What Is an Object, or: A Critical Theory of What?

This presentation argues that a new conception of the object of critique is a condition of possibility for contemporary Critical Theory. Earlier Critical Theories granted the unity of their object by considering them under particular conceptions of history, society, and logic. The unity of these premises enabled first-generation theorists their methodological pluralism, which in turn allowed posing the object of critical theory as a constellational one – a complex of inexhaustible aspects, or open unity. Working within and against a disciplinary division of scientific labor, this generation conceived of their task as an “interdisciplinary” materialism, grasping the object as singularity in the horizon of generality. Habermas’ approach engendered a different form of unity: it segmented objects according to their inner spheres of legality, posing them as related, albeit closed unities – particularities in the horizon of generality. Today's prevailing division of labor poses the objects of critique as closed multiplicities. They are treated as the material for particular “studies”, whose unity is secured, either by the immediate categories they belong to, with a corresponding multiplicity of possible points of view (feminism, queer studies etc.) – or by the point of view under which they are considered, with their corresponding partialization as objects (post-colonial theory, new materialisms etc.). Thus conceived, they appear as singularities in the horizon of particularity, corresponding to today’s prevailing forms of political mobilization. I suggest that a contemporary Critical Theory is contingent on the elucidation of the forms of historical determinacy characteristic for our time. This suggests posing the object as open multiplicity, or generality in the horizon of particularity. A critique thus conceived starts from the forms of concretion immanent to the contemporary historical process, and searches for objects as its complexities – that is, as strategic, albeit finite points of condensation of the social process.