Critical Practice from Voltaire to Foucault, Eagleton and Beyond -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Overview -- The Method of Critique -- Historical Roots of this Study -- Institutional History and Cultural Criticism -- Critical Theory in Question -- Historical-Materialist Method -- Who Are Critical Practitioners? -- Historical-Materialist Invasion -- 1. What is Critical Practice? -- Modes of Critical Practice -- Luc Boltanski: Social Science Critique -- Spying on the World from the Library -- Liberation -- Elimination of all Social Differentiation? -- Detective Work as Critical Social Science -- Teresa Ebert: Humanities Critique -- Blame it on Dilthey -- Is All Literature Criticism? -- Theory as Method in Humanities -- Interpretive Impasse -- Submerging Truth in Layers of Linguistic Foam -- Marx and Critique -- Probing the Historicity of Material Reality -- Chick-Lit and Capitalist Domination -- Max Horkheimer: Meta-Critique -- Stalking Western Civilization -- What Historical Origins for Critical Theory? -- Horkheimer's Bourgeois Philosophy -- Machiavelli + Hobbes + Vico = Bourgeois Dystopia -- Machiavelli's Vision -- A False Good Idea? -- Summary -- 2. Voltaire: Setting the Role of Public Intellectual -- On Vigilance -- Critical Judgment -- Here is Voltaire -- Is Voltaire a Category Error? -- Critical Perspective at the Margin -- Battle Against Fanaticism -- Encyclopedic Demystifications -- Dangers of a Progressive Position -- Intellectual Acumen -- The Enlightenment Quagmire -- Banished Realism -- The Danger of Being Earnest -- Assertively Modern -- More Than Just Digging Up Dirt -- Best of all Possible Worlds: Not Lisbon -- Critical Value of the Systematically Absent -- Creative Value of Negativity -- Theater of Opposition -- Candide as Tragicomedy -- Revolutionary Praxis with a Hoe.

Biography Trumping History? -- Decency Flashes in a Dehumanized World -- Moral Rectitude in an Immoral World -- Soft on Politics? -- Disillusioned Utopian? -- 3. Schiller: Reform Consciousness to Change the World -- Here is Schiller -- University Politics -- Critical Production -- A Man of Three Seasons -- Revolutionary Theater -- Setting the Scene for 'The Robbers' -- The Curtain Falls -- From Theater to Philosophy -- Narrative Arc Defined -- Social-Philosophy with Feeling -- Goethe -- Critical Tension: Materialist and Idealist -- Freedom as Judgment -- Revolution as Change in Consciousness -- Beyond Beauty -- Freedom Beyond Necessity as Grace -- Dignity as Freedom's Higher Calling -- Aesthetic Education: Revolution as an Inside Job -- Play -- Political Aesthetics -- Late Drama -- Hitting the Arrow on the Head -- Revolution as Determined Political Action -- Closing on Form -- 4. Foucault: The End of Evasion -- Foucault Uncorked -- Gunning Away From the Intellectual Stratosphere -- Critical Particulars -- Sawing off the Limb on Which He Stood? -- Ten Years Stalking a Doctorate -- Modern Rationality as Institutional Abuse -- From Literature to Student Upheaval -- University Straitjacket of Conventional Thought? -- Experimental University as Spectacle: Thinking Runs Wild -- From Revolution to Promotion -- L'Ordre du Discours -- A Program Without Foundations -- Disciplined Tourbillons -- On History as Style -- Political Ordering: Things and Words -- Timeless History -- Method as Historical Dig -- Disestablishment of Society -- Genealogy -- Dispositifs -- Critic in Kant's Wake -- Critical Truth: "I have no Title" -- Public Reason, Private Reasons -- Philosophizing Without Declarative Sentence -- Foucauldian Postlude: No Music, No Dancing….

5 Jean Baudrillard: Critical Practice as Core Extraction -- Baudrillard Caged! -- Ah, To Be Alienated Again! -- Hyperreality as Postmodern Frame -- Imagination and Reality -- Objects as De-objectification -- Breathless Atmosphere -- Throw-Away Utility as Universal Form -- Less Than Entirely Beautiful: America -- Choice Without Liberty -- Debt: Now They Got You, Now You Don't -- Dematerialization of Objective Reality -- Simulacra and Simulation -- No Body, No Murder? -- Critical Imaging of the Real Crime -- Illusion is Better than Nothing at All -- Critique is Dead: Vivre Radical Thought -- Power Begets Agony -- Domination and Hegemony -- The Theory of the Second Best -- Politics as Despicable Half-Measures -- An Aesthetic of Death? -- White Terror -- Bamboozled by Good -- Cybernetic Vortex -- Markets Make Consumers -- Rogue Events -- Baudrillard's Method -- 6 Eagleton: Literary Critic - Literature or Criticism? -- London's Most Loved Literary Critic -- In the Beginning, Lacking Uniform -- Criticism vs. History? -- Self-Denial or Self-Deception? -- Theory? -- English on Trial -- Literary Verdun: Eagleton's Critical Cannon -- What of Unconsciousness? -- After-Words -- Afterworlds -- Post-Modernists be Damned! -- The Ideology of Criticism -- From Tatler to Facebook -- Capital Sucks the Life from Criticism -- Ideology and Critical Aesthetics -- Aesthetics and Marx -- Was Marx Right? -- Born-Again Marx -- The Power of the Social State -- The Realism of Historical Materialism -- Tragic Irony -- Socialism? -- The Public Intellectual -- 7 Hayden White: Historic Truth as Story Telling -- Against Historical Formatting -- Militant Accretion -- Historical Half-Measures -- History as Irony -- Metahistory as Postulate -- Four Figures of Interpretation -- Irony: More Than a Stage Technique -- The Poetics of History -- Imaginary Mastery.

Style as Consciousness Figured-out -- The Irony of Irony -- Behind the Veil: Culture Failure? -- What Historians Do -- Trapped by the Trope of Progress -- Inescapably Ironic -- The Tragic Fault of Disciplined History -- History Rules: Utopia is Disqualified -- The Subliminal Becomes Unimaginable -- Historical Limits on Being -- Narrative Flaw? -- Is History Really There? -- Defenselessly True -- 8 Liberation: Project -- Beyond Domination by Necessity -- Critical Profiling -- Engagement -- Genre Criticism -- The Radical Benchmark -- Cases of Critical Objectification -- Justification or Demagogy? -- Is Jail Necessary? -- Disciplinary Irreverence -- The Issue of Method -- Limits on the Reach of History -- The Historicity of the H-M Method -- Ideological Flux -- Critical Vision: More than Meets the Eye -- 20th Century Openings -- Baudrillard's Bold Move -- Trapped by One's Critical Object? -- Materialized History with Eagleton and White -- Eagleton's Methodological Frame -- White and History's Historicity -- History's Line of Defense -- Disciplined History: Counter Revolution from Above? -- History's Double Dialectic -- History as Apology? -- Intention as Potency -- What Critique of the Critical Industry? -- Excessively Reasonable -- Prolific Irrationality -- Reason against Reason? -- Confusion in the Frankfurt Schoolroom? -- The Limits of Critical Rationalism -- What Future for Critical Practice? -- Promising Leads -- Appendix: Technical Note -- Bibliography -- Index.