If cultural criticism is rooted in critique, in what is critique rooted? That is far too big a topic for any one person so I'm just going to throw out some extravagant generalizations about historicity, critique, and agency and I would love to hear what others think. If the Frankfurt School's idea of critique is rooted in a horrific historical moment, one in which intellectuals were not just derided but jailed and killed, if the major theorists of the late twentieth century, virtually all of whom consider critique to be foundational to their method, came of age in the 1960s in the midst of struggles, riots, assassinations, unjust wars, and radicalism generated by a sense of political urgency and agentive hopelessness, what will the cultural criticism of the future look like for eighteen year-olds who voted for the first time for an utterly improbable and historically unlikely president who won. In other words, in the gross world of power politics and partisan politics in the U.S., what happens if what no one could have predicted was even possible a year ago could, through concerted collective effort, become possible? If you believe you have agency in democracy, what is the affective, critical imperative borne of that agency? What is the relationship between theoretical critique and collective action? What is the continuity between success in one improbable arena and the sense that you can enact change in other arenas as well through organized, determined, focused, collective action? What form of progressive critique, evaluation, and analysis emerges when you believe that you have the collective power to enact change in a progressive direction, even against a generation of anti-progressive and highly repressive politics? What form of analysis and future action emerges when you demonstrate, through action as well as through theory, that it is possible to succeed against all predictions, against the assumptions of history?

These are all interesting questions that do NOT presume a utopic world but, rather, presume a rooted sense of power to enact certain forms of collective action and change within a deeply flawed world where constant intervention is required.

I see so many people of my generation, whose sense of urgent critique emerged concurrent with a sense of collective impotence, who are actually fearful of this historical moment. They are worried about betrayal, fearful that too much joy at this success will make us stupid and unable to see areas of real inequality in the world, that taking pride in some collective action accomplished in an entirely improbable presidential race will make us idiotic about all those areas still requiring vigilance and action. But is that kind of stunned, goofy obliviousness really the outcome of success? Or does one collective and unlikely success against odds allow you to feel the power (and pleasure) necessary to take on even bigger and more important challenges in the future? How is affect changed if one brings an expectation of success versus an expectation of resigned, knowing, and "realistic" premonition of failure, of an inability ever to modify the unchanging same of tyrannies large and small?

Rhetorical and real questions. I'd love to hear from you. What do you think?