Critical theory

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

Modern critical theory & classical literature

Abstract: In recent decades the study of literature in Europe and the Americas has been profoundly influenced by modern critical theory in its various forms, whether Structuralism or Deconstructionism, Hermeneutics, Reader-Response Theory or Rezeptionsasthetik, Semiotics or Narratology, Marxist, feminist, neo-historical, psychoanalytical or other perspectives. Whilst the value and validity of such approaches to literature is still a matter of some dispute, not least among classical scholars, they have had a substantial impact on the study both of classical literatures and of the mentalite of Greece and Rome. In an attempt to clarify issues in the debate, the eleven contributors to this volume were asked to produce a representative collection of essays to illustrate the applicability of some of the new approaches to Greek and Latin authors or literary forms and problems. The scope of the volume was deliberately limited to literary investigation, broadly construed, of Greek and Roman authors. Broader areas of the history and culture of the ancient world impinge in the essays, but are not their central focus. The volume also contains a separate bibliography, offering for the first time a complete bibliography of classical studies which incorporate modern critical theory.

How social science is impossible without critical theory: The immersion of mainstream approaches in time and space

Abstract: Any endeavor to circumscribe, with a certain degree of precision, the nature of the relationship between social science and critical theory would appear to be daunting. Over the course of the past century, and especially since the end of World War II, countless efforts have been made in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology to illuminate the myriad manifestations of modern social life from a multiplicity of angles. It is doubtful that it would be possible to do justice to all the different variants of social science in an assessment of their relationship to critical theory. Moreover, given the proliferation of critical theories since the 1980s, the effort to devise a “map” that would reflect the particular orientations and intricacies of each approach to critical theory would also be exacting in its own right.1

Critical Theory and the Dialectic of Rationalism

Abstract: ion, the tool of enlightenment, treats its objects as it did fate, the notion of which it rejects: it liquidates them .... The distance between subject and object, a presupposition of abstraction, is grounded in the distance from the thing itself which the master achieved through the mastered .... The universality of ideas as developed by discursive logic, domination 40. Cf. Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin ofNegative Dialectics (New York, 1977). 41. Cf. Benjamin, Illuminations 254 ff. I have explored the relationship between the philosophies of history ofBenjamin and the authors ofDialecticofEnlightenment in my study WalterBenjamin: An Aesthetic ofRedemption (New York, 1982) 266 ff. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:29:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 48 Dialectic ofRationality in the conceptual sphere, is raised up on the basis of actual domination. The dissolution of the magical heritage, of the old diffuse ideas, by conceptual unity, expresses the hierarchical constitution of life determined by those who are free. The individuality that learned order and subordination in the subjection of the world, soon wholly equated truth with the regulative thought without whose fixed distinctions universal truth cannot exist.42 The explanation for the emergence of rational thought offered here is a thoroughly disenchanted one. Its motives point in the direction of a radicalized ideology-critique that seems to draw more on pragmatist insights and a genealogical focus of Nietzschean inspiration than the Marxist tradition with which critical theory was earlier associated. The utopian potentials of the rational concept could emerge only with great difficulty from this perspective. Instead, the faculty of rational thought would appear to have more determinate links with the history of domination over human and non-human nature than with prospects for emancipation. Whereas Horkheimer seemed for the most part to retain this negative historico-philosophical orientation in his later work, he never attempted to work out fully the epistemological implications of the critique of reason in Dialectic ofEnlightenment. Instead, this task was left to Adorno, who, one might say, executed it with a vengeance in Negative Dialectics, where it seems that the most essential function that conceptual thought could assume at present would be to reflect on its own inadequacies. As Adorno remarks: Reflection upon its own meaning is the way out of the concept's seeming being-in-itself as a unit of meaning .... Disenchantment of the concept is the antidote of philosophy. It keeps it from growing rampant and becoming an absolute unto itself.4s If the preceding reconstruction of the development of critical theory is correct, then its own internal ambivalences concerning the history of Western rationalism would have to be taken into consideration to a much greater extent than it has been in the secondary literature heretofore. One possible way out of this dilemma would seem to be to 42. Horkheimerand Adorno, DialecticofEnlightenment 13-14. 43. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (NewYork, 1973) 12-13. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:29:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

How we became our data: A genealogy of the informational person

Abstract: In the wake of Michel Foucault’s analyses of disciplinary surveillance and biopolitical regulations, or of Gilles Deleuze’s remarks on the ‘society of control’, in the past few years, many political theorists have developed compelling work on so-called ‘data politics’. From Maurizio Lazzarato’s ‘noopolitics’ and Tiziana Terranova’s ‘communication biopower’ to Grégoire Chamayou’s ‘datapower’ and Davide Panagia’s ‘#datapolitik’ (to mention only a few examples; for a more detailed list, see p. 169), it is widely accepted that one of the main ways in which power now functions is by collecting, storing, and exchanging vast amounts of personal data. Colin Koopman’s book, How We Became Our Data, does not merely add to this already vast literature new insights on what he calls ‘infopolitics’ (i.e. the politics of information) and ‘informational persons’ (claiming that we are invariably ‘inscribed, processed, and reproduced as subjects of data’, p. 4). Drawing from Foucault – both methodologically and conceptually – Koopman advances two original claims that have the ambition to transform some of the most deeply rooted assumptions in the field of data politics. First, Koopman convincingly argues that to understand how information became so important for the kind of subjects we are today, we should avoid focusing exclusively on the last few decades – that is, on the age of personal computing, internet, and social media. We should also problematise the widely accepted narrative that our ‘information era’ began in the aftermath of WWII, and more precisely with the elaboration, in 1948, of the so-called Wiener-Shannon theory of information (pp. 16–17). At the same time, Koopman argues that informational persons are not to be confused with confessing individuals and statisticalised populations of the nineteenth century. Informational personhood emerged between the mid-1910s and the mid-1930s. Indeed, the way in which subjects started to be formatted into data at that time (through birth certificates, psychological assessments, education records, financial profiles, etc.) still remains with us today. Koopman provides convincing historical evidence for this claim by analysing in

Theories and concepts in critical discourse studies: Facing challenges, moving beyond foundations:

Abstract: This article emphasises the need to devote more attention to concepts and theories in critical discourse studies (CDS). We are particularly eager to emphasise that CDS theory of the second decade o ...