CRITICISM AND RELIGION

Almost two centuries have passed since the young Karl Marx proclaimed the completion of the critique of religion, adding that such criticism was in fact the "prerequisite of all criticism". One could say that critique's future, unlike that of religion, seemed particularly bright in 1844. From our present point of view, it is difficult not to be struck by two contemporary phenomena that seem to turn this dictum upside down, namely "the return of the religious" and the "crisis of critique". Drawing on various discrepant accounts of and conflicting attempts to solve the latter, we note that they are nonetheless informed by a common set of historical accounts of critique. Have these accounts contributed to critique's current conundrum and, if so, in what way? Given its privileged position, we have turned to Michel Foucault's genealogy of critique in order to tackle this question. After examining its main theses, we observe that despite it's astonishing insights concerning the religious origins of critique it fails to draw the necessary consequences of this fact for contemporary critical practices, a failure which not only immobilizes the latter but also puts into question the viability of genealogy itself. We conclude by proposing that critique seems destined to remain a formal enterprise so long as it continues to oppose itself to religion instead of specifying and fully assuming its own fundamental religiosity.