Book review: From Agamben to Žižek: Contemporary Critical Theorists

2011 was nothing short of an epochal year. The Arab Spring, NATO intervention in Libya, mass protests in Greece, riots in the UK, nuclear fear following the Japanese tsunami, and the deepening of the financial crisis all attest, Simons would argue, to our living ‘in a world that still needs to be theorised critically’ (p. 12). From Agamben to Žižek closes Simons’ three-volume series charting the ‘critical tradition’. The first volume, From Kant to Levi-Strauss (2003), covered this tradition’s precursors, while the second volume, From Lacan to Said (2006), engaged with theorists who had ‘established significant trans-disciplinary reputations in the Anglophone world by 1990’ (pp. 2–3). This final volume presents thinkers who have come to prominence since 1990. While the previous volumes dealt with a canon, this one is engaged in the process of canonization. The inclusion of theorists such as Butler and Žižek is incontestable, yet others – like Agamben (who is given a rather terse treatment) and Rancière – sit here precariously. It is also inevitable that such a collection will have ‘significant omissions’ (p. 7). Every reader will no doubt have their own list of who should have been included. I wondered why Latour was present when Castells was not, or why Wallerstein never made the cut.

Those who did make the cut (and the authors of their respective essays) are: Agamben (Paul Hegarty), Badiou (Benjamin Robinson), Bauman (Peter Beilharz), Bhabha (David Huddart), Butler (Moya Lloyd), Castoriadis (Caroline Williams), ‘Green Critical Theorists’ (?!) (David Kidner), Haraway (Joan Faber McAlister), Laclau and Mouffe (Simon Tormey), Latour (Ilana Gershon), Negri (Arriana Bove), Rancière (Samuel A. Chambers), Spivak (Stephen Morton), Virilio (John Armitage) and Žižek (Matthew Sharpe). Through designating the above as ‘critical theorists’, Simons situates them within an intellectual movement he considers to be

an effect of the appropriation and integration of both Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the various ‘French’ and other thought into Anglophone academies since the mid-1960s, when a range of theoretical approaches to different branches of the humanities and social sciences began to be adopted on the margins of established disciplinary methodologies. (p. 1)

The Frankfurt School is important, because it was within their work that a decisive step was taken to distinguish ‘critical’ from ‘traditional’ theory – as seen, for instance, in their redemption of Marxism from ‘crude’ orthodoxy. A carefully constrained utopianism was present in the work of these pioneering critical theorists. As expressed by Horkheimer and Adorno, in the 1969 preface to Dialectic of Enlightenment, ‘critical thought … requires us to take up the cause of the remnants of freedom, of tendencies toward real humanity, even though they seem powerless in the face of the great historical trend’. The scope of their project, the setting of an ambitious goal in the face of despair, provided fertile ground for those who followed them. Further, they initiated an interdisciplinary approach Simons considers paradigmatic of critical theory. They produced a mode of inquiry that was not just critical of its subject matter but also of traditional approaches and methodologies. In evaluating the legacy of the Frankfurt School, and in assessing the common themes which unite the theorists collected in this volume (with the exception of Latour), it is clear that being counted as a ‘critical theorist’ involves having a life’s work that is necessarily political – if not always manifested through direct action, at least in theory.

This can be seen from the way that some of the most effective essays in this collection were those that threaded their subject’s biography into an explication of their work. Bove, for instance, illustrates the manner in which the events of Negri’s life – through prison sentences and exile – interweave with his key theoretical concepts. The work of another political exile, Bauman, is also rendered accessible through the use of biographical detail by Beilharz (who effectively parallels Bauman’s life and work with Marx’s). What such essays make clear is that the best critical theory often springs from the anguish and inspiration lived experience brings to a theorist’s work – in reading critical theory we are taken a long way from the work of arid analytic philosophers conjecturing as to whether or not it can be said that ‘snow is white’, or if the chair on which I sit ‘really exists’!

Critical theory is unbearably bright at times, illuminating the complex myriad forms of power at play within our lives – but such illumination is sometimes hard won by readers, a point underlined by Huddart, who characterizes Bhaba’s prose as ‘complex, allusive and fragmented, and [that] can therefore seem rebarbative’ (p. 64). Such a statement could stand true for many of the theorists populating this volume. Condensing their work into short, accessible, essays is no mean feat, especially when the body of work being summarized continues to grow. Wrestling with the uncontained corpus of a major living theorist can be a Herculean task, especially if the writer in question is someone like Badiou. As with other ‘introductions to Badiou’ I have read, Robinson’s piece (while excellent) is perhaps overly complex. Badiou has shown himself – in his Manifesto for Philosophy (translated 1999) or Ethics (translated 2001) (either of which offer, to my mind, excellent entry points to his work) – that an extended discussion of set-theory is not needed to introduce his work. But to turn away from the complexity of a theorist’s work when introducing it is to risk excluding something important. Such a dilemma can be seen with Sharpe, who writes one of the most accessible introductions to Žižek I have come across, but does so by passing over his engagement with Hegelian dialectics in almost complete silence. Despite the manner in which most of the theorists addressed in this volume elude easy explication, this collection undoubtedly meets its goal of introducing key contemporary theorists at a level suitable for ‘advanced undergraduate and beginning (post)graduate students’ (p. 2) – I also imagine established academics will benefit from referring to it to catch up on thinkers they are unfamiliar with, or will include chapters from it in the construction of Course Readers. Like the dog-eared Lonely Planet guides accompanying backpackers in their travels, my copy of this volume will end up similarly worn in my hands as I navigate my way through the beginnings of my PhD study in 2012.