Critical theory in sociology was developed by the Frankfurt school that is influenced by divergent intellectual ideas like Marxism and psychoanalysis. Critical theory starts from two principles: opposition to the status quo and the idea that history can be potentially progressive. Together these principles imply a position from which to make judgments of human activity (rather than just describing) and provide the tools for criticism. Critical theory is sometimes associated with highlighting the ‘dark side’ of modernity, critical theory attacks social ideas and practices which stand in the way of social justice and human emancipation (the rational organization of society as an association of free people).
Critical theory is opposed to ‘bourgeois liberalism’. Both feminist theory and critical theory focus on social inequality and economic inequality.
Postmodernism and Critical Theory are essential parts of social semiotic analysis. Postmodernism derives from Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction, criticisms of the Structuralist Approach. Critical theory derives from neo-Marxism and Feminist theory.
Feminist Theory and
Critical Theory: Unexplored Synergies
Martin, Joanne (Stanford University)
Abstract: Although both feminist theory and critical theory focus on social and economic
inequalities, and both have an agenda of promoting system change, these fields of inquiry
have developed separately and seldom draw on each other's work. This paper notes areas of
common interest. It assesses the validity of critiques of feminist theory, such as claims
that it focuses on privileged women and does not challenge existing hierarchical
arrangements. Because these critiques do not accurately describe much of contemporary
feminist scholarship, synergies between critical theory and feminist theory could and
should be explored.
Cultural Studies,
Critical Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis: Histories, Remembering and Futures
- Terry Threadgold (Cardiff)
Abstract: In this paper I have explored some of the histories which inevitably connect,
but also differentiate, critical discourse analysis and cultural studies. I have argued
that both are strongly influenced by the versions of critical theory which have been
characterised as ‘postmodernism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ and that both
could benefit not only from some serious engagement with the several disciplines from
which their interdisciplinarity is derived but also from some further in depth exploration
of the critical theory which informs them and which they have often ‘translated’
or ‘co-opted’ in reductionist ways. I have also argued that the claims sometimes
made for critical discourse analysis are inflated and that without serious ethnographies
and attention to the theorisation as well as research of contexts those claims cannot
really be sustained. On the other hand ‘resignification’ or the cultural
politics of critical discourse analysis are important agendas and we need to do much more
work on establishing exactly how social change can be effected through the kinds of work
critical discourse analysis could do. My conclusion is that we need to reframe and
recontextualise the ways in which we define and perform critical discourse analysis and
that that will involve bringing cultural studies and critical discourse analysis together
in productive new ways with other disciplinary and theoretical formations and with proper
attention to the new and different global and local contexts in which we work.
Incorporating Race:
Critical Theory and Social Facts - Greer, Kirk
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association.
Abstract: This paper articulates the relationship between social science and critical
theory in a problem-oriented approach and how that approach can best promote the end of
racial democratization in the case of the US. I discuss the role of social science in
identifying and constituting the publics to which critique is addressed and the relation
of both dominant and subordinate racial groups to the possibility of racial
democratization. In particular, I advocate that critical theory should give more attention
to the sources of racial hierarchy within white practice and the contradictions
experienced by racial elites within that practice. These instabilities within racial
hierarchy, as experienced by agents, can provide practical reasons for elites to
participate in a politics of racial democratization. This attempts to address the
under-theorized questions of how dominant publics relate to critical theory’s
practical interest in social change and how stable egalitarian advancements are achieved.
Horkheimer, Max. 1972. Critical
Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum
Marcuse's Aesthetics and the Displacement of Critical Theory: Morton Schoolman, New German
Critique, No. 8 (Spring, 1976), pp. 54-79.
Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory. by
Moishe Postone. Review author: Robert J. Antonio, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 68, No.
1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 157-159
Making Critical Theory
Self-Critical
Critical theory recognizes that science is not the simple recording and prediction of
facts. The role of critical theory is to enter the world of objects and illuminate the
human dimensions of social relations that influence the way human subjects strive to
understand the objective world. Can the critical theorist be critical enough to be
self-illuminating? - A Note On Critical Theory, Gaurav Rajen.