CRITERIA IN CRISIS: MODERNIST, POSTMODERNIST, AND FEMINIST CRITICAL PRACTICES A Dissertation Presented by MARY ANN SUSHINSKY

CRITERIA IN CRISIS: MODERNIST, POSTMODERNIST, AND FEMINIST CRITICAL PRACTICES FEBRUARY 1999 MARY ANN SUSHINSKY, B.A. KENT STATE UNIVERSITY M.A., CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Ann Ferguson I examine a problem or dilemma of legitimation faced by the critical theorist who takes as the object of his or her critique a totality of which she or he is a part. The dilemma is that the theorist must either illegitimately exempt her critical theory from the determining influences of the totality or lose normative authority. The critics I examine in detail are: Adorno and Horkheimer; Kant; Hegel; feminist standpoint epistemologists, in particular, Sandra Harding; Irigaray; Foucault; and Arendt. I conclude that a purely theoretical or epistemic ground for the legitimacy of totalizing critique is impossible; philosophical critique must involve an extra-rational faith or a political commitment. However, I also argue that the project of theoretical grounding should not be abandoned. I continue this project by drawing out of the critical theorists I examined some preliminary concepts and strategies (such as mimesis, hysteria, free action, and psychoanalytic practice) that may, after further development, serve to provide a theory of the legitimacy of critical philosophy. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT iv Chapter 1. THE CRISIS OF REASON AND THE DILEMMA OF CRITIQUE 1 The Crisis of Reason 4 The Structure of Critique and the Critic's Dilemma 8 The Epistemological Form of the Dilemma 12 Critique as Practical/Political 15 The Dilemma as a Dialectic of Theory and Practice 20 The Critique of Enlightenment 22 2. THE DILEMMA OF THE KANTIAN CRITICAL SUBJECT AND THE HEGELIAN ALTERNATIVE OF IMMANENT CRITIQUE 45 Authorization and Limitation in the Critique of Pure Reason 49 The Reflexivity of Consciousness in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason 54 Immanence and Transcendence in the Refutations of Idealism 59 Bad Faith as a Strategy of Avoidance 67 Enter Hegel 77 Kant’s Transgression 81 Analytic Entailment as Another Strategy of Avoidance 86 Other Commentators 91 Strawsonian Discipline 92 The Transcendence of Theory: Deleuze 97 Oscillation: Howard and Hutchings 101 Hegel: Phenomenology as Immanent Critique 104 The Dialectical Experience of Consciousness and Immanent Critique 107 The Phenomenological Consciousness as Transcendent to its Object 111 The Ground of Hegelian Transcendence 117 The Oscillation of Immanence and Transcendence in Kant and Hegel 120 3. IS THERE A GROUND FOR A FEMINIST STANDPOINT? 122 The Ground of Standpoint Theory124 The Standpoint of the Proletariat 126 Object Relations Theory 135 The Conflictual Nature of Feminist Empiricism 142 Harding’s Strategy of Immanent Critique 151 The “Terrestrial Fulcrum” of “Strong Objectivity” 156 Subject and Object in Feminist Critique 160 4. IS POSTMODERN FEMINISM THE ANSWER? 167 Immanence and Transcendence in Irigaray’s Postmodern/ Difference Feminism 169 The Platonic Womb of Theory 175 Freud’s Libidinal Economy 178 Irigaray’s Strategy of Mimesis 183 Miming Metaphor for Metonymy 187 An Alternative Economy 195 5. THE CRITIC’S GROUND IN THE POLITICAL: FOUCAULT AND ARENDT201 The Ground of Critique in Political Power: Foucault 202 Genealogy as Immanent Critique 207 Power as the Real Ground 210 The Foucaultian Gap 213 The Ground of Critique in Political Freedom: Arendt 222 The Critic’s Immanence in “The Human Condition” 224 The Immanence and Transcendence of Political Freedom 228 The Defetishization of Freedom 229 The Dual Nature of Free Action 232 Freedom as Mimesis 234 Storytelling, Rather than Theory 237 Forgiving and Promising as Aspects of Critique 244 6. PRAXIS, MIMESIS, TRANSCENDENCE 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 CHAPTER I THE CRISIS OF REASON AND THE DILEMMA OF CRITIQUE According to Gilles Deleuze, "Philosophy is at its most positive as critique."1 I agree. Certainly a critical attitude toward received views has been a moving force behind much of the philosophical thought of the entire western tradition in philosophy.2 In this dissertation, I will focus more specifically on critique as it has been manifest in the modern period. This is not because I fail to recognize the critical attitude and method inherent in the philosophies of the Ancients (especially Socrates and Plato, whose reliance on the distinction between reality and appearance informed all of their philosophical thought), but because the modern period in philosophy, in its unique preoccupation with questions of methodology and epistemology, can be seen as offering self-conscious and sophisticated reflection upon the capacities and problems of critique itself. Furthermore, the modern period in philosophy can be seen to differ from a premodern philosophical weltanschauung in its extension of the powers of critical reason to all spheres of human functioning, including those areas of life which the premodern tradition had left to the authority of religious and political institutions.3 Modern philosophers threw off the yoke of authority and insisted upon autonomously exercising their own critical faculties in order to gain scientific (i.e., systematic, certain, reliable) knowledge and to determine practical questions about society, politics and law, and ethics.4 Motivating the critical philosophies of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, to 1Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), page106. 2For a study which focuses on critique as fundamental to philosophical thought throughout the tradition, where it has been instantiated in various analyses of alienation, see Trent Schroyer, The Critique of Domination, (New York: George Braziller, 1973). 3The 18th century Enlightenment was known for this confident extension of reason in the rise of modern science and in bourgeois political revolutions. 4Kant's famous three questions—'What can I know?,' 'What ought I to do?,' 'What can I hope?' can be seen to incorporate this attitude of critical autonomy in all spheres.