JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, I

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory begins his/her presentation …

It is seldom the case that one can mark in time when a school of thought, say political school of thought, began.  It probably comes closest to that ability when it comes to critical theory.  In 1923 in the city of Frankfurt, Germany a collection of political/social/psychological thinkers got together and founded the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.  Later, its name was changed to simply the Frankfurt Institute.[1]

          There are an ample number of prominent names involved with this founding.  They include Max Horkheimer (who became its leader), Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin (a literary theorist), philosopher Herbert Marcuse, and psychologist Erich Fromm among others.  This diverse grouping is telling in that critical theory turned out to be a product of a diverse disciplinary base.

While this group shared varying advocacy for Marxist thought, they individually and as a group held deep seated concerns with a good deal of its arguments.  What follows gets into this variance, but first this short historical description points out that the Institute, due to the political environment in Germany (the rise of Hitler) during the late 1920s-early 1930s, moved to Geneva in 1933 and then onward to New York City in 1935.

While much has evolved in critical theory thought since those early days, the role of this blog will be to get at the essential arguments the Institute promoted initially.  The blog also wishes to point out that many other writers with varying arguments have added to the mix and it will refer to some of them.  This, of course, makes nailing down what exactly critical theory is an elusive project.  So, for example, contributors emanated from traditions such as poststructuralism and postmodernism.

Along this line, from this view’s very beginnings, part of a general trend with Marxism in the West, starting in the 1930s, was that they, Marxist leaning academics, sought conceptual connections with non-Marxist thought.  And their writings where not, as pure Marxist writings were, geared at proletarian audiences, but to fellow academics. 

The trend was more specifically aimed at cultural and ideological issues and away from political economy.  Just to remind readers, pure Marxist thought proposed a dialectical materialist view of history.[2]  In addition, Marx, in his strict accounting of what that history reveals, are described forces that simply are/were in place and do not materialize due to normative considerations. 

People, according to this purer form of Marxism, fulfill their roles in this history not because they good or evil, or right or wrong, but because they are human beings acting in accordance with their nature.  Critical theorists reject this reasoning as they turn away from objectified research that opts for scientific protocols (more on this later).

Another factor of importance to this development was contextual and time specific to the 1930s.  At that time, intellectual upheaval was being experienced.  There was a hostile environment made of liberal capitalism (or what some have called the late robber baron era), Stalinism, and fascism. 

Not swayed by arguments distinguishing these ideological traditions, early critical theorists were taken with these isms’ similar organizational, technological, cultural, and personality structural elements and, in turn, gave them, the critical theorists, theoretical focus, at least as compared with what pure Marxist writers were able to enjoy.

From the start, the aim among these writers was to change society.  In such a mode, their attention to these other isms and how their advocates sought to rule not only the politics of their polities, but in how people lived their lives.  One needed to understand that the more recent ideological developments – thought of today as mostly anti-democratic ideologies like fascism – were merely outgrowths of the older, liberal democratic tradition. 

For example, fascism could not be studied or understood in terms of its own attributes but needed to be considered as a development spurred on by the subjugating character of the “parental” liberal democratic regimes.  As Horkheimer is quoted, “He who does not wish to speak of capitalism should also be silent about fascism.”[3]  This seemingly contradictory judgment needs clarifying, but it reveals the central contention critical theory makes regarding social realities.

In this mode of transcending traditional boundaries among the various academic disciplines, critical theory pushed to crossover from discipline to discipline.  Early on, its advocates began analyzing subjugation from sociological and political concerns.  This led to socio-cultural analysis with a dash of history in which antisemitism, for example, is perceived as an outgrowth of dominance initiated by the Enlightenment.

Or stated otherwise, fascism can be categorized as rebellion of suppressed antagonism initiated by de-legitimizing long held prejudices among the population against minority groups – especially if those minorities were perceived as enjoying material largesse.  Perhaps Hitler could have adopted a “MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN” slogan to capture this deep-seated antagonism that before Hitler might have been sustained at subconscious levels.

With that, this posting hints at where critical thought is aiming.  More needs to be described and explained.  Just to further remind readers, this blog warned them that with critical theory, one has a more involved set of ideas than the relatively simple rationales of either parochial federalism or natural rights views.  But to report as to what this other view, critical theory, has to offer, this blog will go about doing so in short installments.

---

[1] This blogger wishes to express a word of gratitude to a source of information that has served to organize how this blogger presents its account of critical theory.  It also is a source of information.  See William Outhwaite, “Critical Theory,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell Publishers, Ltd), 106-109.

[2] Readers who would benefit from a refresher review of Marxist thought, are invited to look up Posting #68.  To gain access, readers can go online and look up this blog’s posting, “Posting 68:  Some Influential Sources of Critical Political Thought,” Gravitas:  The Blog Book, I (April 29, 2011), accessed March 15, 2023, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit, 240.

[3] Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination:  A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Oakland, CA:  University of California Press, 1973), 156.

A PROTOCOL FOR JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY

 

Following the pattern this blog has established in presenting, analyzing, and evaluating the main mental constructs Americans have harbored concerning governance and politics, this posting will review how critical theory will be presented.  Basically, in dialectic style, the blog will attempt to take on the view of one who would advocate the construct.  That is, each posting, under the “judging” series, will begin with a reminder:  “An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation …”

The thing is, this blogger, as with natural rights, is not an advocate but will try his best to present that view in positive terms.  The “judgments” will utilize William Schubert’s commonplaces of curriculum, that being subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.[1]  Paralleling how these commonplaces have been used in terms of parochial federalism and the natural rights view, each guides what this blog will address. 

Beginning with subject matter, those presentations will focus on the morality of critical theory, the discipline of the social sciences, and the interdisciplinary nature of critical theory.  With the category, the “student,” this review will sustain the subcategories used with natural rights.  Those are personal student interests, student social interests, students’ economic interests, political student interests, and pedagogic student interests. 

And with the category “teacher,” it will be divided into two subcategories:  teacher effectiveness and teacher knowledge.  Finally, the commonplace “milieu” will direct attention to the expectation of schools, school’s socioeconomic base, and youth culture.  Those are the areas of interests which the blog will further analyze by implementing Aristotle’s categories of causation. 

That is, specific questions of inquiry will be derived from those categories, i.e., they will inquire into the state of affairs, interactions, situational insights, and the capacity to act morally.  Stated more descriptively,

 

·       The state of affairs refers to the actual conditions found in schools, as opposed to abstracted or hypothesized relations between factors or variables.  Of particular concern will be dilemmas caused by adherence to critical theory as opposed to another construct. 

·       Interactions refer to social encounters affected by the respective construct.

·       Situational insights are interpretations of encounters gleaned from analyses of practice. 

·       And capacity to act morally will be assessments of practices judged according to good citizenship and social capital. 

 

The reader is warned that these will not be addressed in order and there will be a good deal of imagination in that critical theory is not that widely employed in American schools.  A lot of what follows is speculation in the mode of “what would happen if” critical theory became prominent – an eventuality this blogger does not anticipate.

          And by further introduction to this construct, here are some other broad-based facts regarding critical theory.  To begin, it is not a predominately political construct.  It is more a sociological one or, better stated, it focuses on society and culture, but with a determined interest in the power structures a society might have. 

In terms of its moniker, it has a bent toward critiquing how existing power structures function and pointing out that despite “democratic” processes, power entities ensure its members secure policies that advance their interests at the cost of those not in power.  As such, related study delves into understanding not only political realities, but also the vast array of human concerns that help critical theorists determine which social forces are at play in maintaining power relations.

Along with political science and sociology, active areas of study include psychoanalysis, history, communication theory, feminist theory, race theory, and philosophy.  To what end?  To secure understanding that deciphers the nature and cause of subjugated human conditions, as it utilizes a varied and open approach to seek truth unadorned by simplistic rationales. 

One aim, it seems, is to understand the role that ideology plays in hampering understanding.  It is adherence to such beliefs systems (capitalism, socialism, fascism, and the like) that justify ongoing injustices keeping humans down, short of true liberation.  The aim of this view is, according to Max Horkheimer, “to [achieve] liberated human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”[2]

In this vein, the following quote is useful in grasping the conceptual boundaries of what critical theorists consider justice – or as Helen Pluckrose refers to it, critical social justice (CSJ) – is:

 

CSJ holds that knowledge is not objective but is culturally constructed to maintain oppressive power systems. This is believed to be achieved primarily by certain kinds of knowledge being legitimised by powerful forces in society, then being accepted by everyone and perpetuated by ways of talking about things – discourses.

These oppressive power systems believed to exist and permeate everything are called things like white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, heteronormativity (assuming that most people are heterosexual), cisnormativity (assuming that people are men or women depending on their reproductive systems), ableism and fatphobia. However, it is believed, most of us cannot see these oppressive discourses and systems because they are just the water we swim in. The marginalised have a greater ability to see them and so have a greater competence to define them and point them out. Knowledge is thus tied to identity and one’s perceived position in society in relation to power – often referred to as “positionality.”[3]

 

One current study that amply describes this sort of mental bondage that transforms into subjugation of the severest form is found in Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents.[4]  It turns out that casteism functions as an ideology.

---

[1] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  The commonplaces can be defined as follows:

·       The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

·       The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

·       Learners are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed with a particular curriculum.

·       Milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.

[2] Raymond Guess, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1981), 2-3.

[3] Helen Pluckrose, “What Do We Mean by Critical Social Justice, Counterweight (February 17, 2021), accessed March 11, 2023, https://counterweightsupport.com/2021/02/17/what-do-we-mean-by-critical-social-justice/. British spelling.

[4] Isabel Wilkerson, Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents (New York, NY:  Random House, 2020).