Outline of critical theory

Updated on Sep 27, 2024

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:

Critical theory – the examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism. This has led to the very literal use of 'critical theory' as an umbrella term to describe any theory founded upon critique.

Essence of critical theory

Cultural studies –

Critical theorists –

Works in critical theory –

Truth theory –

Branches of critical theory

Social theory –

Literary theory –

Thing theory –

Critical theory of technology –

Critical legal studies –

Gender studies

Lauren Berlant –

Judith Butler –

Susan McClary –

Laura Mulvey –

Marxist theory

Frankfurt School –

Theodor Adorno –

Herbert Marcuse –

Walter Benjamin –

Jürgen Habermas –

Max Horkheimer –

Friedrich Pollock –

Louis Althusser –

Mikhail Bakhtin –

Étienne Balibar –

Ernst Bloch –

Antonio Gramsci –

Michael Hardt –

Fredric Jameson –

Ernesto Laclau –

Georg Lukács –

Chantal Mouffe –

Antonio Negri –

Valentin Voloshinov –

Slavoj Žižek –

Hegemony –

Posthegemony –

Postcolonialism

Chinua Achebe –

"An Image of Africa" –

Homi Bhabha –

Frantz Fanon –

Dual consciousness –

Edward Said –

Orientalism –

Structuralism

Roland Barthes –

Ferdinand de Saussure –

Claude Lévi-Strauss –

Louis Althusser –

Post-structuralism

Roland Barthes –

Michel Foucault –

Julia Kristeva –

Bruno Latour –

Deconstruction

Geoffrey Bennington –

Hélène Cixous –

Jonathan Culler –

Jacques Derrida –

Werner Hamacher –

Geoffrey Hartman –

Martin Heidegger –

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe –

Jean-François Lyotard –

Paul de Man –

J. Hillis Miller –

Jean-Luc Nancy –

Christopher Norris –

Avital Ronell –

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak –

Postmodernism

Jean-François Lyotard –

Gilles Deleuze –

Félix Guattari –

Ernesto Laclau –

Claude Lefort –

A Cyborg Manifesto –

Reconstructivism

Paulo Freire –

John Dewey –

Psychoanalytic theory

Félix Guattari –

Schizoanalysis –

Ecosophy –

Luce Irigaray –

Teresa de Lauretis –

Jacques Lacan –

Julia Kristeva –

Slavoj Žižek –

Sigmund Freud –

The Interpretation of Dreams –

On Narcissism –

Totem and Taboo –

Beyond the Pleasure Principle –

The Ego and the Id –

The Future of an Illusion –

Civilization and Its Discontents –

Moses and Monotheism –

Queer theory

Judith Butler –

Heteronormativity –

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick –

Gloria E. Anzaldúa –

New Queer Cinema –

Queer pedagogy –

Semiotics

Roland Barthes –

Julia Kristeva –

Charles Sanders Peirce –

Ferdinand de Saussure –

Cultural anthropology

René Girard –

Theories of identity

Private sphere – certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by interventions from governmental or other institutions. Examples of the private sphere are family and home. The complement or opposite of public sphere.

Public sphere – area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. It is "a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment."

Coolitude

Creolization