Figuration and/as Critique in Relational Matters

Abstract

In this chapter, I bring together two interests that to me are of great significance for present-day critical (feminist) interventions: On the one hand, my discussion of »Figuration and/as Critique in Relational Matters« presents the potential of figuration as a feminist methodology for earthly relations in thought and life. On the other hand, however, I also intervene critically into possibly too easy or too comforting appropriations of figuration as a specifically relational methodological practice. Thus, I devote a lot of energy in this text to explicate and situate the claim that figuration is a non-innocent critical practice. In my affirmative approach to figuration as a relational matter, with recourse also to my critical practice in Terra Critica: Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities, I stress 'non-innocence' and 'impurity' in critical endeavors as important for assessing critical thinking today.