Critical theory

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A critical theory is any approach to humanities and social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge or dismantle power structures. [1] With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals.[ citation needed ] Some hold it to be an ideology, [2] others argue that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. [3] Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, cultural studies, history, communication theory, philosophy, and feminist theory. [4]

Critical Theory (capitalized) is a school of thought practiced by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them". [5] Although a product of modernism, and although many of the progenitors of Critical Theory were skeptical of postmodernism, Critical Theory is one of the major components of both modern and postmodern thought, and is widely applied in the humanities and social sciences today. [6] [7] [8]

In addition to its roots in the first-generation Frankfurt School, critical theory has also been influenced by György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci. Some second-generation Frankfurt School scholars have been influential, notably Jürgen Habermas. In Habermas's work, critical theory transcended its theoretical roots in German idealism and progressed closer to American pragmatism. Concern for social "base and superstructure" is one of the remaining Marxist philosophical concepts in much contemporary critical theory. [9] The legacy of Critical Theory as a major offshoot of Marxism is controversial. The common thread linking Marxism and Critical theory is an interest in struggles to dismantle structures of oppression, exclusion, and domination. [10] Philosophical approaches within this broader definition include feminism, critical race theory, post-structuralism, queer theory and forms of postcolonialism. [11] [12]

History

Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory (German : Kritische Theorie) in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism. He described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them". [13] Critical theory involves a normative dimension, either by criticizing society in terms of some general theory of values or norms (oughts), or by criticizing society in terms of its own espoused values (i.e. immanent critique ). [14] Significantly, critical theory not only conceptualizes and critiques societal power structures, but also establishes an empirically grounded model to link society to the human subject. [15] It defends the universalist ambitions of the tradition, but does so within a specific context of social-scientific and historical research. [15]

The core concepts of critical theory are that it should:

Postmodern critical theory is another major product of critical theory. It analyzes the fragmentation of cultural identities in order to challenge modernist-era constructs such as metanarratives, rationality, and universal truths, while politicizing social problems "by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings". [16]

Marx

Marx explicitly developed the notion of critique into the critique of ideology, linking it with the practice of social revolution, as stated in the 11th section of his Theses on Feuerbach : "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." [17] In early works, including The German Ideology, Marx developed his concepts of false consciousness and of ideology as the interests of one section of society masquerading as the interests of society as a whole.

Adorno and Horkheimer

One of the distinguishing characteristics of critical theory, as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer elaborated in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), is an ambivalence about the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence that gave rise to the "pessimism" of the new critical theory about the possibility of human emancipation and freedom. [18] This ambivalence was rooted in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, particularly the rise of Nazism, state capitalism, and culture industry as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained in the terms of traditional Marxist sociology. [19] [20]

For Adorno and Horkheimer, state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the traditional tension between Marxism's "relations of production" and "material productive forces" of society. The market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) had been replaced by centralized planning. [21]

Contrary to Marx's prediction in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , this shift did not lead to "an era of social revolution" but to fascism and totalitarianism. As a result, critical theory was left, in Habermas's words, without "anything in reserve to which it might appeal, and when the forces of production enter into a baneful symbiosis with the relations of production that they were supposed to blow wide open, there is no longer any dynamism upon which critique could base its hope". [22] For Adorno and Horkheimer, this posed the problem of how to account for the apparent persistence of domination in the absence of the very contradiction that, according to traditional critical theory, was the source of domination itself.

Habermas

In the 1960s, Habermas, a proponent of critical social theory, [23] raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), by identifying critical knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities, through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation. [24] Although unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkheimer's thought in Dialectic of Enlightenment , Habermas shares the view that, in the form of instrumental rationality, the era of modernity marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment and toward a new form of enslavement. [9] :6 In Habermas's work, critical theory transcended its theoretical roots in German idealism, and progressed closer to American pragmatism.

Habermas's ideas about the relationship between modernity and rationalization are in this sense strongly influenced by Max Weber. He further dissolved the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German idealism, though his epistemology remains broadly Marxist. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere and communicative action, the latter arriving partly as a reaction to new post-structural or so-called "postmodern" challenges to the discourse of modernity. Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rorty, and a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism may be felt in his thought, which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy.

Modern critical theorists

Contemporary philosophers and researchers who have focused on understanding and critiquing critical theory include Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth, Judith Butler, and Rahel Jaeggi. Honneth is known for his works Pathology of Reason and The Legacy of Critical Theory, in which he attempts to explain critical theory's purpose in a modern context. [25] [26] Jaeggi focuses on both critical theory's original intent and a more modern understanding that some argue has created a new foundation for modern usage of critical theory. [25] Butler contextualizes critical theory as a way to rhetorically challenge oppression and inequality, specifically concepts of gender. [27]

Honneth established a theory that many use to understand critical theory, the theory of recognition. [28] In this theory, he asserts that in order for someone to be responsible for themselves and their own identity they must be also recognized by those around them: without recognition in this sense from peers and society, individuals can never become wholly responsible for themselves and others, nor experience true freedom and emancipation—i.e., without recognition, the individual cannot achieve self-actualization.

Like many others who put stock in critical theory, Jaeggi is vocal about capitalism's cost to society. Throughout her writings, she has remained doubtful about the necessity and use of capitalism in regard to critical theory. [29] Most of Jaeggi's interpretations of critical theory seem to work against the foundations of Habermas and follow more along the lines of Honneth in terms of how to look at the economy through the theory's lens. [30] She shares many of Honneth's beliefs, and many of her works try to defend them against criticism Honneth has received. [31]

To provide a dialectical opposite to Jaeggi's conception of alienation as 'a relation of relationlessness', Hartmut Rosa has proposed the concept of resonance. [32] [33] Rosa uses this term to refer to moments when late modern subjects experience momentary feelings of self-efficacy in society, bringing them into a temporary moment of relatedness with some aspect of the world. [33] Rosa describes himself as working within the critical theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, providing an extensive critique of late modernity through his concept of social acceleration. [34] However his resonance theory has been questioned for moving too far beyond the Adornoian tradition of "looking coldly at society". [35]

Schools and Derivates

Postmodern critical social theory

Focusing on language, symbolism, communication, and social construction, critical theory has been applied in the social sciences as a critique of social construction and postmodern society. [7]

While modernist critical theory (as described above) concerns itself with "forms of authority and injustice that accompanied the evolution of industrial and corporate capitalism as a political-economic system", postmodern critical theory politicizes social problems "by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings". [16] Meaning itself is seen as unstable due to social structures' rapid transformation. As a result, research focuses on local manifestations rather than broad generalizations.

Postmodern critical research is also characterized by the crisis of representation, which rejects the idea that a researcher's work is an "objective depiction of a stable other". Instead, many postmodern scholars have adopted "alternatives that encourage reflection about the 'politics and poetics' of their work. In these accounts, the embodied, collaborative, dialogic, and improvisational aspects of qualitative research are clarified." [36]

The term critical theory is often appropriated when an author works in sociological terms, yet attacks the social or human sciences, thus attempting to remain "outside" those frames of inquiry. Michel Foucault has been described as one such author. [37] Jean Baudrillard has also been described as a critical theorist to the extent that he was an unconventional and critical sociologist; [38] this appropriation is similarly casual, holding little or no relation to the Frankfurt School. [39] In contrast, Habermas is one of the key critics of postmodernism. [40]

Communication studies

When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Habermas redefined critical social theory as a study of communication, with communicative competence and communicative rationality on the one hand, and distorted communication on the other, the two versions of critical theory began to overlap to a much greater degree than before.[ citation needed ]

Critical disability theory

At the intersection of disability studies and critical theory is critical disability theory. [41] [42] [43] [44] The term crip theory originates in Carrie Sandahl's article "Queering the Crip or Crippling the Queer?: Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance". It was published in 2003 as part of a journal issue titled "Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies". [45] Christopher Bell's [46] Blackness and Disability; [47] and the work of Robert McRuer both explore queerness and disability. Work includes the intersections of race and ethnicity with disability in the field of education studies and has attempted to bridge critical race theory with disability studies. [48]
Critical legal studies (CLS) is a school of critical theory that developed in the United States during the 1970s. [49] CLS adherents claim that laws are devised to maintain the status quo of society and thereby codify its biases against marginalized groups. [50]

Immigration studies

Critical theory can be used to interpret the right of asylum [51] and immigration law. [52]

Critical finance studies

Critical finance studies apply critical theory to financial markets and central banks. [53]

Critical management studies

Critical management studies (CMS) is a loose but extensive grouping of theoretically informed critiques of management, business and organisation, grounded originally in a critical theory perspective. Today it encompasses a wide range of perspectives that are critical of traditional theories of management and the business schools that generate these theories.

Critical international relations theory

Critical international relations theory is a diverse set of schools of thought in international relations (IR) that have criticized the theoretical, meta-theoretical and/or political status quo, both in IR theory and in international politics more broadly – from positivist as well as postpositivist positions. Positivist critiques include Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches and certain ("conventional") strands of social constructivism. Postpositivist critiques include poststructuralist, postcolonial, "critical" constructivist, critical theory (in the strict sense used by the Frankfurt School), neo-Gramscian, most feminist, and some English School approaches, as well as non-Weberian historical sociology, [54] "international political sociology", "critical geopolitics", and the so-called "new materialism" [55] (partly inspired by actor–network theory). All of these latter approaches differ from both realism and liberalism in their epistemological and ontological premises.

Critical race theory

Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, not based only on individuals' prejudices. [56] [57] The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical theory rather than criticizing or blaming individuals. [58] [59]

Critical pedagogy

Critical theorists have widely credited Paulo Freire for the first applications of critical theory to education/pedagogy, considering his best-known work to be Pedagogy of the Oppressed , a seminal text in what is now known as the philosophy and social movement of critical pedagogy . [60] [61] Dedicated to the oppressed and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults learn to read and write, Freire includes a detailed class analysis in his exploration of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. In the book, he calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model of education", because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge. He argues that pedagogy should instead treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge.

In contrast to the banking model, the teacher in the critical-theory model is not the dispenser of all knowledge, but a participant who learns with and from the students—in conversation with them, even as they learn from the teacher. The goal is to liberate the learner from an oppressive construct of teacher versus student, a dichotomy analogous to colonizer and colonized. It is not enough for the student to analyze societal power structures and hierarchies, to merely recognize imbalance and inequity; critical theory pedagogy must also empower the learner to reflect and act on that reflection to challenge an oppressive status quo. [60] [62]

Critical consciousness

Critical consciousness, conscientization, or conscientização in Portuguese (Portuguese pronunciation: [kõsjẽtʃizaˈsɐ̃w] ), is a popular education and social concept developed by Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist Paulo Freire, grounded in neo-Marxist critical theory. Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding. [63]

Critical university studies

Critical university studies is a field examining the role of higher education in contemporary society and its relation to culture, politics, and labor. Arising primarily from cultural studies, it applies critical theory toward the university since the 1970s, particularly the shift away from a strong public model of higher education to a neoliberal privatized model. Emerging largely in the United States, which has the most extensive system of higher education, the field has also seen significant work in the United Kingdom, as well as in other countries confronting neoliberalism. Key themes of CUS research are corporatization, academic labor, and student debt, among other issues.

Critical psychology

Critical psychology is a perspective on psychology that draws extensively on critical theory. Critical psychology challenges the assumptions, theories and methods of mainstream psychology and attempts to apply psychological understandings in different ways.

Critical criminology

Critical criminology applies critical theory to criminology. Critical criminology examines the genesis of crime and the nature of justice in relation power, privilege, and social status. These include factors such as class, race, gender, and sexuality. Legal and penal systems are understood to reproduce and uphold systems of social inequality. [64] [65] Additionally, critical criminology works to uncover possible biases within traditional criminological research. [66]

Critical animal studies

Critical animal studies (CAS) applies critical theory [67] to animal studies and animal ethics. It emerged in 2001 with the founding of the Centre for Animal Liberation Affairs by Anthony J. Nocella II and Steven Best, which in 2007 became the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS). [68] [69] The core interest of CAS is animal ethics, firmly grounded in trans-species intersectionality, environmental justice, social justice politics and critical analysis of the underlying role played by the capitalist system. [70] Scholars in the field seek to integrate academic research with political engagement and activism.

Critical social work

Critical social work is the application to social work of a critical theory perspective. Critical social work seeks to address social injustices, as opposed to focusing on individualized issues. Critical theories explain social problems as arising from various forms of oppression and injustice in globalized capitalist societies and forms of neoliberal governance.

This approach to social work theory is formed by a polyglot of theories from across the humanities and social sciences, borrowing from various schools of thought, including anarchism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, Marxism, feminism, and social democracy. [71]

Critical ethnography

Critical ethnography applies a critical theory based approach to ethnography. It focuses on the implicit values expressed within ethnographic studies and, therefore, on the unacknowledged biases that may result from such implicit values. [72] It has been called critical theory in practice. [73] In the spirit of critical theory, this approach seeks to determine symbolic mechanisms, to extract ideology from action, and to understand the cognition and behaviour of research subjects within historical, cultural, and social frameworks.

Critical data studies

Critical data studies is the exploration of and engagement with social, cultural, and ethical challenges that arise when working with big data. It is through various unique perspectives and taking a critical approach that this form of study can be practiced. [74] As its name implies, critical data studies draws heavily on the influence of critical theory, which has a strong focus on addressing the organization of power structures. This idea is then applied to the study of data.

Critical environmental justice

Critical environmental justice applies critical theory to environmental justice. [75]

Criticism

While critical theorists have often been called Marxist intellectuals, their tendency to denounce some Marxist concepts and to combine Marxian analysis with other sociological and philosophical traditions has resulted in accusations of revisionism by Orthodox Marxist and by Marxist–Leninist philosophers. Martin Jay has said that the first generation of critical theory is best understood not as promoting a specific philosophical agenda or ideology, but as "a gadfly of other systems". [76]

Critical theory has been criticized for not offering any clear road map to political action (praxis), often explicitly repudiating any solutions. [77] Those objections mostly apply to first-generation Frankfurt School, while the issue of politics is addressed in a much more assertive way in contemporary theory. [78]

Another criticism of critical theory "is that it fails to provide rational standards by which it can show that it is superior to other theories of knowledge, science, or practice." Rex Gibson argues that critical theory suffers from being cliquish, conformist, elitist, immodest, anti-individualist, naive, too critical, and contradictory. Hughes and Hughes argue that Habermas' theory of ideal public discourse "says much about rational talkers talking, but very little about actors acting: Felt, perceptive, imaginative, bodily experience does not fit these theories". [79] [80]

Some feminists argue that critical theory "can be as narrow and oppressive as the rationalization, bureaucratization, and cultures they seek to unmask and change. [79] [80]

Critical theory's language has been criticized as being too dense to understand, although "Counter arguments to these issues of language include claims that a call for clearer and more accessible language is anti-intellectual, a new 'language of possibility' is needed, and oppressed peoples can understand and contribute to new languages." [80]

Bruce Pardy, writing for the National Post , argued that any challenges to the "legitimacy [of critical theory] can be interpreted as a demonstration of their [critical theory's proponents'] thesis: the assertion of reason, logic and evidence is a manifestation of privilege and power. Thus, any challenger risks the stigma of a bigoted oppressor." [81]

Robert Danisch, writing for The Conversation , argued that critical theory, and the modern humanities more broadly, focus too much on criticizing the current world rather than trying to make a better world. [82]

See also

Lists

Journals

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jürgen Habermas</span> German social theorist and philosopher (born 1929)

Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Horkheimer</span> German philosopher and sociologist (1895–1973)

Max Horkheimer was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militarism, economic disruption, environmental crisis, and the poverty of mass culture using the philosophy of history as a framework. This became the foundation of critical theory. His most important works include Eclipse of Reason (1947), Between Philosophy and Social Science (1930–1938) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, supported and made other significant works possible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodor W. Adorno</span> German philosopher, sociologist, and theorist (1903–1969)

Theodor W. Adorno was a German philosopher, musicologist, and social theorist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frankfurt School</span> School of social theory and critical philosophy

The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical philosophy. It is associated with the Institute for Social Research founded at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1923. Formed during the Weimar Republic during the European interwar period, the first generation of the Frankfurt School was composed of intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the socio-economic systems of the 1930s: namely, capitalism, fascism, and communism. Significant figures associated with the school include Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social theory</span> Framework used to study social phenomena

Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies, the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity. Social theory in an informal nature, or authorship based outside of academic social and political science, may be referred to as "social criticism" or "social commentary", or "cultural criticism" and may be associated both with formal cultural and literary scholarship, as well as other non-academic or journalistic forms of writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fredric Jameson</span> American academic and literary critic (1934–2024)

Fredric Ruff Jameson was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).

The term culture industry was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity. Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances. The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer perceived mass-produced culture as especially dangerous compared to the more technically and intellectually difficult high arts. In contrast, true psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by Herbert Marcuse.

<i>Dialectic of Enlightenment</i> 1947 book by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

Dialectic of Enlightenment is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. The text, published in 1947, is a revised version of what the authors originally had circulated among friends and colleagues in 1944 under the title of Philosophical Fragments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Axel Honneth</span> German philosopher (born 1949)

Axel Honneth is a German philosopher who is the Professor for Social Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Jack B. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities in the department of philosophy at Columbia University. He was also director of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main, Germany between 2001 and 2018.

In sociology, communicative action is cooperative action undertaken by individuals based upon mutual deliberation and argumentation. The term was developed by German philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas in his work The Theory of Communicative Action.

The positivism dispute was a political-philosophical dispute between the critical rationalists and the Frankfurt School in 1961, about the methodology of the social sciences. It grew into a broad discussion within German sociology from 1961 to 1969. The naming itself is controversial, since it was the Frankfurt School proponents who accused the critical rationalists of being positivists—while the latter considered themselves to be opponents of positivism.

Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Focusing on modern European thought from Kant and Hegel to Adorno and Heidegger, Hammer’s research includes critical theory, Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, phenomenology, German idealism, social and political theory, and aesthetics. He has also written widely on the philosophy of literature and taken a special interest in the question of temporality.

The following events related to sociology occurred in the 1960s.

Articles in social and political philosophy include:

In Marxist philosophy, reification is the process by which human social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity.

Neo-Marxism is a collection of Marxist schools of thought originating from 20th-century approaches to amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism. Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rahel Jaeggi</span> German philosopher (born 1966)

Rahel Jaeggi is a Swiss professor of practical philosophy and social philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research areas are in social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, philosophical anthropology, social ontology, and critical theory. Since February 2018 she has been the head of the Berlin campus of the newly founded International Center for Humanities and Social Change.

Resonance is a quality of human relationships with the world proposed by Hartmut Rosa. Rosa, professor of sociology at the University of Jena, conceptualised resonance theory in Resonanz (2016) to explain social phenomena through a fundamental human impulse towards "resonant" relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marxist cultural analysis</span> Anti-capitalist cultural critique

Marxist cultural analysis is a form of cultural analysis and anti-capitalist cultural critique, which assumes the theory of cultural hegemony and from this specifically targets those aspects of culture that are profit driven and mass-produced under capitalism.

References

Footnotes

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  2. Disco, Cornelis. "Critical theory as ideology of the new class: Rereading Jürgen Habermas." Theory and Society (1979): 159-214.
  3. Geuss, Raymond (1981). The Idea of a Critical Theory. Cambridge University Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN   0521240727. The very heart of the critical theory of society is its criticism of ideology. Their ideology is what prevents the agents in the society from correctly perceiving their true situation and real interests; if they are to free themselves from social repression, the agents must rid themselves of ideological illusion.
  4. "The Left Hemisphere". Verso. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
  5. Horkheimer 1982, 244.
  6. Ritzer, George (2008). "Sociological Theory". From Modern to Postmodern Social Theory (and Beyond). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. pp. 567–568.
  7. 1 2 Agger, Ben (2012), "Ben Agger", North American Critical Theory After Postmodernism, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 128–154, doi:10.1057/9781137262868_7, ISBN   978-1349350391 .
  8. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Routledge. 1990.
  9. 1 2 Outhwaite, William (2009) [1988]. Habermas: Key Contemporary Thinkers (2nd ed.). Polity. pp. 5–8. ISBN   978-0745643281.
  10. Fuchs, Christian (2021). "What is Critical Theory?". Foundations of Critical Theory. Routledge. pp. 17–51. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139196598.007.
  11. Bohman, James; Flynn, Jeffrey; Celikates, Robin. "Critical Theory". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 ed.).
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  13. Horkheimer 1982, p. 244.
  14. Bohman, James (8 March 2005). "Critical Theory". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Archived from the original on 13 June 2019.
  15. 1 2 Bohman, James; Flynn, Jeffrey; Celikates, Robin (2021), "Critical Theory", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University , retrieved 10 June 2022
  16. 1 2 Lindlof & Taylor 2002, p.  49: "forms of authority and injustice that accompanied the evolution of industrial and corporate capitalism as a political-economic system.
  17. "Theses on Feuerbach". §XI. Marxists Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 16 April 2015. Retrieved 11 April 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  18. Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. [1947] 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment , translated by E. Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 242.
  19. Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno". In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures , translated by F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 116: "Critical Theory was initially developed in Horkheimer's circle to think through political disappointments at the absence of revolution in the West, the development of Stalinism in Soviet Russia, and the victory of fascism in Germany. It was supposed to explain mistaken Marxist prognoses, but without breaking Marxist intentions."
  20. Dubiel, Helmut. 1985. Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory, translated by B. Gregg. Cambridge, MA.
  21. Dialectic of Enlightenment . p. 38: "[G]one are the objective laws of the market which ruled in the actions of the entrepreneurs and tended toward catastrophe. Instead the conscious decision of the managing directors executes as results (which are more obligatory than the blindest price-mechanisms) the old law of value and hence the destiny of capitalism."
  22. "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment", p. 118.
  23. Katsiaficas, George N., Robert George Kirkpatrick, and Mary Lou Emery. 1987. Introduction to Critical Sociology. Irvington Publishers. p. 26.
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  26. Nancy Fraser (1985). What’s critical about critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender. New German Critique, 35, 97-131.
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Bibliography

Archival collections