The politics of crisis can seem to render the probing examination of aspirations, ideals, and values—in short, of ethics—an unnecessary distraction from more pressing tasks. And yet an attentive reader of Fassin and Harcourt’s volume, which was provoked by the political turmoil of recent years, will notice that the chapters are animated by a pervasive, if largely unremarked, moral lexicon. The authors speak of “solidarity,” “freedom,” “hope,” “community,” “justice,” “fairness,” “dignity,” “humiliation,” “decency,” and “deservingness,” and make value-laden references to “democracy,” “safety,” and “the collective.” The normative claims may remain implicit, but still they are unavoidable. Indeed, what would the political be without them?

>"With so many crises—environmental, humanitarian, racial, viral, and economic—the work of “critique” can seem to be a luxury. But is it?"

[https://www.publicbooks.org/for-the-slow-work-of-critique-in-critical-times/](https://www.publicbooks.org/for-the-slow-work-of-critique-in-critical-times/) "In critical times, do we still need the slow and subtle work of critique? Bernard Harcourt, coeditor, with Didier Fassin, of A Time for Critique, raises doubts, writing that “critique was always sharper when it confronted liberal ideology … using the aspirations and ideals of its object of critique to motivate a reassessment. … But when the opposition is openly racist, sexist, homophobic, nationalistic, and supremacist, there is little to be gained by immanent critique."

First, critique is not simply “criticism.” Criticism asserts that something is wrong. The critic attempts to unveil the truth of a reality that others misrecognize.

What is the work of critique, and what are its possibilities and limits?