 Welcome to another edition of Thinking Things Through, Thinking Critically in Critical Times. I'm your host, Michael Sukop. Today we have with us Michael J. Thompson, Professor of Political Theory at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. We're going to be discussing critical theory, what it is, why it matters. And in the interest of full disclosure, Michael Thompson and I have known each other as professional colleagues for a number of years and both of us currently are working on books in the general area of critical theory as Michael is going to talk with us about shortly. Welcome to the show, Michael. I'm Michael. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're very welcome. Now, you've written a lot in the area of critical social and political theory, which we'll get into in a moment. You've also written widely in the related areas of critical reason, the politics of inequality, political judgment and the decline of the individual in late capitalist societies. In addition, you're also a practicing psychoanalyst. Is there anything you'd briefly like to add about your background and interests? Well, I suppose a lot of the interests that I have now stem from my own work doing some union organizing and journalism back when I was younger. So I do have a more kind of civic engagement streak. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Great, well, let's push ahead. So first of all, let's start off with, briefly, what is critical theory? How do you define the term? Critical theory is, I think, a term that confuses more than it clarifies. I think the most important thing to do is to think about what the word critique really means. And the word critique is actually a Greek word and the Greek word from which critique comes means to judge something, means to judge the capacity to judge what something is and also to evaluate. Critical theory, I think, is a way of thinking about the world that asks us to inquire about what forms of life, what kind of practices and activities that we do. What is the good? What is justice? What is a healthy form of life? Way of interacting, way of living, way of being. And critical theory really emerged out of the 19th century and early 20th century struggle around, particularly at coming out of Marxism and the need for political activism to consider the role of consciousness, the role of how everyday people think and feel about the world because the assumption before critical theory was on the left, particularly on the Marxist left, but even the non-Marxist left was the idea that things in society are getting so bad. Industrialism is destroying our world and inequality is really terrible. Things are getting so bad that there's going to be an automatic correction. There's gonna be a revolution. There's gonna be some radical change that's gonna happen. People are just not gonna take it anymore. And what people found was that that wasn't happening, that people were not just joining movements, that people were not really rebelling. So the question that critical theorists started to ask was, what are the reasons that people who may be screwed over by the system to use a kind of streetway of thinking about talking about it, actually many times join with the system. Do not actually join in overthrowing the systems that oppress them or dominate. In fact, they may very well do the opposite. All too often they may in fact join in to repress their own freedom. And so this is a kind of riddle if you want to look at it that way, a riddle of history that critical theorists really sought to open up and to understand. Right. Now I just want to put in the background here for some of our viewers and listeners may not know what Marxism is or they may not know what more relevant, what's the relationship between Marxism and critical theory? So you don't need to answer that directly right now but I'd like to kind of touch on that at some point. Now critique, right. What is some of the other two or three other main that you would see as main characteristics of critical theory as compared with so-called mainstream or traditional forms of theory in the social sciences? You know, it's a great question. The idea of theory when you learn it in grammar school and high school, for example, and college is the idea and theory is also a Greek word. Theory is a word that means knowledge or to know something. What's interesting about what you call traditional theory or what one of the founders of critical theory, a guy named Max Gorkheimer called traditional theory also is the idea that to study something and know it you have to somehow constrain your values. You have to constrain your values about whether something is good in order to understand what something is. Critical theory says that this isn't really possible. Critical theory wants to say that to really understand what a thing is you really need to understand what the good or the full expression of a thing is. And the idea is that knowledge about the world can't be cleansed of our judgment or our evaluation. To simply say like, well, I know what a tree is but you really only know what a tree is if you really know what the kind of full, perfect idea of what tree miss is. Because it's like a lot like Play-Doh, doesn't it? Exactly. And I think that's when Play-Doh is where the concept of dialectic really begins. Okay, well, let's not get too far about it. But really it's a distinctive way of thinking about the world because it's the idea that to know something is also to know what the good of that thing is. And I think there's a third feature that's really important, which is critical theory aims not simply at knowledge but the transformation of the way that we live our lives and therefore of social reality. It aims at change. It aims at alteration and progress and growth and mutation of the world around us. Because all too often we live in a world now, I believe that all too often we feel alienated from. Right. But it's magnetic that it's impenetrable to our will. We look at our world as we're kind of alienated from the dynamic lives that we lead. So critical theory wants to say that our social reality is changeable. It is subject to our transformation. And therefore a critical reason is to help us shape and reshape an actually lived life. Not just a theory about how the world could be but rather how the lives that we live can actually be changed and transformed. Now this is, if you don't mind my interrupt, this is very interesting because I can see someone who doesn't think this way or has maybe not even the foggiest idea what you're getting at, say, wow, this is such a biased way of looking at the world. You bring your values and your judgments into it and say, how are you gonna make the world a better place? How dare you? The idea that we should bring our values in was always the kind of, well, this is the thing about modern science, modern scientific reason. Yeah. Talking about nature, it was very important philosophers of the Enlightenment correctly saw to separate our values about nature from nature itself because of the way pre-modern relations to nature were structured. So you would say, oh, a tidal wave occurred because we did something bad in the world and therefore we're being punished with the tidal wave or the tornado or the hurricane. Right. But critical theory is trying to say, no, no, no. To understand the world of human relationships, of our political lives, we cannot separate our values from our knowledge. And any attempt to separate values from knowledge is an attempt at control. Oh, very interesting. It's an attempt at domination. It's an attempt for the powerful to insert their ideas about what is good and what is beneficial. Okay, well, I want you to carry that theme forward as we move on, especially when we get to talking about critical theory and politics. Let me just ask you, in your work, you state, and I'm quoting here, that many different kinds of theory lurk under the banner of what's called critical theory, quote unquote. You go on to say that to do this is, and I'm paraphrasing here, to commit an error about what critical theory and what critique actually are. Could you please elaborate on that point, what you're doing? Yeah, I think academic theory has become so just abstruse and separated from everyday people's lives. Critical theory is a very complicated, philosophical, a lot of texts that are very difficult to read, a lot of ideas that are very complex, to be honest. However, even though that's the case, I think what's at the heart of critique as in critical theory, as I said before, is the idea that you need to posit something new in the world, you need to try to change the world, not only try to understand the way that the world is dominating you, but also to use that in a way to try to create the new, to try to articulate and transform the world to make it a better place. Awesome. Yeah, sorry, Andrew, just what I was trying to get at is, let's use the example of critical race theory. And there are other versions, feminism, postmodernism that may show up under the banner get labeled as critical theory. So what's the mistake there? I think the mistake is, if you think about critical race theory or postcolonials theory or these kinds of theoretical ideas, is that they really don't have anything to offer in the place of what they are positioned again. Postcolonialism is an example. It's like there are many postcolonial peoples, they've been dominated, their culture's been shaped and affected, their political systems, but where does that lead us? Where does that leave us in terms of struggling for something new? So the theory, it remains an academic theory, critical race theory also, to try to pick out the racial and racist dimension and dynamics of modern institutions, that's very important to do. The question of critical theory is, what kind of world, what would be necessary, what transformations of our relations to each other and our institutions would be necessary to make a world where that would no longer be the case. So critical theory asks us about, asks about, it creates a demand on us to think about what freedom would be like, not in terms of some liberal idea of a principle of freedom, but what would it be like to live in a world where our relations to others and our activities are really free. And in this way, I actually think feminism is closer to critical theory because feminism, especially in the kind of feminism from the 60s and 70s, was very anti-hierarchical, a very positive idea of an alternative way of relating to one another. So actually I think feminism is a strong example of something that really intersects with critical theory because you're basically saying, the way the world is now is wrong and there is an alternative. There's an alternative way of living. Right, the way I like to think about it, and I'm assuming you probably agree with me though, maybe not, I like to think of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It was a type of theory that actually developed in a way out of Marxism. And that's a loaded term there, out of, but we don't have time to go there. So there was a type of theory that was called critical theory, initially done by folks in Germany, starting in the early 20s, and they actually used the term critical theory, at least this is my understanding, because they didn't wanna say Marxism. Yes, that's right. But there's also differences between their critical theory and straight line orthodox Marxist theory, but we don't have time to go there. I just wanted to throw that in. Now I wanna move on and see how we can use critical theory to think through some issues in the world. And I'm thinking about, for example, one would be here in the US, the rise of the Republican right and the growth of authoritarian and neo-fascist movements in the US and of course abroad. So what I wanna ask you is not only to say whatever you'd have to say about that from a critical theoretical point of view, could you emphasize how and why being able to think through issues like these in this kind of critical way is important to the very notion of doing critical theory? Well, first of all, going back to your discussion about the Frankfurt School, that kind of moment of the origins of what we call critical theory today. One of the most important research areas of the Frankfurt School was the intersection of psychoanalysis. Absolutely. And the application of that was trying to understand the rise of fascism in Germany in particular the rise of Hitler. So the idea of authoritarianism, of radical right wing fascism in the 1930s, 1920s and 30s in Europe was the real object of study. Today, we are witnessing a return. We are witnessing a return of neo-fascist movements and a kind of right wing authoritarian populism. And critical theory has a lot to tell us about this. And I think one of the most alien ideas is this incapacity for individuals really to this need that they have in a world that is so alienating to find some form of something that gives them inner strength. Meaning. And meaning in the world. And someone like Donald Trump or kind of a leader, a powerful leader, actually, and this is the inside of the Frankfurt School Theorists that psychologically the weakened individuals need, need, then vulnerable individuals. So you have to remember that this is not only people who are intolerant, really in psychoanalysis tells us this, intolerance is really an expression of people's vulnerabilities that they're unable to tolerate their vulnerabilities. And so what they do is follow the strong man. They follow the one who will crush those that they see as unwanted. And that dynamic is playing itself out in Western politics now, in the United States, in France, in the UK, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, there are very strong right-wing movements. And I think this is happening as capitalism, as a system is going to excess, in that inequality is growing, that alienation is increasing, that technological mastery over people's everyday lives is expanding, that people are feeling disempowered in their everyday lives. And they're not fighting back in a progressive way. They're fighting back in a reactionary way. They want, and they're seeking that security, they're seeking a return to hierarchy, and they're seeking a return to group narcissism, like their own identity, as being superior over others. This is one of the ingredients that the Frankfurt School pointed out in the 1930s and 40s. And these are the same dynamics that are returning in your Western European and North American political class. Now, I wanna just, for the interest of time, I wanna pivot to some other issues that may not immediately seem related to what you're talking about, but in fact they probably are. What I'm thinking about is what's going on with the Russia's invasion and war against Ukraine, and the challenges that that poses to world peace and security. And particularly with the recent escalation in geopolitical tension and the potential for direct military confrontation between the US, the other NATO countries in Russia. How can we use critical theory to make sense of what's going on there, and or what other tools would we need to bring in in order to think critically about what's going on with this very frightening situation right now? I mean, it's a terrifying situation. It's a terrifying situation. And I think that critical theory's contribution here is somewhat out of sync with what's happening. Critical theorists saw in the 1950s, warned in the 1940s and 50s, and even before that, that the technology, the technological expansion of the means of destruction were outstripping the humanistic values needed to constrain them. So I think what the real fear here is, critical theory didn't have anything to say about international relations, it didn't have anything to say about any of this, but it does ask us to at least think about the ways that the world that we've created is if fundamentally irration. And when we've created a world where we ate weapons of destruction at one another, where we compete over scarce resources that destroy the planet, that the whole moral, ethical, and political system upon which it's built is fundamentally irrational. There's no reason why, in a rational perspective, that Russia shouldn't be cooperatively integrated into European life, all of the, because within Russia itself, there has been a conquering of the media over a period of 20, 25 years, it's also happening here. This is another thing that the front of the school saw that the Nazis were a very adept at using radio and television to control mass opinion and control public debate. Russia as an example of this, the United States is seeing increasingly privatization of media, and I think that's causing a lot of the polarization. So critical theory has a lot to offer here. What's the truth? What's the news? What are we doing to each other? All right. Right, and I just, yeah, just wanna bring in the nuclear weapons issue. And I agree with you that I don't think the first generation, the original members of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School really thought a whole lot about that. Well, I may have towards their latter years, I'm not aware of anything they wrote, but they did talk about the domination of nature and the ways in which human societies and capitalism in particular has repressed nature both externally and within ourselves. And it's kind of like to use a very untheoretical phrase, the chickens are coming home to roost. What do you think about the relationship there between the critical theory and their analysis of the domination of nature and the fact that we've been living on the precipice of nuclear holocaust on and off for many years now? It goes back to your initial question about blending moral values with scientific reason. It goes back to the idea of fundamental idea about critical theory, which is fundamental to humanism. And I think the very idea of the domination of nature, of seeing nature as an object of our power, of nature being there for our use is one of the most immoral, irrational, and self-destructive aspects of modernity, of the modern world, of capitalism, of industrialism, of technology. Critical theory holds out the promise for us that we can reconcile ourselves with nature, that human beings can find some form of kind of way of progressing ourselves morally without destroying the physical and natural world. What is required is a critique of the values that we are taught every day. I wanna, again, in the interest of time, this is such a great conversation we're fast running out of it, but I wanna talk about concrete ways of critique where critical theory would be very relevant here. And there's the practical question, which I wanna get to is soon and at the end, why should critical theory matter to members of our audience here? Why should it matter to them and why should thinking critically in the ways you are suggesting be important to them as citizens of a supposedly, quote unquote, democratic society? I don't want you to answer that right now, but I wanna put that kind of in the background. Now, you've mentioned earlier and in your writings, the importance of what you call critique, particularly what you've called and is called imminent critique, which, and I'm gonna quote you here, which is the process of understanding the world and its defects and potentialities from within rather than imposing it from without. So given that, right now, I'm gonna bring a very practical example in, in response to recent concerns expressed in the US media about continuing threats to American democracy at home, such as the recent challenges to the validity of the 2020 presidential elections results, you know, the Capitol insurrection in January, 2021 what's happening now with, looks like the potential overturning of abortion rights by the Supreme Court, as well as what we've already talked about going on abroad. We continue to hear in our media, in the US media, the terms democracy and our democracy being used extremely frequently. Let me give you one example, and then I'm going to you because we're fast running out of time. On the PBS news hour on December 9th of last year, a news anchor, Judy Woodruff said that the latest cover story of the Atlantic magazine, and I'm quoting her here, argues that the threat to the US is coming from within as Republicans aligned with former President Trump work to upend a core of our democracy. I wanna focus on that phrase, that the president is chosen by the will of the voters. Keep that in mind too. And then I'm not gonna go into this in much detail but there was a more recent broadcast on NBC where a correspondent quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is saying that the people of Ukraine, and I'm quoting, are fighting for their democracy and our democracy. And then she added, quote, they're fighting for democracy writ large, end quote. We have to save our democracy. No, that wasn't the end of the quote. Then we have to save our own democracy, which is under assault in our country. So what I wanna ask you is, this is, I pay attention to the kind of language that's used on the media for reasons I won't go into. And these phrases are coming up almost daily, almost regardless of the story. But anyway, so as a critical theorist, how might you or one who is a critical theorist understand at a deeper level, what's going on with the use of these phrases or tropes like our democracy, democracy, what kinds of critical questions might we pose about the use of these terms and what does the use of these terms imply? Well, I mean, there's a lot there. I can- Yeah, I know. I know, I have to have part two. Oh no, I can say really quickly, I think going back to the idea that critical theory asks us to connect how we think and how we're told to think with how we act. I think the idea of, whenever I hear a phrase like our democracy, I would wanna know whose democracy is this? Because Washington is deeply interpenetrated with money and finance capital and this corruption. So I think critical theory would ask us to say, what aspects of my life or the lives I share with others are democratic or not? How does democracy, how has democracy practiced in my world? How much accountability do the people who have control over me have? How often do I go to a civic meeting? With critical theory, remember, I think this is core. Critical theory is about what is real, not what is theoretical. Critical theory wants to know if democracy is out there, then it should be a lived experience that we share as living active beings. And to that extent to have people in the media tell you what your democracy is already indicates as a fundamental alienation. Right, and I just wanna add, we use the term, when I say we, I mean everyone in this society and even around the world, but especially the media, as the case in question indicates, use the term democracy, but what are we really talking about? That would be another whole show, which I hope to do. What is democracy? And so to me that the use of a term like that implies that quote, we unquote, oh yeah, we already know what democracy is. So we don't have to spell it out. But when it does get spelled out, if at all, it's connected with holding elections. So that's- As opposed to, as opposed to, as I said before, as opposed to an actually lived life every day. Absolutely. At work with my children, how do I treat my wife? How do I treat nature? All of this is about how you humanize our life. Right, and yeah, thank you so much. And in wrapping up, anything more you would say about how learning to think critically in the ways we've discussed can be important to us as American and world citizens? Why should it matter in today's world particularly? I think that if critical theory begs us to ask what is possible to live the new, to constantly experiment in our world, and to constantly look for a transformed experience. If we give that up and that's snuffed out, and we are left with, we're left without life. We're left with the life that the powerful wanna give us. And those are the two alternatives we have. Well, thank you so much. I'd like to end on your note of hope. And that's all the time we have for today. We've been speaking with Michael J. Thompson, Professor of Theory at William Patterson University in New Jersey. Thanks so much for joining us today, Michael. Thanks for having me, Michael, I appreciate it. Thank you. You're so welcome. I'd love to have you back. This has been Thinking Things Through, Thinking Critically in Critical Times on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Michael Sukoff. Please do join us again two weeks from today at the same time, wherever you may be, or you can always access the recorded video online once it's posted. Mahalo and thanks to Jay Fidel and all the engineers and staff at Think Tech Hawaii who have made this program possible. Mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.