Outline of critical theory

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

Critical theory – examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism. This has led to the very literal use of 'critical theory' as an umbrella term to describe any theory founded upon critique.

Essence of critical theory

• Cultural studies –
• Critical theorists –
• Works in critical theory –
• Truth theory –

Branches of critical theory

• Social theory –
• Literary theory –
• Thing theory –
• Critical theory of technology –
• Critical legal studies –

Gender studies

Main article: Gender studies

• Lauren Berlant –
• Judith Butler –
• Susan McClary –
• Laura Mulvey –

Marxist theory

Main article: Marxist philosophy

• 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 –

Postcolonialism

Main article: Postcolonialism

• Chinua Achebe –
  • "An Image of Africa" –
• Homi Bhabha –
• Frantz Fanon –
  • Dual consciousness –
• Edward Said –
  • Orientalism –

Structuralism

Main article: Structuralism

• Roland Barthes –
• Ferdinand de Saussure –
• Claude Lévi-Strauss –
• Louis Althusser –

Post-structuralism

Main article: Post-structuralism

• Roland Barthes –
• Michel Foucault –
• Julia Kristeva –
• Bruno Latour –

Deconstruction

Main article: Deconstruction

• Geoffrey Bennington –
• Hélène Cixous –
• Jonathan Culler –
• Jacques Derrida –
• Werner Hamacher –
• Geoffrey Hartman –
• Martin Heidegger –
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe –
• Jean-François Lyotard –
• Paul de Man –
• J. Hillis Miller –
• Jean-Luc Nancy –
• Christopher Norris –
• Avital Ronell –
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak –

Postmodernism

Main article: Postmodernism

• Gilles Deleuze –
• Félix Guattari –
• Ernesto Laclau –
• Claude Lefort –
• A Cyborg Manifesto –

Reconstructivism

Main article: Reconstructivism

• Paulo Freire –
• John Dewey –

Psychoanalytic theory

Main article: Psychoanalytic theory

• Félix Guattari –
  • Schizoanalysis –
  • Ecosophy –
• 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 –

Queer theory

Main article: Queer theory

• Judith Butler –
• Heteronormativity –
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick –
• Gloria E. Anzaldúa –
• New Queer Cinema –
• Queer pedagogy –

Semiotics

Main article: Semiotics

• Roland Barthes –
• Julia Kristeva –
• Charles Sanders Peirce –
• Ferdinand de Saussure –

Cultural anthropology

Main article: Cultural anthropology

• René Girard –

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."
• Coolitude
• Creolization

Linguistical theories of literature

• Mary Louise Pratt –

Major works

• Bloch, Ernst (1938-'47). The Principle of Hope
• Fromm, Erich (1941). The Fear of Freedom (UK)/Escape from Freedom (US)
• Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W. (1944/'47) Dialectic of Enlightenment
• Barthes, Roland (1957). Mythologies
• Habermas, Jürgen (1962). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
• Marcuse, Herbert (1964). One-Dimensional Man
• Adorno, Theodor W. (1966) Negative Dialectics
• Derrida, Jacques (1967). Of Grammatology
• Derrida, Jacques (1967). Writing and Difference
• Habermas, Jürgen (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action

Major theorists

Main article: List of critical theorists

• Theodor Adorno –
• Louis Althusser –
• Roland Barthes –
• Jean Baudrillard –
• Jacques Lacan –
• Gilles Deleuze –
• Jacques Derrida –
• Michel Foucault –
• Erich Fromm –
• Jürgen Habermas –
• Herbert Marcuse –
• Edward Said –
• Brij Mohan –

See also

• The Frankfurt School

External links

• Critical Theory, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Theory: Death is Not the End", n+1 magazine's short history of academic critical theory. Winter 2005.
• Critical Legal Thinking: A critical legal studies website which uses critical theory in an analysis of law and politics.
• L. Corchia, Jürgen Habermas. A Bibliography: works and studies (1952-2010), Pisa, Edizioni Il Campano – Arnus University Books, 2010, 344 pp.