My three-part series of posts on critique, cynicism and realism is up on Overland – excerpt:

So what are we left with? Critique is a way of retreating and retrenching, to maintain a degree of distance both from the world we inhabit and the life we lead. We are, each of us, so compromised by our involvement in a deeply cynical society, that critique becomes more a matter of psychic self-defence than an instrument of political change. One can pick over the old bones of ideology, pull apart this or that piece of discourse, and take a dismal pleasure in our own cleverness and freedom from illusion; but it is an empty cleverness and a bitter freedom without agency.

And links:

Part one: ‘Enlightened false consciousnsess’
Part two: ‘Keeping ‘em honest’
Part three: The Speculative Turn