The Case for Dissensus

Negative criticism—its utility, ethics, and cultural politics—is one of those subjects that keeps on giving to essayists and newspaper columnists.

I know this because that’s how a column I wrote ten years ago for the Globe and Mail started off. Since then I’ve been asked on several other occasions to write at length about “going negative.” It’s a debate that some of us need to keep having. But while we’ve all been here before, in Hater, culture critic John Semley does advance some new arguments for being against so much.

But why? Why do we have to write apologies for bad reviews in the first place? Why should the exercise of critical judgment need to be defended?

In part it’s just a function of the sheer volume of media that modern life...