Publication details
Moving Beyond the Symptom? – The Post-Critical Turn in Critical Legal Studies
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The critical legal studies movement is increasingly being referred to as defunct or, at best, somewhat weakened. The main reason for the loss of its former strength is the crisis of critique. Critique as a method of rational questioning of ideological layers has become repetitive and unconvincing. A possible solution to the crisis of criticism is the post-critical turn. The intention of this article is twofold. First, it is to capture and describe the transformation taking place in contemporary critical legal studies. I argue that the causes of the decline of critical legal scholarship have methodological causes as well as possible methodological solutions. The post-critical turn offers a new perspective on what criticism is, what is its function, and what methods it has at its disposal. Post–critique sets itself apart from symptomatic readings, which are based on the premise that the meanings of a text are hidden and must be revealed. In contrast, post–critique offers a method of surface reading that is skeptical of metaphors about the textual depth. The second aim is to show that the opposition between symptomatic and surface reading is in the state of flux – or rather, oscillation – and that one cannot do without the other. On this footing, I will show that if critical legal scholarship is able to undergo a revision of its methods and a rethinking of what criticism represents, it has a chance of becoming relevant again. |
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