Affirmative Critique

Addressing their own scholarly work as well as work by other researchers, the three participants in the discussion examine how it is possible and fruitful to offer critique, first and foremost in organization and management studies but also more generally. Topics discussed include the ubiquity of critique in the present and age of criticism, conceptions of critique, the distinction between negative and affirmative critique, criticism as a problematic caricature and affirmative critique, as well as feminist anger as critique and black scholars’ dreams and articulations of another science and another possible future. When conceptualizing and discussing affirmative critique in organizations and management studies as a critique beyond criticism, the three discussants seek assistance from the work of, among others, critical philosophers based in a European tradition (Derrida, Foucault, Kant, Kierkegaard, Schlegel, and Socrates), critical psychologists from Australia (White), as well as scholars and poets situated in critical feminist and queer studies (Butler, Muñoz, Haraway, Puig de la Bellacasa and Sedgwick) and American black studies (Baldwin, Hughes, Lorde and Hartman).