What is the role of a critic? This question seems to be ever more popular, usually posed with something of a smirk—Critics? Who needs them?—as the once-strong voices of our critics are sucked deeper and deeper into the noise of social media and algorithm-produced judgements. But if these professional arbiters are good at anything, it is making their voices heard; they will not go down without a fight. However, although there are many similarities between the arguments voiced by critics in defense of criticism, there are also substantial differences regarding how they define their occupation—both what it is, and what it should be. While Daniel Mendelsohn purports to be a an educator of the masses, Barry Schwabsky perceives himself an essential figure in the creation of art, and Bruno Latour insists on improving criticism for its own sake.

Primarily, in his essay for the New Yorker titled “A Critic’s Manifesto,” Daniel Mendelsohn expresses a rather traditional perception of the cultural critic. “The role of the critic,” he says, “is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way.” In this way, Mendelsohn sees himself as a critic for the people. He seeks to harness his own taste and knowledge of art in order to judge it meaningfully, and then present his judgements to the public in his “engaging and, preferably, entertaining way” so that the uncultured masses can follow his arguments and learn to think more critically on their own. In other words, the role of criticism is not to reveal the correct judgement on any given subject, but to demonstrate a unique, practiced mode of perception so that others may come to their own conclusions. However, while Mendelsohn’s model sets up the critic as a sort of guide for the public, art critic Barry Schwabsky perceives himself as a representative of all spectators.

In his essay “A Critic’s Job of Work,” Schwabsky first explains how he believes that art is created not just by the artists themselves but through a participatory process including both them and the spectators of their work. He underlines this concept with a quote from the poet Walt Whitman: “Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does.” It is based on this foundation that Schwabsky defines his role as a critic; “The art critic,” he declares, “formalizes and deliberately exemplifies the role of the spectator who realizes the artist’s work—not by leaving it just as it is, but by adding something to it, making a personal contribution.” In other words, Schwabsky is seeking to be Whitman’s idealized spectator, “the complete thing.” Like Mendelsohn, he places great value on the distinction between professional critics and everyone else, perceiving a critic as the more knowledgable and experienced version of an ordinary spectator. However, unlike Mendelsohn, Schwabsky’s goal is not to teach the public to do what he does—instead, he seeks to be a sort of artist himself by ensuring that great works of art receive worthy receptions. But if Mendelsohn is a people’s critic, and Schwabsky is an artist’s critic, then Bruno Latour is a critic’s critic.

“Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” asks the title of his scholarly article, and the answer that follows is quite a bit more complex than those offered by the aforementioned cultural critics. Latour seeks to analyze in depth how highbrow criticism has, at least in his eyes, had a detrimental effect on our culture as of late. One focus of his study is the so-called overzealous “iconoclasm” of critics, who Latour claims are seeking to de-fetishize any and all “objects” through their work. He perceives these rampant attempts at demystification by scholars as leading to—or at least justifying the logic of—conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers (if the truth about our culture is routinely hidden from the masses, could not the same be true of government? Of science?). In his conclusion, Latour argues for a new kind of criticism:

Can we become critical again, in the sense here offered by Turing? That is, generating more ideas than we have received, inheriting from a prestigious critical tradition but not letting it die away, or ‘dropping into quiescence’ like a piano no longer struck. This would require that all entities, including computers, cease to be objects defined simply by their inputs and outputs and become again things, mediating, assembling, gathering many more folds than the ‘united four.’

Latour does not elaborate very deeply on what this new breed of criticism would actually look like, but in a fashion similar to Mendelsohn, he aims at better bridging the distance between critics and the masses. And like Schwabsky, Latour hopes that critics would create new meanings and possibilities through their work. However, this revolutionary brand of cultural criticism that Latour describes is nearly as abstract as Turing’s  “super-critical” machine. What would it mean for a critic to turn fetishized “objects” into Heidegger’s gathered, folded “things” instead of the other way around? Perhaps it would mean defending the so-called “low art” like unoriginal superhero movies to which critics like Schwabsky and Mendelsohn might be tempted to take a hatchet.

In the end, the role of criticism is largely disputed amongst these critics, and although they use their critical minds to create careful, thoughtful arguments over the purpose and value of their profession, modern technoculture is deaf to their cause as it slowly crops them out of the picture, reducing their work to numbers and “content” with numbered-words.