Introducing Critical Theory

A Graphic Guide

Stuart Sim, Borin Van Loon

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781848317802
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

What might a 'theory of everything' look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School? The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, postmodernists, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention. Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon's incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within tradition of critical analysis going back to the rise of Marxism. They present the essential methods and objectives of each theoretical school in an incisive and accessible manner, and pay special attention to recurrent themes and concerns that have preoccupied a century of critical theoretical activity.

The Theory of Everything

Theory has become one of the great growth areas in cultural analysis and academic life over the last few decades. It is now taken for granted that theoretical tools can be applied to the study of, for example, texts, societies, or gender relations.

The Phenomenon of “cultural studies” in general, one of the major success stories of interdisciplinary enquiry, is based on just that assumption.
Any area of our culture is amenable to the application of the latest theories.
The further assumption is being made that the application of such theories will lead to a significant increase in understanding of how our culture works.

The Grand Narrative of Marxism

The motivation for this development can be traced back to the rise of Marxism. Karl Marx (1818–83) and his followers bequeathed us an all-embracing theory, or “grand narrative” as it is more commonly referred to nowadays.

IT’S ABOUT TIME VAN LOON DID A NEW DRAWING OF ME …
you can analyse and form value judgements on any cultural phenomenon: literature, art, music, political systems, sport, race relations, etc.

Entire cultures can be put under the microscope of Marxist theory. It forms a paradigm of the way in which any critical theory in general works. Cultural artefacts are tested against the given projection of the world as it is, or should be, constructed.

The Politics of Criticism

One criticism levelled against critical theory says that it is an “alternative metaphysics”, promoting a particular world view, and, at least implicitly, a particular politics. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with such a procedure, as long as it is made clear what that metaphysics entails. What is it trying to achieve? One can then accept or reject its programme.

From Marxism onwards, critical theory has been very closely linked to political positions.
Nor that critical theory should be kept separate from the world of politics.
We cannot assume that any criticism is a “value-free” activity.

A great deal of its value stems from its ability to remain politically engaged. Being critical is being political: it represents an intervention into a much wider debate than the aesthetic alone, and that is surely something to be encouraged. We live in politically interesting times, after all.

Such theories have been adapted by various movements to help further a political programme, as in the case of queer theory and black criticism.

Feminism can be crossed with Marxism or deconstruction; Marxism with postmodernism, poststructuralism, or postcolonialism – and so on in a variety of permutations.

The sheer profusion of theories with which we are confronted promotes this kind of experiment.
In the theory world at present, it is very much a consumer’s market.

Bringing Theory to the Surface

To be a critic now, especially in academic life, is also to be a theorist – as any student in the humanities and social sciences will be only too painfully aware.

One no longer studies “literature”, but literature plus the full range of critical theories used to construct readings of narratives.
The same thing goes for art history, media studies, sociology – and so on through the humanities and social sciences.
Cultural studies ranges over many of these disciplines.

How we arrive at value judgements, and, indeed, whether we can arrive at value judgements, are now at least as important considerations as what the actual value judgements themselves are.

Hidden Agendas and Ideologies

Of course, theories have always operated “under the surface”, prior to the development of the term “critical theory” itself, but they were generally implicit rather than explicit.

It was a case of assumptions that were taken for granted rather than used in a self-conscious way.
Liberal humanists tended to assume the “ennobling power” of great literature, for example; New Critics in the 1940s and 50s assumed that literary artefacts featured an “organic unify” – the higher the order of organic unity, the greater the work.
“Assumptions that are taken for granted” is a pretty good and handy definition of ideology.

Theoretical Reflexivity

Self-consciousness, or “reflexivity” as we now call it, in the application of theory is what defines the current state of play in the various disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. A student preparing a dissertation or thesis will normally be advised to outline the theoretical model being used, first of all, before going on to undertake the actual task of analysis itself.

The adoption of a theoretical position, a method of “reading” cultural “texts”, must be foregrounded.
The final mark for one’s work will reflect the degree of success in articulating, and then applying, the theoretical “line” as much as anything else.

The last thing one wants to be accused of in such situations is being “undertheorized” – that way, low marks lie. The successful student in higher education reaches theoretically-informed conclusions in essays and exams, and can show precisely how the theory informed those conclusions.

Science Studies: the Paradigm Model

But it is not only in the humanities and social sciences that critical theory is deployed. Even the hard sciences have been infiltrated to some extent. Science as a social phenomenon is most certainly a target for critical theory. One well-known founder of “science studies” is the historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn (b. 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Theory of Everything
• Further Reading
• Glossary
• Index