Photograph via snooOG

Critical theory is a school of thought that stresses the examination and the critique of society and culture by applying knowledge from the social sciences and the humanities.

Welcome to r/CriticalTheory!

Critical theory is a school of thought that stresses the examination and the critique of society and culture by applying knowledge from the social sciences and the humanities.

As a term, critical theory has two meanings with different origins and histories: the first originated in sociology and the second originated in literary criticism, whereby it is used and applied as an umbrella term that can describe a theory founded upon critique; thus, the theorist Max Horkheimer described a theory as critical in so far as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them."


This subreddit is intended to be a massive theory HUB, much like /r/ArtTheory, /r/FilmTheory, /r/FeministTheory, and /r/EconomicTheory for all things pertaining to criticism, including and especially social scientific and literary theories.

We are interested in long-form or in-depth submissions and responses, so please keep this in mind when you post so as to maintain high quality content.

If you post a question, it must include an attempt to answer it or demonstrate some attempts to search and engage with existing literature- this is not a place for us to do your homework! If you are completely stumped and have questions about philosophy and/or socialscience and want a high quality answer try /r/askphilosophy and /r/AskSocialScience

Video submissions that are not lectures or interviews with acclaimed (at the very least recognised within the critical theory world, in or out of academia) theorists must be over 20 minutes long and include a substantive submission statement which is not simply a copy of the youtube description (unless the description is fairly thorough). Submissions removed under this rule may be resubmitted with a statement, though substantial existing discussions may be left up at moderator discretion.

Please post announcements for events, reading groups, and other similar invitations in the monthly pinned thread.

Please direct shorter videos, memes, and shitposts to /r/CriticalTheoryTV

In this subreddit offensive language may be tolerated depending on the context in which it is used and users should keep in mind that if moderators determine that use of such language is done with a malicious intent, they will be banned. Persistent derailing, trolling, and/or off-topic posting and commenting may also result in a ban. All bans are subject to the discretion of the moderation team and site-wide rules apply.

Posts of aaaaarg links or posts asking about aaaaarg keys will be removed. For questions related to aaaaarg, please contact one of the following users: u/leftcomsnob, u/MovingToJersey, u/lzbrgs, u/Louie-dog, u/Santabot, u/Amberkowicz1, u/CyberDiablo, u/joseph_jacotot


Resources


Influential thinkers:

  • Theodor Adorno
  • Louis Althusser
  • Alain Badiou
  • Roland Barthes
  • Jean Baudrillard
  • Walter Benjamin
  • Lauren Berlant
  • Judith Butler
  • Helene Cixous
  • Gilles Deleuze
  • Jacques Derrida
  • Frantz Fanon
  • Michel Foucault
  • Erich Fromm
  • Jürgen Habermas
  • Donna Haraway
  • Luce Irigaray
  • Julia Kristeva
  • Jacques Lacan
  • Bruno Latour
  • Herbert Marcuse
  • Chantal Mouffe
  • Edward Said
  • Eve Sedgwick
  • Pierre Bourdieu
  • Gayatri Spivak
  • Slavoj Zizek

(Please see more here)


Related Subreddits:

See all in a multi-reddit

. .
/r/Aesthetics /r/AffectTheory
/r/AcademicPhilosophy /r/ArtTheory
/r/ActorNetworkTheory /r/Biocosmism
/r/AskLiteraryStudies /r/AskPhilosophy
/r/Autonomia /r/Biopolitics
/r/Communalists /r/Zizek
/r/ComparativeLiterature /r/ContinentalTheory
/r/CriticalPedagogy /r/CriticalPedagogy
/r/CulturalStudies /r/culturalstudies
/r/Deleuze
/r/Ecocriticism /r/Ecofeminism
/r/Existentialism /r/Feminism
/r/FeministTheory /r/FilmTheory
/r/Formalism /r/FrankfurtSchool
/r/GermanIdealism /r/Hermeneutics
/r/HistoryofIdeas /r/Individuation
/r/Integral /r/MagicRealism
/r/Mutualism /r/modernart
/r/Narratology /r/NewCriticism
/r/NewHistoricism /r/NewInternational
/r/NonPhilosophy /r/Nonviolence
/r/PathofCapital /r/Phenomenology
/r/PhilosophyofRace /r/PoMo
/r/Postanarchism /r/Postcolonialism
/r/Posthumanism /r/PostMarxism
/r/Postmodernism /r/PostPoMo
/r/Poststructuralism /r/ProcessRelational
/r/Psychoanalysis /r/Psychogeography
/r/QueerTheory /r/RadicalExchange
/r/RadicalPhilosophy /r/ReadingFoucault
/r/ReaderResponse /r/ReadingSOTS
/r/ReligiousTheory /r/RussianFormalism
/r/Situationism /r/SpeculativeRealism
/r/SphereTheory /r/Structuralism
/r/Surrealism /r/SystemsTheory
/r/Theopoetics /r/TheoryReview
/r/ThingTheory /r/TraumaTheory
/r/UrbanStudies /r/VisCulture

Notice: If you have a subreddit you would like to add to the Multi-reddit, please PM the moderators.

/r/CriticalTheory

163,773 Subscribers

2

1 or Several Žižeks?

This video traces the roots of Žižek's philosophical perspective via a comparison of Lacan and Derrida into the origins of Western Christianity. Considering the legacy of deconstruction as an echo of the gap between St. Paul and Augustine at the origins of the West (explored in memes and irreverant timelines), we see this prolific thinker as, himself, symptomatic of our times.

0 Comments
2024/12/30
19:07 UTC

50

on postmodernism: what it is, what it isn't, and where to start

recently I saw a post asking for an overall criticism or explanation of postmodernism, but by the time I tried to reply the comments were locked. this isn't the first time I've seen such questions; the confusing usages of "postmodernism" is a perennial topic. so I thought, in case it's useful to anyone curious about postmodernism but not sure where to start or what it is, to post my thoughts and see what others think about thi most ambiguous of labels.

so postmodernism refers to a lot of different things to a lot of different people. it's more of a grab bag of a lot of schools and thinkers and especially styles of thought. and what counts as postmodern in, say, gender theory might be very easily categorized as modern in literature studies, and vice versa.

when people try to define a single theory of post modernity which includes everyone they want to include and excludes everyone they want to exclude they usually the up realizing that there's no single postmodern method, idea, style, institution, tradition, agenda, or foundation. it would be like asking "what is a good criticism of philosophy," or "what are the core concepts of fiction." it's not the right kind of question.

the first step to learning about postmodernism, therefore, is to define who you are actually talking about. everyone and his mother, from Walter Benjamin to Judith Butler to Spivak to Deleuze to Derrida to Cesaire to Fannon to Terrance McKinna to Hume to Foucault to Garcia Marquez to Siddhartha to Hildegard of Bingen to Kant to Subcomandante Marcos is to the post- side of someone's moden and to the modern- side of another's post, often quite independent of chronological order. my Hinduism Professor, for example, liked to say that India was postmodern in antiquity.

the most common definition of post modernism I've encountered which isn't just being made up to attack leftists and queer people is that postmodernism, emerging from a dissatisfaction with the grand unifying theories of the modern era (Marxism, Liberalism, Freudianism, Fascism, etc etc), is distinguished by a skepticism of meta-narratives. that's it. skepticism or criticism or caution of meta-narratives. but pretty much everyone is skeptical of certain meta narratives and w willing to make use of others unskeptically, at least on a preliminary basis.

(sometimes this gets bastardized into a wholesale rejection of meta-narratives, leading directly to the observation that such a rejection is itself a kind of metanarrative, implying that postmodernists have outsmarted themselves and just gotten caught up in the very thing they're trying to avoid. most post modernists know that even criticism or skepticism of meta narratives doesn't exempt one from them. Here Wittegstein may be useful, though as with all philosophy your mileage may vary.)

so instead of looking for any overarching defining thing called postmodernism, try engaging with one or a few texts, persons, and/or schools that interest you. figure out who calls them postmodern and why, and what they have in common with and how they differ from other so called postmodernists. you'll find more sensible coherence and more interesting contradictions and more useful questions that way.

41 Comments
2024/12/29
13:18 UTC

4

Bi-Weekly Discussion: Introductions, Questions, What have you been reading? December 29, 2024

Welcome to r/CriticalTheory. We are interested in the broadly Continental philosophical and theoretical tradition, as well as related discussions in social, political, and cultural theories. Please take a look at the information in the sidebar for more, and also to familiarise yourself with the rules.

Please feel free to use this thread to introduce yourself if you are new, to raise any questions or discussions for which you don't want to start a new thread, or to talk about what you have been reading or working on.

If you have any suggestions for the moderators about this thread or the subreddit in general, please use this link to send a message.

Reminder: Please use the "report" function to report spam and other rule-breaking content. It helps us catch problems more quickly and is always appreciated.

Older threads available here.

3 Comments
2024/12/29
11:00 UTC

8

deleuze masochism/monism paradox?

why does deleuze associate masochism with hegelian transcendental negation and sadism with spinozistic immanence when he seems to praise masochism, the contract, etc. even though he's philosophically spinozist and aligns more closely with the characteristics he attributes to the works of sade?

i understand the function of mediation in masoch as he describes in coldness and cruelty, im just confused about the apparent juxtaposition between his affinity with masoch, the contract, and his immanent, monistic framework of philosophical analysis.

0 Comments
2024/12/29
02:24 UTC

5

Dialectic of Enlightenment: Excursus II

I am currently writing a paper (for university) on 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. I am focusing on Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality; in particular I'm busy trying to give a comprehensive definition of what "enlightenment morality" truly entails. I am finding Excursus II to be one of the more challengingly — I actually want to say poorer — written chapters in the book, mainly because your reading a lot citations from Kant, Nietzsche and Sade Frankensteined together. Does anyone know good secondary reading to help me articulate this chapter better? So far I have only found Alison Moore's 'Sadean nature and reasoned morality in Adorno/Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment' as a good secondary reading. Thanks in advance!

(For Moore's article, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2010.494901 )

2 Comments
2024/12/28
23:15 UTC

0

Does speciesism render the entire Left project bankrupt?

This is something I think about a lot.

  1. Nonhuman animals are conscious, they have interests of their own, but they can't organize as a class and mobilize their interests collectively.
  2. We breed, mutilate, and slaughter billions of these beings who are powerless every year. As I'm writing, hundreds of millions bash their skulls against iron bars and scream their whole lives.
  3. Very few people take an interest. Either because "bacon cheeseburgers are so good" or because not enough people pressure them to care.

So basically, we're in this situation where a population of beings that dwarfs the entire human population many times over is savagely exploited, beings who are powerless. And no one cares because those beings don't have the power to make us care.

Doesn't affect us, we benefit. And no one takes an interest because we hold power and those "others" don't. Kinds of proves people only care if something affects them, or if others can pressure them to care.

Doesn't all this sound familiar?

12 Comments
2024/12/28
19:58 UTC

14

Has Anyone Read Saving the Modern Soul? Thoughts and Insights?

I’ve been reading Saving the Modern Soul by Eva Illouz and would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve engaged with it. The book critiques how therapy and self-help have become commercialized, shaping modern identities and emotions.

Do you find her analysis of the therapeutic culture compelling? How does it connect to broader sociological or philosophical discussions on individualism and emotion? Any insights or critiques you’d like to share?

Looking forward to hearing your perspectives!

0 Comments
2024/12/28
18:38 UTC

21

Can Jameson's dialectical criticism be applied to obviously political novels?

I want to analyze Spanish crisis novels with Jameson's theory, which, very briefly, consists of finding out what aspects of the History the fiction represses. The issue is that Spanish crisis novels, on the contrary, aim to make visible capitalism's unperceived operations. I've seen generally this theory was applied to appearingly unpolitical novels, but I wonder if I can reveal the idiolegemes of Spanish crisis novels, and see how they capture the History without repressing it. Anyway, I also appreciate any suggestion on how I can apply Jameson's theory to Spanish crisis novels?

Further explanation: The problem is that they don't seem like any symbolic solution to some social contradictions but they directly refer to the social contradictions themselves.

14 Comments
2024/12/28
15:47 UTC

19

Readings on (ideology of) the judicial system

I want to write about my experience going to a courtroom. Specifically, about the surprising amount of moralising I noticed the DA and the judge doing. Instead of treating cases like cold hard legal facts, they spent most of the time rambling to suspects/convicts about their moral character.

I've already gotten myself a copy of Discipline and Punish by Foucault, but I would love any recommendations that relate to the topic so I can delve in further!

21 Comments
2024/12/27
18:29 UTC

4

Calculus and modernity - Any recommended readings?

I will try Deleuze, Whitehead and Leibniz, though I'm wondering if someone has written broadly on this topic in an accessible way for someone without much background in math.

8 Comments
2024/12/27
17:47 UTC

5

Please sense check this "thesis"

Hi all, thanks for taking the time. I have been developing a "thesis" (in air-quotes -- its hardly a thesis so much as it is a collection of ideas I am trying to string into one cohesive concept) regarding language, organisational ontology and the relationship between these things.

For context - I finished my undergraduate studies in philosophy, politics and economics last year and was initially planning to pursue a career in academia. I got the M.phil place but decided to go work for the government instead due to financial pressures. This choice has been massively thought provoking, and I have tried to organise some of these thoughts. They rely heavily on existing and very well explored philosophy of language, but I haven't really found exactly what I'm looking for in my research yet.

The short argument (will post with commentary below) is basically this:

P1: Our experiences of the world (in a broad sense) constitutes the building blocks of what we deign ourselves to know about the world, ie: our beliefs.

P2: The way we use language informs the way we make sense of our experiences of the world.

P3: The way we communicate is informed by our existing experiences of the world.

C1: So, our experiences are the foundational building blocks of our worldly beliefs, which are then processed linguistically so that we can make sense of these experiences. Once we've made sense of them, we communicate these beliefs to others, but mediate how we go about that communication in light of our experiences.

P4: We talk about organisations, institutions and other non-persons as if they are agents; that is, we personify organisations, institutions or even ideas which cannot act.

P5: When we personify non-actors or non-subjects, we abstract the subjects that actually constitute these organisations or institutions.

P6: We ascribe moral ill and failure to organisations and institutions.

C2: If C1, P4 - P6 then changing the way we linguistically process our experiences of, and communicate about, organisations and institutions can meaningfully change their role in the world.

The upshot: the people behind governments, markets, corporations, wars and so on are obscured by the way we abstract away from the persons that form these entities and instead ascribe personhood to the entity itself. Obviously I understand that this is to some extent just linguistic short hand. I get that we can't name every soldier that boards crosses some border or whatever. But at the same time, I feel strongly that the actors behind these institutions use the "personhood" of the institution to separate themselves from their and their colleagues actions. This has been informed to some extent by my experiences in government, where I have acted in a way totally contrary to my values but done so under the auspices of acting "as government", and have witnessed many others do similarly. But it has also been informed by simply trying to answer questions like how do people harm others in the intense and foul ways they do? Why do we participate in markets that we know are harmful to the planet, to our fellows, or both? How do people who work for fossil fuel companies reconcile that with knowledge of climate change? How do people who work for weapons companies reconcile? And so on. I also understand that some of these answers boil down to need and necessity, but some of it does not -- no one needs to work for Raytheon, I chose to work for the government, and so on.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Again, I know that this relies heavily on some existing and well explored language of philosophy, but I have not been able to find much that talks about institutions and organisations in the way that I am getting at, though I haven't been able to get into the good databases since my uni cut me off.

Thanks all!

The argument but with commentary:

P1: Our experiences of the world (in a broad sense) constitutes the building blocks of what we deign ourselves to know about the world, ie: our beliefs.
Eg: when I look at two types of tree and note the differences and similarities between them, I am having an experience of the world that informs what I may then say I know about the world -- I know where the trees are, what they look like, their rough dimensions and so on. Further, when my Dad tells me about the these differences and the names of the trees, I have another experience of the world that informs more knowledge -- I now know their scientific names, what drives their differences and similarities, and that my Dad knows a lot about trees.

P2: The way we use language informs the way we make sense of our experiences of the world.
Eg: My dad and I use a shared language to discuss these trees, and he uses words and concepts I know at first to help me expand my understanding into new words and concepts, such as their scientific names and how soil attributes affects the bark of different species in different ways.

P3: The way we communicate is informed by our existing experiences of the world.
Eg: Dad uses a different linguistic approach with me, a lay person than he does with a colleague. This is because his experiences in the world so far are such that he believes that I am a layperson with little arboreal knowledge, while his friend is also an arboreal enthusiast.

C1: So, our experiences are the foundational building blocks of our worldly beliefs, which are then processed linguistically so that we can make sense of these experiences. Once we've made sense of them, we communicate these beliefs to others, but mediate how we go about that communication in light of our experiences.
[I am shaky about the phrasing here, but bear with me]

P4: We talk about organisations, institutions and other non-persons as if they are agents; that is, we personify organisations, institutions or even ideas which cannot act.
Eg: We talk about "the government's belief that taxes must come down", we talk about the "market driving house sales", we talk about "capitalism's desire for profit".

P5: When we personify non-actors or non-subjects, we abstract the subjects that actually constitute these organisations or institutions (noting that this premise takes for granted that governments, markets and society are ultimately all groups of people, though I don't discount that there is an argument to be made about how and to what extent the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and what that means).

P6: We ascribe moral ill and failure to orgnaisations and institutions.
FWIW, I don't think we should -- these things can't act. People that form them act.

C2: If C1, P4 - P6 then changing the way we linguistically process our experiences of, and communicate about, organisations and institutions can meaningfully change their role in the world.

41 Comments
2024/12/27
07:30 UTC

89

Thoughts on Mao and the idealism of Western academia

This is inspired by a recent post here on critical theory's relationship with Marxism-Leninism.

I want to focus on Mao here. I feel like on the one hand, you have people who lionize Mao. There are lots of valid criticisms of the cult of personality and so on. I'm not trying to defend Mao uncritically at all here.

On the other hand, I feel like many Western leftists have this extremely idealist view. They take their understanding of politics in a 21st century American context and apply it to 1950s China.

In a 2024 US context, almost everyone has a high school education. In China, the population was largely illiterate. There's huge economic inequality in the 2024 USA, but it's not like living in a largely feudal society.

I personally appreciate the Frankfurt school, but they were responding to a specific material context in the post-war West. Try going to 1930s China and talking in the way Marcuse does. Many of them were starving peasants up against oppressive landlords. Their immediate concern was fucking survival, not trying to "imagine" something outside of consumer capitalism and "unleash creative potentialities" or whatever.

I feel like it's easy to criticize Mao's "brutality" when you ignore the brutality of that context. I'm not saying you can excuse anything, but I wish we could realize a USA 2024 context is a universe away from that of Mao and many other Third World Marxists in the last century.

Many of them were trying to organize a movement of oppressed peasants who couldn't even read against brutal landlords and imperialists. And here we are talking about a revolution based not "creativity" or "desires" or "liberated intellectual capacities" in all this Lacanian or Freudian language.

32 Comments
2024/12/26
22:36 UTC

0

Criticism and psychoanalysis snippets on 'the Polar Express' (Dialectic of enlightenment, dream-Interpretation Psychoanalysis)

(Pls discussion and feedback)

The 2004 animated film 'Polar Express', based on the 1985 children's book 'The Polar Express' by Chris Van Allsburg, tells the story of a childlike skeptic who is led back into myth. To be more precise, it is a boy who has the faith to Christmas stories and put rational explanations in its place. To We find it beginning pictorially on the day before Christmas in the reference work the habitability of the Checking the North Pole instead of waiting for Santa to arrive. He falls asleep and the Polar Express appears at his door. Under numerous allusions, justice is done for a long time suspensefully left open whether the action-packed and supernatural experiences in the Christmas train and on the North Pole is a dream. It is interesting to look at the film under the assumption that the entire middle part is actually represents a dream. Equipped with the tool of psychoanalysis, it would be possible for us to from the point of view of the wish-fulfillment theory, what is important about the dream of the Polar Express for the rationalized enlightened individual is presented as desirable. According to Freud, a Dream always represents and distorts the fulfilment of desires by psychic mechanisms, which the dreamer cannot or may not fulfill himself in reality due to external conditions. But in order for the ego to still get its money's worth, it grants itself an experience of fulfillment in the dream in a consequence-free space. The Polar Express shows us a boy whom reality leads to acceptance. scientific explanations. The belief in Santa Claus and Co. KG is with these declarations are not compatible. He calculates, for example, that the Christmas sleigh has more than Must have the speed of light. So does this boy dream of taking a fantastic trip to the North Pole, which is lively for Christmas, with a large number of accompanying and witnessing children, we could in this Longing to see myth. He wishes, despite the other powers of persuasion, (natural) scientific findings, to be able to believe in things that are are exempt from the obligation to provide scientific evidence. That he has a helping spirit on the roof of the Polar Express, which saves his and his friends' lives several times, would correspond to the Desire for metaphysical protection. However, this desire does not remain unbroken. Because when he takes a seat on Santa's lap, he doesn't want anything from him less than a physical, scientifically comprehensible proof of his supernatural elves Experiences: namely a bell from the Magic North Pole, which is placed under the tree in his parents' house. and thus comes into his rationalized world. Also the dream element of the many the events shows us that the desire is to combine evidence and faith. what pretends to be a contradiction in positivist reality. The protagonist wishes does not use the myth, as the film claims, when it has him say 'I want to believe', rather, he wishes for the compatibility of myth and enlightenment in his lifeworld. (1) However, the film itself reveals itself to be positivistic in the last part, when the reality status in limbo with the one who actually arrived under the tree bell with a note from Santa Claus is clarified as truly happened. All Viewers should be sure that this is how it really happened in the film. The boy may or may must now "believe" because the proving relic suggests so. The scientific Criteria of cognition leave him no choice ("Faith is seeing", it is also said in the film) and dominate in the end, still in his matter of faith. His interest in knowledge is, even if the Film this claims not to have been converted to faith. That he has the ringing of the bells, which only the 'believer', states the opposite and thus sets out the Positivism is guilty. This decisive restriction of openness in the last part could be daringly saved if one would also like to regard the last scene as an attached-nested part of the dream: then the wish of the rational boy came to fruition in a picture-book way by giving him a evidence of the myth, which nevertheless deprives him of metaphysical experiences, the hearing of the bell, not failed. Maintaining a rigid positivism and the possibility of genuinely Experience is not mutually exclusive. Wishful thinking of the positivist.

Footnotes (1) If we followed the main idea of the Dialectic of the Enlightenment by Adorno and Horkheimer, Enlightenment and myth are necessarily intertwined, then he does not have to worry about it at all. wish.

0 Comments
2024/12/26
21:51 UTC

0

gender theory question

I’m not a gender theorist so bear with me.

Is there a theory which argues that gender categories are both undefinable and objective? That is, that some people are in fact men, and other people are in fact women, and that necessarily match up with how they self-identify, but that there is also no way of defining “man” and “woman” by specific qualities. It is only possible to say, well, we know X, Y, and Z are not women, so we know that “woman” exists, but we cannot define it. But it exists independently of individual’s imaginations, so R is in fact either a man or a woman at time T, and R’s statement “I am a man” or “I am a woman” is either true or false but not determinative of R’s gender.

(I didn’t include non-binary because that complicates the question even more, not because I don’t think it would interesting to include! I feel like a solid gender theorist might be able to include non-binary in a really interesting way.)

Just curious, because most of the people I know fall into the “gender is self-identification” or “gender is biology or socially constructed at birth” buckets and I’m curious if there are theorists out there who believe that gender categories are objectively meaningful but can’t be reduced to a defined set.

30 Comments
2024/12/26
19:08 UTC

3

Videos/Recordings of Critical Theorists or Psychoanalysts talking about the Father?

Hello,

As the title says, I'm looking for theorists, philosophers, psychoanalysts (preferably Lacanians) talking about the figure of the Father in the context of Authority, the Law, Power, Hierarchy etc.

The problem is that I need this in a recorded format, I got plenty of literary ressources, I need videos, recorded conferences, lectures, films and documentaries or at least audio recordings.

Any suggestions are more than welcome!

1 Comment
2024/12/26
18:30 UTC

5

Post-colonial/Settler-colonial studies

Looking to understand the relationship between post-colonial and settler-colonial studies as I am interested in using both frameworks for my thesis.

I know both framework deal with the impact of colonialism but i am unsure about their relationship. Are they distinct frameworks or is settler-colonial studies a subfield of postcolonial? or they both represent different theoretical traditions.

Also looking for sources from a postcolonial perspective that critiques settler-colonial studies and vice versa. Or sources that outline tensions or contradictions between the two approaches.

For context, I will be studying on historical immigrant communities in Canada’s from post-colonial states, looking at labour and culture.

Thank you

9 Comments
2024/12/26
15:24 UTC

38

Engineers looking down on others (I need your thoughts/opinions/knowledge)

Especially talking about people who pursue science like physics, chemistry, or engineering and looking down on the "soft" sciences or any other majors like biology, psychology, literature, etc.

I want to write an essay on this, but I thought collecting your thoughts first could be a good idea.

80 Comments
2024/12/26
13:21 UTC

15

Sociomaterialism x new materialism x posthumanism

Hi! I am just beginning to explore the theories of new materialism, and so far, I am finding it difficult to grasp their main differences and structures. How do we construct a theoretical framework that aims to move beyond the human and understand the role of non-human objects? What is the umbrella theory, or is there even one?
Academia seems to somehow 'mix' many terms together by tracing them back to specific philosophers, but my question is: how can we distinguish these theories from one another? How can I logically organize their meanings to better understand and decide which approach makes sense for my research? I guess I just want to make some order for myself to understand the trajectory of this thinking.

6 Comments
2024/12/25
22:30 UTC

124

Why did Adorno (as far as I know) almost never critique colonialism?

Dialectic of Enlightenment was published in 1947, Minima Moralia in 1951. And he was working on drafts to Aesthetic Theory between 1959 and 1969.

This period actually coincides precisely with the decolonization wave. Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in African and Asia achieved independence. It's not like it was one country. It was a seismic shift in the world order right in the most active period of his thinking.

In contrast to Adorno, Sartre supported the FLN (Algerian National Liberation Front), and wrote multiple books and/or introductions attacking French colonialism. He was so active that his office got bombed twice by far-right paramilitaries.

So why did Adorno almost never critique colonialism?

68 Comments
2024/12/25
19:29 UTC

10

How exactly does Adorno see the relationship between identity thinking and exchange value?

So I understand that these are both important in Adorno's thought.

Identity thinking subsumes all of the diverse phenomena of life under totalizing categories. He thinks that this has been significant across Western history, but especially after the Enlightenment, with the rise of instrumental rationality.

Exchange value is important to Adorno because it makes everything commensurable in the market and flattens the real diversity of life.

His critique of identity thinking and exchange value seem intertwined. The critiques overlap. But I'm not sure how exactly the relationship maps out.

Does he think the rise of modern capitalism exacerbated an already-extant trend in Western history (identity thinking?). How does a formal market logic like exchange value relate to this broad historical/cultural trend of identity thought?

3 Comments
2024/12/25
19:07 UTC

35

All I want for Critmas…

…is peer review! Merry Critmas Gang!

So sorry for my absence of late; I’ve really missed you folks. My ectoreddit commitments have been ballooning, what with finishing my dissertation and the recent birth of our twins! All this time spent wearing my chest pumps has got me feeling particularly cyborgian… my relations with futurities feeling more bumptious by the day.

If you don’t know, Critmas is a tradition started by my grandfather (a professor of Law, now emeritus, at Duquesne University) of decorating a Yuletide tree not with bedazzled ornaments but instead with the most withering critiques we have read in the past year. It is a time for us to revel in a materialism more dialectical than consumerist, and to synthesize all the texts — critical and otherwise — that we’ve devoured since last Critmas.

On my tree:

Some other fun favorites!

So… what’s on your tree??

3 Comments
2024/12/25
13:52 UTC

21

Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation

0 Comments
2024/12/25
13:27 UTC

8

Can anyone recommend me works to get into Critical Legal Studies?

I am already familiar with Adorno, Focault, etc.

Edit: Thank you for all the replies 👍

13 Comments
2024/12/25
10:45 UTC

4

Is this a decent, broad understanding of major aspects Heidegger’s being-in the-world?

I haven’t really read Heidegger seriously, but I feel being-in the-world is such a famous concept of his that I should have a broad idea what he’s talking about.

So my understanding is that Heidegger thinks it’s wrong to conceptualize this neat division between the subject and “what’s out there.” Instead he thinks that being and world are inseparable parts of a totality. There is no subject without a world. The world is a constitutive part of being a subject. Heidegger draws on earlier thinkers in phenomology who argue that consciousness is characterized by intentionality. Each subject is a world and is always directed at or engaged with its constituent elements.

As part of this, Heidegger talks about moods. As I understand it, he doesn’t think of moods as things in our head. He thinks that moods are a definitive part of being-in-the-world. Moods make the world intelligible, they disclose the world to us.

Heidegger thinks we are thrown into the world. Most of us let ourselves be taken over by the they-self, by immersion in what “one should do.” This is inauthentic existence. Authenticity is a big part of Heidegger’s ontology. In my understanding, he wants us to direct ourselves toward own deaths because death is final and non-relational (i.e. we all die alone and it is irreversible, the point of ultimate oblivion). He thinks this being-toward-death will help us to live authentically, even if it always produces anxiety. Most people do not live this way, but those who do can resist the they-self and live authentically. Many of these ideas are influenced by Nietzsche’s ideas on eternal recurrence and the task of living affirmatively.

Heidegger’s whole project basically aims at a reevaluation of most of Western metaphysics by going back to the primordial question of Being. All of these ideas undermine the idea of the subject as a primarily “knowing” or “rational” subject split from the world, as developed by Descartes. Heidegger sees the subject and world as inseparable, and thinks that moods/emotions and our historical/social environment are all parts of that worldhood by definition.

Like I said, I haven’t studied Heidegger really and I just want to make sure I have a broad idea. Is this a decent, broad view?

8 Comments
2024/12/24
05:54 UTC

20

Am I understanding this part of Capitalist realism correctly?

Hello,

Had to read this passage a few times in capitalist realism to semi grasp it, have not read Zizek or Deleuze so maybe that’s why. wondering what other people’s thoughts on on this part of the essay, feeling a bit lazy atm to dig deeper here and research each one of these terms more intensely:

Pg 46-47,

Fisher talks about sci fi ? writer Nick Lands conceptualization of capitalist system, as one that shatters The Real “signals circulate on self sustaining networks that bypass the symbolic and therefore do not require the big Other as a guarantor. “ Then he makes the argument this formulation is inherently problematic as it is NOT capitalism as capitalism cannot be purified, “strip away the forces of anti production and capitalism disappears”…. Etc which I understood, but then on the next page he talks about quintessential postmodernism as having to deal with the “crisis of symbolic efficiency”, and that this was achieved previously only by “maintaining a clear distinction between a material empirical causality and another incorporeal causality proper to the symbolic” which I took as meaning, the literacy of interpreting the symbolic channel can only be done when these symbols are recognized for themselves, without ironical distance. It’s this distance that is akin to the formulation Land has, ( without acknowledgement of inherent principle capitalism relies on) He then goes onto say “a cynic who believes only his eyes misses the efficiency of the symbolic fiction and how it structures our experience of reality.”

I guess what I’m asking is where does this term “symbolic efficiency” come from and what did other people think when they read that part? What are some examples of symbols that he refers to here?

Mainly just wrote this out to formulate this part of the argument to myself.

19 Comments
2024/12/24
03:16 UTC

79

The Overlap of Psychological Terms in Modern Relationships: Toxicity, Narcissism, and Beyond

Hello everyone,

In recent years, psychological and psychoanalytic terms like "toxicity," "narcissism," "attachment styles," and "trauma responses" have become central to how we discuss and understand modern relationships. These concepts are often used to frame conflicts, explain behaviors, or even redefine the dynamics of intimacy and connection.

Why do you think there is such a growing reliance on these terms? Is it driven by societal shifts toward individualism and self-improvement, or perhaps a reflection of the therapeutic culture critiqued by writers like Eva Illouz? Could it also be tied to how social media popularizes these ideas, sometimes oversimplifying complex psychological theories?

I'm particularly curious about the frequent use of "toxicity" and "narcissism"—terms that are now almost ubiquitous. What do you think this says about our cultural moment and the way we view relationships? If you know of any books or articles that explore this phenomenon in depth, I’d greatly appreciate your recommendations.

Looking forward to your perspectives!

17 Comments
2024/12/24
01:01 UTC

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