Theory Toolbox
"ISMS"
*All of the content in the "isms" section was contributed by Tania de Sostoa-Mccue
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Critical Theory
Definition
There are two branches of critical theory. Of interest, critical sociology emerged from the Frankfurt School (1930’s), philosophers and theorist whose work aimed at examining society and the ways in which ideologies blocked social/human changes and progress. Critical theory (sociology) is evident in the works of Freud and Marx.
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Relevance
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Modern Critical Theory emerged from the second movement of the Frankfurt School in the 1960’s, influenced by scholars/theorists such as Habermas and Lytoard.
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Habermas believed that the shift away from enlightenment ideals and modernism had a negative impact on progress away from dominant ideologies. “Because of the forces of modernism, the principle of unlimited self-realization, the demand for authentic self-experience and the subjectivism of a hyperstimulated sensitivity have come to be dominant” (Habermas 95).
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Lyotard rejected metanarratives and critiqued the works positioned as positivist and ahistorical (such as Marx).
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Lytoard’s work was in turn heavily critiqued and deconstructed by other scholars, including Derrida, who believed that his conception of language depended on binary oppositions. Additionally, Habermas has been positioned as anti-postmodern.
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Terms and Ideas
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Metanarratives: Metanarratives work to legitimize ideologies which are dependent on “universal” truths (see Positivism, Postmodernism, and Poststructuralism). These metanarratives function to enforce and reinscribe power structures.
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Ideology: beliefs that function to normalize individual, group, or social ideals. In this context, ideology/ideologies play a role in construction, deconstruction, or identification of the work of power structures (Wikipedia). The works of Marx and Althusser are particularly relevant for examination of this idea in context of our course.
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Discourse/Discursive Formations: regarding theory, the ways in which discourse (in which signs give/confer meaning, rather than signs inherently having meaning) is produced by discursive formations (forms of communication). Foucault’s work is particularly relevant to this.
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Historicism
Definition
Emerged post 1950’s, valuing specific history as context important to understanding and evaluating information, rather than understanding them as universal. Truth/understanding don’t exist external to history, norms, cultural frameworks of a particular time.
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Relevance
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Sometimes referred to as New Historicism, particularly in context of Postmodernism.
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Theorist such as Foucault, Lacan, Derrida can be considered New Historicist.
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A part of the shift from Structuralism to Poststructuralism. Structuralism was critiqued by theorist such as Foucault, Derrida, Althusser, Barthes, and Butler as being ahistorical.
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Derrida believes that in order for a new structure to come about, there must be a rupture with one that existed before. Unless one questions the issue of going from one structure to another, history is being neutralized.
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“...the repetitions, the substitutions, the transformations, and the permutations are always taken from a history of meanings...a history, a period--whose origin may always be revealed or whose end may always be anticipated in the form of presence.” (Derrida 224)
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Additionally, in discussing Postmodernism, scholars such as Belsey have reflected on Historicism as a movement toward a politically radical cultural history within the history of meanings. If meanings are located historical periods, this information could be used to determine where meanings solidified into discourses, practice, tradition and where norms for these periods emerged.
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Terms and Ideas
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Hermeneutics: Theory/method of interpreting communication (verbal and non-verbal). Examines semiotics as well. Linked to Antipositivism.
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Ahistoricism: A term often seen in our texts both in context of an argument for and against schools of thought and theory. Ahistoricism separates the an object, idea, movement, ideology etc from its historical context. Ahistoricism has been connected by scholars and theorists to Structuralism as well as Enlightenment thought and philosophy.
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Phenomenology
Definition
Not easily definable, as within this philosophy/study are various theorist and scholars whose work shares resemblance but vary quite a bit. Relates to structures of consciousness, and factors/objects/contexts which work/create these structures.
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Husserl: Considered a founder of phenomenology. According to Husserl, phenomenology reflects on and studies what structures within consciousness and what phenomena appear in acts of consciousness. Knowledge is in the center of the knower – knowledge rooted in their experiences. (Wikipedia)
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Linked to Structuralism, along with the works of Heidigger and de Sausser.
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Linked to Antipositivism
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Antipositivism
Definition
Antipositivism grew from the works theorists, scholars, and philosophers critiquing Positivism. Founded on theories/methodologies that understand human behavior is subjective and that reflect on the ways in which values, symbols and norms create culture, behavior and ideologies (Wikipedia). Specifically related to the idea that science, knowledge, or behavior are not ahistorical or reducible to metanarratives.
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Grew out of critique of positivist theorists, or those influenced by positivism, such as Marx.
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Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard are among these critiquing scholars.
Terms
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Positivism: Philosophy that states that all rational discourse/ideas can be proven through science, logic, or math. A rejection or metaphysical understanding, or religious belief in higher power, etc. Also a way of framing law and society as functioning by specific rules which are logical and based on previous reason; morality and idealism should therefore not affect how a law is enforced (Wikipedia).
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Modernism
Definition
Modernism emerged in response to large scale changes in Western society over a long period of time. Influenced by Industrialization, World War I, and changes in life and family structure with the rise of cities. Modernism was rooted in faith in the ability of people to affect positive changes and progress with the aid of science, technology, philosophy (see Positivism). Modernism runs through (and therefore has a wide variety of meanings and definitions in relation to) art, literature, philosophy, science, etc. There are no clear boundaries for time periods related to Modernism, as its influence is seen in different spaces at different times.
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Background knowledge for understanding works read, particularly those specifically postmodern or examining Postmodernism
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Postmodernism
Definition
Postmodernism arose as a counter to ideologies, metanarratives, and universalism, including positivist and modernist tendencies. As Western cultural dominance began to wane -- or as its centrality began to come under question -- scholars and theorists began the work of deconstructing these metanarratives and understanding of truths as universal. “Truth,” knowledge, ideologies, etc. were understood as the products of discourses. Deconstructionism, Antipositivistm, Historicism and Poststructuralism are all linked to post-modern movements and theory.
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Relevance
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The works of scholars we’ve studied such as Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Huyssen, Rorty, Baudrilliard, and Butler.
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Additionally works by scholars looking at Postmodernism (rather than creating theory or philosophy directly) such as Belsey, West, hooks, and Hutcheon.
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Historicism vs. Ahistoricism: “What I want to call postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political” (Hutcheon 244).
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Decentralization of European cultural dominance: Discussed by West as well as Lyotard, “Those who lament the ‘loss of meaning’ in the world...are really mourning the fact that knowledge is no longer primarily narrative knowledge of this kind” (Hutcheon qt Lyotard, p 246).
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Positivism v. Antipositivism: crisis of legitimation seen discussed in the works of Habermas and Lyotard.
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Metanarratives: complicity with knowledge, challenging the idea of hierarchies and master narratives seen in the works of Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, etc.
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Resistance, legitimation and rupture: “Wherever there is a history of subjection to norms and truths, there is also a history of resistances. Power produces resistance not only as its legitimation, as the basis for an extension of control, but as its defining difference, the other which endows it with meaning, visibility, effectivity” (Belsey 557).
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Terms
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Simulacra: linked to the work of Baudrillard, who referred to a simulacrum as hyperreal -- that is, a representation that is not a copy of what it represents, but its own truth.
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Bricolage/bricoleur: Although initially used by Levi-Strauss in context of theory (bricolage as an attempt to take existing materials in order to problem solve, Derrida used the idea of bricolage in reference to discourse. "If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur” (Derrida 231).
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Indetermanence: the combination of two central tendencies in postmodernism: indeterminacy and immanence.
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Deconstruction: a method of critique of the relationship between text and meaning. Origins in the works of Derrida, whose approach was reading texts with an ear to what runs counter to the intended meaning or the structural unity of that particular text. The purpose of deconstruction is to expose that the object of language (and therefore text) is irreducibly complex and unstable.
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Performativity: a concept first used by Austin (associated with Structuralism in the 1950s), who examined how particular speech acts work to create or complete their spoken action. Derrida took from Austin’s work, shifting the focus and importance from speech utterance toward a privileging of writing. Instead, Derrida focused on the performativity of signs, or units of language, and the ways in which their citationability allows for potential breaks from their intended context or meaning, therefore allowing for unlimited new potentials and utterances. Butler built on both Austin and Derrida’s work in her argument that speech acts work toward a social construction of gender, as well as the maintenance of this constructed identity through actions, behaviors and other nonverbal communications.
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Social Constructivism and Social Constructionism
Definition
Artifacts are constructed by social groups/social interaction. Social constructionism focuses on the artifacts produced. Social constructivism focuses on the idea that artifacts are born of group/social interactions. Social constructivism focuses on how a person learns, or the process of learning, through interaction of the group in the construction of said artifact (Wikipedia).
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Tracing back to Weber, Marx and Durkheim, social constructionism influenced the works of Bourdieu and Foucault (through connection to Positivism). The stress on diversity of meanings and social actors influenced the works of Kant, Nietzsche, which influenced the Frankfurt School and Habermas. In regards to its links and influence on works on ideology, legitimacy (see Antipositivism) and the relationship between power and knowledge, it influenced the works of Foucault, Said, Hall, Bourdieu, and the Birmingham School (Wikipedia)
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Social constructionism aimed to reveal how individuals and groups work in the construction of social realities. See Phenomenology, and reference Habermas, Husserl, and Foucault.
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Structuralsim
Definition
Rooted in structural linguistics of the 1900 (de Saussure), Structuralism emerged in the 50-60s in France. Examined structures within cultural products, analyzed these structures using concepts from a variety of fields. Rejected the phenomenological idea that knowledge is centered in the human – it’s in structures that create experience. Concepts, language, signs.
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Bourdieu, within a social science/sociological frame.
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Structure, domination, and struggle are at the core of sociological understanding/analysis.
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Levi-Strauss and Lacan were scholars who took an interest in Structuralism
Terms
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Symbolic violence: Agent with symbolic capital exercise power of that capital over those who hold less. This conferrence of frameworks of thought or perception are then taken by those with less capital as just. This is the perpetuation of dominant social structures.
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positivism vs. antipositivism of interest here, particularly in the exercise and execution of law based on predetermined social structures vs. what one might think of as morally or ethically right.
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Field: where social agents are located, determined by their habitus and capital.
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Habitus: Term influenced by others, of interest, Husserl. Systems of dispositions create an agents habitus (perception, thought, action).
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Poststructuralsim
Definition
In the 60-70’s continental and French scholars began calling Structuralism into question. Some of this included rejection of binary oppositions that undergird the structures of power. These scholars all presented different critiques of Structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures. Poststructuralism argues against phenomenology and Structuralism insofar is how and where knowledge if founded.
Relevance
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Structuralism came under the critique of theorists and scholars such as Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, and Althusser.
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Among the criticism, Structuralism was considered to be ahistorical.
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Terms
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Binary oppositions/Binaries: The concern with binarism was first established by the French structural linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, who held that signs have meaning not by a simple reference to real objects,but by their opposition to other signs. Each sign is itself the function of a binary between the signifier, the ‘signal’ or sound image of the word, and the signified, the significance of the signal,the concept or mental image that it evokes. Saussure held that although the connection between the signifier and signified is arbitrary (key terms, rewrite) Contemporary post-structuralist and feminist theories have demonstrated the extent to which such binaries entail a violent hierarchy, in which one term of the opposition is always dominant (man over woman, birth over death, white over black), and that, in fact, the binary opposition itself exists to confirm that dominance. This means that any activity or state that does not fit the binary opposition will become subject to repression or ritual.
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Essentialism
Definition
Essentialism is the assumption that groups, categories, or classes of objects have one or several defining features exclusive to all members of that category. Some studies of race or gender, for instance, assume the presence of essential characteristics distinguishing one race from another or the feminine from the masculine. In analyses of culture it is a (generally implicit) assumption that individuals share an essential cultural identity, and it has been a topic of vigorous debate within post-colonial theory.
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Relevance
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Theorists such as Gayatri Spivak drew attention to the dangers of assuming that it was a simple matter of allowing the subaltern (oppressed) forces to speak, without recognizing that their essential subjectivity had been and still was constrained by the discourses within which they were constructed as subaltern.
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