Viele Theoretikerinnen und Theoretiker haben sich von einer Praxis der Kritik verabschiedet und sich für alternative Einstellungen des Urteils ausgesprochen, die als Praktiken der Wertschätzung bezeichnet werden können. Der Sammelband untersucht, wie eine Opposition dieser beiden Denkweisen verstanden wird, und fragt danach, ob und wie sie sich überwinden lässt. Dabei spielen die Praktiken der Urteilens im Feld der Kunst eine paradigmatische Rolle. Mit Beiträgen u.a. von Luc Boltanski, Eva Geulen, Rahel Jaeggi und Bruno Latour

Isabelle Graw ist Herausgeberin der Zeitschrift Texte zur Kunst. Sie lehrt Kunsttheorie an der Städelschule Frankfurt. Christoph Menke ist Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Frankfurt am Main.

Preface This book is based on a conference that took place on January 18th 2017, a date that was overshadowed by Trumps inauguration. It shouldnt come as a surprise that this historical turning point finds an echo in many of the contributions in this volume. The title of the conference The Value of Critique connects two different modes of judgment which are often understood as being fundamentally different: critique and value (or evaluation). While judging is in itself an act of critique that implies a decision between right and wrong in the name of a rule, it can also be conceptualized and performed differently as an evaluation that generates and presupposes values. The process of judging is thus deeply interconnected with critique and value. But what is at stake in the juxtaposition between value and critique? When described schematically their relation would unfold as follows: critique is the enlightenment strategy of judgment whereby a subject establishes itself and declares its autonomy as an independent judge above and distant from the matter of its consideration. To criticize in this sense means: to gain freedom over and against an object, a situation, a condition, in short: over and against the world by claiming that the world is contradictory in itself. The concept of value, on the other hand, refers to an act of evaluation which is openly and avowedly partial and perspectivalthe act of measuring, in which a living being expresses the utility of something in the world for it, i.e. its survival or its flourishing. Evaluation is about the enhancement of the evaluating living being, about increasing its life-forces, its ability to live. Understood in this way, critique and value are antagonistic. From the perspective of value, critique is a strategy used by the subject to empower itself, merely pretending to let the thing itself speak. From the perspective of critique, the model of value has surrendered from the start to the endless circle of the immanence of life, be it biological or economical, and thus merely stands in the service of self-preservation or -empowerment. Critique is an attitude of negation: of judging and thinking as the unfolding of the inner negativity of its object. Value, on the other hand, is the name of an attitude of affirmation: judgment as an expression of the way in which a self says yes to its existence and its conditions. At second glance, however, the relationship between value and critique turns out to be much more complicated. Instead of being just polar opposites, both concepts share a metonymic structure: critique refers to an object that is outside of it as much as the critic might be deeply affected by it. A similar displacement occurs in value since there is no intrinsic value as Marx already underlined. Value is relational and therefore always to be found elsewhere. Its force depends on the investment an affective collectivity contributes (actively or passively). Apart from its metonymic nature value needs to get represented and objectified it has a form and this formal dimension renders it similar to the objects of critique. Considered as social practices, critique and value thus overlap in manifold ways. For as soon as the critic selects an object as worthwhile of her interest and time, she has declared it as being potentially valuable. The critic, although often against her own intentions, indeed contributes to her objects value. It is precisely by questioning existing values, that critique gets implicated in the formation of value. Practices of evaluation, on the other hand, are never merely affirmative and enhancing. For their modus operandi seems to be partly critical: to establish and foster a value means to engage in critical strategies of distinction and decision. As much as critique without value becomes empty and pointless, value without critique become blind and loses its edge. Despite critiques strength as a relational concept, it appears to have lost its transformative power in an economy that is supposedly busy absorbing it. Although we acknowledge accounts of an ongoing commercialization of critique, we opted for a less totalizing (and less pessimistic) take in this conference: We distinguished between different types of critique and aimed to analyze their respective situative potential. Starting from Luc Boltanskis sociology of critical practice, Bruno Latours critical proximity, Rahel Jaeggis immanent critique, up to Beate Söntgens aesthetic critiqueeach of these models indeed presupposes a different notion of critique, a different understanding of its values. The virtues and limits of these models are further addressed by the respondents: Benjamin Noys, Dirk Setton, Martin Seel, Kerstin Stakemeier, Eva Geulen, and Juliane Rebentisch. Each one of them honor and question the contributions in a challenging way. Some of the propositions of the main speakers are anyhow at odds with one another which leads to further controversies. For instance: Bruno Latour blames social critique for not dealing with geopolitical issues, arguing for critical zones where an ideal of critical proximity should reign. Luc Boltanski, by contrast, insists on a model of social critique based on distance and the ability to contest institutional authority. Both Benjamin Noys and Dirk Setton note in their responses how Latours geopolitical critique resembles the social critique that it wants to overcome. Boltanksis faith in a critique that is able to question institutional authority is questioned by Juliane Rebentisch: she wonders what happens to this type of critique of institutional authority once it turns right wing? Whether critique should be based on distance or proximity is equally contended. Rahel Jaeggis model of immanent critique demonstrates how proximity and distance can actually go hand in hand. While emphasizing immanence this model of critique also presupposes distance as Eva Geulen points out. Futhermore, as Thomas Lemke asserts, critique, by being immanent, is always in danger of becoming technical and procedural and thus needs a transgressive moment on which its political force depends. There is further controversy about the stance that a critic should take: should she opt for affirmation or negation? Taking Diderot as her case study, Beate Söntgen argues for a model of critique that affirms art and its (critical) subject. Kerstin Stakemeier replies that she would rather opt for negation against affirmation. Martin Seel raises the question of to what extent und in what sense art criticism is to be understood as an activity at alland shows that its liberating power lies precisely in the way it is passive activity (or active passivity). What becomes obvious in all of these controversies is critiques ability to develop its own criteria, criteria that are different from the values that critique produces. It apparently still matters how critique is argued even if there is a complicity with the current power technologies to a certain extend. Instead of endlessly deploring this complicity, the contributions in this volume demonstrate how critique evaluations differ from those acts of evaluation that are implied in the concept of (economic) value. But since there is no value without human laboras the critique of political economy has convincingly arguedthe volume also examines the value-labor-complex in a roundtable discussion between Sabeth Buchmann, Isabelle Graw, Christoph Menke and John Roberts. At first there seems to be agreement between the participants as to the nature of artistic labor: the current convergence between artistic labor and general labor in a post-Fordist economy is something no one disputes. However, the consequences drawn from this state of affairs greatly vary. For Sabeth Buchmann the merging of specific and general labor leads to the rise of rehearsal formats in contemporary art. While acknowledging the current overlaps between artistic and general labor Isabelle Gra...

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