Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides Book 0)

Being critical is being political: it represents an intervention into a much wider debate than the aesthetic alone, and that is surely something to be encouraged.

Indeed, Foucault regarded our conception of “man” – that is, the liberal humanist vision of the individual as the possessor of certain inalienable natural rights – as a very recent invention.

Capitalist societies are adept at disseminating their ideological beliefs without having to resort to force. Ideology is passed on at the level of ideas, as much as by economic pressures (often unwittingly by the individuals involved).

Society always consists of an economic base or infrastructure, and a superstructure. The superstructure comprises everything cultural – religion, politics, law, education, the arts, etc. – which is determined by a specific economy (slave-based, feudal, mercantile, capitalist etc.).

In Benjamin’s view, this opens up art to the masses in a way that has never been possible before, enabling them to escape from the clutches of tradition – a highly desirable outcome for the revolutionary-minded Marxist.

The essential idea for critical theory is that there is nothing accidental in a text – in the widest sense of text as production. Every indication of what is hidden, repressed or displaced in its structure can be traced back to the “textual unconscious”.

we are witnessing the rise of “scientific” forms of social control by the authorities. The lives of individuals are to be strictly regimented.

Alienation is a process by which mind – as the consciousness of a subject (thesis) – becomes an object of thought for itself (antithesis). And thereby the human mind constantly progresses to the next higher stage of synthesis and self-consciousness.

But a print of a Vincent van Gogh, no matter how high quality its reproduction, is not the real thing. In Benjamin’s words, the print lacks the original’s “presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”; or, as he proceeds to call it, its “aura”.