The Critical Tradition

Communication as a reflective challenge of unjust discourse

The critical tradition arose to counteract the tendency of the other approaches to describe the communicative process

without questioning the outcomes

The term critical school of communication comes from a

group of German scholars known as the “ Frankfurt

School” because they were part of the independent

Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University

The Frankfurt school is neo-marxist though it had rejected the economic determinism of

orthodox Marxism

The leading figures of the Frankfurt school are Max

Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse

These scholars and their followers offered thoughtful

analyses of discrepancies between the liberal values of

freedom and equality that leaders proclaimed and the unjust concentrations and

abuses of power that made those values a myth

Critical scholars consistently challenged three features of contemporary society:

0The control of language to perpetuate power imbalances,0The role of mass media in dulling sensitivity to repression,

and 0Blind reliance on the scientific method and uncritical

acceptance of empirical findings.

Although diffuse and hard to organize, this tradition brings one thing in common on the

table…

…the idea that social and cultural arrangements are

loaded to enforce the power of certain stakeholders in ways

that dominate and even oppress others

The critical school hope to move beyond feelings of sympathy and stimulate

praxis – social action.

modernism Post-modernism

Post-structuralism

Post-colonialism

modernism

0Marxism0Critical scholars attempt to name and expose

structural oppression that may be hidden from our consciousness

0Louis Althusser: ‘ideology is present in the structure of society and arises from the practices undertaken by social institutions’.

modernism

0For Althusser: the society has repressive state apparatuses – the police and military, and ideological state apparatuses – education, religion and mass media.

0The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, hegemony occurs in many ways in society, especially, when events and texts are interpreted in a way that promotes interests of one group over those of another.

modernism

Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School:0 the study of mass communication0Pioneers are: Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and

Herbert Marcuse at the Frankfurt School of Social Research, 1923.

0Contemporary scholar – Jurgen Habermas: the theory of the Public Sphere

modernism

0Feminism: liberal and radical feminism0Liberal feminism: …that women have been oppressed

as a group.0Radical feminism: …that the oppression of women

runs far deeper than political, it is about a patriarchal hegemony

Postmodernism

0Cultural studies – investigations of the ways culture is produced through a struggle among ideologies.

0Feminist Cultural Studies – patriarchy as the source of gender oppression.

Poststructuralism

0They opposed the idea that language structures are just natural forms to be used by individuals as a tool of communication.

0Their goal was to “deconstruct” language in order to show that language can be understood, used, and constructed in a limitless number of ways.

0Michel Foucault: “language creates the person”. The discourse of our age will shape who we are and how we think.

Postcolonialism

0This scholars are devoted to understanding Eurocentrism, imperialism, and the processes of colonization and decolonization – all of the ways in which the colonial experience can be understood as an ideology of domination.

0Neo-colonialism0Postcolonialism – domination, ideology, and power

through globalization.