes down to considering thatcritique cannot be anything but a kind of call to order, in the literal sense of the term. Tostudy the critique of those actors least endowed as well as those best endowed in the varioustypes of capital is to cease to think of the relation between domination and critique as oneof poison and antidote. That does not necessarily mean losing critique as the conventionalperspective conceives it—indeed, our reflections here suggest quite the contrary. No longerassuming that its sole mainspring is distance, detachment, or various forms of exterioritygives us better chance to improve our understanding of the most ordinary dynamics of (moreor less) ordinary critiques. To no longer think of it as (a)critical depending on its resultsand whether they are more or less satisfying is to authorize ourselves to think that illegitimatecritiques and, before that, ineffective critiques—for the rather hasty equivalence betweenlegitimacy and efficacy deserves further interrogation—are still critiques. Not only wouldstudying them allow us to better understand critiques that succeed in finding an audience,it would enable the analysis to escape a finalist bias which we have stated here in terms inwhich no serious sociological thinker would recognize himself, but which neverthelessremains a marked trait of (both) sociologies of critique.1

What is more, if it seems useful, when delimiting the scope of practices understood as critical,to take the methodological decision to be indifferent to the forms, driving forces, and con-sequences of critique, this is also in order to (better) discover them in study, when thosepractices have to be explained. It is only on condition that these three facets of critique arenot taken up in the very definition of the object, that it becomes possible to study the wayin which the conditions of entry into a critical exchange can influence the course of exchangesand/or their outcomes, how the forms and effects of these critical interactions may help orhinder actors in obtaining different critical grasps in specific social contexts, and which actorsare thus affected.

Finally, this new acceptation, in distancing itself from a conventional definition of critiquethat, over and above being a definition, is a normative essentializing of this activity, can playa part in the sociological normalization of the study of criticism. In ceasing to consider thatcriticism supposes—in the full sense of the word (obtains, necessitates, and is defined as)—asuspension of the social attraction exerted on mental representations, it invites us to breakwith all explanatory exceptionalism. That is to say, it invites us to reinstate the ordinary ofthe social relations within which criticism is integrated.

It is true that this reorientation may seem to discredit the critique of actors, by ceasing tounderstand critique as a pure affair of ideas and an affair of pure ideas—as if this then meantseeing it as an affair of impure, dirty ideas. This critical effect of an approach whose postulatesare non-normative, a direct consequence of the scholarly common sense of critique, is

1. On this “finalism”, which consists in explaining social phenomena via their real or perceived-as-real effects(and often confusing effect with cause), see François Simiand, “Anthropomorphisme et finalisme”, Notes cri-tiques–Sciences sociales, 1904, 73-4. This enterprise of sociological normalization has proved fruitful on otherterrains–see for example Michel Dobry, “February 1934 and the discovery of French society's allergy to the‘Fascist Revolution’” in Brian Jenkins (ed.), France in the Era of Fascism: Essays on the French AuthoritarianRight, 1st ed., Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2005, pp. 129-50.


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doubtless the price to be paid in order to be better informed as to the diversity of its forms,and to think an unthought of (both) sociologies of critique: their social organization.

In this sense, the above reflections may be useful to anyone seeking to work on criticalactivities, even if they choose to define them differently. Above all we would like to thinkthat, in constraining ourselves to make criticism an object of study and nothing but an objectof study—that is to say, in apprehending it as just another sociological object and resistingthe sirens of critique unless it is of a methodological order, it will be possible to reinvigorateour knowledge (for knowledge’s sake) of social actors’ critical practices and, within thatbroad spectrum, that of “social critique” “itself”.

Elsa Rambaud

Elsa Rambaud holds a doctorate in political science, and was the winner of the Dalloz thesis prize andthe Aguirre Basualdo Chancellery Prize of the Universities of Paris 2014. Her publications include aprogrammatic article (“L’organisation sociale de la critique à Médecins sans frontières”, Revue françaisede science politique, 59(3), June 2009, 723-56), a revised version of her thesis (Médecins Sans Frontières.Sociologie d’une institution critique, Paris, Dalloz, 2015), and a discussion of grammatical approaches tocriticism (“À partir du Devoir et la Grâce [Lemieux, 2009]: réflexions sur les usages de la notion de“grammaire” dans la sociologie des pratiques morales”, Working Papers du CESSP 7, 2016). Her researchcombines a sociology of humanitarian work attentive to the organizational shaping of activism with asociology of critical practices that brings together the contributions of philosophy with those of soci-ology in order to think of criticism and institution together. CESSP, Université Paris 1-Panthéon Sor-bonne, 5 rue Cujas, 75005 Paris, <[email protected]>.


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“great” critique, “little” critique, and “the” revolution

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