Best Critical Theory Quotes

"Critical theory has some value in that it questions power structures, and we were born into an imperialist power structure. It's worth questioning, but when it gets out of control and then it loses its own tolerance and has problems with upending itself when it sees its own flaws, that's the wildfire that's dangerous."

"Marxism is a genus of ideological thought... Critical race theory, queer theory, and postcolonial theory are species in this genus."

"I think one of the hardest things sometimes about white feminism™ is that sometimes they don't realize that they can be the oppressor to other people."

"Critical diversity is the belief that identity Marxists have the only relevant understanding of diverse perspectives."

"Critical consciousness is an awareness of the mass brainwashing by the capitalist class."

"The intimacy of violence that we experience now... all those formations ultimately are shaped by a social structure as John Clark says that is born in and maintains its hierarchy through violence sustained violence."

"White supremacy is a global religion, operating in black bodies, yellow bodies, red bodies, and white bodies."

"The Biden administration's embrace of critical theory on both race and gender undermines fundamental American principles and divides Americans from each other." - Ben Shapiro

"Wokism regularly plays on people's better motivations and compassion, clumping everything into groups of people regardless of individual actions." —

"Wokism eats its own. They're starting to eat their own, you just can't be woke enough."

"The logical conclusive conclusion of critical theory is you have to get rid of the oppressor class."

"Using critical race theory, I'm going to expose the secret of Marxism."

"All my craven colleagues must craft DIE statements very nice to obtain a research grant."

"What critical race theory suggests is that American racism is not simply the product of individual biases but is actually embedded in the structure of American institutions."

"You are your politics. Everything must be understood in terms of those pagan gods of power dynamics because it's Marxism."

"No matter what the antecedent, no matter what the predicate, the conclusion is always the same: America is systemically racist."

"The concept of white privilege is a purely racist construct."

"Racism is the ordinary state of affairs of society, according to critical race theory."

"Freedom would become the environment of an organism which is no longer capable of adapting to the competitive performances required for well-being under domination."

"We are entirely ready to deconstruct previous ways of knowing as they have been developed through the lens of white supremacy."

"Neocolonialism is imperialism in its final and most dangerous stage."

"Critical theory exists to induce psychopathologies which are by definition psychological states that make you incapable of dealing with reality as it is."

"Parents protesting critical race theory identify another target: mental health programs... Protesting mental health programs."

"Woke means that you are awakened to the structural power dynamic understanding of the world."

"Critical theory is a philosophy or method of analyzing things that views the ways that social structures and power dynamics influence social problems more than individual beliefs or actions."

"To perpetuate a sense of division, to instill this idea that we can be separated into oppressor and oppressed classes..."

"It's actually a program of liberation or revolution that was outlined in the early years in the 1960s as critical theory..."

"Capitalism truly does create its gravediggers."

"Critical social justice can destroy liberalism from within."

"Critical pedagogy believes education must be at the center of radical movement building."

"This gender Theory, it's sacrosanct because the white woman is sacrosanct."

"Knowledge itself is power, a core principle of critical constructivism."

"Everything boils down to applications and perceptions of power in society, a fundamental premise of critical social justice."

"Critical perspectives view policy very differently. CRT views policy not as a mechanism that delivers progressively greater degrees of equity, but a process that is shaped by the interests of the dominant white population."

"Now I'm looking and I'm starting to think because I look at this woke scholarship that this critical stuff and so especially right now it's flaring up that they're like trying to undo math."

"They reinvented racism and called it the cure."

"White supremacy has affected so much of our society... it finds its way to sink into every little thing including fandom."

"Wokeness isn't just recent; it has deeper roots in our society."

"Now it's all about seeing the world through the lens of oppressed and oppressor groups."

"Critical theory is this umbrella category that encompasses entire disciplines like critical race Theory queer Theory critical pedagogy postcolonial Theory intersectional feminism."

"When I talk about the Matrix I'm talking about the systems which have been created by society which are deliberately designed to enslave."

"The challenge that you mission in this book for all of the thinkers the intellectuals the scholars were the people who think that they have some kind of right to know a paternalistic design architecture for society."

"By combining the dynamics of critique and collective struggle with a philosophy of hope, Freire has created a language of possibility."

"The identification of this fact about the age of the supremacy of reason is the great achievement of the dark enlightenment."

"Their very conceptions of equity and equality are indeed racist on the terms that critical theory itself sets."

"Critical theory is set up to deconstruct ideology rather than to establish an ideology of its own."

"Nobody on the left was talking about critical race theory."

"If you use reason to argue back you're participating in a system that was created by white men in order to exclude women and racial minorities from being able to argue on their own terms."

"Deconstruction seeks to destroy the meaning of ideas because doing so sucks the power out of ideas."

"There are three kinds of violence: the first, the mother of all the others, is the institutional violence... There is no worse hypocrisy than to call violence only the second by pretending to forget the first." - Dom Hélder Câmara

"Whiteness as a parasitic disease for which we must find a permanent cure."

"The concept of mental health in some ways is very aligned with white supremacy."

"Gender and sexuality and race are meaningless constructs."

"Imperialism and the military-industrial complex are examples of love."

"I gave us a talk on critical theory. I said I could get up here and speak about critical race theory, gender Theory, and queer Theory but that would be very obvious and I think it be touching the surface everyone knows that these are issues."

"Unless you understand white supremacy, everything else you understand will only confuse you."

"White fragility actually reinforces racist beliefs socially."

"When you're free, your job is to free somebody else."

"Critical theory aims to challenge the existing order by relentlessly criticizing its aspects."

"It's about contestation, power... Everything is about contestation, power."

"There's no such thing as truth or objectivity or science... Everything is about contestation, power."

"We reject both the collectivism of racism and the collectivism of critical race theory."

"If I were a white nationalist who wanted to discredit the progressive anti-racist movement, I would invent critical race theory."

"Critical race theory is the ideology that is behind most of these diversity and inclusivity trainings."

"We've kind of reached this point where self-awareness and metatextual deconstruction has been deemed necessary in every story for decades."

"The bottom line is have a radical critical theory, which does not need ultimate value to be critical of false ideas and lies. Get truth; and the ideal is the person who can fulfill itself in the world, and conquer the world as such."

"Critical theory cannot do because of its nature is build anything, it cannot unite, it can only divide."

"If you're into the intersection of video gaming and critical theory and visual art and science fiction, there you go."

"To understand how to read and interpret a tarot card, we borrow from critical theory."

"Remember kids, critical theory does not equal critical thinking."

"Critical theory is becoming a religious movement, attacking STEM as inherently racist."

"Critical race theory is an academic field that simply demonstrates how racism is embedded in our laws and in our institutions. That is exactly what it is."

"For Butler, we are always already within it and by virtue of that, we must challenge it from within."

"The current crisis of neoliberal capitalism should alter the landscape of critical theorizing."

"The critique of capitalist society, pivotal for earlier generations, has all but vanished from the agenda of critical theory."

"A crisis of this sort, which I want to insist is multi-dimensional, supplies the inescapable backdrop for every serious attempt at critical theorizing henceforth."

"The symptomatic reading is the reading that makes it possible to listen to the multiplicity of incompatible voices that are there in a text or a situation or more generally in ideology."

"A theory is critical in so far as it seeks to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them."

"Intersectionality is an intellectual framework for trying to discuss oppression."

"Whiteness is neither inherently good nor inherently bad; rather, whiteness is a social construct."

"It challenges assumptions of social constructs like race and even gender."

"Deconstruction is an anti-structuralist gesture."

"Critical theory in the social sciences, including international relations, is about revealing the hidden sources of domination in politics in order to facilitate human emancipation."

"Racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas."

"Neo-Marxism is a theory that evolved as a reaction to the failings of traditional Marxism."

"...postmodernism and postcolonialism dismantle western and colonial centres and challenge their power, history, and prejudices."

"I adopted the gender critical position because I didn't see the claims of self-identity essentialism evidenced, whereas I saw many compelling arguments being made for the gender critical position."

"Part of critical race theory is just that, it lets you know and understand how racism works and operates in America."

"I love the idea of taking critical theory and being like, if we apply this to Harry Potter, what can we learn about ourselves?"