In the midst of a discussion about Thomas Nagel’s The View from Nowhere, one of the participants came up with the phrase, “the view from critique.”
“Critique” here refers to a tradition of thought that’s associated with Marx, extends into the postmodern era dominated by Foucault, and continues today in the work of folks like Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek.
In our conversation we agreed that “the view from critique” typically disrupts claims of universal and eternal truths, claims for example about “human nature” that hold for all times and all cultures. Characteristically, the view from critique localizes the universal and temporalizes the eternal. For instance, Judith Butler’s Gender Troubles goes so far as to challenge the timeless verities of “male” and “female”, asserting that these are performative, not natural, categories whose meanings are entirely determined by transient cultural conditions.
I became curious in this conversation about where to locate the “view from critique” itself. When we observe, compare and relativize multiple points in cultural space or historical time, where are we standing ourselves? It seems that we must adopt a position that is “as if” outside space and outside time—something close to Nagel’s “view from nowhere.”
I don’t suggest this invalidates the thought products of “the view from critique.” I do think it implies an interesting irony.