Critical theory

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Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are fundamentally shaped by power dynamics between dominant and oppressed groups.^[1] Beyond just understanding and critiquing these dynamics, it explicitly aims to transform society through praxis and collective action with an explicit sociopolitical purpose.^[2][3][4]

Critical theory's main tenets center on analyzing systemic power relations in society, focusing on the dynamics between groups with different levels of social, economic, and institutional power.^[5][6] Unlike traditional social theories that aim primarily to describe and understand society, critical theory explicitly seeks to critique and transform it. Thus, it positions itself as both an analytical framework and a movement for social change.^[7][8][9][3] Critical theory examines how dominant groups and structures influence what society considers objective truth, challenging the very notion of pure objectivity and rationality by arguing that knowledge is shaped by power relations and social context.^{[10][11][7][12]} Key principles of critical theory include examining intersecting forms of oppression, emphasizing historical contexts in social analysis, and critiquing capitalist structures. The framework emphasizes praxis (combining theory with action) and highlights how lived experience, collective action, ideology, and educational systems play crucial roles in maintaining or challenging existing power structures.^{[3][13][14][15][16]}

Nancy Fraser summarises the difference between a critical and uncritical theory as follows:^[17]

A critical social theory frames its research program and its conceptual framework with an eye to the aims and activities of those oppositional social movements with which it has a partisan though not uncritical identification. The questions it asks and the models it designs are informed by that identification and interest. Thus, for example, if struggles contesting the subordination of women figured among the most significant of a given age, then a critical social theory for that time would aim, among other things, to shed light on the character and bases of such subordination. It would employ categories and explanatory models which revealed rather than occluded relations of male dominance and female subordination. And it would demystify as ideological rival approaches which obfuscated or rationalized those relations. In this situation, then, one of the standards for assessing a critical theory, once it had been subjected to all the usual tests of empirical adequacy, would be: How well does it theorize the situation and prospects of the feminist movement? To what extent does it serve the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of contemporary women?

The historical evolution of critical theory traces back to the first generation of the Frankfurt School in the 1920s. Figures like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and others sought to expand traditional Marxist analysis by incorporating insights from psychology, culture, and philosophy, moving beyond pure economic determinism.^{[18][1][14][19][20][3][21][7][8][22]} Their work was significantly influenced by Freud's psychoanalytic theories, particularly how subjective experience shaped human consciousness, behavior, and social reality.^{[3][1][19][23][24]} Freud's concept that an individual's lived experience could differ dramatically from objective reality aligned with critical theory's critique of positivism, science, and pure rationality.^[19][23][24]

Critical theory continued to evolve beyond the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Jürgen Habermas, often identified with the second generation, shifted the focus toward communication and the role of language in social emancipation.^[3] Around the same time, post-structuralist and postmodern thinkers, including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, were reshaping academic discourse with critiques of knowledge, meaning, power, institutions, and social control with deconstructive approaches that further challenged assumptions about objectivity and truth. Though neither Foucault nor Derrida belonged formally to the Frankfurt School tradition, their works profoundly influenced later formulations of critical theory.^[18][25] Collectively, the post-structuralist and postmodern insights expanded the scope of critical theory, weaving cultural and linguistic critiques into its Marxian roots.^{[3][14][18][26][27][28]}

With the emigration of Herbert Marcuse, contemporary critical theory has expanded to the United States and today it covers a wide range of social critique within economics, ethics, history, law, politics, psychology, and sociology, with a diverse list of subjects including critical animal studies, critical criminology, dependency theory and imperialism studies, critical environmental justice, feminist theory and gender studies, critical historiography, intersectionality, critical legal studies, critical pedagogy, postcolonialism, critical race theory, queer theory, and critical terrorism studies.^{[3][29][30][31][32][33]} Modern critical theory represents a movement away from Marxism's purely economic analysis to a broader examination of social and cultural power structures with the incorporation and transformation of Freudian concepts and postmodernism, while retaining Marxism's emphasis on analyzing how dominant groups and systems shape and control society through exploitation and oppression^[34] along with social and political praxis, the adaptation and reformulation of multiple Marxian conceptual frameworks (including alienation, reification, ideology, emancipation, base and superstructure), and a general skepticism towards and critique of capitalism.^{[19][20][3][21]}

Criticism of critical theory have come from various intellectual perspectives. Critics have raised concerns about critical theory's reliance on Marxist revisionism^[35][36][37] and its frequent emphasis on subjective narratives, which can sometimes be at odds with empirical methodologies.^[38][39][40] They also point to issues of circular reasoning and a lack of falsifiability in some critical theory arguments, as well as an epistemological and methodological stance that challenges or conflicts with traditional scientific methods and ideals of rationality and objectivity.^{[41][42][43][44][45][46][47]}