Impossibility of 'Auto-Critique' (was Re: Irony, or, the Importance of Being Earnest)

[W. Kiernan]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> 
> Doug replies to me:
> >
> > Yoshie wrote:
> > >
> > > Not at all. There is no such thing as 'auto-critique.' The Self
> > > cannot critique itself without falling into narcissism. Didn't
> > > Marx and Freud tell you that?
> >
> > Well not exactly. Freud psychoanalyzed himself, which is a kind of
> > critique, no? Not that he succeeded, or that a psychoanalysis ever
> > succeeds. But without some allowance for self-critique, we'd all be
> > completely, inescapably creatures of our personal histories and
> > social positions. Engels would have been a capitalist pig and not
> > Marx's collaborator and patron.
> 
> I think that 'auto-critique' fundamentally works to preempt (expected
> and unexpected) critiques by others. One criticizes oneself in the
> secret hope that one won't be (badly) surprised by becoming an object
> of others' criticisms. In other words, 'auto-critique' protects our
> fragile ego from becoming wounded. In this sense, 'auto-critique' is a
> defense mechanism one develops in order to manage the fear and shame
> of having one's own (inescapably) partial vision exposed in front of
> others. It is what we do so as not to get 'caught with our pants
> down,' so to speak. It is a sign of the lack of solidarity (or of
> trust in our friendship/comradeship with others). That is why I
> heavily discount the value of navel-gazing about 'privilege.' It is
> not just an impossible task; it is also a smarmy gesture.
> 
> Barkley Rosser wrote:
> >
> > Ah, but aren't we all narcissists now in this wonderful new era of
> > selfishness?
>
> Perhaps the above is one of those ironic one-liners that do not
> require any reply, but let me pretend ignorance and answer that
> 'auto-critique' allows us to feel we are so wonderfully above being
> defensive of our little ego, thus giving us a pleasant sensation of
> anti-narcissistic narcissism.

Hello Yoshie!

I have an uneasy feeling I'm missing something here.  I don't buy this
absolute position of yours at all.  Sure, you're obviously right that
one reason you might criticize yourself is to cover your ass, another is
to pre-inoculate yourself against others's criticisms.  But above that,
any serious person is going to want to self-criticize, just like he is
going to want to bathe, both out of curiosity and for a self-centered
purpose of knowing what he's apt to do next week, whether or not Freud
and Marx assert it is impossible.  Self-criticism may be relatively more
difficult than criticizing others, a lot more difficult, the criticism
is inevitably partial and defective, but from that it doesn't follow
that it is entirely pointless and fatuous.

In fact, how would you feel about the personality of someone who did not
ever seriously criticize himself, assuming such a person could exist? 
I've got cats that are like that, and I like them all right, but they
are cats and not humans.

Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net