Abstract

This essay discusses Felski's and Latour's postcritical proposals, casts light on the non-negligible differences between them, but also their shared argumentative strategy, which consists in assuming as an exclusive evaluation criterion for a theory its practical fecundity, that is, its performative efficacy. My main intent is to show how, by drawing and elaborating on the 20th linguistic turn or better the distinguishable role of language in the diverse construction and self-construction of natural and historical-social worlds, only the retrieval and transformation of a critical-reflective framework allows valorising important postcritical intuitions and suggestions, such as the one relating to the impact of the living or inanimate things within the historical- social world or also relating to the role of the subjects, study objects, in the elaboration and attestation of a social theory, yet without lapsing into reductive conceptions of action and subjectivity, but rather gesturing towards a more adequate thematization. By reflective critique here I mean a framework that, by integrating "real" processes, is capable of accounting for the conditions and limits of possible controllability/testability of the theoretical proposals about them, linguistically articulated and advanced.