CRITICAL THEORY

1. Introduction:
Critical Theory is an approach to the human sciences and philosophy
developed in the 1930s and early 1940s by leading members of the
Frankfurt Institute for social research which is also known as Frankfurt
School in Germany. It is an interdisciplinary approach to the social science
which draws especially on the works of early Marx and late Freud. It is
opposed to positivism. While opposing positivism instead of answering “what
is” it emphasizes on “what ought to be”. In the beginning most of the
Jewish scholars led the foundation of the school due to the following
reasons:

 Marxist lost the grass root touch. Marxism in former USSR

became totalitarian.
 The prediction of Marxists on the collapse of capitalism in Europe
and America did not materialize.
 Capitalism became more welfare oriented.
 They established the Hegelian touch in early Marxist writing and
rejected the economistic models.
 They emphasized on the cultural, social, political and ideological
aspects.
 They emphasized on subjectivity rather than the phantom
objectivity.
 They emphasized on the alienation of individual as a form of
exploitation.
Though the above characteristic became convincing to intellectuals it
remained mostly marginal in sociology because of –
 Abstract discourse.
 Writings in German language.
  Established sociology journals did not allow the writings of
scholars of critical school.
Therefore, in the words of Lowenthal, its is aptly described as –
“Critical theory is some thing every one knows but no
body reads.”
2. Frankfurt School :Origin and Development:
Frankfurt school was established in 1924 as a centre for Marxist
research. The first director of Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt was
Carl Gruenberg. He was taking more of a traditional orthodox attitude of
Marxism. But when Max Horkheimer assumed the Directorship in 1930, the
orthodox orientation of research was abandoned. It established its own
journal, which became the mouth piece of the school. Horkheimer along
with the inner circle of scholar like Adurno, Marcuse and Fromm adopted a
more philosophical and less dogmatic Marxism that was more open to
diverse intellectual currents. They moved from the economistic analysis to a
critic of culture.
During this period Hitler was powerful. He made the life of the Jewish
scholars miserable. The life of the Jewish group became extremely
dangerous in 1933. Horkheimer was dismissed. Frankfurt school premise
was occupied by Nazis but fortunately the institute could manage to transfer
the documents and other important papers to Holland in 1931 and most of
the scholars could move out of Germany. In 1934 an arrangement was made
to reestablish the “Institute of Social Research” at Columbia University, New
York and later on the new school for social research was established
independently by these scholars.
The approach of the Frankfurt School of Germany was known as the
“Critical Theory” in USA. Critical Theory was used as a code word to
publish the papers of the Frankfurt school scholars.
3. Basic postulates of Critical Theory:
Alvin Gouldner wrote about “two Marxism”. Those are –
(a) Russian Marxism
(b) European Marxism
 Russian Marxism is traditional, orthodox, mechanistic, economistic
and deterministic.
European Marxism is cultural, critical, cataclysmic, voluntaristic.
Further, Critical Theorists emphasized on early Marx. The Marxist
writing in his early phase of life the most prominent books of these phase
are –
“Political and psychological manuscript” and “Gruindrisse”. Here the
Hegelian touch is found. Subjectivity is important.
Some of the Marxist scholars like Carl Crosch, Gerog Lukacs and
Antonio Gramsci laid the foundation of early Frankfort School, but these
three scholars were jailed or forced to recant their views.
Critical Theory concerned with the contradiction between ideology and
reality. Ideology portrays a false unity of idea and real, but the greater the
distortion, the deeper the contradiction and more vulnerable the system is to
criticism. It emphasized on the subjective dimension of emancipation, by
clarifying the eminent (inherent) emancipating ends by free action. Instead
of state ownership of the property for the emancipation of the mankind,
critical theories emphasized on “Public Sphere”. It refers to the “Ideal Speech
Situation” which means free flow of information without any sort of coercion
and that is real emancipation.

Critical Theories worked on variety of areas. The most dominant ones

are Authoritarian personality, Domination, Public Sphere, Domination of
Technology, Culture Industry etc.
While discussing authoritarian personality, it identified the essential
features, it means the more the individual an authoritarian, the more he is
dominant and consequently more rigid is his social attitude.
Domination : While discussing about domination, it is exercised not
only through crude economic power, but the capacity of super-ego, that
means the less it is visible, more it is oppressive.
Domination is exercised by manipulation, which restricts the freedom
of individuals, but also pushes the individual towards option which only
spuriously seem to be profitable to him.
 Domination is exercised by ideology.
4. Scholars of Critical Theory:
Apart from the early Frankfort School Scholars, the most noted
scholars are Habarmas, Fromm, Aderno etc
Habarmas talked about culture industry, ideal speech situation.
Fromm talked about one dimensional man.
Adorno talked about authoritarian personality.
5. Conclusion :
Critical Theory is abstract, not empirical and philosophical. The areas
they study are diverse. Therefore, the injection of some sociology into critical
theory and vice-versa will enrich the both critical theory and sociology.
At last, this can be said that the Leninist have imposed the change in
the world, but now is to understand it.
U-IV. Derrida
1. Introduction:
Jescques Derrida is a French thinker. He was heavily influenced by the movement of
structuralism which engulfed the whole of Europe. Like the post-modernist thinkers, such as
Baudrillard and Loytard, he waged a war against the founding fathers of Sociology and their
fundamental universalistic theories. He developed his own particular post-structuralist brand
of philosophy, linguistic and literary analysis. All these centered around by the concept of
De-construction, a concept he coined. He was hostile to logo-centrism. Logo-Centrism
means the search of universal system of thought that reveals what is true, right and beautiful.
He de-constructed logo-centrism.
2. Life History:
Derrida was Algerian-born French philosopher born on July 15, 1930, in El-Biar,
Algeria and died of pancreatic cancer, on October 8, 2004, in Paris, France.
As a teenager Derrida took an interest in philosophy after hearing a talk about French
author and philosopher Albert Camus, who promoted a philosophy known as absurdism,
which held that attempts to find meaning in life were hopeless because the world was an
irrational place.
In 1966 Derrida introduced his philosophy to the United States during a symposium at
Johns Hopkins University. He gained more attention the following year when he published
three groundbreaking works, Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena and Of
Grammatology
Derrida's critics accused him of being a nihilist— someone who believed there was no
meaning. Detractors believed the philosophy would destroy society by reducing it to a
negative state of meaning. Derrida, however, charged that just because a text contained no
single meaning did not mean it did not have any meaning. Derrida's detractors forever asked
him to define his philosophy in straightforward terms. He most often declined and told that
attempting to offer a definition for deconstructionism would simply yield "something which
will leave me unsatisfied."
Derrida died of pancreatic cancer at a Paris hospital on October 8, 2004; he was 74.
3. Major Works:
As Derrida is more of a philosopher than a scientist, he wrote on a variety of topics.
His major books are :-
 Speech and Phenomena
 Of Grammatology
  Writings & Difference
 Margin of Philosophy
 Specters of Marx
4. De-construction:
Derrida has developed the theory of De-construction. According to him
deconstruction discovers hidden assumption about a text. It is also to find the meaning of the
meaning.
There is no knowledge outside society, culture or language. The dictionary meaning
of the deconstruction is – a critical technique, especially in literary criticism, which claims
that there is no single innate meaning and thus no single correct interpretation of a text.
Therefore, the central argument of Derrida is that things do not have a single meaning,
instead the meaning embraces fragmentation, conflict and discontinuity in matters of history,
identity and culture. The characteristic of deconstruction are –
1. Deconstruction is a method of enquiry.
2. It is a play of presence and absence.
3. Difference: The structure of presence is seen as being constituted by difference
instead of simply concentrating on the presence, the focus in the study of a context
is on the play of presence and absence.
4. A meaning of text can be plural and unstable. Deconstruction rejects the surface
meaning and tries to find out the hidden meaning. The Text never carries a basic
single meaning. There is fragmentation, plurality, and discontinuity in the text.
5. Deconstruction means critical reading of text. The texts are open to new critical
discovery. Any attempt to arrive at truth, must be carried out within textuality
because there is nothing outside the text.
6. A text gives several meaning, like any form of Grammar, Graph or Writings. It
transcends its authors and point to its origin.
7. Derrida suggests that a reader and analyst must approach the text with awareness
and arbitrariness of sign and meaning. The focus in a text should be on the
inconsistency and contradiction of meaning in it.

8. A reading of absence and insertion of new meaning are the twin strategy
employed by postmodernism to emphasize that knowledge is not a system of
discovering truth, rather it a field of free play.
5. Conclusion:
In the changing societies the meaning of the things are also changing. The concept of
generation gap creates the differences between the persons of different generations. New
meanings are generated and this is identified with the development of knowledge.
Deconstruction tries to find new meanings in opposition to the earlier meanings associated
with events. Therefore the contribution of Derrida shall remain relevant in future also.