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    Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide
    Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide
    Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide
    Ebook365 pages2 hours

    Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide

    By Professor Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon

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    About this ebook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcon Books
    Release dateJun 5, 2014
    ISBN9781848317802
    Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide

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      Book preview

      Introducing Critical Theory - Professor Stuart Sim

      Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39-41 North Road, London N7 9DP

      email: [email protected]

      www.introducingbooks.com

      ISBN: 978-184831-780-2

      Text and illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd

      The author has asserted his moral rights.

      Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

      Contents

      Cover

      Title Page

      Copyright

      The Theory of Everything

      The Grand Narrative of Marxism

      The Politics of Criticism

      The Synthetic or Magpie Approach

      Bringing Theory to the Surface

      Hidden Agendas and Ideologies

      Theoretical Reflexivity

      Science Studies: the Paradigm Model

      Postmodernism and Science

      The Sokal Scandal

      In Defence of Big Science

      Origins of Marxism

      Absolute Spirit: the Logic of History

      The Communist Manifesto

      Infra- and Super-structures

      Economic Determinism

      The Hidden Text

      Mapping the Origins of Critical Theory

      Reflection Theory

      Zhdanovite Socialist Realism

      The Battle for Class Consciousness

      Lukácsian Theories of the Novel

      A Critical Realist View of Alienation

      The Theory of Hegemony

      Cultural Criticism

      The Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory

      The Progress of Irrationalism

      One-dimensional or Non-oppositional Society

      The Alternative or New Left

      The Politics of Avant-garde Art

      Against Totality – and Totalitarianism

      Theory of the Aura

      In Combat with Tradition

      Brecht’s Epic Theatre

      Russian Formalism

      The Grammar of Narrative

      Shklovsky’s Defamiliarization

      Bakhtin’s Plural or Dialogic Meanings

      Intertextuality or Heteroglossia

      Jakobson’s Semiotic Linguistics

      The Psychoanalytic Unconscious

      Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory

      Structuralism and Critical Theory

      What is Structuralism?

      The Structuralist Unconscious

      Lacan and Structuralist Psychoanalysis

      Lacan’s Imaginary and Symbolic Realms

      Barthes and the Empire of Signs

      The Common Structure of Narratives

      The Death of the Author

      Readerly versus Writerly Texts

      The Death of Man

      Intertextuality and the Symbolic Order

      Eco’s Labyrinth

      The Structuralist Marxism of Althusser

      Structuralist Marxism and Literary Criticism

      Genetic Structuralism

      Reader-Response Theory

      Poststructuralism: the Breakdown of Sign-Systems

      Poststructuralist Deconstruction

      Différance and Meaning

      Deconstructing Binary Oppositions

      The Order of Things

      The Rise of Scientific Discipline

      Uncovering the Hidden Discourse

      The End of Humanism

      Lyotard’s Differends

      The Postmodern Condition

      Postmodern Science

      Scientific Narrative and Relativism

      The Enlightenment, Unfinished Project

      The Problem of Value Judgement

      Paganism or Benthamism

      Postmodernism in the Service of Capitalism

      The Case-by-Case Event

      Techno-science and the human

      A Feminist Response to the Inhuman

      The Sociology of Seduction

      Against the Marxist Fetishism of Production

      A World of Hyperreal Simulacra

      Disneyworld America

      When Did Postmodernism Begin?

      The Double-Coding of Postmodernism

      Postmodern Pastiche and Irony

      Anti-Oedipus and Schizoanalysis

      Anti-Oedipal Networks of Communication

      Stay Sane – Keep Moving

      Post-Marxism: The Breakdown of Marxism

      A Post-Marxist Answer to Capitalism

      The Failures of Marxian Theory

      Beyond Doctrinaire Marxism

      The Spectre of Marx

      A Plural Marx

      The End of History

      Our Complicity in Ideology

      The New Historicism

      Cultural Materialism

      A Politicized Shakespeare

      The Theory of Postcolonialism

      Fanon’s Anti-Colonialism

      Poststructuralist Hybridity

      Subaltern Studies

      Theory as Sexual Politics

      A Feminist Literary Canon

      Feminism and Marxism

      Post-Marxist Feminism

      The Theory of Gynocriticism

      Against Patriarchy

      The Surplus Woman

      Against the Male Canon

      Heroinism in Women’s Literature

      French Feminism: écriture féminine

      The Undecidable of écriture féminine

      Does Difference Lead to Separatism?

      Two Champions of Modern Feminism

      Postfeminism and Positive Womanhood

      A Parallel with Post-Marxism

      Queer Theory and Sexual Identity

      Black Criticism

      Black Feminist Criticism

      Theory is Power

      Critical Theory and a Pluralist World

      Further Reading

      Glossary

      Index

      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.

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