Concepts from a reconceptualized critical theory (Kincheloe, 2005)

1. critical enlightenment—analyzes competing power interests between groups and individuals within a society; privileged groups have an interest in supporting the status quo; identifies processes by which such power plays operate.

2. critical emancipation—attempts to gain power to control own lives in solidarity with a justice-oriented community; attempts to expose forces that prevent individuals and groups from shaping the decisions that crucially affect their lives; seeking for greater autonomy and human agency

3. rejection of economic determinism—21st century critical theorists understand that there are multiple forms of power, not just economic; however, economic factors can never be separated from the other axes of oppression

4. critique of instrumental or technical rationality—instrumental rationality separates fact from value in an obsession with proper method, losing an understanding of the value choices always involved in the production of knowledge

5. impact of desire—critical theorists embrace poststructural psychoanalysis as an important tool for discerning the unconscious processes that create resistance to progressive change and induce self-destructive behavior; psyche is no longer separated from the sociopolitical realm, i.e., desire for power can be socially constructed

6. concept of immanence—critical theorists are always concerned with what could be, what is immanent in various ways of thinking and perceiving; critical theory should thus always move beyond the contemplative realm to concrete social reforms

7. reconceptualized critical theory of power: hegemony—critical theory is intensely concerned with the need to understand the various and complex ways that power operates to dominate and shape consciousness; power is an ambiguous topic that demands detailed study and analysis—power is a basic constituent of human existence that works to shape both the oppressive and productive nature of the human tradition; concern with the oppressive aspects of power and its ability to produce inequalities and human suffering; power not always exercised through physical force but also through social psychological attempts to win people’s consent to domination through cultural institutions such as the media, schools, family and church—hegemonic social relations are often legitimized by their depiction as natural and inevitable; hegemony is always contested by groups with different agendas

8. reconceptualized critical theory of power: ideology—formation of hegemony cannot be separated from the production of ideology; ideological hegemony involves the cultural forms, the meanings, the rituals and the representations that produce consent to the status quo and individual’s particular places within it; dominant ideological practices and discourses shape our vision of reality

9. reconceptualized critical theory of power: linguistic/discursive power—language is an unstable social practice whose meaning shifts, depending upon the context in which it is used; language is not a neutral and objective description of the real world; linguistic descriptions serve to construct the world; language in the form of discourses serves as a form of regulation and domination; discursive practices are a set of tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said, who can speak with authority and who must listen, whose social constructions are valid and whose are erroneous and unimportant; power discourses undermine the multiple meanings of language, establishing one correct reading that implants a particular hegemonic/ideological message into the consciousness of the reader.

10. focusing on the relationships among culture, power, and domination—culture has to be viewed as a domain of struggle where the production and transmission of knowledge is always a contested process; development of mass culture has changed the way culture operates; new forms of cultural domination are produced and blur the distinction between real and simulated; the proliferation of signs and images functions as a mechanism of control in contemporary Western societies.

11. centrality of interpretation: critical hermeneutics—in knowledge work there is only interpretation, making sense of what was observed in a way that communicates understanding; the quest for understanding is a fundamental feature of human existence; no social theory or discursive form can claim a privileged position that enables it to speak as an authority

12. role of cultural pedagogy in critical theory—pedagogy refers to the ways dominant cultural agents produce particular hegemonic ways of seeing; critical theorists are intent on exposing the specifics of these processes; critical pedagogy is about connecting theory to practice—praxis—the complex combination of theory and practice resulting in informed action; questioning the relationship between particular thoughts and actions as they confront lived experience.

from Kincheloe, J.L. (2005). Critical pedagogy primer. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 50-59