Critique may simply refer to the critical element of liberal and academic debate: criticism (usually conceived as ‘open’) of the opinion and work of others.

But more importantly critique is a tradition within western philosophy. After Kant critique is reflection on the conditions of possible knowledge, a rational reconstruction of the conditions which make language, cognition and action possible. After Hegel and Marx critique is negative thinking. This involves an opposition to neat systems of thought on the grounds that they are always inadequate to reality (qv heterogeneity). Critique aims to subject everything to rational scrutiny, unveiling and debunking, reflecting on the constraints to which people succumb in the historical process of their self formation (qv ideology). Critique asks questions of people’s identity, their subjectivity, questions of power as agency and involving subjection to powers beyond. Negative thinking includes ideology critique as the scrutiny of sedimented meanings within cultural works which serve particular social interests; often it is associated with a political project of liberation from distortions, constraints and tradition via critical insights into the working of power. Anglo-American Critical Archaeology (a term applied to the work of Mark Leone and others usually belonging within a postprocessual outlook) has adopted such a project.

Critique is not a methodology but more an attitude which focuses on the social construction of knowledge. The tradition is thus very relevant to a self-reflective discipline.

References

---

---

Theory