Critical theory

About: Critical theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5372 publications have been published within this topic receiving 164765 citations.

Beginnings: Intention and Method

Abstract: Asking, "What is a beginning?", this book brings together history, philosophy, structuralism and critical theory in a work of literary criticism. Edward Said differentiates beginning from origin; the latter is divine, mythical and privileged, the former secular, humanly produced and ceaselessly re-examined. During the 18th and 19th centuries, he argues, the novel was the major attempt in Western literary culture to give beginnings an authorizing, institutional and specialized role in art, experience and knowledge. He traces this idea through the late-19th and early-20th centuries - to Freud's discoveries and the novels of modernist authors - and goes on to explore the question of beginnings in critical discourse and the work of the French structuralists. Combining philosophy and belles-lettres, the book refuses to divorce literature from history, philosophy and social discourse, thereby broadening the role of criticism, from celebration and orthodoxy to re-experiencing and questioning. It discusses Dickens, Conrad, Hardy, T.E. Lawrence, Nietzsche, Freud, Vico and Michel Foucault. Edward Said is the author of "Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism" and "Peace and Its Discontents".

The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia

Abstract: The utopian design and organization of Brasilia-the modernist new capital of Brazil-were meant to transform Brazilian society. In this sophisticated, pioneering study of Brasilia from its inception in 1957 to the present, James Holston analyzes this attempt to change society by building a new kind of city and the ways in which the paradoxes of constructing an imagined future subvert its utopian premises. Integrating anthropology with methods of analysis from architecture, urban studies, social history, and critical theory, Holston presents a critique of modernism based on a powerfully innovative ethnography of the city."

Paradigms and promises : new approaches to educational administration

Abstract: In the field of educational administration there have been several years of active debate over how America's school systems are run. Contemporary educational administrators have been forced to reflect not only on educational policy and practice, but on the very nature of their position. How does administration contribute to the type of society we have? In what ways does it impede or enhance our cultural ideals and values? "Paradigms and Promises" offers an unorthodox solution by presenting administration as an arena for critical reflection and humanistic action, rather than a more technically-oriented style of management. Foster's critical analysis is premised on an understanding of the relationship of theory to practice, and as he provides alternative theories, he sheds new light on educational administration. Orthodox administrative theory receives heavy criticism in this text. Foster employs progressive critical theory as well as conventional analyses in critical appraisal, and advocates a dialectical concept, through which administrators, teachers and students are encouraged to challenge and question each other - the eventual result being a more responsive, democratically-run system.

Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory

Abstract: Part I. A Critique of Traditional Marxism: 1. Rethinking Marx's critique of capitalism 2. Presuppositions of traditional Marxism 3. The limits of traditional Marxism and the pessimistic turn of Critical Theory Part II. Toward a Reconstruction of the Marxian Critique: The Commodity 4. Abstract labor 5. Abstract time 6. Habermas's critique of Marx Part III. Toward a Reconstruction of the Marxian Critique: capital 7. Toward a theory of capital 8. The dialectic of labor and time 9. The trajectory of production 10. Concluding considerations.