Critical Theory: An Introduction
QuoteCritical theory allows us to explore the cultural production and communication of meanings in precise and nuanced ways, and from a range of different perspectives. It questions the ways in which we might be used to making sense of artistic, historical or cultural artefacts and prompts us to reconsider our beliefs and expectations about the ways individuals interact with material things and with each other
QuoteLanguage is not a transparent medium through which ideas can pass between minds without alteration. Rather, as almost all of the essays and entries in this book acknowledge, it is a set of conventions that influence or even determine the sorts of ideas and experiences people are able to have. Language is cultural (some thinkers even claim it is the essence of culture), and therefore open to criticism and change. If linguistic meaning were naturally given, for example, why would there be more than one language? A word does not mean what it does 'naturally'; rather meanings arise on the basis of complex linguistic and cultural structures that differentiate between truth and falsity, reality and fantasy, and good and evil, and are inextricably tied up with value judgements and political questions, as well as with identity, experience, knowledge and desire.
QuoteStructuralism's understanding of the world, then, is that everything that constitutes it – us and the meanings, texts and rituals within which we participate – is not the work of God, or of the mysteries of nature, but rather an effect of the principles that structure us, the meanings we inhabit and so on. The idea is that the world without structures is meaningless – a random and chaotic continuum of possibilities. What structures do is to order that continuum, to organize it according to a certain set of principles, which enable us to make sense of it. In this way, structures make the world tangible to us, conceptually real, and hence meaningful.
QuoteIn order for the idea 'spinster' to become meaningful in language, the concept of 'women', as the other of 'men' in the duality 'women and men', would have to come first. The idea 'spinster' could not, in other words, exist without a corresponding idea of gender as male and female. But any meaning for 'spinster' is of course also dependent on the prior establishment of the concept of marriage, as well as a differential understanding of the status of 'women' and 'men' in relation to marriage. Indeed, in this example, meaning begins to seem to have a great deal more to do with value, and specifically cultural value, than the model of language as a naming system might suggest. The meaning of spinster is, after all, surely not inevitable, natural or true, but rather the product of a system of cultural values which are open to debate. If this is the case, then far from simply naming an objective reality, language would seem to play an important role in realizing reality, as well as its meaning for us within the linguistic communities we inhabit. If we did not have the linguistic term 'spinster', would we think of female existence in the ways that we do? It is certainly relatively easy to imagine a social community in which the concept of a spinster might have no meaning whatsoever – not necessarily because unmarried women do not exist, but rather because women are not simply valued, or thought of as meaningful, in relation to whether or not they are married to men.
QuoteAs I have already suggested, for Saussure language is not simply a system for naming a reality which pre-exists it. Turning that notion on its head, Saussure argued instead that language is in fact a primary structure – one that orders, and therefore is responsible for, everything that follows. If this is so, then it seems fairly straightforward that different languages will divide, shape and organize the phenomenal world in different ways. While this understanding of language allows us to see cultures other than 'our' own as relatively different, by implication it must also show us that the culture we claim as 'ours' is in turn neither natural nor inevitable. That is, it demands that we recognize as structurally produced the culture which seems to us most obvious, most natural and most true. What Saussure's work gave to structuralism, then, was an account of language as a primary structure, a system of signs whose meanings are not obvious, but rather produced as an effect of the logic internal to the structural system that language is.
QuoteI could go on. It may be sufficient, however, to draw the following three conclusions from this example: (i) signs function to constitute meaning only within the terms of the system of which they are a part; (ii) while all sign systems function according to their own structural principles, they all function nonetheless like language; (iii) all forms of cultural text can therefore be understood as signifying systems, the meanings of which are not fixed for all time but, rather, are open to change.
Quotenarrative can be found in numerous aspects of life: not only in other forms of art (drama, poetry, film) but in the ways in which we construct notions of history, politics, race, religion, identity and time. All of these things, regardless of their respective claims to truth, might be understood as stories that both explain and construct the ways in which the world is experienced. As Barthes famously said, 'narrative is international, trans-historical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself'.
QuoteThe sentence 'Walking dogs should be encouraged' has a single surface structure (plot) and two deep structures (stories). Accordingly, this single sentence can be read as an invocation to encourage dog owners to exercise their pets (story 1) or as a suggestion that perambulating dogs should be cheered on and applauded (story 2). Conversely, the sentences: 'The dog ate my homework' and 'My homework was eaten by the dog' have different surface structures (plots), i.e. they differ in their word order, but have the same deep structure (story). The meaning of both sentences is the same, despite the variation in its presentation.
QuoteDespite these legitimate calls for caution, the distinction between story and plot provides a useful way of approaching narratives. One of the implications of the split is the suggestion that story, which is only ever available as a paraphrase, is translatable from medium to medium, whilst plot appears to be text-specific. This is to say that an individual story can appear in numerous distinct texts and across a wide range of media: for example, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has appeared as a trilogy of novels (1954, 1954, 1955), an animated film (Ralph Bakshi dir. 1978), numerous computer games (1985–2004), a radio play (Brian Sibley, 1981) and, most recently, as Peter Jackson's highly successful trilogy of films (2001, 2002, 2003). Despite this variety of media and 'authors' there is a general consensus that the story of The Lord of the Rings is recognizable in each instance.
Quote'The term History, unites the objective with the subjective side, and denotes . . . not less what has happened, than the narration of what has happened' (Hegel 1991: 60). History is not discovered but constructed; in other words, facts do not speak for themselves – the historian selects and interprets facts. Accordingly, histories are always composed, created and situated narratives, and it follows that they should be approached as such.
QuoteAttempts to bring narratology into inherently political and ideological theories, such as feminism, gender and race, have met with mixed success.
QuoteWhat Marx demonstrated was that far from comprising an open and neutral environment the capitalist economy is first and foremost a power structure. The basis of this power structure is class oppression.
QuoteAs emerging enterprises create more advanced, diverse and cheaper products, then not only does this steadily reduce profit margins, it also begins to undermine the entire capitalist structure of property relations. An example of this would be the internet, where all kinds of copyright material and products (texts, music, pharmaceuticals, software and so on) can be obtained freely or at much reduced prices. Faced with this type of threat, the typical response of transnational corporations is to increase monopolization by buying up the smaller enterprises and actively stifle competition, innovation and development in order to protect markets and profits. So there is an inherent tension between the revolutionizing drives within capitalism (technological advances, etc.) and capitalism itself (a productive mode based on profit).
QuoteThe Czech Marxist Kautsky, for example, was to observe that by the early twentieth-century workers were far more interested in trade unionism and social democratic (party) politics than revolutionary communism. This has led writers such as Lichtheim (1974) to argue that Marx's view of inevitable revolution really only held credibility under the conditions of nineteenth-century capitalism. As these conditions have been transformed through social reform/welfarism (not least as a result of trade union activity and social democratic politics) this view is neither relevant nor likely.
QuoteA central assertion was that capitalist society was moving to a new level of ideological sophistication through what Horkheimer called the 'culture industry'. Culture had replaced religion as the new 'opium of the masses' in framing a subtle order of conformism. According to Benjamin the emerging context was one in which the possibility of independent art forms was becoming more and more compromised by an ever expanding mass culture whose basic tendency is towards the banal and mediocre. And this tendency is insidiously political. Not only are cultural enterprises and artefacts increasingly managed and produced on a mass scale for consumption purposes but, at a deeper level, they feed into a self-perpetuating milieu of docility. Mainstream theatre, radio, television, internet and so on can be seen to be already in the service of a certain pacifying bourgeois culture. Indeed all such media may be said to be at its most ideological precisely when it aspires to this idea of neutral entertainment: that is to say, when it implicitly accepts, and consequently naturalizes, the power configuration of the capitalist status quo – thereby displacing and eviscerating all sense of critique and critical energy.
