Towards a critical theory of being critical – a note to columnists and fellow letter writers

Apr 25, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

One of the finest aspects of Guyanese intellectual culture is the unabashed tendency to be critical. The columns and letters in Guyana Times, Kaieteur News, Guyana Chronicle, and Stabroek News, regardless of their political slant, are marked by unremitting efforts at critical analysis. The techniques, methods, and epistemologies of our critical turn take many forms including, but not limited to pointing out factual and empirical contradictions, deconstruction, hermeneutics (interpretation), discourse analysis, counterfactual analysis, semiotics, and plain-old internal criticism, meaning here contradictions in the logic of argumentation. These approaches are not always explicit.

Yet, a symptomatic reading of our broadsheets does reveal traces of attempts to go beyond mindless deposits of remonstration. Yes, we have a good deal of irresponsible criticism for criticism’s sake, but most writers try to make a meaningful contribution to our ongoing debates. It is this context that I offer nine points on the art of being critical.

1. People write with theoretical assumptions even though they do not use words associated with theorizing, words that are often abstract. In this sense, we are all theorists. Most columns and letters are concerned with issues of justice, the rule of law, democratic governance and economic, cultural, racial, gender, and political equality. Writers use theories to make sense of the empirical world. Data do not speak on their own behalf. Data are mere raw materials that must be classified, analyzed, interpreted.
2. According to Robert W. Cox, a professor of international political economy at York University in Toronto, the world of theory may be divided into problem-solving and critical theory. The former takes the world it finds; the latter investigates how the world and society we write about, came into being.
3. The task of problem-solving criticism is to make things better for society without having to embark on a revolution. On the other hand, critics who want a complete overhaul of everything existing, demand all the institutions of society to be reconstructed from afresh. The problem of radical critics is they know how to break things up, but have no viable ‘theory’ for reconstruction.
4. Criticism, including those by columnists and letter writers, are never politically neutral. All critics in the newspapers have some kind of political interest. That said, they try to make their arguments appear to be apolitical, or better yet, in the interest of all regardless of political affinities. For instance, Randy Gopaul in a recent Village Voice piece, refers to Milton Freidman and Ludwig von Mises to justify his claims about race politics in Guyana. Mr. Gopaul knows that the Austrian School of economics is the fount of radical free-market ideology where equality is irrelevant. Yet he uses the names of Freidman and von Mises to lend intellectual credibility to his arguments about race and inequality in Guyana. PS: Hayek, instead of von Mises would have been more effective.
5. Many critics try to make their arguments ‘scientific’. They think that loads of data constitute the grounds for making law-like (nomothetic) statements. Critics need to be careful here. The attempt to be make arguments scientific in the natural science sense, assumes that the subject (writer) and the object (problem addressed) could be compartmentalized, separated from each other. But this is scientistic, not scientific. The former is a mere pretention towards science.
6. Instead of trying to be scientific, good social science criticism must be historical and holistic. The historical approach allows us to see how things came about, rather than assuming the current situation is ‘natural.’ Further, it is best not to divide up society into discreet parts because, in fact, the thing called society is a structured totality.
7. Most critics want change but change from what to what is deeply contentious. At this point, we need to understand that ideology shapes how we see the world, and influences the type of change we want, and how to go about it. While I do not mean to over-politicize this piece, the point is illustrated with reference to the WPA’s ideology of bringing about change through “all means necessary,” rather than via electoral competition. By contrast, the PNCR and PPP/C believe in winning hearts and minds, and in winning elections at the polls. “All means necessary” often refers to political violence.
8. Good critics do not separate the domestic, regional, and international/global. To do so it to underestimate the ways in which world order pressures (interstate system and global economy) shape the limits and possibilities of domestic behavior. A good example of this is the ways in which the global politics of climate change has become a fetter on Guyana’s oil & gas sector. The great powers have been moralizing climate change economics to preserve their built-in privileges they enjoy in the current world economic order.

9.For a long-term programme of critical engagement to be effective, the critics must become consciously self-reflective. They must think about the consequences of their writing and must review the extent to which they are contributing to deepening the institutionalization of pluralism and the democratic ethos, or detracting from it.

The French philosopher M. Foucault once stated that “people know what they do” and “they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what it is what they do does.” We know that intended actions have unintended consequences, and that is always a worry for responsible writers. My concern today is that many of today’s critics knowingly cultivate disunity as part of their political strategy. It is time to reflect on this even if you accept Carl Schmitt axiom that the political world is divided between enemies and friends. Tentanda Via.

Sincerely,

Dr. Randolph Persaud (Randy)

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• Dr. Randolph Persaud (Randy), Guyana Chronicle, Guyana Times, Kaieteur News, Stabroek News

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