Outline of critical theory

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:

Critical theory has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in social science and the other in literary criticism. The term "Critical Theory" was first coined by Max Horkheimer in his 1937 essay "Traditional and Critical Theory". While academic traditions differ, critical theorists have contended with the impossibility of objective knowledge and the social and historical conditions of the subject. Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy is considered, with the Communist Manifesto, to be the bread and butter of the form because each were written within and against an existing theory or set of theories; the former, on the work of Adam Smith and the latter on the catechism. The word "critical" in this context comes from the Greek root of "crisis". Critical theory can thus be understood as the throwing into crisis established patterns of thinking with reference to philosophy, politics and anthropology.

Essence of critical theory

Concepts

Historicity^[1]

Branches of critical theory

Social science –
Anthropology –

Political theory –

Aesthetics –

Modernism –

Post-modernism ‐

Realism –

Actor–network theory

Commonly used terms

African-American studies

Henry Louis Gates Jr. –
Frantz Fanon –

Gender studies

Marxist theory

Frankfurt School –
- Theodor Adorno –
- Herbert Marcuse –
- Walter Benjamin –
- Jürgen Habermas –
- Max Horkheimer –
- Friedrich Pollock –
Louis Althusser –
Mikhail Bakhtin –
Étienne Balibar –
Ernst Bloch –
Antonio Gramsci –
Michael Hardt –
Fredric Jameson –
Ernesto Laclau –
Georg Lukács –
Chantal Mouffe –
Antonio Negri –
Valentin Voloshinov –
Slavoj Žižek –
Hegemony –
Posthegemony –

Commonly used terms

Postcolonialism

Chinua Achebe –
- "An Image of Africa" –
Frantz Fanon –
- "The Wretched of the Earth" –
Homi Bhabha –
- Double consciousness –

Structuralism

Post-structuralism

Commonly used terms

Deconstruction

Commonly used terms

Bricolage^[1]

Postmodern philosophy

Reconstructivism

Paulo Freire –
John Dewey –

Psychoanalytic theory

Luce Irigaray –
Teresa de Lauretis –
Jacques Lacan –
Julia Kristeva –
Slavoj Žižek –
Sigmund Freud –
- The Interpretation of Dreams –
- On Narcissism –
- Totem and Taboo –
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle –
- The Ego and the Id –
- The Future of an Illusion –
- Civilization and Its Discontents –
- Moses and Monotheism –

Commonly used terms

Schizoanalytic theory

Commonly used terms

Queer theory

Semiotics

Commonly used terms

Semiotic square^[1]

Literary theory

Commonly used terms

Theories of identity

Private sphere – certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by interventions from governmental or other institutions. Examples of the private sphere are family and home. The complement or opposite of public sphere.
Public sphere – area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. It is "a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment."
Creolization