Criticism and criminology: In search of legitimacy GEORGE PAVLICH University of Auckland, New Zealand Abstract Although the new criminology held a mandate to advance novel critical genres, it developed a radical program at the expense of studying the bases of its critique. In this article, I argue that by overlooking the latter, influential strands of radical criminology (e.g. left realism) have inadvertently succumbed to the lure of an insubstantial critical pragmatism. Here, critique claims legitimacy either on the basis of an ability to secure universal emancipation, or increase managerial efficiency. Both claims are problematic since contemporary knowledge-producing arenas no longer embrace the certainties driving modernity’s critical genres and technical efficiency disallows fundamental critique. As such, critique has been immoderately abridged. By not paying sufficient attention to such issues, many critical criminologists have not appreciated the extent to which their favored critical genres are ill-suited to an ethos wracked by uncertainty. In trying to recover legitimate genres of critique, I refer to recent developments within critical criminology and I explore how Lyotard’s work can help us to reconceive critical practices in criminology. The discussion concludes with a prologue outlining an alternative critical genre that might claim legitimacy through ‘paralogy.’ Key Words critical criminology • criticism and crime • left realism • Lyotard • radical criminology Theoretical Criminology © 1999 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi. 1362–4806(199902)3:1 Vol. 3(1): 29–51; 006982. 29