1057617

book-review2021
PTXXXX10.1177/00905917211057617Political TheoryBook Review

Book Review
Political Theory

Book Review
1­–6
© The Author(s) 2021
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Critique and Praxis, by Bernard Harcourt. New York: Columbia University Press,
2021. 684 pp.

Reviewed by: Renee Heberle, Political Science, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA
DOI: 10.1177/00905917211057617

Dorothy Allison married Alix Layman in 2008 when the California Supreme
Court ruled that prohibiting same-sex marriage was a civil rights violation.
As a self-identified radical lesbian feminist, Allison spent a good part of her
life criticizing the institution of marriage; she married her partner as a politi-
cal gesture in response to her son’s insistence that it was the right thing to do
in that moment. What had felt like a “concession” given her prior thinking
about the value of state-sanctioned marriage became a gesture of political
solidarity. Her son reminded her of the temporality of what had been to her a
foundational value: to criticize and resist participation in patriarchal, hetero-
normative institutions, including marriage. This kind of critical, reflexive
approach to values is, at least in part, what Bernard Harcourt argues for
throughout Critique and Praxis.
Critique and Praxis is a wide-ranging effort to take up the conundrum
of critical theory, which has been with us since Marx wrote the eleventh
thesis—that is, that we think and act in and on a damaged society, one that
critical theorists, including Bernard Harcourt in this book, typically argue to
be in varying stages of crisis. Because we are part and parcel of the damaged
world, we cannot assume our work will not be further damaging, untimely,
out of place, or just wrong. Though I hesitate to identify him as a critical
theorist in the same vein, Michel Foucault argues that, as we are always
already embedded in relations of power, there is no “innocent” outside to
patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other systems of dominance that will not,
when set in action, constitute its own set of norms and exclusions. Yet it is
necessary to act. Harcourt wants to rethink and reconstruct how we think
about the relationship between critique (interpreting conditions in which we
live) and praxis (changing conditions in which we live) for the twenty-first
century. His tone is urgent and personal as he moves across the landscape of
2 Political Theory 00(0)

critical theorizing of the last two hundred years to assess and explain his
basic concern—that is: “what more am I to do” in the name of “infus[ing]
the world with the values of compassion, equality, solidarity, autonomy, and
social justice” (1).
Harcourt argues that the broad swath of thinkers he identifies as twenti-
eth-century critical theorists have traveled down an “epistemological
detour”; it is a detour as it has taken them away from praxis to arguments
about the status of truth, who is equipped to know the truth, or how “we”
get to the truth. He notes the early commitments to praxis of critical theo-
rists of the Frankfurt School and those who came after but suggests a com-
bination of historical factors (the rise of fascism, more recently neoliberalism,
austerity policies, authoritarianism, climate crises) and their own doubts
drove a shift in emphasis. The result was a kind of relapse into theory and
a yearning for certainty as to knowledge claims about emancipatory politi-
cal struggle.
As Harcourt surveys the epistemological detour, it becomes clear that, in
his view, Foucault, among others, has dug up the roads, making them rocky
enough to send anyone traveling the epistemological detour off on the shoul-
der. While this synopsis of his discussion suggests discontinuity and maybe
breakdown, a “detour” also suggests that while we leave a path, we eventu-
ally find our way back to what was sought. And Harcourt does, ultimately,
suggest that critical theory needs to find its way back to something. The sec-
ond half of his book articulates what that might look like.
Taking the epistemological detour means that critical theory focused on
“mental categories and constructs” as the problem to be solved on the road to
emancipation rather than on praxis as such (163). From Antonio Gramsci’s
theory of cultural hegemony to Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive practices,
how we know the world became the issue rather than how to act in the world.
Harcourt’s response to the mountain of complex claims made about the
potential for emancipation from suffering over the twentieth century is decep-
tively simple. In contrast to arguing over how we might best know the world
and therefore, “what is to be done,” He develops over the course of the book
his rationale for simply asking what more he is to do in any given context. He
is radically opposed to those who think it the obligation of the critical theorist
to argue for others how and why to act. Instead, with Foucault, Harcourt
argues the critic should persistently expose how truth, including their own,
functions in relationship to power and as an effect of power, always indexing
praxis against critique and critique against praxis.
Book Review 3

Harcourt reconstructs critical theory from the rubble (the counter-founda-

tional work he describes at length in the first part of the book) left by Foucault,
among others, by way of what he calls the “counter-move” and a “radical
critical philosophy of illusions.” I read this as a response to the struggle in
critical theory articulated, for example, by Theodor Adorno when he asserts
that “there is no peeping out,” or, that there is no “outside” to the system from
which “we” might act as subjects free of the effects of the administered soci-
ety. We are always already implicated. The conceptual tool Harcourt describes
to be deployed as we move past this conundrum is the “counter-move.”
Foucault’s use of the term “counter” in reference to what might have been
referred to as resistance or opposition figures prominently in Harcourt’s
reconstructive effort. To counter is to use the power circulating and constitut-
ing the norm against the norm. And, importantly, it is to not assume one
inhabits an alternative space constituted by righteousness or truth prior to
acting. Harcourt does not want to remain with the counter-move, however.
He argues further for a radical critical philosophy of illusion.
Sigmund Freud is the inspiration for the language of “illusion”; Harcourt
finds the language of illusion useful for its proximity to truth. A radical criti-
cal theory of illusions keeps us on the path of critique paved by Friedrich
Nietzsche and carefully reworked by Foucault; it exposes truths as historical
artifacts, as effects of power, and any claim to “Truth,” therefore, as an illu-
sion. It takes truths seriously as that to which any given society is attached
at any given time, while calling for ongoing interpretive action and resigni-
fications that continually parry the laying down of new truths. It is worth
noting that Harcourt does not explain how “illusions” (of the free market, for
example) are not epistemological, or knowledge/reality-based quandaries, to
be sorted out by theory as we figure out how to act against them. His lan-
guage of exposure, unveiling, and unmasking are all, in the end, referencing
how we “know” the world.
Harcourt’s journey through critical theory travels many paths. He does
not stay with any thinker very long, but winds through and among texts,
identifying elements of foundationalism, normativity, and truth-telling. His
levels of engagement are uneven as he identifies theorists who “side” with
theory (Adorno and Hannah Arendt, for example), those stuck on the episte-
mological detour (Amy Allen and Axel Honneth, for example), and those
digging up the asphalt (Foucault and Étienne Balibar). While he rightly
expresses antipathy for the notion of “influence” (are you a Foucauldian? A
Marxist? A post-structuralist?—talk about being asked for one’s papers!), he
misses opportunities as he nonetheless situates thinkers rather than specific
4 Political Theory 00(0)

ideas and insights in relationship to the detour. For example, at one point
Harcourt implicates Adorno in the increasing “fracturing of the coherence of
praxis” when earlier he identified his work as the “interpretive bridge” with
postfoundational thought. He dismisses (wrongly, I would argue) the Arendt
of “Truth and Politics” for “taking the side of theory” while not exploring
the value in her thinking about action and political freedom, which could
inform thinking about praxis. Harcourt’s book is not about showing what
system produced by a theorist is good for what kind of politics. It assumes
the fractured quality of the political and, in its form, suggests that critique
(theory) for the twenty-first century should reflect those qualities, not aim at
constructing ahistorical systems or models for praxis. However, in identify-
ing thinkers as either on or off the detour, he tends to reproduce what he is
arguing we should avoid.
Harcourt says, “I can and should theorize only about my actions. I also
want to imagine that we can instantiate now something beyond politics—an
end to politics” (35). He does not explain what he means by an “end to politics,”
though one can presume it means an end to a focus on process and the insti-
tutionalization of forms of political activity. This is related to his thinking
about the relationship between critique and praxis; he describes it as one of
collision, contradiction, and confrontation, using the Hadron Collider as
metaphor for his conceptualization. It is fair to ask how this “instantiates
something beyond politics.” Harcourt’s introduction of this metaphor
responds to concerns about theory as vanguard or inspiration for action and
the authoritarian consequences for those who think in relation to those who
act. Critique and praxis must always be colliding, clashing, indexed against
each other. There is no theoretical projection toward the future that should
reassure in advance that action is rightly taken, but only ongoing battle
informed by colliding one’s theory with their praxis. “Our political fate . . .
always will be determined by what we struggle for and how” (271).
Harcourt does not successfully move from his personal reflections on his
action as a death penalty litigator, human rights litigator, organizer of
marches, and counselor to Occupiers, back to his thinking about the “counter-
move” and the radical critical theory of illusions. Being a lawyer is an insti-
tutionally embedded task. While Harcourt mentions friends, allies, and
colleagues, the tasks being carried out are tasks only he can do in the moment
through and in the courts. His lawyering is something he does as an expert
(even if when he began, he felt ill-equipped). This institutionally embedded
quality of litigation is worth exploring, beyond his acknowledgement of the
deep interdependence between him and the men and women whose cases on
Book Review 5

which he works. In Harcourt’s own telling, his work as a death penalty litiga-
tor is not in his imagined Hadron Collider. Ultimately, the value of the lives
on behalf of which Harcourt is litigating will not be subjected to “critique.”
He concludes that saving some lives from premeditated murder by the state
(in our name) is enough. It need not do any other work in the world, either to
end the death penalty, to change doctrine, or to organize opposition to the
death penalty. That is the other side of his, again very personal, articulation of
why he represents men and women sentenced to death, and it resonates with
the Kantian imperative to not treat others as means to an end. He does not
make a clear connection, however, to a “radical critical theory of illusions” or
how it is “countering” systems grounded in retributive moral claims. There is
important unrealized potential in this discussion.
Harcourt also describes his decision to not move from the sidelines to join
a protest march in France (donning the Yellow Vest), initially assessing
whether to participate in light of concerns about the nationalist tendencies
of the movement. He is jarred into rethinking by a student who asks whether
his nonparticipation, or fellow-traveler status, cedes ground to those on the
right who threaten to hijack the narrative of the Yellow Vest movement. In a
“leaderless” movement one must participate to shape the meaning. It is only
in a movement made up of followers that one can afford to stand outside or
travel alongside without losing an opportunity to forge the meaning of the
collective action. Harcourt does not describe a discussion with the student;
rather, his fellow traveler status is “hammered” (a reference to Nietzsche’s
“philosophizing with a hammer”) by the student’s critique. I am not left with
any ideas as to how the counter-move and the consequent radical theory of
illusions help us think through the everyday dilemmas faced by anyone
deciding to take what Arendt describes as the risks of action, of disclosing
oneself in public. It is clear, however, that the student was not only thinking
about what the student should do. He was persuading Harcourt to act differ-
ently. There are not bright lines between theory, persuasion, argument, and/or
“politics” as suggested by Harcourt’s argument.
Harcourt consistently uses language of the “agony” and the “brutality” of
the collision between critique and praxis. In general, the discursive tenor of
the book thus becomes somewhat overwrought. We live in dark times, but
when have times not been dark from the critical theorist’s and the progres-
sive organizer’s perspective? The insistence on collision and discontinuity is
provocative and sometimes persuasive. However, it dramatizes the every-
dayness of doing politics in a way that does not resonate once one is actively
engaged in collaboration with others. Harcourt’s critique borders on a kind
6 Political Theory 00(0)

of “self”-importance. By this I do not mean a character flaw like arrogance.

Rather, I mean it downplays that the significance of what we each do can
always only be understood in relationship to a “we.” I am thinking about the
relational sensibilities I read out of Arendt’s references to acting in concert
and those feminist political theorists who argue for a thinking in public and
about public things that does not presuppose the “I” that, as Harcourt asserts
(35), can only think for himself about what he himself is doing. We could
contrast with Harcourt’s “I,” for example, a reading of Dorothy Allison’s
description of how she and her partner decided to get married. They did it
specifically as part of the we of the gay rights movement that was realizing
the previously impossible, “gay marriage.” The singular “I” was not in the
mix. Allison was thinking and acting with others in concert. Further, the
student who challenged Harcourt’s decision not to “join” a leaderless move-
ment was engaging in an act of persuasion, just as Harcourt himself is
engaged in persuading his readers about the relationship between critique
and praxis. Persuasion and argument, always emerging from critique, are
political acts. Harcourt himself cannot avoid the performative contradiction
of claiming he can only theorize about his own acts while writing a book
arguing others should do the same.
Arguing among ourselves, and with others, as critical theorists about what
we want as a different future need not mire us in epistemic angst. Further, I
do not know how to critique or act alone; working with others means we will
share our knowledges in the many different forms those knowledges take on
and are expressed. “What we want for us . . .” is said in the spirit of desire
(a future vision), organizing (a means), and collaboration (acknowledging the
I as always and only in relationship to the we). It reminds me of the title of
Miriam Makabe’s contribution to the Abolitionist Papers, “We do this ‘til we
free us.” In registering his discontent with the epistemological detour, in
emphasizing the ethical “I” who acts, Harcourt elides reference to the “we”
or the “us” that ultimately defines the space of politics.