Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction. Annika Gonnermann

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СКАЧАТЬ is Rahel Jaeggi’s taxonomy of criticism, which provides a fruitful template for the analysis of dystopian fiction on a non-content level, illuminating the narrative structures and elements and opening them up for analysis. Her Kritik von Lebensformen (2014, trans. Critique of Forms of Life, 2018), originally written as an attempt to return the critical theory of the Frankfurt School to the attention of philosophical and social analysis, thematises modes of criticism, the good life, and the seeming impossibility of criticising 21^st-century life styles without resorting to a patronising, prescriptive, often westernised discourse of how individuals should live. She disagrees with the liberal notion and “widespread relativism which maintains [that] we are in no position to criticise particular cultures or societies or ways of life” (Wilding), insisting that we must continue to criticise one another based on the criteria of how successful certain life forms are in terms of problem-solving. Jaeggi claims that if a certain form of life is obviously no longer able to process arising problems sufficiently, critique is not only justified but imperative. By delineating a discourse which is not defined by content but rather discussing forms of life abstractly, Jaeggi manages to venture forth against “ethical abstinence,” i.e. against a laissez-faire mentality (cf. Jaeggi, Critique 1–3), while simultaneously refraining from partaking in a patronising Western discourse.

      Her inquiry into forms of life and what constitutes the ‘good life’ (cf. Arentshorst 274) introduces an innovative taxonomy of criticism that is also directly applicable to dystopian fiction. Understanding criticism as an initiative and “impetus for transforming a (social) formation based on reasons” (Critique 84), Jaeggi establishes a meta-language to critically evaluate the formation of criticism. Her taxonomy differentiates between ‘external,’ ‘internal,’ and ‘immanent criticism.’ The most basic form of criticism with the most obvious result is what Jaeggi terms ‘external criticism.’ This form imposes external standards onto an item or construct, questioning it in its entirety by championing an alternative to the status quo. The two – reality and alternative – are usually mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled, meaning that the critic aims to overcome the original target of criticism (cf. ibid. 177). As Jaeggi writes,

      external criticism applies an external normative standard to an existing society. This standard is external in the sense that it is supposed to be valid regardless of whether it already holds within an existing community or an existing social institutional structure and of whether it is ‘contained’ in a given state of affairs, and it judges the given situation according to whether it satisfies this standard. Criticism in this case aims to transform, supersede, or reorient what is given on the basis of norms that are brought to bear on it from the outside. (Critique 178)

      Intending to harvest the power of external criticism, the critic is defined by her reluctance to share the norms and values esteemed in the given society and thus chooses to distance herself from that society (cf. ibid.). While Jaeggi herself does not illustrate her argument, it is an easy task to conceive of one oneself: the West criticising the role of women in Arab countries externally, for instance, is a relevant and highly debated example in the context of post-colonial criticism and the supposed moral superiority of the West.

      Jaeggi goes on to introduce her next category, which she terms ‘internal criticism’ – a category related to an everyday understanding of critique and frequently used to detect inherent contradictions. This form of criticism assumes that “although certain ideals and norms belong to the self-understanding of a particular community, they are not actually realized within it” (ibid. 179). Jaeggi introduces examples to make her point clear: the Christian community which preaches the gospel yet rejects refugees; or a CEO who champions women’s rights in public, yet favours male employees when hiring new staff (cf. ibid. 179f.). Contrary to external criticism, which imposes its standards externally, ‘internal criticism’ rests on the conviction that “the standard of criticism resides in different ways in the matter itself.” (ibid. 180, emphasis in the original) Criticism grows out of promises made but not kept, general principles, or norms that might have been proclaimed, however which are not (fully) realised by the community. Internal criticism is at its heart a conservative technique, advocating the re-establishment of certain norms and practices by illuminating “an inconsistency either between assertions and facts, between accepted norms and practices, between appearance and reality, or between claim and realization” (ibid.). It does not champion an alternative system, but rather results in upholding of the status quo (cf. ibid. 182) – the source of its persuasiveness and power. Jaeggi argues that this type of criticism is employed regularly, for it demands very little effort. Its “practical and pragmatic advantages” (ibid. 183, emphasis in the original) lie in the fact that this type of criticism merely reminds the community of what they signed up for in the first place: “[n]o one, we assume, can wish to remain in an internal contradiction” (ibid.). Essentially, critic and the object of criticism are part of the same in-group since they belong to a community that has already accepted certain norms and values.

      Jaeggi’s third and most ambitious type of criticism is subsumed under the term of ‘immanent criticism.’ Similar to internal criticism, this mode appeals to a normative yardstick already inherent in the object/person they want to criticise. This form of criticism is thus “not conducted from an imagined Archimedean point outside of the reality to be criticized“ (ibid. 190) like external criticism. But, as Jaeggi claims, immanent criticism is “normatively stronger” than external or internal criticism for it “find[s] the new world through criticism of the old one” (190). As Hans Arentshorst summarises,

      [i]mmanent criticism differs from both these approaches because it starts from the problems and [inherent] contradictions of a life-form. In this sense it is more negativistic and formal than internal criticism: it is not interested in recovering certain values, but it wants to contribute to the transformative potential of a life-form by raising consciousness about its internal problems and contradictions. In this sense, immanent criticism is context-dependent, since it analyzes the internal problems and contradictions of a life-form, but it is also context-transcending because it aims at the transformation of the current life-form in order to overcome its problems. (273)

      Assuming that the standards set by the object of criticism are “contradictory in themselves” (Jaeggi, Critique 190, emphasis in the original), immanent criticism, then, anchors its method within the criticised reality itself, encountering it (ideally) without any ideologically framed preconceived ideals. It is therefore a new type of criticism due to its inherent objectiveness.8 It does not “merely proceed from the critic’s subjective critical intention” (ibid. 191f.) but creates parameters for the object of criticism to criticise itself. Fundamentally, immanent criticism is only possible in constellations, in which “the object of criticism […] has succumbed to a crisis of itself” (ibid. 192). Immanent criticism operates thereby to a certain degree outside of any ideology, since it refrains from approaching the object of criticism with preconceived normative standards.

      Applying a theoretical framework, the critic’s task is to – so to speak – ‘detect’ a crisis: “the crisis qua crisis of the objects (as a problem lying in the social relations) must always be analyzed and uncovered in the first place at the theoretical level” (ibid.). Therefore, it is imperative to frame the criticism theoretically: “[w]hereas internal criticism is a mundane procedure that is applied in one way or another in a variety of situations, immanent criticism is guided by theory” (ibid. 191). Immanent criticism constructs links and connections between two seemingly unrelated phenomena and thus originates in the school of thought of dialectics as popularised by Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic (1813). This philosophical method “relies on a contradictory process between opposing sides” (Maybee), that is to say, observing two seemingly antithetical concepts, such as life and death. Upon closer inspection, however, Hegel argues that binary distinctions are dissolved into a continuum, in which one concept embodies the other: life depends on death (in the form of digestion, consumption); death does not exist without life (cf. R. Winter); conceptual boundaries merge and flow into another until they are declared invalid and shown СКАЧАТЬ