Critique,Ethics, and the Apparatus of Experience: A Foucauldian Framework

The paper explores examples of contemporary experience in order to demonstrate the moralisation of new areas of behaviour (especially in relation to environmental issues).It sketches a Foucauldian framework for understanding the historical transformation of experience,in terms of the "apparatus of experience." On that basis,it presents a novel account of critique,in which critique is seen as the potentially transformational,experiential practice of re-experiencing the contemporary apparatuses of experience.In other words,critique is "experience squared." It is this re-experiencing of our everyday experience that permits us,to a certain extent,to "get over ourselves" and thus to reflect critically on the processes of moralisation and de-moralisation in which we participate.