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Critical Theory & Socially Engaged PRACTICES - Coggle Diagram
Critical Theory & Socially Engaged PRACTICES
Critical Theory
Critical/ Criticality
Practice
Praxis
Change
Appropriation, Resistance, Sub-culture, Tactics, Performative research, Performative research, Production of space, etc.
Representation
Dialectics
A term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides
Dialectical Materialism
Our understanding of reality is never perfect or complete
Change is a process, not an endpoint
The process of struggle, contradictions between opposite
Contradiction transforms each side
Negating both & producing a new conflicting unity
Type
Use of language
Production
Theory
Models of the world
Pictures of realities
Type
Descriptive
Elaborate, give details
Analytical
Break it down, examine the components
Functional
How to use something, steps, and procedures
Dialectics
Theories (our understanding of reality) can only be perfected (improved) through practice
What is Critical Theory?
Models of the world that seek to problematize by articulating the many forms of power and our loss of human agency
Problematization
Specific mode of “problematization”
POWER & CONTROL
E.g. Fashion
Unequal distribution
Economic class
Culture
etc
Characteristic
External power control
Subjection
Systematic power control
Institution, policy, conventions
Internalized power control
Values, ethics, beliefs, daily practices
Our inner life is fabricated by power (Hegel, Nietzsche); consciousness and conscience are also ways in which power is anchored in subjectivity
Revealing the realities of...
Forces that delimit, homogenize us...
How knowledge is a form of control...
How individuality is being suppressed
Begins
When and how did an idea become a standard, a norm, common sense?
Revealing unstated assumptions
Whose power is a standard, a norm, a kind of common sense sustaining?
Ideology, Discourse, Hegemony, etc.
Horkheimer's "Critical Theory"
(1) The structure of history
(2) Idealism Vs materialism
(3) Traditional Vs critical theory
Materialistic Anthropology
The unity of bourgeois society mediated through commodity production
The past is in the daily struggle of the present
Continuous confrontation with the past
Remembrances of past injustices that can never be remedied.
Total social-psychic make-up of individuals, groups, strata, classes
Conscious and unconscious behavioral pattern
Our dependence on societal reality
Knowledge production (epistemology)
Away from Descartes’ mathematical deductionism
Away from positivism: different sciences are drawing from the same basic premises
Less primary principles the better
All the parts hang together to show no conflicts
Chracteristic
Explanatory
Practical
Normative
PROBLEMATIZATION > ARTICULATION
Articulation
Process
a specific social group/class/stratum’s
Appropriation of cultural forms for their own use
Bringing together facts and experiences to form a reasoned discourse
Communication theory > a theory of context
Target
Artists
To understand general issues in a local context
Artistic method and general research methods: a unique way to find out about the world
Uniqueness of art in understanding society
Art gives visibility (as well as other perceptual experience such as touch and hearing) to what otherwise cannot be touched upon or talked about
Art embodies a special voice of critique of society
Social/ Society
Critique of Capitalism
Different forms of control
Mercantile capitalism
Production/ Labor Time/ Surplus Value/ Commodities/ Concept of Money
Industrial capitalism
Fordism/ Mass Production / Economic Growth><Political, Social Order
Cognitive capitalism
Prosumer (consumer + producer) / Big Production Models > Micro Processes
Economic system
Social being
All behaviors occur in a social context
(Social) Interactionism (Sociology)
A theoretical perspective that derives social processes from human interaction
It is the study of how individuals shape society and are shaped by society through meaning that arises in interactions
Always a social dimension to something even very personal
Socially engaged
Socially engaged practices
Volunteered Actions (projects,activities) that seeks Proactive connection between the individual and society
Individual and other sectors of society
To provoke new social relations
ART
Entertainment
Unique in being expressive
More accessible
Type of commodity
Meaning
Practices that seek critical reflection on the artist/individual’s place in society
Practices that seek to place the artist/individual’s action in a social context and even in the public space
Art-making that promotes not just the individual (artist) but explores the artist’s place in society and the everyday person’s relation to art
Art-making that seeks to break the boundary between art and everyday life by encouraging participation
Art and society?
Culture = Everyday life