Who? How and How Much? When and Where? On Why We Need to Be Pragmatic about Critique

As critique appears to have run out of steam, become a culprit in the culture wars, and a source of capitalization in the market place of social media prestige, the following discussion embraces these dynamics not as epiphenomena to be overcome but as critical styles that be restyled within a consequentialist and pragmatist frame. Dramatizing critique in this way shifts the methodological focus away from the redemptive gesture that guides the critique of critique toward the creative exploration of what can be done to make critique work within the gamified battlefield of contemporary social media environments. Doing so invites a provocative change of critical tone, reflections upon who counts as a critic, and an encounter with everyday moral calculations. It culminates in a deflationary image of critique as everyday practice.