Critical theory concepts

Explanations > Critical Theory > Concepts

Critical theory is a challenging area where a crossover of many concepts meet. Many of these are described elsewhere (see 'See also' below).

• What is Critical Theory: basic definition.

• Death of the author: Barthes' liberation of the reader.

• Deconstruction: debunking binary opposites.

• Différance: where opposites interact and meaning becomes unstable.

• Episteme: Founding idea taken as assumed truth.

• Ideology: An envelope that creates our being.

• Interpellation: 'Hailing' a person and hence creating them as subject.

• Ideological State Apparatus: Controls the mind.

• Langue and Parole: The system and use of language.

• Other: Who is not the subject so creates the subject.

• Semiotics: The study of signs.

• Signifier and Signified: Two sides of the sign.

• Speech act theory: Where speaking becomes enacting.

• Subject: The person as a distinct unity.

• Synchrony and Diachrony: Language at one time and over time.

• Syntagm and Paradigm: Relationships of synergy and replacement.

See also

Concepts in psychoanalysis, Identity