In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. The former is theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to understanding or explaining it. The latter is theory used in the critical analysis and understanding of literature and is discussed in greater detail under literary theory.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:

[edit] Essence of critical theory

• Critical theory
• Cultural studies
• Major critical theorists
• Notable works in critical theory
• Truth theory

[edit] Branches of critical theory

• Social theory
• Literary theory
• Thing theory

[edit] Gender studies

• Lauren Berlant
• Judith Butler
• Susan McClary
  • Susan McClary's constructions of subjectivity in Franz Schubert's music
• Laura Mulvey

[edit] Marxist theory

• Frankfurt School
  • Theodor Adorno
  • Herbert Marcuse
  • Walter Benjamin
  • Jürgen Habermas
  • Max Horkheimer
  • Friedrich Pollock
• Louis Althusser
• Mikhail Bakhtin
• Étienne Balibar
• Ernst Bloch
• Antonio Gramsci
• Michael Hardt
• Fredric Jameson
• Ernesto Laclau
• Georg Lukács
• Chantal Mouffe
• Antonio Negri
• Valentin Voloshinov
• Hegemony
• Posthegemony

[edit] Postcolonialism

• Chinhua Achebe
  • An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"
• Homi Bhabha
• Frantz Fanon
  • Dual consciousness
• Edward Said
  • Orientalism

[edit] Structuralism

• Roland Barthes
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Louis Althusser

[edit] Post-structuralism

• Roland Barthes
• Michel Foucault
• Julia Kristeva
• Bruno Latour

[edit] Deconstruction

• Geoffrey Bennington
• Hélène Cixous
• Jonathan Culler
• Jacques Derrida
• Werner Hamacher
• Geoffrey Hartman
• Martin Heidegger
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
• Jean-François Lyotard
• Paul de Man
• J. Hillis Miller
• Jean-Luc Nancy
• Christopher Norris
• Avital Ronell
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

[edit] Postmodernism

• Gilles Deleuze
• Félix Guattari
• Ernesto Laclau
• Claude Lefort
• Cyborg theory

[edit] Reconstructivism

• Paulo Freire
• John Dewey

[edit] Psychoanalytic theory

• Félix Guattari
  • Schizoanalysis
  • Ecosophy
• Luce Irigaray
• Teresa de Lauretis
• Jacques Lacan
• Julia Kristeva
• Slavoj Zizek
• Sigmund Freud
  • The Interpretation of Dreams
  • On Narcissism
  • Totem and Taboo
  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle
  • The Ego and the Id
  • The Future of an Illusion
  • Civilization and Its Discontents
  • Moses and Monotheism

[edit] Queer theory

• Judith Butler
• Heteronormativity
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• Gloria E. Anzaldúa
• New Queer Cinema
• Queer Pedagogy

[edit] Semiotics

• Roland Barthes
• Julia Kristeva
• Charles Sanders Peirce
• Ferdinand de Saussure

[edit] Cultural anthropology

• René Girard

[edit] Theories of identity

• Private sphere
• Public sphere

[edit] Linguistical theories of literature

• Mary Louise Pratt

[edit] Major works

• Bloch, Ernst (1938-'47). The Principle of Hope
• Fromm, Erich (1941). The Fear of Freedom (UK)/Escape from Freedom (US)
• Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor W. (1944/'47) Dialectic of Enlightenment
• Barthes, Roland (1957). Mythologies
• Habermas, Jürgen (1962). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
• Marcuse, Herbert (1964). One-Dimensional Man
• Adorno, Theodor W. (1966) Negative Dialectics
• Derria, Jacques (1967). Of Grammatology
• Derria, Jacques (1967). Writing and Difference
• Habermas, Jürgen (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action
• Mohan, Brij (2005). Reinventing Social Work

[edit] Major theorists

Theodor Adorno - Louis Althusser - Roland Barthes - Jean Baudrillard - Jacques Lacan - Gilles Deleuze - Jacques Derrida - Michel Foucault - Erich Fromm - Jürgen Habermas - Herbert Marcuse - Edward Said

[edit] Critical theory lists

Main article: List of critical theory topics

[edit] See also

Critical theory portal

• the Frankfurt School

[edit] External links

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