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#critical theory
aretheygayvideos · 25 days
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Hannah Montana’s Guide to Life Under Capitalism
Haven’t posted in a while but made a new video :)
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determinate-negation · 3 months
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In the wake of the modernizing process and rising fascism in Europe, members of the Frankfurt School at the Institute for Social Research astutely observed that with the rise of modernity and mass culture, culture had become an industry in itself, taking on the characteristics of every other capitalist commodity and obeying the same rules of production. While their analysis primarily focused on modernity and cultural production in Germany, their contributions to an understanding of mass culture and its mechanisms of ideological control are highly applicable to the history of Italian fascism as well. Fascism rose in Italy well before its German counterpart, and while both were aided by the support of finance capital and the conservative elite, their success was also due to the mass appeal they were able to create. Technological changes in communication, new social relations and commodity forms, and the extension of the market into the realm of culture allowed fascism to flourish in Italy, and became highly effective means of reinforcement after the Italian Fascist party seized power. However, it was not through sheer luck that these conditions worked favorably for Mussolini. He and the Italian fascists recognized the shifting social relations that accompanied modernity and strategically used them to build their image and the new Fascist culture they envisioned. Mussolini’s efforts may not have been successful if not for the tacit support he received from foreign press, specifically that of the United States, which lauded his actions and portrayed him similarly to a celebrity. Building on the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, I examine how the rise of mass culture and the logic of the culture industry influenced Italian fascism and the Fascist regime’s use of propaganda.
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livesouls · 2 months
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My first Substack post is out!
"Even though the wall kenneled, humiliated, impoverished, and starved the Palestinians, that was the extent of what it could accomplish. The wall deferred the problem of Palestinian resistance, but did not destroy it. This didn’t stop Israelis from seeing the wall as the shield of Israel’s sovereignty: a monument to peace, security, and the legitimacy of colonial domination. This perception seeped into all levels of Israeli society, including the country’s massive military and intelligence apparatus. According to New York Times writer Ronen Bergman, who was born and raised in Israel, 'people of the military got completely enchanted by the wall. And in time, [Israel] allocated fewer and fewer forces to the southern front.' The tragic result of this faith in the wall was that when its effectiveness was finally tested, '[the] contract between the state and the Jewish people was brutally violated.'"
—"The architecture of disavowal"
Read the full article here!
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rustyscreech · 2 years
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Everything Everywhere All At Once should be taught in critical theory classes. An hour and a half into discussing the movie after getting out of the theater I half-jokingly said "Okay. This is a Marxist movie now. Go." and my partner went "alright so half the movie is laborers fighting the IRS. They are alienated from themselves because of their labor. They live in their workplace, to the point where Evelyn can bang on the ceiling and tell her husband to stop being a husband and start being a laborer. The conflict starts because the American Dream is failing for these Ideal Chinese Immigrants(tm) who are Perfect Little Workers Pulling Themselves Up By Their Bootstraps. Deidre is 'going after all the Chinese in the community to audit.'"
Borrowed observation from Dan Olson:
"Abstraction is, counterintuitively, very efficient. It allows a movie to be about a lot of things simultaneously by letting symbols bleed into one another." [src]
What I love about how the movie is cut and how the story is told is that there's as many different readings as there are cuts between shots. Some readings are pretty obvious (race, queerness, gender), pretty obvious with necessary background knowledge (the whole thing might as well be a postmodern retelling of the Myth of Sisyphus), subtle but no less There (Marxist alienation of labor, the lived experience of mental health especially ADHD and dissociative responses, the experience of modernity being a constant demand for attention a la ads, social media, social obligations), or pretty out there but an argument can be made for their presence anyway (Waymond as Christ figure, metanarrative about the Hero's Journey).
Basically, I like this movie a lot, and anyone who wants to get better at analyzing media should go see it, pick a framework, and apply it. See what'cha get. I chose the Absurdism/Nihilism angle when I saw it the first time, because Camus is my favorite philosopher, but you can choose basically anything and come out satisfied. Go see this movie.
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notaplaceofhonour · 2 months
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i think there is some connection between this post and this post
the increasing tendency to treat flaws as justification to declare something wholly “problematic” is a big piece of the anti-intellectualism on the left
the entire point of criticism in academia is to refine & improve understanding in your field. when you level criticism, you are seeking to create dialogue, not shut it down—you engage in criticism to understand not just that a thing has problems, but to seek to understand those problems so you can contribute to a solution
it’s for that reason that the once valid image of a bunch of rich white dudes sitting around smoking cigars in a white tower isn’t accurate anymore. by no means does that mean all problems of systemic inequality are fully “solved”, but we live in a world where academia can and does adjust to criticism, and is now full of diverse perspectives from all intersections of minority voices
but when your approach to criticism is just finding any flaws to declare something wholly “problematic” and the only solution you have is “throw it all out!” “burn it all down!” the fact that institutions of higher learning are flawed and can be criticized leads you to embracing anti-intellectualism. rather than seeing the limitations of privileged perspectives as just that—limitations, which need to be filled out by combining them with perspectives that historically were overlooked—any perspective that may have been privileged in the past becomes trash that needs to be thrown out entirely
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etudiantfantome · 6 months
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Critical Theory, which includes all of its subcategories (such as Critical Race Theory) is fundamentally un-American, because it is inherently opposed to the notion of individual self-determination. According to Critical Theory every human being is a product of their social environment on a level that they cannot even begin to comprehend much less control. Therefore it is only by entirely reordering society from top to bottom that a new course can truly be set for the individual. Individuals are merely symptomatic of their social settings.
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disgustingposer · 4 months
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i like to imagine how a "theory brained" person lives, like imagine them playing GTA and thinking "that's exactly how Baudrillard wrote"
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ethicopoliticolit · 6 months
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Almost all the media coverage of AIDS has been aimed at the heterosexual groups now minimally at risk, as if the high-risk groups were not part of the audience. And in a sense, as Watney suggests, they’re not. The media targets “an imaginary national family unit which is both white and heterosexual” (p. 43). This doesn’t mean that most TV viewers in Europe and America are *not* white and heterosexual and part of a family. It does, however, mean, as Stuart Hall argues, that representation is very different from reflection: “It implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping: not merely the transmitting of already-existing meaning, but the more active labour of *making things mean*” (quoted p. 124). TV doesn't make the family, but it makes the family *mean* in a certain way. That is, it makes an exceptionally sharp distinction between the family as a biological unit and as a cultural identity, and it does this by teaching us the attributes and attitudes by which people who thought they were already in a family actually only *begin to qualify* as belonging to a family. The great power of the media, and especially of television, is, as Watney writes, “its capacity to manufacture subjectivity itself” (p. 125), and in so doing to dictate the shape of an identity. The “general public” is at once an ideological construct and a moral prescription. Furthermore, the definition of the family *as an identity* is, inherently, an exclusionary process, and the cultural product has no obligation whatsoever to coincide exactly with its natural referent. Thus the family identity produced on American television is much more likely to include your dog than your homosexual brother or sister.
—Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” (1987)
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septictankie · 2 years
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“He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty, nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him.”
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omegaphilosophia · 17 days
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Theories on the Philosophy of Power
The philosophy of power encompasses various theories that seek to understand the nature, sources, and implications of power in human societies. Here are some key theories in the philosophy of power:
Pluralist Theory: Pluralist theory posits that power is dispersed among multiple groups and individuals in society, and no single entity holds absolute power. According to this view, power is decentralized, and different groups compete for influence through political, economic, and social channels.
Elite Theory: Elite theory contends that power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite group within society, such as political leaders, business magnates, or cultural elites. According to this perspective, elites wield disproportionate influence over political decisions and societal outcomes, often at the expense of the broader population.
Marxist Theory: Marxist theory emphasizes the role of economic power in shaping society and maintains that power relations are fundamentally determined by class dynamics. According to Marxists, the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) hold power over the proletariat (working class) through the control of economic resources, leading to exploitation and inequality.
Foucauldian Theory: Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault, Foucauldian theory examines power as a diffuse and pervasive force that operates through disciplinary mechanisms and social institutions. Power is not solely held by individuals or groups but is embedded in societal structures and practices, shaping norms, behaviors, and subjectivities.
Feminist Theory: Feminist theories of power highlight the gendered dimensions of power relations and critique patriarchal structures that perpetuate male dominance and female subordination. Feminist scholars analyze how power operates within families, workplaces, and political systems, and advocate for gender equality and social justice.
Poststructuralist Theory: Poststructuralist theorists, such as Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, challenge essentialist notions of power and instead focus on power as performative and discursive. Power is understood as fluid and contingent, constructed through language, discourse, and social practices, rather than being inherent or fixed.
Network Theory: Network theory conceptualizes power as emerging from relational connections and interactions between actors within complex networks. Power is distributed unevenly across network structures, with some nodes or actors exerting greater influence due to their centrality, connectivity, or resource control.
Rational Choice Theory: Rational choice theory models individual behavior as driven by rational calculations of costs and benefits, including the pursuit of power. According to this approach, individuals seek to maximize their utility or achieve their goals by strategically deploying resources and forming alliances to enhance their power position.
Critical Theory: Critical theories of power, influenced by the Frankfurt School and critical social theory, emphasize the role of ideology, culture, and social institutions in perpetuating power inequalities. Critical theorists analyze how power operates through processes of domination, hegemony, and ideological control, and advocate for emancipatory social change.
Intersectional Theory: Intersectional theory considers how power operates at the intersections of multiple axes of identity, including race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability. This approach recognizes that power relations are shaped by intersecting systems of oppression and privilege, and emphasizes the importance of addressing multiple forms of inequality simultaneously.
These theories offer diverse perspectives on the nature and dynamics of power, illuminating its complexities and providing insights into its effects on individuals, groups, and societies.
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"The crisis of the family cannot be dismissed as a mere symptom of decay and decadence. The family is presented with the bill not only for the crude oppression so often inflicted by the head of the family on the weaker woman and especially on the children up to the threshold of the modern age, but also for economic injustice, the exploitation of domestic labor in a society that otherwise obeys the laws of the market, and for all those suppressions of desire, which family discipline imposes on its members, without this discipline always being justified in the minds of the family members, and without their having much faith in the prospect of being compensated for such renunciations, for example, by secure and tradable property, as seemed to be the case at the height of the liberal age. The loosening of family authority, especially as one of the sexual taboos, is due to the fact that the family no longer reliably guarantees subsistence, and that it no longer adequately protects the individual against the increasingly overpowering encroaching environment. The equivalence of what the family demands and what it provides is threatened. Every appeal to the positive powers of the family as such therefore has something ideological about it, because the family no longer accomplishes, and can no longer accomplish for economic reasons, what it is praised for."
On the Problem of the Family (1955), Adorno
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livesouls · 2 months
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"The tools that fascism uses were designed by liberal-capitalist nation states, whether those tools be mass politics, national identity, or racial and colonial violence. Fascism also is not a totalitarian organism, as liberal critics like Hanna Arendt have postulated: it is a cancerous formation, taking root in various organs of the body politic without needing rigid control over the entire system to exist. The inconsistent and differential application of fascist violence is a feature, not an exception." Read my latest article, "The boomerang effect", here on Substack!
This week I am responding to Alberto Toscano's most recent book, Late Fascism, published through Verso Books.
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Hey Cyan, out of curiosity, did ever have to learn about critical theory in college? If so, any thoughts on it?
Yes, and it was painful. I spent every day wanting to beat my head on my desk. Writing papers about it was like cutting off pieces of my brain and flushing them down the toilet in return for a letter on a transcript. Fucking ugh.
For context, I was peak hardcore woke leftist unthinking idiot in college, and I STILL thought this shit was flaming donkey poo
All this shit is motivated by a need to frame the world, or any smaller thing within it, in such a way that you have victims and oppressors, and the thing you're criticizing is somehow inherently producing oppression, or is a tool of the oppressor, yeah?
Real life isn't fucking like that. In real life, we are all human beings with agency. The mere concept of individual agency shatters this shit into sand.
Above all else, I've always believed in personal agency, which, when I bothered to think properly about my beliefs, led to me putting emphasis on personal responsibility, which led to all thoughts of "I'm inherently oppressed/oppressive" being discarded.
We aren't cogs in a social machine, a society is built of the individuals inside it. You can't make declarations about society and then fit your theory of the people inside it to those definitions or you're working backwards just to agree with yourself.
Somewhere I have screenshots of the first time I started to doubt this kind of rhetoric, and it's when I was arguing with the bf about intersectional feminism having good intentions or starting from a good place or whatever, and he told me to look up the definition. I did, and was immediately pissed off because it was utterly incoherent and spoke of nothing, but attempted to separate people from each other to mark them as inherently oppressed or oppressive and put them in boxes.
Fuck that shit
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“A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages...”
― Hermann Hesse
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