Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides Book 0)

Narrative only becomes problematical when it is worked up into a “grand” form that claims authoritarian or even totalitarian precedence over the multitude of “little” narratives (individual or small local group) that any society contains.

Indeed, Foucault regarded our conception of “man” – that is, the liberal humanist vision of the individual as the possessor of certain inalienable natural rights – as a very recent invention.

we are witnessing the rise of “scientific” forms of social control by the authorities. The lives of individuals are to be strictly regimented.

Capitalist societies are adept at disseminating their ideological beliefs without having to resort to force. Ideology is passed on at the level of ideas, as much as by economic pressures (often unwittingly by the individuals involved).

Marxian dialectics and Freudian psychoanalysis equally emphasize a hidden agenda beneath our surface dimension – things are not what they seem. Critical theory follows them in attempting to tease out that agenda.

Society always consists of an economic base or infrastructure, and a superstructure. The superstructure comprises everything cultural – religion, politics, law, education, the arts, etc. – which is determined by a specific economy (slave-based, feudal, mercantile, capitalist etc.).

The essential idea for critical theory is that there is nothing accidental in a text – in the widest sense of text as production. Every indication of what is hidden, repressed or displaced in its structure can be traced back to the “textual unconscious”.

Once again, we notice Marx’s critical insistence on the hidden: religion, politics, law, etc. – everything cultural that we “live by” – disguises and renders perfectly natural an economic means of production that is unnatural.

In deconstruction, we move from system-building to system-dismantling. Derrida’s major concern is to direct our attention to the many gaps in our systems of discourse which, try as we may, we can never quite disguise. Deconstruction is a philosophy which very self-consciously sets out to deflate philosophical pretensions about our ability to order