Abstract

Note: This is a pre-print, Author Original Manuscript. The final version was published online in _Textual Practice_ in January 2026. doi 10.1080/0950236X.2025.2608009. Please cite the published version. This paper explores the extent to which works of literary fiction both resonate with and contribute to the aims of critique, understood along Foucauldian lines as a transformative engagement with modes of subjectivity. Drawing upon Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, these modes are defined in terms of the ‘conduct of sensibility’. Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) reveals aspects of the conduct of sensibility and of the battle between conflicting forces that strive to give shape to that conduct. In its multi-perspectival staging of the complex formation of a mode of sensibility, the novel makes a contribution to the practice of critique by providing both an analysis of a certain framework of subjectivation and by offering a strategic map for its transformation. If modes of sensibility, along with the socially sanctioned conduct of that sensibility, unfold along an axis of perception, interpretation, and action, then works of fiction offer privileged access to that complex web, not only as tools for analysis but also as interventions that nudge, probe, and disrupt. Hence, rather than critique on its own, or literature on its own, being able to engage in effective critique, my argument is that the practice of critique needs fiction, not as an occasional object of analysis but as a constant ally in its work. The conclusion of this paper, therefore, is not so much that novels can make readers more effective critics, or more virtuous citizens, but that engaging with fiction can make critique itself more effective.