Beyond conventional critique in education: embracing the affirmative

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides new insight into the potentialities of critique. Drawing on posthuman critical theory and the Spinozan concept of power to act, we explore the limits of critique that centrally depends on making explicit power relations that are frequently hidden. Set within the context of inequalities surrounding sexuality, gender and mental health, this exploration involves two Australian government schools and critique as practised. The interdependence of affective, discursive and material relations as they play into these inequalities is shown. Affect and material forces emerge as constitutive aspects of critique with the capacity to address these inequalities and do so in generative ways. Critique presents as more than exposing power structures and power manifests as potentialising, as well as normalising. The argument is made that we might with profit move beyond human-centred and exclusively critical modes of critique. A de-centering of human subjects and re-centering of human and more-than-human relations augments received views of critique and reflects the immanent and productive power to act that underpins it. In bringing an enacted ontology of power to bear, what counts as critique is complex relational positioning with both criticality and affirmation at its core.