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

In Benjamin’s view, this opens up art to the masses in a way that has never been possible before, enabling them to escape from the clutches of tradition – a highly desirable outcome for the revolutionary-minded Marxist.

Alienation is a process by which mind – as the consciousness of a subject (thesis) – becomes an object of thought for itself (antithesis). And thereby the human mind constantly progresses to the next higher stage of synthesis and self-consciousness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The inheritances of Marxism in critical theory are: 1. Tension of idealism versus materialism (the autonomy versus social construction of a text). 2. A hidden or camouflaged unconscious. 3. Interventionism: a sense that critical theory can make a difference.

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.