Kritiks and Critical Theory
– a Primer
With Rodrigo Paramo, Tyler Haulotte, and Eric Emerson
Structure of today’s presentation
 I. Introduction
 II. Parts of a critique with examples
 III. Types –
 A. Structural
 B. Identity
 C. Thinking
 D. Representations/Discursive
Introduction – What is it?
 Examples – please be brief –
 Copernicus?
 Martin Luther King and Malcolm X? What are they
kritiking?
 First wave feminists in America, circa 19th and early 20th
century?
II. Parts
 Link –
 Impact
 Role of the ballot or standard
 Alternative?
Helpful hints
 We have imbedded citations and authors throughout the
presentation. Please check out the notes section after
we are done.
 In addition, you can always search the applications of
these authors to the topics you will debate throughout
the year. Our recommended search engines include:
Google scholar, Project Muse, Taylor and Francis, Sage
Publications, ebsco, etc.
 Many of your schools have access. If not, ask recent
graduates, friends, or siblings who may have access to
college databases.
III. Types – there are a lot!
 Please know that we are, to the best of our ability,
providing brief synopsis on various bodies of literature
that have a lot written on them and that are way more
complex than we can flush out in our limited time.
 Your understanding will improve by engaging the
literature. The stuff that we are talking about is
discussed in undergraduate and graduate schools and in
various departments across universities.
Structural
 Capitalism Kritik, Kritiks of economic theory, and
development
Structural
 Biopower/Biopolitics – Nietzsche, Foucault, Agamben,
Deleuze, etc.
Structural
 Anarchism – state is bad, always bad, really bad.
Identity
 Race – Afro-pessimism, Anti-Blackness, Wilderson
 Gender –
 Sexuality, Orientation, Queer Theory, and Radical Queer
Futurity
Identity (cont..)
 Ableism – it is both a critique of thinking and of representations –
it links if the AC says we are blinded by….or we fail to see that….
1.
Immigration itself is ableist
2. Exclusion of disabled bodies underlies all forms of oppression
and mass death; All oppressive systems operate by isolating
and eliminating people with traits deemed inferior and
deviant. Only by reconceiving how disabled bodies appear
can we begin to undo the underlying justification for all
forms of violence against disqualified populations.
3. Alternative: Only beginning with an epistemic rejection of
disabling dichotomies solves the ontological position of
subordinated identities.
Identity
 Anthropocentrism, object oriented ontology and new
materialism
 Post-Colonial Studies, Native American/indigenous
radicalism
 Class – see Cap K above, but from an identity viewpoint
Identity
 Intersectionality – when we think of ‘gay rights’ often
we have an image of the classical mainstream media
version of an attractive gay, affluent white male –
 Do you think the conditions of being gay changes if it’s a
poor white woman? How about a gay black man? How
about a trans-gendered poor person, not someone like
Kaitlin Jenner (sp?)
Kritiks of Thinking
 Civil rights was a kritik of thinking. So too was Copernicus and Galileo
 Psychoanalysis – What is the real –
1.
Real – the Real is the negative of the Symbolic and serves as its border, its limit.
Each is defined in terms of what the other is not. Consequently, the Symbolic
concept cannot exist in the Real ideal and vice versa - the two are mutually
inconsistent. To achieve the Real would, therefore, be to obliterate the
Symbolic.
2.
Symbolic – symbols of things like security, life saving, justice of values – it’s a
belief in the utopian fantasy of order
3.
Lack – between the real and the symbolic is the space that we can never achieve
– we are always lacking – example is awkward moment amongst friends or
colleagues
4.
Attachment - Utopian fantasies of social order are not only impossible
because of our inherent subjectivity and reliance on the big Other, but also
necessitate scapegoating and violence to those who are still “different”
Kritiks of Thinking
 Security Kritik –
 Critical Pedagogy
Representation Based
 Its not what you say that matters but why we do things.
 Representation Kritiks include bad word Ks, Orientalism,
Gender and all of the other ones
AFFIRMATIVE ANSWERS
 LOL, WE DON’T HAVE TIME…ASK YOUR LAB LEADERS