On Critique

A Sociology of Emancipation

Luc Boltanski

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745683539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

The relationship between sociology and social critique has haunted the discipline since its origins. Does critique divert sociology from its scientific project? Or is critique the ultimate goal of sociology, without which the latter would be a futile activity disconnected from the concerns of ordinary people? This issue has underpinned two divergent theoretical orientations that can be found in the discipline today: the critical sociology that was developed in its most elaborate form by Pierre Bourdieu, and the pragmatic sociology of critique developed by Luc Boltanski and his associates.

In critical sociology, description in terms of power relations underscores the potency of mechanisms of oppression, the way the oppressed passively endure them, going so far in their alienation as to
adopt the values that enslave them. Pragmatic sociology, by contrast, describes the actions of human beings who rebel but who are endowed with reason. It stresses their ability, in certain historical conditions, to rise up against their domination and construct new interpretations of reality in the service of critical activity.

In this major new book Boltanski develops a framework that makes it possible to reconcile these seemingly antagonistic approaches - the one determinist and assigning the leading role to the enlightening science of the sociologist, the other concerned to stick as closely as possible to what people say and do. This labour of unification leads him to rework central notions such as practice, institution, critique and, finally, 'social reality, ' all with the aim of contributing to a contemporary renewal of practices of emancipation.

— 1 —

THE STRUCTURE OF CRITICAL THEORIES

Power or Domination. Society or Social Order

I shall approach critical sociologies starting from the concept of social domination, a polemical notion if ever there was one, because it has been a major axis of critical theories while having often been rejected by other currents in sociology, at least when the term domination is used not only to refer to different ways of placing power in the service of politics, whatever it might be – as is more or less the case with ‘modes of domination’ in Max Weber – but also serves to identify and condemn manifestations of power deemed extreme and abusive. As we shall see in the next talk, critical sociology has made abundant use of it in this sense and the pragmatic sociology of critique has simply ignored it. However, do not expect me to outline a conceptual history of this notion, which would take me far beyond not only the time in which I shall address you but also, alas, my competence. I shall instead base myself on this problematic notion in order to seek to clarify the relationship between sociology and critique, and examine the ways in which they might converge in compromise formations that are never free of tensions.

An initial characteristic of sociologies of domination is that they fashion a synthetic object, in the sense that it cannot give rise to direct observation, so that revealing it is necessarily the result of a reconstruction on the part of the analyst. All sociology can observe is power relations. For standard sociology, reference to power goes hand-in-hand with the identification of asymmetries, but they are diverse, partial, local or transitory. The existence of different sources and sites of power creates a web in which these powers can become entangled, contradict and even neutralize one another. The fact of exercising power or of being subjected to power does not escape the consciousness of actors and power relations are invariably visible to the eyes of an observer. Power can therefore easily form the object of an empirical sociology, on the one hand because social relations are shot through with forms of power that are fairly readily observable, at least in certain situations; and on the other hand because power relations are, in many cases, inscribed in pre-established formats that are themselves stabilized in the form of customs or registered in texts – for example, juridical texts and other forms of regulations. As Max Weber showed, power thus tends to be rationalized, whatever its modalities, in the sense that its structures and exercise are subject, at least formally, to requirements of justification that impart a certain robustness to them. It is by invoking these requirements that those who hold power can claim it to be ‘legitimate’, thereby compelling those who challenge it to rise in generality in such a way as to subject the very principles they invoke to critique.¹ By contrast, to characterize a form of power as ‘arbitrary’ signifies that it is impossible to take its measure by referring it to a pre-established format ensuring its exercise a certain consistency and thereby to stress the difficulties facing those who endure it in forming predictable expectations of it. Because it must be both asserted and justified, power speaks of power.

The same is not true of domination. Critical theories of domination posit the existence of profound, enduring asymmetries which, while assuming different forms in different contexts, are constantly duplicated to the point of colonizing reality as a whole. They adopt the point of view of the totality.² The dominated and the dominant are everywhere, whether the latter are identified as dominant class, dominant sex or, for example, dominant ethnicity. What is involved is not only not directly observable, but also invariably eludes the consciousness of actors. Domination must be unmasked. It does not speak of itself and is concealed in systems whose patent forms of power are merely their most superficial dimension. Thus, for example, contrasting with the demand to get done, rendered manifest by an order given in a hierarchical relationship, are manoeuvres or even, in still more tacit fashion, social conditions deposited in an environment, which combine to determine an actor to do something for the benefit of another as if she were doing it of her own accord and for herself. It is therefore as if actors suffered the domination exercised over them not only unwittingly, but sometimes even by aiding its exercise.

As a result, theories of domination must select an object slightly different from that of sociologies which, for convenience sake, we shall call standard. This discrepancy is the result of different forms of totalization. As an empirical activity, sociology can describe different dimensions of social life (and different forms of power) without necessarily aiming to integrate them into a coherent totality – on the contrary, even seeking to bring out the specificity of each of them. By contrast, theories of domination unmask the relations between these different dimensions so as to highlight the way they form a system. Where sociology takes as its object societies, however it identifies them (and it could be shown that it invariably involves nation-states, as is obviously the case, for example, in Durkheim),³ theories of domination, relying on sociological descriptions, construct a different kind of object that can be referred to as social orders. In fact, it is only once this object has been constructed that an approach to society as a totality considered critically can be posited;⁴ and that a mode of domination can be described in its generality (and also, in numerous cases, that contradictions immanent in this order can be identified, whose exposure furnishes a basis for its critique. In fact, contradictions are distinguished from the disparate only within a unified framework).⁵ The substitution of social order – an object that is manifestly constructed – for social relations – an object supposed to follow from empirical observation – represents the strength and weakness of critical theories of domination. They are always liable to be denounced as illusory – that is to say, as not offering pictures which provide a good likeness of reality, but merely being the expression of a rejection of reality based on nothing but particular (and contestable) points of view or the desire (and resentment) of those who condemn it.⁶

Morality, Critique and Reflexivity

Compared with the so-called natural sciences, the specificity of the social sciences is that they take as their object human beings grasped not in their biological dimensions, but in so far as they are capable of reflexivity (that is why it is appropriate to distinguish between the social and the human sciences). Considered in this respect, human beings are not content to act or react to the actions of others. They review their own actions or those of others in order to make judgements on them, often hinging on the issue of good and evil – that is, moral judgements. This reflexive capacity means that they also react to the representations given of their properties or actions, including when the latter derive from sociology or critical theories.⁷

The moral judgements formulated by actors in the course of their everyday activities often take the form of critiques. Moral activity is a predominantly critical activity. The sociological doxa taught to first-year students (often invoking a popularized form of Weberian epistemology) consists in making a sharp (if not always clear) distinction between, on the one hand, critical judgements delivered by so-called ‘ordinary’ people and sustained by ‘moralities’ or ‘cultures’, which form part of the legitimate objects of description, and, on the other hand, critical judgements made by sociologists themselves (renamed ‘value judgements’), which are to be banished (axiological neutrality). This distinction is based on the Weberian separation of facts from values.⁸ Critical theories of domination necessarily rely on descriptive social science to paint a picture of the reality subject to critique. But compared with sociological descriptions that seek to conform to the vulgate of neutrality, the specificity of critical theories is that they contain critical judgements on the social order which the analyst assumes responsibility for in her own name, thus abandoning any pretention to neutrality.

Ordinary Critiques and Metacritical Positions

The fact that they are backed up by the discourse of truth of the social sciences endows critical theories of domination with a certain robustness in describing the reality called into question, but complicates the critical operation itself, which is essential to them. This confronts them with a dilemma.

On the one hand, it prevents them making judgements that rely directly on the resources, invariably exploited by ordinary critique, represented by spiritual and/or moral resources of a local character. Metacritical theories cannot judge the city as it is by comparing it with the City of God, or even by introducing a secularized but specific moral ideal that the metacritical theoretician naively adopts on her own account in order to judge (and condemn) society as it is, as if it involved not one moral conception among others, but the moral ideal in itself (which would contradict the comparativist requirement to place the moral ideals present in all known societies on an equal footing). That is why critical theories of domination are clearly distinguished from the very many intellectual movements which, basing themselves on moral and/or religious exigencies, have developed radical critiques and demanded from their followers an absolute change in lifestyle (e.g. primitive Christianity, Manichaeanism, millenarian sects, etc.).

On the other hand, however, critical theories of domination are not abstract organums suspended in the heaven of metaphysics. The existence of a concrete relationship with a set of people (defined as public, class, group, sex or whatever) forms part of their self-definition. Unlike ‘traditional theory’, ‘critical theory’⁹ possesses the objective of reflexivity. It can or even must (according to Raymond Geuss) grasp the discontents of actors, explicitly consider them in the very labour of theorization, in such a way as to alter their relationship to social reality and, thereby, that social reality itself, in the direction of emancipation.¹⁰ As a consequence, the kind of critique they make possible must enable the disclosure of aspects of reality in an immediate relationship with the preoccupations of actors – that is, also with ordinary critiques. Critical theories feed off these ordinary critiques, even if they develop them differently, reformulate them, and are destined to return to them, since their aim is to render reality unacceptable,¹¹ and thereby engage the people to whom they are addressed in action whose result should be to change its contours. The idea of a critical theory that is not backed by the experience of a collective, and which in some sense exists for its own sake – that is, for no one – is incoherent.

This dual requirement places a very strong constraint on the structure of critical theories. On the one hand, they must provide themselves with normative supports that are sufficiently autonomous of the particular moral corpuses formed from already identified religious or political approaches, and identified with as such by specific groups whose critical stances they arm. In fact, were this not the case, the opponents of these theories (even those who might initially have been favourable to them) are bound to reduce them to these positions and, consequently, to denounce their local character, bound up with particular interests. They will then dissolve into the sea of ordinary critiques that accompany relations between groups and form the fabric of everyday political life, in the broad sense. But, on the other hand, they must try to meet these ordinary critiques as if they derived from them and were merely unveiling them to themselves, by inducing actors to acknowledge what they already knew but, in a sense, without knowing it; to realize what this reality consists in and, through this revelation, to take their distance from this reality, as if it was possible to exit from it – to remove themselves from it – in such a way as to conceive the possibility of actions intended to change it. When this second condition is not fulfilled, critical theories can be rejected by consigning them to the sphere of ‘utopias’;¹² or, as Michael Walzer more or less does (in connection with the work of Marcuse in The Company of Critics) by regarding them as nothing more than the lamentations of rootless intellectuals, cut off from the sense of reality that comes from belonging to a community and, as a result, having abandoned even the desire of acting to transform it.¹³

The kind of critical judgement built into theories of domination therefore has complex relations with the critiques formulated by people in the course of everyday life. It never coincides with them and subjects them to more or less sustained attention depending on the case, ranging from rejection (critiques formulated by actors derive from illusions, particularly moral illusions) to partial acknowledgement (there is something in these ordinary critiques that can pave the way for Critique with a capital ‘c’). But in any event, a distinction is maintained between the partial critiques developed by the actors on the basis of their experiences and the systematic critique of a particular social order.

For this reason we shall say that critical theories of domination are metacritical in order. The position adopted, geared to the critique of a social order in its generality, distinguishes metacritical positions from occasional critical interventions which, from a position of scholarly expertise, call into question, with a view to reparation or improvement, some particular dimension of social relations without challenging the framework in which they are inscribed. But metacritical constructions must also be distinguished from the multiple critical stances adopted by ordinary people who, in the course of political action and/or the disputes of daily life, denounce people, systems or events that are characterized as unjust by reference to particular situations or contexts. In the rest of these talks, when we speak of critique, it is to these socially rooted, contextual forms of criticism that we shall be referring, while reserving the term metacritique to refer to theoretical constructions that aim to unmask, in their most general dimensions, oppression, exploitation or domination, whatever the forms in which they occur.

Simple Exteriority and Complex Exteriority

The two operations whose ideal type I have tried to trace – the sociological operation of describing society and the critical operation addressed to a social order – share the common feature that they need to situate themselves in a position of exteriority. But the kind of exteriority to be adopted is not the same in both cases. We shall speak of simple exteriority in the case of description and complex exteriority in the case of value judgements that are based on metacritical theories.

The project of taking society as an object and describing the components of social life or, if you like, its framework, appeals to a thought experiment that consists in positioning oneself outside this framework in order to consider it as a whole. In fact, a framework cannot be grasped from within. From an internal perspective, the framework coincides with reality in its imperious necessity. This engineering perspective is the one often adopted by sociologists when they are attuned to the officials in charge of large organizations (be it firms or organizations dependent on the state) and prove open and attentive to the problems facing these officials and the issues they pose. This position is one of expertise. The expert is asked to examine the problematic relationship between elements (e.g. between women’s access to wage-labour and the birth rate), which have already been subject to formatting in a language of administrative or economic description used by those in charge to govern.

Sociological work answering to this kind of demand, which developed in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, today makes up the bulk of the output identified with sociology the world over. It has two key objectives, which are complementary. The first is to increase the rationality of organizations and enhance their productivity, which subordinates sociology to management. The second is also to limit the costs, but this time the so-called ‘human’ costs, entailed by managerial policies geared to profit. In the second case, sociology is called on to help put in place ‘palliative care’, as one says in medicine – that is, either to sketch the shape of ‘social policies’ or to provide justifications to those who implement them on the ground (i.e. ‘social workers’) and sustain their morale. However, in both cases this work by experts identifying with sociology can be realized (it would be better to say must be) without problematizing the general framework upon which the ‘variables’ considered depend.

The social sciences free themselves from expertise, and hence define themselves as such, by positing the possibility of a project of description which is that of a general social anthropology (in a number of cases appealing to comparativism) from a position of exteriority. In the case of ethnology or history, adoption of a position of exteriority is favoured by the distance – geographical in one instance, temporal in the other – that separates the observer from her object. Because it derives in a sense from constraints that are independent of the observer’s will, the move towards exteriority has been able to remain more or less implicit in the case of these disciplines.

In the case of sociology, which at this level of generality can be regarded as a history of the present, with the result that the observer is part of what she intends to describe, adopting a position of exteriority is far from self-evident. The fact that its possibility even poses a problem in a sense leads the move to externalization to become self-conscious. This imaginary exit from the viscosity of the real initially assumes stripping re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• TitlePage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Structure Of Critical Theories
• 2 Critical Sociology and Pragmatic Sociology of Critique
• 3 The Power of Institutions
• 4 The Necessity of Critique
• 5 Political Regimes of Domination
• 6 Emancipation in the Pragmatic Sense
• Notes
• Index