My final critique

Sometimes, I identified challenges on campus or elsewhere and then proposed a solution. But over the past two years, I mostly stopped trying to put forth policy fixes. Rather, my columns tended to focus exclusively on critiquing events both here and abroad.

Based on the feedback I received, I have noticed that some readers regard this latter form of column with disdain. It is considered lazy or cowardly to offer a critique without offering any solutions. These columns are often seen as mere whining. By contrast, columns that both raise questions and offer possible answers are seen as bold and important since they are ‘actually’ trying to change the situation.

I have long taken issue with this viewpoint, and not just because it implies I have grown increasingly whiny. More importantly, it suggests that so much of what happens at this university — which houses many professors who publish articles that only rarely offer tangible policy solutions — is extraneous to what occurs in “the real world.” Indeed, the idea that those who engage in critique are just putting down those who are actually trying to make a difference is behind much of the disdain for academia in general. As they say, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

But critique is not the refuge of those who cannot “do” anything. In fact, the art of critique is the most powerful of all the liberal arts.

Michel Foucault famously defined critique as “the art of not being governed.” He argued that our own way of thinking and acting is constrained by our history and our culture. For him, the purpose of critique was to point out the artificiality of our own societal norms so as to open up new possibilities for reimagining how our society could be different. For example, Foucault wrote a history of Western ideas of “madness,” or insanity. By tracing the specific historical events that led us to define “madness” as a mental disorder, Foucault showed that it is not a natural fact that insanity is a disease. Rather, it is society that defined insanity in this particular way. As such, we should be open to new ways of reimagining and understanding “madness,” as something other than a disease.

One place where we can see that this sort of thinking had a powerful impact is on our society’s understanding of homosexuality. Less than 40 years ago, the American Psychological Association’s official publication, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, classified homosexuality as a mental disease (as a form of madness). By first adopting a critical attitude towards this idea — by recognizing that the notion of homosexuality as a mental disorder was not a natural fact but rather a social creation — we allowed for the rethinking of homosexuality as something other than a form of insanity.

What this specific example helps to illustrate is the larger principle that critique is not merely complaining, but rather a first move that allows for other forms of change. It is an important and worthwhile activity in and of itself. Transformative leaders — from the least educated to most over-educated — have all forced us to rethink our commonly held assumptions about the way the world works. This, perhaps more so than their other actions, is what makes them so revolutionary.

So we can see the art of critique is an art of both unmaking and making. It deconstructs our current understandings at the same time that it creates new space for us to reimagine our world.

To that end, Princeton itself has served as something of an extended lesson on critique. Whereas I spent most of high school years constructing my understanding of the world, I spent most of my time here questioning the concepts I had previously taken for granted. For example, in high school I learned the facts and figures that comprise American history. At Princeton I learned to ask, “What is ‘America’?” and “What is ‘history’?” In so doing, I gained the space to imagine new possibilities for myself and others.

Of all the experiences I have had at Princeton, perhaps none are greater than the experience of learning with professors and classmates who push me to think critically about myself and society. I would like to thank them as well as the administrators and staff whose hard work and daily dedication make this University possible. I would like to thank this newspaper for providing me with a space to struggle with the new ideas I have encountered while at Princeton. Finally, I would like to thank those of you who have been kind enough to read my columns over these past four years. It has been a great honor to experiment with the art of critique on these pages. I will miss it dearly.

Adam Bradlow is an anthropology major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at abradlow@princeton.edu.