Affirmativ kritik: Håb og begejstring, uhygge og vrede

Abstract

In this roundtable conversation, Mads Bank, Sverre Raffnsøe and Dorthe Staunaes, discuss different historical and contemporary forms of critique. We discuss how critique in our age has become ubiquitous and which challenges and problems this raises. We outline two archetypical forms of critique, which we term negative and affirmative critique. The negative or paranoid critique is characterized by being preoccupied with a critique of what is present, exposing what is beneath, debunking existing truths, regimes of knowledge and relations of power. This form of critique is essential and necessary but has limitations, as it in many instances do not lead to change and subjects can then experience frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. We argue that this points to the need to supplement our critical practices, with more affirmative forms of critique. Affirmative forms of critique do not subtract, debunk or expose, but work by adding or potentializing. Affirmative critique seeks to unfold the virtuality of its subject matter and confirm something that could be or are in the process of becoming. Negative and affective forms of critiques are not oppositional or mutually excluding, but different ways of engaging with problems and the world. In this roundtable, we discuss how different philosophers, social theorists and activists conceptualize and tune affirmative forms of critique differently; how affects such as hope, enthusiasm, unease and anger are crucially impulses intertwined with the critique; and how we in relation to precarious lives and practices have engaged in critical pedagogies with a purpose going beyond criticism.