The Function of Critical Inquiry

From a discussion of ‘novelty’ over at the ARC/Rabinow Concept Work blog where I wrote:

“What function can and ought critical inquiry serve today?  Not denunciation of course! (Nor its contemporary twin, snarkiness!)  We can seek to understand where these conditions came from, of what elements they are composed, and to what stresses they are susceptible.  To denounce is beside the point and nobody is listening anyway.  We might take as our example Foucault, who never said that ‘discipline’ was a bad thing even if this was the takeaway message for almost everyone who read him too quickly: discipline is a condition of who we are and so we would do well to understand the broader problematization by which it conditions us.”

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