In Judith Butler’s reading of Foucault’s lecture, “What Is
Critique?” she identifies the act of questioning, and more specifically the
questioning of power structures, as central to critique. Questioning through
critique is a disruptive act that can destabilize social and political
hierarchies, expose the limits of the way we order knowledge, and undermine the
frameworks of evaluation that we otherwise accept as given. According to
Butler, then, critique makes room for the subject to exist outside of the
predetermined categories of the “regime of truth.”
The act of questioning is juxtaposed to the act of judging,
which is not deemed to be the primary role of critique. Judging is an act of
closure: classifying the subject as good/bad, valuing it as worthy/unworthy.
This reinforces the existing value system. Questioning, on the other hand, is
an act of opening-up: it frees the subject by undermining existing hierarchies
and structures. If the act of judging relies on the existing frameworks of
evaluation, then the act of questioning challenges those frameworks.
Butler points out that critique must exist in relationship
to the thing it is critiquing. She says it is difficult to talk about critique
in general, abstracted from particular instances. But beyond the individual
“act” of critique, Foucault offers us a model for a broader practice of
critique, or what he terms the “art” of critique. Understood separately from
the action of critiquing, this could mean that we assume a critical attitude, a
way of approaching the world in general.
One example of a contemporary artist operating from a
critical perspective is Joseph Grigely, in his “Exhibition Prosthetics”
project. Grigely has amassed specific examples of exhibition support materials,
including wall labels, exhibition announcements, and press releases, that
operate as works of art. Butler says critique allows us to “question the limits
of our most sure ways of knowing.” Grigely is interested in the limits of
artistic practice. He explains his project as a way “to
look closer at fringes and margins and representations [of the artwork].” He
questions the hierarchical value system that elevates the traditional forms of artwork
above the formats of exhibition collateral materials. This “desubjugates” the
modest labels, booklets, and brochures in relation to the institutional
structure of the gallery/museum.
I find it interesting that Grigely
himself frames his project as a question, since questioning is essential to
critique. In his words, this project asks “what seems to me a very fundamental
question: to what extent are these various exhibition conventions actually part
of the art—and not merely an extension of it?”
(Source of quotes and image: Joseph Grigely. Exhibition Prosthetics. London: Bedford
Press, 2009.)
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