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

Critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

– the examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

s and

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism. This has led to the very literal use of 'critical theory' as an umbrella term to describe any theory founded upon critique. The term "Critical Theory" was first coined by Max Horkheimer in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory".

Essence of critical theory

Cultural studies Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rel ...

– *

Critical theorists Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are fu ...

– * Works in critical theory – *

Truth theory Truth or verity is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as ...

–

Concepts

Aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

Agency (sociology) In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to have the power and resources to fulfill their potential. Social structure consists of those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc ...

Author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

ship *

History History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

Human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...

Ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

Law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

Money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are: m ...

Objectivity and subjectivity The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is a basic idea of philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics. Various understandings of this distinction have evolved through the work of countless philosophers over centuries. One b ...

Sex–gender distinction While in ordinary speech, the terms ''sex'' and ''gender'' are often used interchangeably, in contemporary academic literature, the terms often have distinct meanings, especially when referring to people. ''Sex'' generally refers to an organis ...

Branches of critical theory

Social theory Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena.Seidman, S., 2016. Contested knowledge: Social theory today. John Wiley & Sons. A tool used by social scientists, social theories re ...

– *

Literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

– *

Thing theory Thing theory is a branch of critical theory that focuses on human–object interactions in literature and culture. It borrows from Heidegger's distinction between objects and things, which posits that an object becomes a thing when it can no longe ...

– * Critical theory of technology – *

Critical legal studies Critical legal (CLS) is a school of critical theory that developed in the United States during the 1970s.Alan Hunt, "The Theory of Critical Legal Studies," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1986): 1-45, esp. 1, 5. Se DOI, 10.1093/ojl ...

– *

Hermeneutics Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. As necessary, hermeneutics may include the art of understanding and communication. ...

–

Actor–network theory

Commonly used terms

Articulation (sociology) In sociology, articulation labels the process by which particular classes appropriate cultural forms and practices for their own use. The term appears to have originated from the work of Antonio Gramsci, specifically from his conception of superst ...

Assemblage (philosophy) Assemblage (from everyday , - arrangement, layout, "a collection of things which have been gathered together or assembled") is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and subsequently taken up by other theorists, s ...

* Blackboxing

African-American studies

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950), popularly known by his childhood nickname "Skip", is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of t ...

– *

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961) was a French West Indian psychiatrist, political philosopher, and Marxist from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have become influential in the ...

–

Gender studies

Lauren Berlant Lauren Gail Berlant (October 31, 1957 – June 28, 2021) was an American scholar, cultural theorist, and author who is regarded as "one of the most esteemed and influential literary and cultural critics in the United States." Berlant was the ...

– *

Judith Butler Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In ...

– *

Raewyn Connell Raewyn Connell (born 3 January 1944), usually cited as R. W. Connell, is an Australian feminist sociologist and professor emerita at the University of Sydney, mainly known for co-founding the field of masculinity studies and coining the concep ...

– *

Susan McClary Susan Kaye McClary (born October 2, 1946) is an American musicologist associated with " new musicology". Noted for her work combining musicology with feminist music criticism, McClary is professor of musicology at Case Western Reserve Universit ...

– *

Laura Mulvey Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist and filmmaker. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught ...

–

Marxist theory

Commonly used terms

Postcolonialism

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel ''Things Fall Apart'' ( ...

– ** " An Image of Africa" – *

– ** "

The Wretched of the Earth ''The Wretched of the Earth'' () is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and discusses the broader social, cul ...

" – * Homi Bhabha – **

Double consciousness Double consciousness is the dual self-perception experienced by Hierarchy, subordinated or Colonization, colonized groups in an Oppression, oppressive society. The term and the idea were first published in W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois's Aut ...

–

Structuralism

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...

– *

Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...

– *

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...

– *

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

–

Post-structuralism

– *

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

– *

Julia Kristeva Julia Kristeva (; ; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, ; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She has taught at Colum ...

– *

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; ; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Librari ...

–

Commonly used terms

Critical apparatus A critical apparatus () in textual criticism of primary source material, is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and scholars. The apparatu ...

Event (philosophy) In philosophy, events are objects in time or instantiations of properties in objects. On some views, only changes in the form of acquiring or losing a property can constitute events, like the lawn's becoming dry. According to others, there are al ...

Genealogy (philosophy) In philosophy, genealogy is a historical technique in which one questions the commonly understood emergence of various philosophical and social beliefs by attempting to account for the scope, breadth, or totality of discourse, thus extending th ...

Heterotopia (space) Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow "other": disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are "wo ...

Deconstruction

Commonly used terms

Bricolage In the arts, ''bricolage'' (French language, French for "DIY" or "do-it-yourself projects"; ) is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work constructed using mixed media. The t ...

Postmodern philosophy

Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and p ...

– *

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

– *

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...

– *

Ernesto Laclau Ernesto Laclau (; 6 October 1935 – 13 April 2014) 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, ...

– *

Claude Lefort Claude Lefort (; ; 21 April 1924 – 3 October 2010) was a French philosopher and activist. He was politically active by 1942 under the influence of his tutor, the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (whose posthumous publications Lefort lat ...

– *

A Cyborg Manifesto "A Cyborg Manifesto" is an essay written by Donna Haraway and first published in 1985 in the ''Socialist Review (US), Socialist Review'' under the title "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s." In it, th ...

–

Reconstructivism

Paulo Freire Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher whose work revolutionized global thought on education. He is best known for ''Pedagogy of the Oppressed'', in which he reimagines teaching ...

– *

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and Education reform, educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overridi ...

–

Psychoanalytic theory

Commonly used terms

Schizoanalytic theory

– *

Deleuze and Guattari Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a French psychoanalyst and political activist, wrote a number of works together (besides each having distinguished independent careers). Their conjoint works included '' Capitalism and Sch ...

–

Commonly used terms

Body without organs The body without organs (or BwO; French: or ) is a fuzzy concept used in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The concept describes the unregulated potential of a body— not necessarily human—without organizati ...

Rhizome (philosophy) A rhizome is a concept in post-structuralism describing an Assemblage (philosophy), assemblage that allows connections between any of its constituent elements, regardless of any predefined ordering, structure, or entry point. It is a central conce ...

Queer theory

– *

Heteronormativity Heteronormativity is the definition of heterosexuality as the normative human sexuality. It assumes the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two distinct, opposite genders) and that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between peo ...

– *

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American feminist academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the field of quee ...

– *

Gloria E. Anzaldúa Gloria may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Christian liturgy and music * Gloria in excelsis Deo, the Greater Doxology, a hymn of praise * Gloria Patri, the Lesser Doxology, a short hymn of praise ** Gloria (Handel) ** Gloria (Jenkins ...

– *

New Queer Cinema "New queer cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in '' Sight & Sound'' magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s. It is also referred to as the "queer new ...

– * Queer pedagogy –

Semiotics

– *

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

– *

–

Commonly used terms

Semiotic square The semiotic square, also known as the Greimas square, is a tool used in structural analysis of the relationships between semiotic signs through the opposition of concepts, such as feminine-masculine or beautiful-ugly, and of extending the releva ...

Literary theory

Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...

* Mary Louise Pratt – *

René Girard René Noël Théophile Girard (; ; 25 December 1923 – 4 November 2015) was a French-American historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the a ...

–

Commonly used terms

Carnivalesque The Carnivalesque is a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos. It originated as "carnival" in Mikhail Bakhtin's ''Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics'' and was further dev ...

Chronotope In literary theory and philosophy of language, the chronotope is how configurations of time and space are represented in language and discourse. The term was taken up by Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin who used it as a central element in h ...

Dialogic Dialogic refers to the use of conversation or shared dialogue to explore the meaning of something. (This is as opposed to monologic which refers to one entity with all the information simply giving it to others without exploration and clarificatio ...

Narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. The term is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretica ...

Heteroglossia ''Heteroglossia'' is the coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language (in Greek: ''hetero-'' "different" and ''glōssa'' "tongue, language"). The term translates the Russian раз� ...

Theories of identity

Private sphere The private sphere is the complement or opposite to the public sphere. The private sphere is a certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority and tradition, unhampered by interventions from governmental, economi ...

– certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by interventions from governmental or other institutions. Examples of the private sphere are family and home. The complement or opposite of public sphere. *

Public sphere The public sphere () is an area in social relation, social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion, Social influence, influence political action. A "Public" is "of or c ...

– area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. It is "a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment." *

Creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ...

Major works

*Bloch, Ernst (1938–47). '' The Principle of Hope'' *Fromm, Erich (1941). '' The Fear of Freedom'' (UK)/'' Escape from Freedom'' (US) *Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W. (1944–47). ''

Dialectic of Enlightenment ''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 cir ...

'' *Barthes, Roland (1957). ''

Mythologies Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

'' *Habermas, Jürgen (1962). ''

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere ''The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society'' () is a 1962 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. It was translated into English in 1989 by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. An impo ...

'' *Marcuse, Herbert (1964). ''

One-Dimensional Man ''One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society'' is a 1964 book by the German–American philosopher and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, in which the author offers a wide-ranging critique of both the contempora ...

'' *Adorno, Theodor W. (1966). ''

Negative Dialectics ''Negative Dialectics'' () is a 1966 book by the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, in which he presents a critique of traditional Western philosophy and Dialectic, dialectical thinking. Adorno argues that the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment's em ...

'' *Derrida, Jacques (1967). ''

Of Grammatology ''Of Grammatology'' () is a 1967 book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The book, originating the idea of deconstruction, proposes that throughout continental philosophy, especially as philosophers engaged with linguistic and semiotic id ...

'' *Derrida, Jacques (1967). ''

Writing and Difference ''Writing and Difference'' () is a book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The work, which collects some of the early lectures and essays that established his fame, was published in 1967 alongside ''Of Grammatology'' and '' Speech and Phen ...

'' *Habermas, Jürgen (1981). ''

The Theory of Communicative Action ''The Theory of Communicative Action'' () is a two-volume 1981 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in which the author continues his project of finding a way to ground "the social sciences in a theory of language", which had been set out i ...

Major theorists

References

External links

Critical Theory

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') is a freely available online philosophy resource published and maintained by Stanford University, encompassing both an online encyclopedia of philosophy and peer-reviewed original publication ...

"Theory: Death is Not the End"
''

n+1 N1, N.I, N-1, N=1, or N01 may refer to: Information technology * Nokia N1, an Android tablet * Nexus One, an Android phone made by HTC * Nylas N1, a desktop email client * Oppo N1, an Android phone * N1, a Sun Microsystems software brand now ...

'' magazine's short history of academic critical theory. Winter 2005.
Critical Legal Thinking
A

critical legal studies Critical legal (CLS) is a school of critical theory that developed in the United States during the 1970s.Alan Hunt, "The Theory of Critical Legal Studies," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1986): 1-45, esp. 1, 5. Se DOI, 10.1093/ojl ...

website which uses critical theory in an analysis of law and politics. * L. Corchia
''Jürgen Habermas. A Bibliography: works and studies (1952-2010)''
Pisa, Edizioni Il Campano – Arnus University Books, 2010, 344 pp. * * {{Outline footer

Outline