Critical Theory

Critical theory is a school of thought that stresses the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture by applying knowledge from the social sciences and the humanities.

Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
The Society of the Spectacle
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
Mythologies
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Simulacra and Simulation
Orientalism
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
The Culture Industry
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey ChaucerSongs of Innocence and of Experience by William BlakeLyrical Ballads by William WordsworthThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence SterneA Companion to the History of Economic Thought by Warren J. Samuels
Reading - Summer 2014
24 books — 2 voters
The Uncanny by Sigmund FreudGad's Hall / The Haunting of Gad's Hall by Norah LoftsThe Philosophy of Horror by Noël CarrollHouse of Echoes by Barbara ErskinePowers of Horror by Julia Kristeva
Horror / ghosts reading list
25 books — 2 voters

Camera Lucida by Roland BarthesOn Photography by Susan SontagI Give My Eyes... by Brian H. PetersonLooking at Mexico / Mexico Looks Back by Janet SternburgCrisis of the Real by Andy Grundberg
Photography Books to Read
69 books — 41 voters
Egoists, a Book of Supermen by James HunekerThe Ego and Its Own by Max StirnerMythologies by Roland BarthesViolence by Slavoj ŽižekThe Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner
Spook Busting
41 books — 3 voters

Seven Beyond by Stella AtriumThe Consolation of Philosophy by BoethiusPhilosophy of Evil by Lars Fredrik Händler SvendsenThe Art of War and Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy by Sun TzuPhilosophy as Passion by Karen Vintges
books with ‘philosophy’ in title
249 books — 14 voters
Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert  WhitakerFrontlash / Backlash by Jeffrey C. AlexanderI Love My Doctor, But... by Lawrence W. GoldThe Birth of the Clinic by Michel FoucaultMad in America by Robert  Whitaker
Critical Psychiatry and Mad Studies
202 books — 54 voters

Herbert Marcuse
In a world without reason, reason is only the semblance of rationality; in a state of general unfreedom, freedom is only a semblance of being free. This semblance is generated by the internalization of idealism. Reason and freedom become tasks that the individual is to fulfill within himself, and he can do so regardless of external conditions.
Herbert Marcuse, Critical Theory and Society: A Reader

The material and ethical assertions of [Critical Social Justice] CSJ are controversial. Most people with apparently oppressed identities don’t think about the world through this ideological lens—it is an artifact of academia.
Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

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