The critical mind is one that retrains its senses to interrogate ideas and strip them of the ideological and cultural freight lying beneath the surface of consciousness. Such a mind takes upon itself the task of isolating each thing so as to empty it of any preconceived meaning. The role of the critical mind, then, is to take everything apart — not for the sake of dismantling, but so that the elements of each idea remain separate from one another, securing a fuller and more careful understanding of the origins of consciousness and its necessities. Where there is no sound appreciation of the place of each structure of knowledge, hidden meanings inevitably creep in and settle into a fluidity that grants itself the right to colour everything with whatever purposes are at hand — and that is the business of politics, not of pure consciousness. Criticism here is not merely an act of discernment; it is a continuous test. Criticism is necessary for criticism's own sake, and it cannot be understood as a kind of philosophical rhetoric able to build its authority outside the guardianship of criticism itself.
Those said to possess this faculty in abundance do not stand above the rest of society. And because the process is complex and so revealing of its contents, it is all the more costly in societies whose living forces still relish the comfort of ease and leniency, the certainty of absolute guidance when building appearances on the promptings of the possible and the reasonable, and the pouring of their orality into moulds of slogans and talk. Those charged with building such a mind suffer a double denial. On the one hand they are accused of theoretical indulgence, of fleeing the demands of reality — yes, because they still tread with a cautious sensitivity that does not wish to say everything at once. On the other hand they are expected to yield to the restless movement of society. They are caught, in other words, between two submissions: to power and to the masses. Here they must not practise the virtue of giving listeners what they ask for, nor fear those able to turn the instruments of the state against dissenters. We would not be going too far in saying that critics of this kind withdraw from action and effect because they are a minority, unable to strike a balance between reflection and the burdens and responsibility that fall on them as the ones the masses demand most.
Criticism is necessary for criticism's own sake
In a strange situation that happens often, the masses go on regarding them as necessary boils, there to ward off harm — their existence essential because they are a front line to hide behind, while the masses keep harping on their impotence and the meagreness of their stock for producing change. It seems that an intellectual of this kind — alone in the face of the ruling class — is enough for the masses, easing their burden and quenching their thirst for the legitimacy of keeping silent about injustice, so long as the proxy cannot provide alternatives. It is as if the masses were subject to a hidden process that power desires: the existence of spokespeople for the collective reduces the chances of an assault on power, confining the battle to quarrelling, powerless individuals on one side and, on the other, a power swollen with the illusions of representation. It is an unequal battle: forsaken individuals, despite their right to speak on behalf of the rest, and a power that draws its plausibility from the wide void called “the masses of our people”.
Among the questions tied to this small minority is the tiresome binary that sets “the intellectual” against power — a binary we can at the very least call hybridised stupidity. Because the intellectual owns tools that he has laboured to refine until they ripen into propositions and ideas, he becomes in this position a public intellectual whose job is to answer everything, at any time. The demand for such figures in society seems to mean casting them as spokespeople by proxy for everyone else — a view that now belongs to the leftovers of the Middle Ages, when it was enough for someone to declare “J'accuse” (the title of Émile Zola's article on the Dreyfus Affair, 1898) for everyone else to get off the bus at the first stop without paying the fare, dodging the cost of travelling the road of confrontation.
Today the term “intellectual” is no longer the preserve of those who hold the right of expression. In today's world, speech belongs to everyone. The class of intellectuals is therefore doomed to vanish if society clings to its classical definition of a group of eloquent and charismatic people who, on top of that, are compelled to answer society's claims on them, standing before the court of power that sits in permanent session.
It has become necessary to reconsider this binary, which has cost us so much. Put simply, it seeks to transfer all of the masses' reserves of consciousness to the “bank” of the one who speaks in books, in the sayings of sages and the experiences of philosophers. This explains why there is no class of intellectuals united around a single understanding of the world and society: they cannot truly build any kind of unity among themselves so long as the legitimacy of their existence is tied to an unconscious course of action that lacks scrutiny and observation. Societies are not moved by a steady consciousness, because a poor kind of criticism prevails — a criticism obsessed with evasion — through which “the masses” rid themselves of the burden whose deep roots in daily life make them groan, by shouting that nothing can be changed any more, and that the reason lies with those figuratively called “the elite”.
Confrontation with power also means shifting the battle — the battle of consciousness against injustice — from an authentic right of the masses into a battle whose details are known by heart (opposed — confronted — imprisoned … and so on), along with the rest of a cheap drama.
In today's world, speech belongs to everyone
The truth is that today's battle is one of consciousness, and it is not necessarily bound to these forms of conflict. Under the dominance of the media it has become desirable — or at least a way out of embarrassment — for the masses to speak for themselves in their own clear voice. Indeed, they must shake off their inertia and their practised habit of absolving themselves of responsibility and selling it, without contract, to proxies who play their part in change with what they lack: a true knowledge of the nature of social transformation. Many of us may not realise that the world has changed from a struggle over power between two sides into a battle to prove the validity of the ideas and arguments used in the confrontation.
Today's world can no longer remain hostage to individual abilities, however singular, to be deployed against the faults of power and the appetites of politicians. We now face the independent existence of a human being beyond proxy — one who can realise himself through symbolic violence, draining the dominance of whoever holds the reins of wealth and land by exposing him through criticism, and sometimes through triviality. As for the tale of confrontation — what a seductive and somewhat sexual phrase — today's idea of confrontation is nothing but the remnant of knights competing for a princess's heart, or of fighters indulging a lust for death.
We believe it has become necessary to close the chapter on the notions of prison, detention and confrontation between the intellectual and power, and to open new pages in which an individual consciousness capable of contending, rather than confronting, takes up the task of speaking for masses who flee the consequences of speaking for themselves. It then becomes necessary to break the covenant with a consciousness entrusted to one particular class of society. Since the battle is theirs and the life is theirs, the masses should, on the one hand, work to limit power's dominance over them and, on the other, rid themselves of the illusion of a privileged class responsible for meeting power somewhere nearby and paying the costs of the battle in instalments.
In our view, the task is to rebuild the vocabulary of class in social studies. It is no longer possible to rely on divisions such as “elite / masses”; we need a new understanding that defines society as a force above any other meaning. This means beginning to build a new social science that draws on the latest transformations in consciousness. It would free us from the leftovers that have long dominated us — leftovers that sustain themselves by sidelining powerful energies in society and stirring its stillness, and by pushing the whole task onto a minority whose impotence, relative strength, and even bullying of everyone else under the illusion of privilege and of speaking for others, history has proven. None of this can be reached without the critical mind.