What then does the task of incorporating a self-reflexive and self-critical ethos into the concrete problematization and explanation of social phenomena entail? On the one hand, the ontological postulates of our approach concerning radical contingency have to inform the construction, investigation and explanation of social phenomenon (155).
We must develop a style of research that builds contingency into its very modus operandi, and which is open and attentive to possibilities disclosed by the research itself.
A Deconstructive Genealogy of a social practice or regime
The task here is to reactivate and make evident options that were foreclosed during the emergence of a practice – the clashes and forces which are repressed or defeated – in order to show how the present configuration of practices relies on exclusions that reveal the non-necessary character of the present social formation, and to explore the consequences and potential effects of such ‘repressions’. On the other hand,
Onto-ethical critique
In the mode of what we could call an onto-ethical critique the task is to critically interrogate the conditions under which a particular social practice or regime grips its subjects despite its non-necessary character. This mode of critique furnishes us with a means of critically interrogating the will to (fantasmatic) closure.
However, both modes of critique are informed by an ethos of exercising a fidelity to contingency itself, by displaying other possibilities for political decision and identification as well as other modalities of identification. Together they contribute to a practice of ethico-political interpretation. (155)