Paper short abstract:

I argue that presently procedures to authorize controversial, politically relevant knowledge are changing. The emergence of non-governmental organizations that certify and rate things of all sorts is indicative of this change. This has in impact on what social critique can be.

Paper long abstract:

Many of us have invested a lot of intellectual energy to establish anthropology as a post-structuralist, post-foundational discipline. The only realm where we are normally prepared to offer knowledge with a normal scientific claim of validity is with reference to processes where others make sense and create realities for, instance by numeric representations. Or even a step further: instead of writing the critique of this or that social reality it appears more challenging to examine the making of critique.

In certain contexts the will to "speak truth to power", i.e. to articulate critique and expect to be heard, seems to require one more additional step beyond the analysis of other peoples' sense making. This step is about making a substantial claim with reference to a state of affairs that gets across as being objective and sometimes imperative for action.

A pertinent case is an anthropologist's knowledge about what she considers to be an ethically intolerable state of affairs that is publicly not recognized as such. For instance me reporting about what goes on in South Kordofan (Sudan) since June 2011.

However, all knowledge to be processed juridically and politically needs to be authorized beforehand by certain procedures. I argue that presently the procedures to authorize controversial, politically relevant knowledge are changing in a certain direction. The emergence of non-governmental organizations that certify and rate things of all sorts is indicative of this change. This, again, has in impact on what social critique can be.