*Originally published in 2023. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

That the practice of critique should find itself embroiled in controversy is nothing either new or remarkable. Indeed, it rather comes with the territory. If we look at the etymology of ‘critic,’ we find that this term has, for more than two thousand years, been associated with the practice of discerning, distinguishing, and forming evaluative judgements. The negative sense of ‘criticism’ – as not just evaluating but fault-finding – also has a long history. Amongst philosophers writing in English, it is common to distinguish between criticism (as an everyday practice) and critique (as a more rarified, philosophical one). However, this distinction doesn’t necessarily work in other languages, and even those who make this distinction rarely follow it consistently. Nevertheless, the difference between, for example, criticising an unjust policy and critiquing a philosophical treatise or a system of political economy is an important one. When we speak of critique in this latter sense, we mean it less as a practice of forming evaluative judgements (though that may still be part of it) and more as a practice of thinking about the presuppositions and preconditions of things. In other words, to critique something (in the strict sense) is to determine not just what that thing is or how we should value it, but to determine what else must be the case for that thing to be possible.

When we speak of something like ‘critical IR,’ however, these finer distinctions tend to disappear. The significance of the adjective ‘critical,’ in general academic parlance, is not so much denotative (declaring specific, definite meanings) as it is connotative (implying a whole range of meanings, bundled together). What qualities, then, do we tend to associate with the figure of the ‘critical scholar’? This is a much larger question than I can answer here. However, the first association that comes to my mind is that a critical scholar sees their work, whatever it is that they study, as political.

The traditional raison d’être of an academic (in terms of self-presentation, at least) has been that of producing ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake.’ In other words, in this classic conception, an academic simply strives to add another layer, however modest, to the collective repository of universal human knowledge. (Indeed, this is pretty much what the whole notion of a ‘university’ suggests.) Critical scholars, by contrast, tend to be sceptical about notions of universality, seeing knowledge production as conditioned by historical and cultural circumstances. Moreover, whereas a traditionally-minded scholar may be content to simply put their research out there, on the assumption that a rising tide of truth will necessarily lead to more rational and informed ways of running the world, critical scholars place no trust in this relationship. Indeed, such a scholar may even point to how rational and true knowledge can, within an irrational and oppressive society, lead to worse outcomes rather than better. Thus, a critical scholar sees their work as being intrinsically political, addressing the harmful contradictions of the world in which we live in a way that challenges those contradictions, demonstrating the possibility of change.

And so, whichever definition of ‘critique’ we take, it is not surprising that critical practice becomes controversial. No one likes being judged! Even film critics or music critics, for example, tend to stoke controversy in forming their opinions. This potential becomes particularly apparent when we are talking about social or political criticism – that is, forming evaluative judgements about how our world is run (and those who run it). In authoritarian societies, expressing open, public, critical judgements may, to greater or lesser degrees, be prohibited. In liberal democratic societies, by contrast, critical expression is generally protected, and even formally encouraged. However, this does not mean that critical expression, in such societies, is truly ‘free.’ Libel laws in the UK, for example, are notorious for the degree to which they protect the rich and powerful against criticism. And even in countries with more robust free speech protections, such as the US, there are countless ways in which unwanted critical perspectives can be quashed and restrained – the ongoing moral panic regarding Critical Race Theory being an excellent example.

However, perhaps the most formidable way of neutralising the political effect of critical judgment, of whatever sort, within societies where it is officially protected, is to co-opt it – that is, to imitate its form while replacing its content with something that serves dominant relations of power, rather than challenging them. There is nothing new in this, either. However, the issue of the co-optation of critique has become particularly pronounced over the past decade or so, with the rise of right-wing populism globally, and the presidency of Donald Trump in particular.

In his recent contribution to E-International Relations, Nicholas Michelsen draws some despairing conclusions for critical IR scholars regarding the state of their practice. It is a call, essentially, to abandon ship. Forty years of critical IR and there is ‘effectively nothing to show for it.’ The very foes we thought we were fighting have ‘borrowed all of our best lines,’ and the very principles we thought we were fighting for have devolved into ‘competitive wars of purity,’ maladjusted to our........

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