Criticism, Confidence and the Crisis in Critique

The focus of this essay is on the crisis in critique, that is, the crisis that critique aims to produce through its questioning of what is given to us as 'natural, necessary or obligatory' limits, a crisis in the subjectivity of the audience to which the act of criticism is addressed. Starting with Foucault's reflections on the critical attitude and the distinction that he draws in comparative historical terms between two modes of the relationship of critique and Aufklärung , I offer an account of the distinction between the two modes by distinguishing two types of confidence questions that can be addressed to our outlooks: "can it be justified?" and "can it be vindicated?" I go onto to argue that these two ways of problematizing confidence can be related to "ideological captivity" and "aspectival captivity" respectively, with the two modes of critical attitude exemplified in ideology-critique and genealogy. I conclude by showing how these confidence questions also arise for each of the two modes of critical attitude and with some reflections on the politics of these forms of critical attitude.