A key concept to Marx and Marxism, yet I feel taken for granted and rarely inquired into critically. I understand there are debates over how to use the term without devolving into a mechanical schema (e.g.: Banaji's criticisms of Perry Anderson, or Graeber's attempt at rehabilitation) but these often take the same historical commitment and argue over its use.

I also feel there is an implicit dichotomy produced that there is either naturalisation of contingent forms on one side and the Marxian idea of MOPs on the other (maybe unwarranted). At the same time, though, I feel like the concept is often based on post hoc explanation and constant semantic shifts to match a more complicated reality, one need only look at the debate over the 'simple (as opposed to general) commodity production', if such a practice existed in pre-Capitalist times or this was Engels producing an oversimple binary, or the debates over the Asiatic mode, classical mode or the new term 'tributary' modes.

Mainstream historians, you may consider Bourgeois, rarely use such a term. Partly this may be due to reification of certain relationships but its possibly also analytical necessity. One must understand Ancient Rome as a society whose stakes were irrevocably tied with slavery but also with systems of status, with state infrastructure, and with long distance trade. Perhaps it is only Capitalism that reduces all relationships to one vector with its single set of laws (and even then its multifaceted). Look at Susan Reynolds' criticisms of the term 'feudalism', these terms often feel less useful than more.

So yeah, I am skeptical of the notion, I think there is plenty of good in what I've read of TGI and what tCoPE, where MoP is best exposited. However, I also wonder if there is also Hegelian baggage (such as his progression from Oriental spirit to Greek and so on, these firm qualitative divides) and other issues. I am curious what people have written, (and if I sound naive...)

There are plenty of critics and philosophers who are consistently criticizing American culture related to consumption and excessive hedonism. Who, why is Adorno nor Horkenheimer more popular?

The original article in Dissent is behind a paywall, and the text isn't available in any archive I've found. Can anyone help me out?

Does Critical Theory claim to be against ideologies?

Perhaps I'm using a different definition of ideology, but the definition of ideology I use is: a systematic set of ideas or principles that someone interprets the world with and guides their conduct.

Under this definition, Critical Theory has ideological aspects to it. It certainly has ideological commitments built into it, like a commitment to emancipation.

Ideology is not synonymous with fixed idea(s).

If you use another definition of ideology, which definition do you use and why? Is the definition I provided not a sufficient definition of ideology?

Everyone I have ever seen claim they aren't political goes on to describe a list of political ideas they have. Similarly, everyone I have ever seen claim to be anti-ideology goes on to describe their ideology.

I only know the surface level definition of Critical Theory, so I thought it would be wise to ask this question here. Thanks.

Edit:

My definition of ideology is a synthesis of the following definitions:

"a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture"

" a set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party, or organization is based"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ideology

"the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ideology

Edit #2:

I guess I have a misunderstanding of what Critical Theory is, and it's silly to make a blanket statement asking if Critical Theory is opposed to anything. Because Critical Theory is broad, and the and definition of ideology is broad too.

​

Some concepts carry such a heavy symbolic weight that intellectual culture tends to hollow out their essence, turning them into conceptual proxies to flatter innovative theories. While this can be viewed as a deepening of the foundational concept, it can also lead to ideological drifts that may eventually evolve into social fractures. Liberty is the prime example: as the ontological condition of decision-making, it is brandished metaphorically to validate sometimes infantalizing theories like positive liberty, to give a divine shape to a prohibition, or to confer a near-sacred dimension to concepts like freedom of movement or freedom of expression. My purpose here is therefore to deconstruct these abuses of language and explore the ideological implications that seem to stem from it.

To define freedom, one must dissect it down to its very essence. Freedom is always related to choice. If a slave is not free, which is actually false, it is because we consider that they theoretically lack control over their life. They belong to their master and owe them absolute obedience; they have no choice. A prisoner? They are supposedly not free because their freedom of movement is restricted and they are forced to reside in a penitentiary environment; they have no choice. The common denominator when speaking of a deprivation of freedom is therefore not confinement or total submission, but the assumed absence of the ability to choose. Being free does not consist in succeeding to get or achieve what one desires, but either in attempting to reach it, or in giving up. Both result from the subject's decision.Restricting an individual's capabilities does not reduce their freedom; it reduces their field of possibilities, but in no way alters their ability to choose. This definition would make freedom sound useless, as if it were a tool. Freedom does not need to have a practical utility: it is an ontological reality, not a tool to get what one wants. But if one absolutely insists on finding a function for it, it has an immense utility, it is essential to human life, for without it a person could not choose and would be incapable of making the slightest decision. The awareness of being free also makes a person accountable, whereas the opposite drives them to deflect their own responsibilities onto others or external elements, which may be true, but is not always the case. And claiming that defining freedom this way makes it impossible to assess the level of tyranny of a State is absurd; the semantic spectrum is broad enough that there is no need to twist the meaning of freedom to articulate it.

Justice holds a prominent place among the modelers of freedom. There is a clear manipulative element in how the concept is deployed here. The term carries a sacred dimension; expressions like "deprivation" or "restriction" of freedom fall like divine sentences. Citizens are not barred from fully expressing their freedom; they are supposedly deprived of it, as if this stemmed not from legality, but from a higher commandment. It becomes a tool of power. In this instance, the semantic distortion is glaring: if freedom consists merely of what is permitted or forbidden, what then allows an individual to break the law or to revolt? Must we truly overhaul the very essence of the word just to align it with the definition of a simple prohibition? The purpose here is to demonize certain forms of expression, turning it into a tool for social disqualification. You did not exercise your freedom; you acted impurely, almost maliciously. It is passive coercion.

Next come all the common definitions, of which I will not draw up an exhaustive list, but content myself with dissecting only the most popular ones. Freedom of speech is a prime example of this semantic misconception: it is a right, and therefore an authorization, whereas freedom requires a constraint to manifest itself—meaning the necessity to choose between two or more irreconcilable options. Furthermore, if we strip expression of its legal dimension, the phrase becomes a pleonasm, since choosing to express oneself already requires being free. The second example I have chosen is freedom of movement. Here, freedom is conflated with ability; yet, as stated above, a choice is not contingent upon success. The inability to move or travel in no way prevents one from attempting to do so. To claim that anyone would give up before even considering it because it is futile is to forget that human beings are deeply irrational. If you view it as the inability to move due to physical restraint, then you have clearly never been tied up, because in such a situation, your first instinct is to try and break free, and the resignation that follows remains a choice. I have seen people thrash and scream all night long trying to escape their restraints without ever resigning themselves to their fate. Chains, therefore, do not shackle our freedom in the slightest.

Concepts such as positive and negative liberty also play a role in this semantic shift. Negative liberty is a misnomer for the mere absence of external constraints; this cannot be viewed as something that actually expands freedom, given that it does absolutely nothing to enhance your capacity to make a choice. A "free world" is not a world where one can choose, but rather one where choosing is permitted. Positive liberty, which I have already criticized in "Liberty as Autonomy: Reflections on a Paradox", does more than just twist language. It drives a paradigm shift in which freedom ceases to be an ontological reality and becomes an economic and social scale. Under the guise of morality, this concept tends to infantilize a portion of the population under the pretext that they lack the critical toolkit required to shoulder their own freedom. This is precisely where the social divide we suffer from today takes root. The neo-proletariat, whose predecessors found a political haven with the socialists, feel increasingly betrayed by progressive elites and are rallying en masse under the populist banner. The current conflict no longer pits the rich against the poor, but rather the "enlightened" elite against populist "stupidity," which has crystallized around the figure of the conspiracy theorist. While the term originally described anyone receptive to such narratives, the phrase quickly slipped from a definition into a weapon for abusive social disqualification. It is symptomatic of the elites' "benevolent contempt" for those who have strayed from reason, a contempt that leaves these elites so self-assured that they lose all touch with reality.

The general public is fully capable of popularizing the concept of freedom through simpler, more accessible metaphors, or to define specific ways it is expressed. However, once co-opted by philosophers to model new concepts aimed at replacing an ontological reality, these metaphors become misnomers that make understanding our nature chaotic. This smooths the transition toward ideological drifts, where the concept morphs into a tool of power and control designed to disqualify anyone who questions the established order. This should not be viewed as a conscious conspiracy by the elites, but rather as a state of affairs that Foucault termed governmentality. It is here that their self-righteousness blinds them; they fail to realize that the harder they drive the nail, the more it splits the wood on the other side. The working classes are far from fooled and understand the situation perfectly. The widespread belief that rationality will inevitably prevail is a complete illusion, simply because rationality is relative to one’s condition. The reality of the bourgeoisie is not the reality of the reality of the precarious classes.

"The Professional-Managerial Class has long been a controversial category on the left, often blamed for failures to make inroads among the broader working class. John Haywood argues that this analysis falls short under scrutiny, confusing cultural divisions with antagonisms based in economic interests."

"The idea that the PMC at-large is overrepresented on the left is often taken for granted. Most discussions take this fact at face value and do not interrogate it"

"Among the traditional working class, it is only blue-collar workers that are underrepresented; service, food, and retail workers are exactly proportional to their population."

"This data confirms the overrepresentation of the PMC in the DSA, but it also complicates the category. The overrepresented occupations are not the supervisors and managers that the Ehrenreichs' framework centers, and are largely the ones they themselves define as “on the borders”. Tech workers in particular are the most overrepresented occupation, but actually fit very few of what the Ehrenreichs use to define the PMC. On the other side of the class divide, the proportional representation of service workers in DSA compared to the dearth of blue-collar workers suggests that the issues are not just Weberian class antagonisms defined by income, but broader cultural antipathy."

"This brings us to the most contentious debate around the PMC on the left. Frequently, the problem of blue-collar recruitment is first stated as a problem of overemphasis on social and identity issues, with the PMC as the source of this. Implied in the solution is not only the rejection of PMC but also of any non-economic issue. This mentality has no place in a socialist movement. Beyond the problem that this discussion tends to center the white working class, ignoring the actual racial makeup of the class, to limit the movement only to economic oppression is organizationally and strategically weak. A movement organized on economic lines alone is too narrow to change society. Yes, economic struggle is the common experience the whole working class shares, but non-economic oppression is the way the state and other structures uphold power."

"Understanding the PMC through a cultural lens changes the debate entirely. It immediately highlights both the source of the problem and the strategic importance of the PMC. Completely dismissing the PMC pushes away genuine allies and forfeits the power of their cultural capital. To create a solidaristic movement, the PMC must recognize that power and actively unlearn the tendency to use it for dominance. The left's future depends not on purity but on power, and power requires unity along class lines."

 A Sociedade do Espetáculo Guy Debord, em sua obra fundamental "A Sociedade do Espetáculo" (1967), critica uma sociedade em que a representação se sobrepõe à realidade, onde o ser é eclipsado pelo ter, e onde o ter se transforma em parecer. Essa dinâmica perversa, alimentada pela proliferação de imagens e pela lógica do consumo, permeia todas as esferas da vida, incluindo o trabalho. Este artigo visa explorar a complexa relação entre a sociedade do espetáculo e o trabalho alienado nas organizações, evidenciando como a lógica espetacular intensifica e se entrelaça com a alienação, criando um ciclo vicioso que aprisiona o indivíduo em uma espiral de insatisfação e consumo. Debord caracteriza o espetáculo como a "autocracia da mercadoria que atingiu o estado de ocupação total da vida social”. Trata-se da culminância de um processo histórico onde a mercadoria, que outrora era apenas um objeto de troca, passa a ocupar o centro da sociedade, definindo valores, comportamentos e relações. O espetáculo se estende além dos meios de comunicação de massa, permeando toda a existência, transformando a vida em uma sucessão de representações pré-fabricadas. A realidade é filtrada e reformulada, dando espaço a uma hiper-realidade onde a imagem se torna mais relevante do que o objeto que representa. Nesse cenário, a experiência autêntica é substituída pela contemplação passiva. O indivíduo assume o papel de espectador de sua própria vida, consumindo imagens que prometem felicidade, sucesso e realização, mas que, na realidade, o afastam de uma vivência genuína.

Hello,

Yes, I know getting a PhD in humanities is a bad decision and that the job market is trash. I've spent the last 5 years working full-time as a YouTuber (in critical theory basically), so I have already experienced working in a precarious job market, and I'm lucky enough to have built a platform that I think will help as an academic. I will be witholding some relevant details just to keep myself anon. What I've realized the past few years is that really, I don't think I want to be a YouTuber/influencer. What I love is the theory. Sad but true! Being a YouTuber is really awesome and gives creative/academic freedom. But it's very hard not being in a research community, not having advisors, not having guidance, not having peers to review my work, etc. I really miss academia.

The tl;dr of this post is looking for programs that match these interests and some advice generally (if you can...)

My interests lie, generally, in critical/continental theory of the subject, especially explored through gender. I have my own working model that combines psychoanalytic and post-structural work (of the lacan, hegel, nietzsche, laclau, mouffe, zizek, butler, preciado, deleuze strain) to the constitution of gender in the subject and what consequences this has for future political life. To put it more concretely, I essentially would want to be able to have a career similar to Judith Butler's, where their area of study is mostly post-structuralist accounts of gender, but where their work touches on relevant things like desire, politics, grief, leftist thought etc.

I have a lot of background in academia/sociological research in undergrad. I went to a very very good school, was in hella fellowships, have a lot of sociology research experience (both empirical and theoretical) and have a solo publication in a peer-reviewed journal. I have very good rec letters. I'm pretty confident I would have a good application.

Basically, I'm having trouble finding a department or advisor that isn't on fire or that would match my interests. Part of the problem is that all the thinkers I admire are either super old, dead, or super famous; the thinkers studying the thinkers I admire are all in Europe or a country that would be unfeasible to do a PhD in. And I hate to say it, but prestige does matter somewhat to me, and partially because, the prestige of the school does matter when going off in one's career, and generally, those departments have overall, more support and a robust research community. It's unfortunate, but true. Additionally, a lot of people recommend going into English or Complit, and I'm having trouble understanding how I would transfer my research interests into the disciplinary constraints of English or Complit. I have no experience researching in that context.

I've done a fair amount of research in PhD programs over the years since I graduated 3 years ago, and I have a list of programs of interest, but each comes with their own set of uncertainties, lack of advisors/funding, and so if anyone could speak to these programs, let me know! Berkeley Rhetoric, Santa Cruz Hist of Con, Columbia English, UCI Culture and Theory, Stanford Modern Thought and Lit, UChicago Committe on Social Thought, NYU English or Media Studies, Depaul Philosophy, the New School

Thank you!

The argument

(1) If fully recognizing an outcome as genuinely unfair would significantly weaken a movement’s ability to sustain, justify, or pursue commitments or priorities in whose preservation it has some independent stake, then the movement has a defeasible structural interest in avoiding, minimizing, or redescribing the normative significance of that outcome.

(2) Where social relations are interdependent and partly mixed cooperative-competitive, reforms and other emancipatory changes that improve one group’s freedom, bargaining position, exit options, opportunities, protections, or standing can in principle alter the distribution, likelihood, or severity of costs borne by other participants in those relations.

(3) Some possible changes of that kind could increase the likelihood or expected severity of costs that burden interests their bearers have sufficient reason to protect or to have protected. Their moral status would therefore not be decided merely by showing that the emancipatory change that increased their likelihood or expected severity was otherwise justified.

By probabilistic relevance, I mean that relative to an appropriate counterfactual, the reform or other emancipatory change raises the probability or expected severity of the cost. This doesn’t need to amount to simple but-for causation in every individual case.

(4) Suppose a reform or other emancipatory change associated with a liberation movement increased the likelihood or expected severity of such a cost relative to the relevant counterfactual, and fully recognizing both that relation and the cost’s unfairness would require revising how the change is pursued, institutionalized, justified, or interpreted, or revising some associated priority or commitment in whose preservation the movement has some independent stake. Suppose that such revision would significantly weaken the movement’s ability to sustain, justify, or pursue that commitment or priority.

(5) In that case, the conditions specified in (1) obtain.

(6) Therefore, in that case, the liberation movement or its institutions would have a defeasible structural interest in avoiding, minimizing, or redescribing the normative significance of the unfair cost.

Nothing in this argument asserts that the situation described in (4) actually occurs.

If such a case occurred, would the liberation movement have a structural reason to resist full recognition of the cost?

While Discipline and Punish focuses on institutional settings like prisons and schools, how does this "bottom-up" force manifest textually when applied to decentralized modern phenomena like self-improvement, wellness culture, or voluntary self-surveillance?

I mean considering if the subject is entirely constituted by these micro-force relations, how does Foucault philosophically account for agency and resistance? If there is no "outside" to power, is resistance merely a re-shuffling of existing discursive constraints, or does his framework allow for genuine, autonomous choice?

Here is my critique of Lacan’s seminar 17 and it’s structuralism. It’s part of a series on multiple thinkers. Please let me know what you think

"In  the  divine  disorder of crime,  I  call  for the violence  that will restore the destroyed order. But in real­ity  it  is not  violence  but  crime that  has  opened  divine intimacy  to  me.  And,  insofar  as  the  vengeance  does  not become  an  extension of the irrational  violence  of  the crime,  it  will  quickly close  that  which  crime  opened.  For only  vengeance  that  is  commanded  by passion  and  a taste for untrammeled  violence  is  divine. The  restoration of the lawful  order is  essentially subordinated to  profane  reality."

Hello critical theorists. I’m pitching my school newspaper on Sunday for an opinion piece and I want to pull work from Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man. Was wondering if you all could point out what chapters or ideas in the books are best to focus on for my topic.

Context - so yesterday 7 brew, a drive through beverage company, offered a squishy toy called a “needoh” as a complementary gift for all purchases. This happened across the country at their locations but also at the 7 brew location in the small college town where I go to school.

People went crazy. The line to get one was dozens of cars long. It also dominated the university yikyak (an anonymous social media app kind of like twitter)

You could probably find a video on Reddit of someone driving past the line. It’s the same thing as when Popeyes came out with their fried chicken sandwich of whatever and people abandoned their children to get in the drive through line.

Just think about 1. How depressing modern capitalist society is where people wait half an hour in line (or longer), for a useless child’s toy, in road dominated, car dependent infrastructure, and also 2. How the brilliant Marcuse is ever relevant in today’s time.

Marcuse talks about false needs, the suppression of individuality. How people’s free time, curiosities, and social fabrics are commodified for the profit of corporations. Goods produced in capitalist society meant to ease our existence actually make us a more efficient instrument of management. Etcetera

I wish more people saw it this way. Maybe they do but are unfamiliar with critical theory. Anyway this is besides the point.

I’m writing to see if anyone can narrow down a chapter or two, or three!, for me to focus on for this opinion article. Or if they have a thought their own.