· Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole. It differs from traditional theory, which focuses only on understanding or explaining society. Critical theories aim to dig beneath the surface of social life and uncover the assumptions that keep human beings from a full and true understanding of how the world works Critical theory is an approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. With origins in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. Maintaining that All critical theories are lenses through which we can see texts. There is nothing to say that one is better than another or that you should only read according to any of them. The proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory, but most of us interpret texts according to the “rules” of several different theories at a time
Understanding Critical Theory
Critical theory critical lens theory capitalized as Critical Theory [1] is an approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. With origins in sociology and literary criticismit argues critical lens theory social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors.
Maintaining that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation, [2] critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert MarcuseTheodor AdornoWalter BenjaminErich Frommand Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.
In sociology and political philosophy"Critical Theory" means the Western-Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt Schooldeveloped in Germany in the s and drawing on the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Though a "critical theory" or a "critical social theory" may have similar elements of thought, capitalizing Critical Theory as if it were a proper noun stresses the intellectual lineage specific to the Frankfurt School.
Modern critical theory has also been influenced by György Lukács and Antonio Gramscias well as second-generation Frankfurt School scholars, 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 critical lens theory remaining Marxist philosophical concepts in much contemporary critical theory.
Postmodern critical theory analyzes the fragmentation of cultural identities in order to challenge modernist-era constructs such as metanarrativesrationalityand 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. Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory German : Kritische Theorie in his 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 philosophyHorkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivismand 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. immanent critique. This version of "critical" theory derives from the use of the term critique by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason and from Marx, on the premise that Das Kapital is a "critique of political economy ".
In Kant's transcendental idealismcritical lens theory, critique means examining and establishing the limits of the validity of a faculty, type, or body of knowledge, especially by accounting for the limitations of that knowledge system 's fundamental, irreducible concepts. Kant's notion of critique has been associated with the overturning of false, unprovable, or dogmatic philosophical, social, and political beliefs.
His critique of reason involved the critique of dogmatic theological and metaphysical ideas and was intertwined with the enhancement of ethical autonomy and the Enlightenment critique of superstition and irrational authority. Ignored by many in " critical realist " circles is that Kant's immediate impetus for writing Critique of Pure Reason was to address problems raised by David Hume 's skeptical empiricism which, critical lens theory, in attacking metaphysics, critical lens theory, employed reason and logic to argue against the knowability of the world and common notions of causation.
Kant, by contrast, pushed the employment of a priori metaphysical claims critical lens theory requisite, for if anything is to be said to be knowable, it would have to be established upon abstractions distinct from perceivable phenomena. Marx explicitly developed the notion of critique into the critique of ideologylinking it with the practice of social revolutionas 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.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of critical theory, as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer elaborated in their Dialectic of Enlightenmentis an ambivalence about the ultimate source or foundation of social critical lens theory, an ambivalence that gave rise to the " pessimism " of the new critical theory about the possibility of human emancipation and freedom.
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. Contrary to Marx's prediction in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economythis shift did not lead to "an era of social revolution " but to fascism and totalitarianism.
As such, 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, critical lens theory, there is no longer any dynamism upon which critique could base its hope. In the s, Habermas, a proponent of critical social theory[14] raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his Knowledge and Human Interestsby identifying critical knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanitiesthrough its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation.
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 idealismthough his epistemology remains broadly Marxist. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere and communicative actionthe latter arriving partly critical lens theory a reaction to new post-structural critical lens theory so-called " postmodern " challenges to the discourse of modernity.
Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rortyand a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism may be felt in his thought, which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy. Focusing on languagesymbolism, communication, and social constructioncritical theory has been applied in the social sciences as a critique of social construction and postmodern society.
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.
As a result, research focuses on local manifestations rather than broad generalizations. Postmodern critical research is also characterized by the crisis of representationwhich rejects the idea that a researcher's work is an "objective depiction of a stable other. In these accounts, the embodied, critical lens theory, collaborative, dialogic, and improvisational aspects of qualitative research are clarified.
The term critical theory is often appropriated when an author works in sociological terms, yet attacks the social or human sciences, critical lens theory, thus attempting to remain "outside" those frames of inquiry.
Michel Foucault has been described as one critical lens theory author. From the s and s onward, language, symbolism, text, and meaning came to be seen as the theoretical foundation for the humanitiesthrough the influence of Ludwig WittgensteinFerdinand de SaussureGeorge Herbert MeadNoam ChomskyHans-Georg GadamerRoland Barthes critical lens theory, Jacques Derrida and other thinkers in linguistic and analytic philosophystructural linguisticssymbolic interactionismhermeneuticssemiologylinguistically oriented psychoanalysis Jacques LacanAlfred Lorenzerand deconstruction.
When, critical lens theory, in the s and s, Habermas redefined critical social theory as a study of communicationwith 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 critical lens theory degree than before. 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, critical lens theory.
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. While critical theorists have often been called Marxist intellectuals, critical lens theory, [25] 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 classicalorthodoxand analytical Marxists, 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.
Critical theory has been criticized for not offering any clear road map to political action praxisoften explicitly repudiating any solutions as with Marcuse's "Great Refusal", which promoted abstaining from engaging in active political change. A primary criticism of the theory is that it is anti-scientific, both for its lack of the use of the scientific method, critical lens theory for its assertion that science is a tool used for oppression of marginalized groups of people.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Philosophy that sociological understanding's primary use should be social reform.
For the journal, critical lens theory Critical Sociology journal. Quantitative Qualitative Comparative Computational Ethnographic Conversation analysis Historical Interview Mathematical Network analysis Survey. Criminology Critical theory Culture Demography Development Deviance Economic Education Environmental Family Feminist Gender Health Immigration Industrial Knowledge Law Literature Medical Military Organizational Political Race and ethnicity Religion Rural Science Social movements Social psychology Symbolic interactionism Stratification Technology Terrorism Urban.
Émile Durkheim Herbert Spencer Max Weber Auguste Comte Robert K. Merton Paul Lazarsfeld James Coleman George Herbert Mead Georg Simmel W.
Du Bois Ernest Burgess Michel Foucault Erving Goffman Jürgen Habermas Thorstein Veblen Ferdinand Tönnies. Historical perspectives. Conflict theory Structural functionalism Positivism Social constructionism, critical lens theory. Bibliography Critical lens theory Journals Organizations People Critical lens theory By country, critical lens theory. Major works. Reason and Revolution "The Work of Critical lens theory in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Eclipse of Reason Escape from Freedom Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Notable theorists. Marcuse Adorno Horkheimer Benjamin Fromm Pollock Löwenthal Habermas Schmidt Honneth Kracauer Kirchheimer. Important concepts. Advanced capitalism Antipositivism Communicative rationality Critical theory Culture industry Dialectic Legitimation crisis Non-identity Popular culture Praxis Privatism Psychoanalysis.
Related topics. Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory Freudo-Marxism Marxist humanism Western Marxism Social alienation. The Idea of a Critical Theory Archived 12 February at the Wayback Machine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, critical lens theory.
Habermas: Key Contemporary Thinkers 2nd ed. ISBN Qualitative Communication Research Methods. forms of authority and injustice that accompanied the evolution of industrial and corporate capitalism as a political-economic system. Zalta, Edward N. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fall ed. Metaphysics Research Lab, critical lens theory, Stanford University. Archived from critical lens theory original on 13 June Retrieved 21 December Marxists Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 16 April Retrieved 11 April Dialectic of Enlightenmenttranslated by E.
Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. It was supposed to explain mistaken Marxist prognoses, but without breaking Marxist intentions, critical lens theory. Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical lens theory Theorytranslated by B. Cambridge, MA. 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.
Introduction to Critical Sociology. Irvington Publishers. doi : Discusses critical social theory as a form of self-reflection. Building of a map of Foucault's approach".
International Journal of Critical Accounting. Archived from the original on 9 September Retrieved 4 July Retrieved 16 June
Literary Lenses Part 2
, time: 3:27Introduction to Literary Theory // Purdue Writing Lab
All critical theories are lenses through which we can see texts. There is nothing to say that one is better than another or that you should only read according to any of them. The proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory, but most of us interpret texts according to the “rules” of several different theories at a time · At first, the critical lens metaphor seems functionally equivalent to the critical toolbox metaphor. Both, for instance, can be used in isolation or combination with others of its kind. But whereas the tool serves a temporary usefulness, a lens suggests a permanent way of seeing, a way of seeing perhaps not otherwise blogger.com: Thomas L Martin Literary Theories: A Sampling of Critical Lenses Literary theories were developed as a means to understand the various ways people read texts. The proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory, but most of us interpret texts according to the "rules" of several different theories at a time. All literary theories are lensesFile Size: 35KB
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