Essays in Refusal: Pre-Theoretical Commitments in Postmodern Anthropology and Critical Race Theory

A paper challenges Foucauldian "rejectionism" by suggesting, through an example, that criticism cannot and should not assume an irreducibly oppositional stance. Critique is indeed "a challenge directed to what is"; this challenge, however, should not be reduced to an "insurrectionary gesture." Two broad claims are forwarded. First, criticism itself should be understood as a social practice. Such an understanding demonstrates that certain characterizations of postmodernism as an antifoundational, nihilistic retreat from struggles for justice have no referent in the social world. Second, this sociological understanding of criticism provides scholars with useful conceptual resources with which to guide the productive incorporation of postmodern insights into legal scholarship. The paper analyzes the impact of the "postmodern turn" on the Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement.