Time for Critique

Didier Fassin is the James Wolfensohn Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. The author of several books, including most recently Life: A Critical User’s Manual, he was the first social scientist to receive the Nomis Distinguished Scholar Award.Bernard E. Harcourt is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and professor of political science at Columbia University and a director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Founding director of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought at Columbia University, he is the author of several books, including most recently The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction, by Didier Fassin and Bernard E. HarcourtPart I: Critique as Practice1. How Is Critique?, by Didier Fassin2. Critique as a Political Practice of Freedom, by Linda M. G. Zerilli3. Critique Without a Politics of Hope?, by Ayşe Parla4. The Usefulness of Uncertain Critique, by Peter Redfield5. Human Rights Consciousness and Critique, by Karen Engle6. Critique as Subduction, by Massimiliano Tomba7. What’s Left of the Real?, by Vanja HamzićPart II: Critique in Practice8. Subaltern Critique and the History of Palestine, by Lori Allen9. Critical Theory in a Minor Key to Take Stock of the Syrian Revolution, by Fadi A. Bardawil10. Pragmatic Critique of Torture in Sri Lanka, by Nick Cheesman11. Dispossession, Reimagined from the 1690s, by David Kazanjian12. Crisis, Critique, and Abolition, by Andrew Dilts13. Law, Critique, and the Undercommons, by Allegra M. McLeod14. Critical Praxis for the Twenty- First Century, by Bernard E. HarcourtList of ContributorsIndex

What is a timely book? Perhaps one that, in the middle of urgency, is untimely enough to bridge the gaps between a rich tradition and a problematic future, identifying multiple forms of resistance and innovation within multiple life worlds which are also places of reflection. I found all that, and more, in Fassin and Harcourt's fascinating inquiry on the question of critique and its relation to practice. And I trust that readers will think as much.