Detailansicht
The Value of Critique
Exploring the Interrelations of Value, Critique, and Artistic Labour, Normative Orders 26
ISBN/EAN: 9783593510101
Umbreit-Nr.: 5888380
Sprache:
Englisch
Umfang: 188 S.
Format in cm: 1.4 x 21.5 x 14
Einband:
Paperback
Erschienen am 17.07.2019
Auflage: 1/2019
- Kurztext
- Viele Theoretikerinnen und Theoretiker haben sich von einer Praxis der Kritik verabschiedet und sich für alternative Einstellungen des Urteils ausgesprochen, die als Praktiken der Wertschätzung bezeichnet werden können. Der Sammelband untersucht, wie eine Opposition dieser beiden Denkweisen verstanden wird, und fragt danach, ob und wie sie sich überwinden lässt. Dabei spielen die Praktiken der Urteilens im Feld der Kunst eine paradigmatische Rolle. Mit Beiträgen u.a. von Luc Boltanski, Eva Geulen, Rahel Jaeggi und Bruno Latour
- Autorenportrait
- Isabelle Graw ist Herausgeberin der Zeitschrift Texte zur Kunst. Sie lehrt Kunsttheorie an der Städelschule Frankfurt. Christoph Menke ist Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Frankfurt am Main.
- Leseprobe
- Preface This book is based on a conference that took place on January 18th 2017, a date that was overshadowed by Trump's inauguration. It shouldn't come as a surprise that this historical turning point finds an echo in many of the contributions in this volume. The title of the conference The Value of Critique connects two different modes of judgment which are often understood as being fundamentally different: critique and value (or evaluation). While judging is in itself an act of critique that implies a decision between right and wrong in the name of a rule, it can also be conceptualized and performed differently as an evaluation that generates and presupposes values. The process of judging is thus deeply interconnected with critique and value. But what is at stake in the juxtaposition between 'value' and 'critique'? When described schematically their relation would unfold as follows: critique is the enlightenment strategy of judgment whereby a subject establishes itself and declares its autonomy as an independent judge above and distant from the matter of its consideration. To criticize in this sense means: to gain freedom over and against an object, a situation, a condition, in short: over and against the world by claiming that the world is contradictory in itself. The concept of value, on the other hand, refers to an act of evaluation which is openly and avowedly partial and perspectival-the act of measuring, in which a living being expresses the utility of something in the world for it, i.e. its survival or its flourishing. Evaluation is about the enhancement of the evaluating living being, about increasing its life-forces, its ability to live. Understood in this way, critique and value are antagonistic. From the perspective of value, critique is a strategy used by the subject to empower itself, merely pretending to let "the thing itself" speak. From the perspective of critique, the model of value has surrendered from the start to the endless circle of the immanence of life, be it biological or economical, and thus merely stands in the service of self-preservation or -empowerment. "Critique" is an attitude of negation: of judging and thinking as the unfolding of the inner negativity of its object. "Value", on the other hand, is the name of an attitude of affirmation: judgment as an expression of the way in which a self says "yes" to its existence and its conditions. At second glance, however, the relationship between value and critique turns out to be much more complicated. Instead of being just polar opposites, both concepts share a metonymic structure: critique refers to an object that is outside of it as much as the critic might be deeply affected by it. A similar displacement occurs in value since there is no "intrinsic" value as Marx already underlined. Value is relational and therefore always to be found elsewhere. Its force depends on the investment an affective collectivity contributes (actively or passively). Apart from its metonymic nature value needs to get represented and objectified- it has a form and this formal dimension renders it similar to the objects of critique. Considered as social practices, critique and value thus overlap in manifold ways. For as soon as the critic selects an object as worthwhile of her interest and time, she has declared it as being potentially valuable. The critic, although often against her own intentions, indeed contributes to her object's value. It is precisely by questioning existing values, that critique gets implicated in the formation of value. Practices of evaluation, on the other hand, are never merely affirmative and enhancing. For their modus operandi seems to be partly critical: to establish and foster a value means to engage in critical strategies of distinction and decision. As much as critique without value becomes empty and pointless, value without critique become blind and loses its edge. Despite critique's strength as a relational concept, it appears to