Critical Agency – An Ethnographically Informed Political Epistemology of Critique

• Applicant: Dr. Deborah Muehlebach
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 543375836

The world is full of critique – some criticise Europe’s anti-migration policies, others criticise Sea-Watch for rescuing migrants at sea, feminists criticise femicides as a structural problem of patriarchy, and “anti-woke” movements criticise wokeness. But critique does not always land as critique. Some critics are systematically ignored, some talk past each other, and sometimes people have limited access to the resources needed to develop a critical stance. In such cases, critical agency, i.e. the capacity to form and put forward critique that is actually taken up as critique, is limited. This project explores the nature of critical agency: what does critical agency consist in and what circumstances do promote or inhibit it? CRITICAL AGENCY argues that key to critical agency is the ability to understand a variety of interacting elements on the part of the critic, the addressees and bystanders. Among these elements are the object and content of critique, the social positions of people involved in a critical encounter, and the ways these positions relate to each other. Building on that basic claim, the project aims to develop a political epistemology of critical agency. It systematically studies the interaction between socio-political and epistemological aspects of critical agency by bringing into conversation fields in theoretical and practical philosophy that have hitherto not engaged as much with each other. Addressing the social complexity of critical encounters requires close attention to social categories and power dynamics involved in such settings and thus engaging in non-ideal theorising in an ethnographic key: providing thick descriptions of settings in which the dynamics of critical agency are manifest and developing conceptual and normative questions and hypotheses grounded in such real-world practices. At this specific time in which we need to collectively navigate a climate catastrophe, several wars, and deep political disagreements, critique is everywhere and understanding nowhere. At least so it seems at first sight. A careful philosophical analysis of critique and understanding helps us better see what our critical practices consist in, what we aim to do, actually do, and should do when we try to criticise each other. The ethnographically informed political epistemology of CRITICAL AGENCY sets out to answer these timely conceptual and normative questions.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups