Critical Theory
Max
Weber’s View of Objectivity in Social Science
Did Weber believe that, even though facts are one thing and values
another, social and economic facts could be evaluated without the
analysis being influenced by values? And what is the relation of
objectivity to values? Could objectivity, for instance, be used to show
that one value is superior to another? Or does objectivity apply only to
the analysis of facts? Do one’s values or perspective stem from human
nature, metaphysical views, personal identity, or is it just as likely
that they are a mere construct of culture? Read on …
Saussure’s
Sign The sign, the signifier, and the signified are
concepts of the school of thought known as structuralism, founded
by
Ferdinand de
Saussure, a Swiss linguist, during lectures he gave between 1907 and
1911 at the University of Geneva. His views revolutionized the study of
language and inaugurated modern linguistics. The theory also profoundly
influenced other disciplines, especially anthropology, sociology, and
literary criticism. The central tenet of structuralism is that the
phenomena of human life, whether language or media, are not intelligible
except through their network of relationships, making the sign and the
system (or structure) in which the sign is embedded primary concepts. As
such, a sign -for instance, a word -gets its meaning only in relation to
or in contrast with other signs in a system of signs. Read more …
The Myth of Psychoanalysis: Wittgenstein Contra Freud My central thesis is that if, as Wittgenstein says, Freudian psychoanalysis is based in myth, its application to actual psychological problems does not, indeed cannot, resolve them. Instead, all it can do is clarify them or present them in a different light. Implicit in my argument is that this is how Wittgenstein thought of the results of psychoanalysis, much like he thought of the application of his philosophical technique to philosophical problems, especially those of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. As such, Wittgenstein is also subverting a larger myth: that the insights gained in psychoanalysis lead to the scientific resolution of psychological problems. Read on …
Image over Substance: An
Example of Postmodern Politics Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Adorno, commenting on Hitler’s propagandistic use of the radio, note
“the gigantic fact that the speech that penetrates everywhere replaces
its content,”1 a formula that has been taken one step further by
television: On TV, the image
dominates,
overpowering
not only the fact of speech but also its content. Read more …
Foucault: A Lover’s
Discourse about Madness and the Media Roland Barthes,
writing in the early 1970s, begins The Pleasure of the Text
with these words: 
Read more …
An Analysis of
Kellner’s Theory of Media Culture
In an era when the
media have grown to be one of the most dominant forms of culture in
North American -so dominant, in fact, that the they can now be seen as
the pinnacle of commercial culture -an explanatory theory of the media
becomes paramount. Yet considering the intimate relationship between
culture and media and that, for many, the media have become their
culture, a theory that views the media outside the context of culture
will be afflicted with myopia. Thus, for completeness, a theory of the
media requires a firm connection to culture in its every step. Douglas
Kellner, in his book Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and
Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern, sets out to make these
connections. Read
more …
Why Can’t We Stop Watching TV? Roland Barthes, writing in The Pleasure of the Text, has an explanation for a befuddling recurrence: Why so many people, including myself, watch so much bad TV even when we know it is awful. Barthes’s answer: pleasure. He elaborates thus: Read more …
Using French Social Thought for Media Criticism With a focus on Althusser, Barthes, and Foucault, this essay broadly delineates the theoretical approaches of the three schools in explaining the role of the mass media in society. As I proceed, I enumerate several strengths and weaknesses of each theory and make some comparisons among them. Read more …
Interpretation and
Indeterminancy
Throughout the essay,
I will argue a hard line: the exact meaning of a speaker’s utterance in
a contextualized exchange is often indeterminate. Within the context of
the analysis of the teacher-pupil exchange, I will argue for the
superiority of interactional linguistics over speech act theory because
it reduces the indeterminacy and yields a more principled
interpretation, especially when the interactional approach is
complemented by elements from other sociologically influenced methods,
namely the ethnography of communication and Labovian sociolinguistics.
Read on …
Habermas’ Theory of Discourse Ethics The purpose of this essay is to reveal the central distinctive elements of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of discourse ethics and how his moral theory differs from those of two other prominent philosophers, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls. In unveiling the distinctive qualities of Habermas’ discourse ethics, the fundamental difference between it and Kant’s moral theory, upon which Habermas in part bases his thought, will be explained. Next, in exposing another distinctive element of discourse ethics, a pivotal difference between Habermas’ moral theory and John Rawls’ theory of justice will be elucidated. Read on …
A Wittgensteinian
Approach to Discourse Analysis This essay seeks to take
Wittgenstein’s influence on discourse analysis a step further by using
his writings as the theoretical foundation for an approach to analyzing
discourse that is distinct from speech act theory,
which stems from the
analytic tradition in philosophy, and to suggest that a
Wittgenstein-inspired approach may actually be closer in spirit and
content to that of an unlikely candidate whose views, in contrast to the
analytic school, harbor a distinctly Continental flavor which has come
to influence critical theory: Mikhail Bakhtin. Read on …
Philosophy Becomes Psychotherapy. Do you remember that beautiful September during your first year of graduate school when you discovered existential psychoanalysis? There was never a cloudy day.
A Scientific Analysis of Desire?
Short Cuts: A Pithy Remark Steeped in Atitude
Wittgenstein and Freud: Points of Contact and Criticism
Freud’s Notion of Subconscious as a “Means of Representation”
Wittgenstein: A Disciple of Freud?
Psychoanalysis as Weltanschauung
Freud Rebuts Wittgenstein on Verifiability
Indoctrination and Resistance in Psychotherapeutic Dialogue
The Construction of the Double as Social Object.
Max Weber’s Interest in Studying Capitalism
Goals in Reading Max Weber’s Early Works