The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:
Deliberation is a process of thoughtfully weighing options, usually prior to voting. Deliberation emphasizes the use of logic and reason as opposed to power-struggle, creativity, or dialogue. Group decisions are generally made after deliberation through a vote or consensus of those involved.
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. He primarily works on continental philosophy and political theory, as well as film criticism and theology.
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm. As the universal dominant ideology, the ruling-class worldview misrepresents the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, and perpetual social conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
Ernesto Laclau was an Argentine political theorist and philosopher. He is often described as an 'inventor' of post-Marxist political theory. He is well known for his collaborations with his long-term partner, Chantal Mouffe.
Chantal Mouffe is a Belgian political theorist, formerly teaching at University of Westminster.
Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. It has a rich history within continental philosophy, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and running since through critical theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism.
Agonism is a political and social theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain forms of conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict in the political sphere, but seeks to show how individuals might accept and channel this conflict positively. Agonists are especially concerned with debates about democracy, and the role that conflict plays in different conceptions of it. The agonistic tradition to democracy is often referred to as agonistic pluralism. Beyond the realm of the political, agonistic frameworks have similarly been utilized in broader cultural critiques of hegemony and domination, as well as in literary and science fiction.
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left is a collaborative book by the political theorists Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek published in 2000.
Radical democracy is a type of democracy that advocates the radical extension of equality and liberty. Radical democracy is concerned with a radical extension of equality and freedom, following the idea that democracy is an unfinished, inclusive, continuous and reflexive process.
Alan Johnson is a British political theorist and activist. He is a senior research fellow at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Previously he was Professor of Democratic Theory and Practice at Edge Hill University.
Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, also known as the Ljubljana Lacanian School is a popular name for a school of thought centred on the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Philosophers related to School include Slavoj Žižek, Rastko Močnik, Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupančič, Miran Božovič and Eva Bahovec. Other scholars associated with the school include philosophers Zdravko Kobe, Rado Riha, Jelica Šumič Riha, sociologist Renata Salecl and philosopher Peter Klepec.
Post-politics refers to the critique of the emergence, in the post-Cold War period, of a politics of consensus on a global scale: the dissolution of the Eastern Communist bloc following the collapse of the Berlin Wall instituted a promise for post-ideological consensus. The political development in post-communist countries went two different directions depending on the approach each of them take on dealing with the communist party members. Active decommunisation process took place in Eastern European states which later joined EU. While in Russia and majority of former USSR republics communists became one of many political parties on equal grounds.
Yannis Stavrakakis is a Greek–British political theorist. A member of the Essex School of discourse analysis, he is mainly known for his explorations of the importance of psychoanalytic theory for contemporary political and cultural analysis and for his discourse studies on populism.
The Essex School of discourse analysis, or simply 'The Essex School', refers to a type of scholarship founded on the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. It focuses predominantly on the political discourses of late modernity utilising discourse analysis, as well as post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory, such as may be found in the works of Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and Derrida. Discourse analysis, according to its own terms at least, seeks to "unfix and destabilise" the accepted meanings of everyday language, and to reveal how the dominant discourse "marginalises and oppresses... equally valid claims to the question of how power could and should be exercised."
The Democratic Paradox is a collection of essays by the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, published in 2000 by Verso Books. The essays offer further discussion of the concept of radical democracy that Mouffe explored in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, co-authored by Ernesto Laclau. In this collection, Mouffe deals with the specific conflicts between the post-Marxist democratic theory that she and Laclau theorized in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and the competing democratic theories proposed by Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. Verso's UK blog characterizes The Democratic Paradox as Mouffe's most accessible review of her perspectives on radical democracy.
According to the political theorist Alan Johnson, there has been a revival of serious interest in communism in the 21st century led by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. Other leading contemporary communist theorists are:
Neo-Marxism is a Marxist school 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.
Post-Marxism is a political philosophy, critical social theory and Marxist school of thought which radically reinterprets Marxism, countering classical Marxist economism, historical determinism, anti-humanism, and class reductionism, whilst remaining committed to the construction of socialism. Post-Marxism can be considered a synthesis of post-structuralist frameworks and neo-Marxist, analysis, in response to the decline of the Left post-protests of 1968. Most notably, post-Marxists are anti-essentialist, rejecting the primacy of class struggle, and instead focus on building radical democracy.
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 which are profit driven and mass-produced under capitalism.
