The conceptualisation and limits of 'critical' in critical military studies

What has the ‘critical’ in Critical Military Studies meant? What criticalities have informed and been developed within CMS approaches to the study of militarism and military institutions, power and processes? What might some of the limits of this be? And as we look ahead to the future of the field, what imperatives might guide the directions we take next? Responding to these animating questions I set out to do two things in this article. Firstly, I map out where the ‘critical’ in critical military studies came from, how it developed, and attempt to locate the field in broader analytic traditions and social and political projects. Secondly, I take the article in a more exploratory direction in which I map some of my misgivings about the limits of CMS’s criticalities and invite directions we might take next. I focus on two areas: the disavowal of denunciation, which I argue has foreclosed important normative work within CMS; and the framing of alternative, which I argue has been limited by a post-structuralist concern with opening space for, rather than delineating the conditions of, alternatives.