#critical-theory — Public Fediverse posts

lol somebody said this: "Feminism is a product of critical theory and this promotes a narrative that there is only oppressor and oppressed and that men and women have essentially been at war forever." And the rebuttal is just, like, "No." sure there is feminist critical theory but, just, no. #feminism #criticaltheory

MACBA podcast w/ Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean talks about communism as a still-latent project, about the Party as a scalable global form, about dystopian municipalism, anamorphic ecologies, and liberal democracies, about Not An Alternative and Liberate Tate as examples of sustainable activism practices at museums, about desires, enthusiasm, and trust and about the emotions captured inside social media.

Link: https://rwm.macba.cat/en/podcasts/sonia-268-jodi-dean-2/

🧵 1/4

#macba #macbapodcast #femalepressure #podcast #criticalthinking #criticaltheory #feminism #philosophy #rwm

I'm not sure the gender debate is all that these days with the distraction factory in DC; nonetheless, I've been reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble.

https://open.substack.com/pub/brywillis634737/p/the-striated-woman-no-one-owns-the?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

I like Butler's ideas a lot, so I wanted to engage her material directly. Beauvoir is another favourite.

#philosophy #language #writing #blog #podcast #identity #women #feminism #judithbutler #beauvoir #socialontology #legibility #substack #ontologicalgrammar #gendertheory #criticaltheory #politics

Pluralistic: Vicky Osterweil's "The Extended Universe" (28 Apr 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/27/mouseketeers/

In this second of two essays, I discuss the immorality of property, even deeper than the first post yesterday.

https://brywillis634737.substack.com/p/before-the-fence-the-self

#philosophy #language #ontology #criticaltheory #blog #podcast #property #rights #privateproperty #propertyrights #justification #metaphysics #consciousness #phenomenology #ethics #philosophyofmind #identity #personalidentity #apples #essay #substack

I've argued that property rights are immoral. Now, I've shared a pair of posts that argue at a deeper level. This is the first:

https://brywillis634737.substack.com/p/the-fence-before-the-field

#Philosophy #substack #blog #podcast #language #ontology #criticaltheory #anarchism #politicalphilosophy #politicaleconomy #economics #locke #rousseau #propertyrights #property #privateproperty

Great article about one of my philosophical heroes, Michel Foucault — still incredibly relevant in a world saturated with social media.

Something I’ve only just realised: one of the core ideas I’ve carried for years is really a paraphrasing of his work on power and knowledge (via Hilary Lawson):

“Science is not powerful because it is true — it is true because it is powerful.”

https://theconversation.com/40-years-after-his-death-michel-foucaults-philosophy-still-speaks-to-a-world-saturated-with-social-media-232589?utm_medium=article_clipboard_share&utm_source=theconversation.com

#philosophy #Foucault #criticaltheory #socialmedia #powerandknowledge #digitalculture #criticalthinking

Basically, the favorite hobby of pseudo-intellectuals and Pop authors is to caricaturize Marx's writings up to a point where there's nothing left besides a simplistic scarecrow designed to scare people with poor critical thinking skills. And everybody knows lazy thinking has always been very popular among lazy people :-D

It's extremely funny because people often end up accusing Marx of defending exactly the opposite of what he wrote. Why? Because they don't have time to read/are lazy / lack the literacy skills to understand Marx's writing. The fact is that Marx didn't care much about inequality per se and other topics usually associated with burgueois morality. He thought that all the traditional socialist tropes around injustice were just idealist bullshit - as a matter of fact they are.

"If anything, a common critique made by better-informed critics of Marxism is precisely that Marx was too much a product of the Enlightenment. In particular, via his very Pinkereseque optimism that human history was going to continue to advance: the technological forces of production would continue to develop under capitalism, this would last until capitalist relations of production became a fetter on their further development, and then capitalism would be transcended by a higher form of society which would be more free, equal and democratic. Technological progress would continue under socialism until we’re all living in post-scarcity idyll where everyone can pursue their own projects without income needing to be tied to labor contributions, and there will be so much to go around, everyone can simply take what they want. (This is the famous “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” formulation from his Critique of the Gotha Program.) At this point, as Marx puts it in Capital Vol. 3, the “development of human powers” would become an end in itself for the first time."
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/steven-pinker-doesnt-know-anything-about-marxism
#Marx #Marxism #CriticalTheory #PopWriting #PoliticalEconomy

My monograph Digital Modernity: Why We Need to Think Historically About the Digital Age (Routledge, 2026) is out now, and available open access.

Core argument: digital systems are continuations of modernity, not breaks from it.

Covers Silicon Valley ideology, digital colonialism, AI, infrastructure, and the public sphere.

Open Access: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003684398/digital-modernity-james-smithies

Physical: https://www.routledge.com/Digital-Modernity-Why-We-Need-to-Think-Historically-About-the-Digital-Age/Smithies/p/book/9781041164012

#DigitalHumanities #DigitalSocialScience #CriticalTheory #OpenAccess #Modernity #AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zldrIB2v48w

#Art #Media #Philosopjy #CriticalTheory #ArtHistory

Any other #musicology / #visualculture nerds on here? Witness #EMOCON2026 with online components this Saturday! Free to Zoom. I stream @ 3 p.m. EDT but will catch some of the early sessions. --> www.emocon2026.com #music #musician #radio #musicchannel #arthistory #criticaltheory #DJ #AcademicChatter

Emo Con 2026

Nancy Fraser on Habermas

'My ties to Habermas were multi-layered. He was an inspiration and a role model; a mentor and an antagonist; a figure who showed me early on how to practise ‘critique with an emancipatory intent’ but from whom I eventually had to distance myself'

#frankfurtSchool #habermas #philosophy #nancyFraser #marxism #criticalTheory #literature #bookstodon

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/march/after-habermas

Thomas Meaney on Habermas

'It cannot be stressed enough how far the Frankfurt School of the 1960s was from the Marxism of the interwar period. The ‘Western Marxism’ of Frankfurt prided itself on retaining what it thought was living in the tradition – its dialectical method and style – while discarding its historical analysis, which it blamed for both the dangers of adventurism, from the March Action of 1921 to the Red Army Faction, and the political quietism of a left that passively expected history to work out for it'

#criticalTheory #philosophy

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/normcore?pc=1750

'Distinguishing system critique from model evaluation is not a concession to hype: it means focusing on collective benefits and harms rather than individual uses. We can talk about what models cannot or should not do without denying what they *can* do'

#genAI #technology #criticalTheory

https://www.techpolicy.press/stochastic-flocks-and-the-critical-problem-of-useful-ai/

A capacity for rational dialogue?

“Democracy depends on the belief of the people that there is some scope left for collectively shaping a challenging future.” Jürgen Habermas

"His abiding concern was the state of democracy and the fear of backsliding into the exclusionary and violent social order..." >>
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/books/jurgen-habermas-dead.html
#PublicSphere #PublicDiscourse #communication #dialogue #nationalism #violence #democracy #CriticalTheory

Dichotomies in Media and Communication Theory

Bart Cammaerts

(Taylor & Francis, 27/02/2026 - 278 pages)

"This innovative textbook explores media and communication theory, and its intersections with social and political theory, through the prism of eight core dichotomies – communication/media, private/public, production/reception, material/symbolic, mainstream/alternative, abundance/scarcity, control/freedom, and virtual/real – revealing their complex interrelationships and significance in understanding contemporary media and communication landscapes.

Students will gain a nuanced understanding of media and communication theories by examining both sides of each dichotomy and their dynamic interplay. The book historicizes each concept pair, illustrates them with past and present examples, and demonstrates how competing paradigms often complement rather than contradict each other. This approach helps readers grasp theoretical complexity, recognize the democratic importance of media and communication, and develop critical thinking skills through engaging case studies and discussion questions in each chapter.

This textbook is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking media and communication theory courses. Instructors teaching critical media and communication theory will find the dichotomy-based approach particularly valuable for helping students navigate complex theoretical debates and understand the field's intellectual development. It will also be useful supplementary reading for specific topics within broader media studies programs."

https://books.google.pt/books?id=btitEQAAQBAJ

#MediaTheory #CommunicationTheory #MediaStudies #CriticalTheory

1/6
Ever feel like the more "rational" our world gets, the more nonsensical it feels? In 1944, while the world was on fire, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer dropped a philosophical pipe bomb: Dialectic of Enlightenment.
They didn't just want to critique the Nazis; they wanted to know why humanity was "sinking into a new kind of barbarism" instead of becoming truly free. #CriticalTheory #FrankfurtSchool #Philosophy

@thejessiekirk

If you genuinely think that the solution to bias in science is to just do science better then you really need to read some critical theory, maybe critical race theory or something (the concepts translate to lots of domains but i think this is the most written about)

And why did you refer to it as "animal research" rather than "non-human animal research"

Yes I am comparing it to racist IQ test because the concept of measurable intelligence was invented by racists and the concept still carries the same assumptions implicitly even if the explicit intentions were written out. And because the spore remains it translates quite nicely onto speciesism and human supremacy as I have outlined above

#Speciesism #HumanSupremacy #Racism #WhiteSupremacy #CriticalTheory

In der aktuellen Ausgabe von #RockHard wird der von mir mitherausgegebende Band "Meta/Metal. Open Questions in Metal Studies" lobend besprochen. Für das Buch habe ich einen Essay über " #HeavyMetal as #Peacebuilding" beigesteuert. #MetalStudies #MetalResearch #Metal #Science #CriticalTheory

the idea that sound, too, can be divided into the traced and the untraced. perhaps the real disturbance is not inaudibility, but untraceability.

#SoundStudies
#AcousticEcology
#SonicTheory
#CriticalTheory
#Philosophy
#MediaTheory
#Anthropology
#Listening

The Institute for Critical Social Theory’s Call for Paper for their 2nd annual conference is now available. This year we will meet in Istanbul! #philosophy #sociology #psychology #psychoanalysis #university #politics #istanbul #theory #criticaltheory #war #religion #socialtheory #anthropology #academicconference
See the full call for papers here: https://www.criticalsocialtheory.com