Critique is unsustainable: A polemic

Abstract

In this polemical essay, we seek to provoke reflection and debate on the role of critique in addressing the global ecological crisis that we find ourselves confronted with in the Anthropocene. Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s reading of capitalism, we will suggest that the core functional process of capitalism is one of infinite growth that subsumes any attempts at resistance, escape, or socially progressive practice. Critique, we will suggest, is a part of capitalist processes, not an opposition to it. Consequently, we will argue that, given the inextricable imbrication of accounting and capitalism, without an impossible and unconceptualisable ‘post-capitalist accounting’, all notions of sustainable accounting are protracted exercises in futility that serve rather than abate ecological collapse. Paradoxically, any attempt to produce such accounting makes it harder to achieve.