A dissenting author’s critique ends up reinforcing the very system it opposes.

Evidence

The subversive author, on the other hand, interrogates the foundational assumptions and epistemological mainstays of the discursive formations as well as of the larger system of power that sustains them. Marx was one such author, but after 1917, he rose to the rank of a discursive author. Freud, however, was almost “born,” in one important sense, into a discursive authorship, having gathered discursive momentum some three decades before his death. (It is not the place here to interrogate in any detail Foucault’s lumping together of Marx and Freud, since their discursivity is not of a type, and thus should be further distinguished, schematically and typologically. Since our authors do not belong to any of these categories, it is not essential to engage that issue.) What differentiates the subversive author from his discursive counterpart is the absence in a central domain of a discursive momentum that is integral to a formation. A subversive author is thus synonymous with a latent, potential, or at best embryonic discursive momentum that never rises to the level of a formation, one that is oppositional to the dominating épistémè. For once that level is attained a subversive author obviously ceases to belong to that category. Yet, while the subversive author shares certain qualitative attributes with the discursive author (chief among them systemic or foundational critique, typified by Marx and Freud, respectively), this type also shares quantitative attributes with the dissenting author. By virtue of dissenting on major—but not foundational or systemic—issues within the system, the dissenting author invariably and inevitably provokes opposition and countercritique. The subversive author likewise tends to generate a measure of critique, at times rather vehement and overwhelming, while at others less so—the latter by virtue of a tendency to marginalize and isolate, whether consciously or not. Yet, the quantitative analogy between the two authors does not only lie here. It is most remarkable in the parallel response in endorsement and following. The dissenting author attracts followers who, by virtue of their awareness of the need to critique the system, end up reinforcing and strengthening the system. The subversive author’s followers stand on the opposite side, adopting the subversive author’s critique with a view to changing the underpinnings of the system, creating another one, altogether different. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 342

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes three authorial types — subversive, discursive, dissenting — on the axis of whether their critique strengthens or overturns the dominant system.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s ‘What is an Author?’ and the general problem of how critique can be co-opted into the system it targets — echoes Berger and Luckmann’s legitimation work. — connects to: Critics are implicated in the systems they condemn; The political facade’s illusion sustains the very individuals who criticise it.; Society represses the negative and then reabsorbs the subversive art that resists it. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 65 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The core paradox — that dissenting critique serves the system while genuinely subversive critique cannot reach systemic status without ceasing to be subversive — is a dense, reusable analytic frame worth sitting with.