What is Critical Theory?

Here is a bad model for understanding writing and reading: 1. In a writer’s head are some ideas. 2. The writer writes those ideas down. 3. A reader reads what the writer has written. 4. The writer’s ideas are now also in the head of the reader. 

 

Probably no one is naive enough to think that the process of writing and reading is as simple as that so let’s consider some of the complexities and problems that a theory of reading would need to deal with. We can start small and get bigger. 

 

Language: Language is not just a neutral vessel for the transportation of ideas. When people think and write, they have no choice but to do this in a language which they have inherited and which has provided them with a fixed and limited set of words with which to express themselves.

 

Discourse: No one is free to write whatever they like. In order to make sense, sentences must be organized according to pre-existing rules and conventions. These rules and conventions will limit and shape what can be said.

 

Ideology: Ideology is the invisible set of ideas and assumptions that readers and writers have about the world. Often, we are not even aware of our own ideology and yet these ideas will affect what we take to be true or reasonable. Any act of interpretation involves ideology.

 

The unconscious: Freudian theory tells us that we do not even know what is going on inside our own heads. Unconscious ideas, however, can find their ways into text. So text can express meanings that the author is not even aware of.

 

Text: Language is not limited to written or spoken words. Any sort or sign system communicates information as is therefore available to be read. We don’t just read books, we read and interpret human faces, dirty dishes left in the sink, the glance of a cat, nuclear waste, melting icebergs, fossilized bones. In short everything is a text.

 

Interpretation: Have two people read the same text and then tell you about it. You will have two different accounts. Every reading is different. 

 

We could certainly go on,  but the point is that reading and understanding texts is not straightforward. Critical Theory has developed a vast network of complex ideas about reading. Not all of them agree with one another and there is much debate. This said, there are some ideas that most theorists would agree on and can perhaps be seen as foundational:

 

No neutral reading

 

Reading is always partial. There is no “God’s eye view” from which to read and each reader inevitably brings a vast collection of cultural, social and personal baggage to the text. It is only possible to make sense of text through ideology but who is to say which set of ideological assumptions are correct?

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Reading and writing involve power

 

Not everyone gets to speak. Writing is therefore a privilege which is afforded to some and denied to others. To write is both to exercise power and to reflect or resist pre-existing networks of power. Critical theory is closely attuned to how power affects the positioning of subjects, especially in terms of race, sex and class.

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Gender is a construct

 

Critical theory generally takes culture to be the dominant force in determining sexual difference. Like everything else, sexual difference is understood through language, and theory closely examines the ways in which patriarchal structures of power are deeply embedded in texts. Theory in general is deeply suspicious of binary oppositions, such as the female-male divide, finding them not only to be subject to deconstruction, but also hierarchical, whereby one term is privileged over the other. Much feminist theory is concerned with revealing the inconsistencies and paradoxes of traditional gender stereotypes while queer theory demonstrates ways in which gender is performed.

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Race

 

Just as gender is understood to be constructed, so is race. In particular, theory is suspicious of the ways in which race is encoded through binary differences. Western culture is filled with examples of white civilized rationality founded in opposition to non-white barbarity. Theory is sensitive to the ways in which non-white races are systematically othered in texts, both as a foil to white supremacy or in order to render people of color invisible. On a cultural level, theory pays attention to the construction of non-Western cultures as exotic, mystical and savage.

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Texts are ideological

 

Ideology, or the set of ideas that we have about the world, is present in all texts. From a Marxist perspective, the crucial elements of ideology describe the relations between people under the conditions of capitalism. If capitalism is, fundamentally, an exploitative system, then where do the signs of exploitation appear in texts? And if, as many Marxists claim, texts most often deceive readers into a false understanding of their position in the world, then how can we read texts in a transformative manner?

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Reading never stops

 

Texts always say more than you think. It is not possible to finish reading a text. There is no final meaning that a reader can arrive at. In this sense, texts are excessive, always overspilling and escaping any act of interpretation. Texts exceed their own borders in that they refer to and recall other texts in ways which call into question where a text might begin or end. And reading does not just involve what texts say, but also considers what they do not say. The gaps and silences of a text can be just as important as the elements which explicitly appear.

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Everything is text

 

Texts are not just printed words. Movies, music, theater is text. Adverts, magazine covers and wrestling matches are text. The interpretive tools of critical theory can be used to analyze anything at all. More importantly, there is no outside to text. According to theory, the world is an endless play of textuality because we can only access it via language. Since, as we have seen above, language is not a neutral vessel for the transportation of pure meaning, any sort of thinking about the world is an act of interpretation. Critical theory is about what happens when we read and if there is no outside to the text, then there is no outside to reading. 

 

Little Red Riding Hood: An Example

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The best way to understand critical theory is to see it in action. Let’s sketch out some ways in which theory could help us to read the well known folk tale “Little Red Cap.” This reading refers to the version in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm edited by Jack Zipes.

 

The tale can be read as a coming of age story about gender and sexual propriety. Little Red Cap, in this reading, is a girl on the cusp of womanhood. The red of her clothing brings to mind menstrual blood and she is learning how to navigate the world as a woman with sexual desires among predatory men with desires of their own. Her instructions are not to “stray from the path” in order to avoid the schemes of devious men like the wolf. But it seems that Little Red Cap has desires of her own. When she acts on them, she is punished and taught that she must ally herself with powerful men who can protect her.

 

There is more than just naivety in the girl’s interactions with the wolf. When he asks where her grandmother lives, she replies: “About a quarter of an hour from here in the forest. Her house is under the three big oak trees. You can tell it by the hazel bushes.” It is almost as though she is inviting the wolf to the house. There is clearly a level, perhaps unconscious for the girl, on which she wants to see more of him. In other words, the story acknowledges female sexual urges, but codifies them as dangerous. If she is to survive, Little Red Cap must repress her desires. 

 

As we suggested above, staying on the path can be read as observing sexual modesty. This idea is strengthened by events once the girl leaves the path: “she plunged into the woods to look for flowers. And each time she plucked one, she thought she saw another even prettier flower and ran after it, going deeper and deeper into the forest.” Not only is the picking of flowers a common euphemism for the loss of female virginity, but the plunge into the woods is also a detour into the temptation and enjoyment of sensory pleasures. Again, it is her unconscious which is getting the better of her. Each flower takes her further from the order of civilization and into the dangerous dark mysteries of the forest. 

 

Once the girl and her grandmother have been eaten by the wolf, the huntsman enters the tale to save them. There is a familiar construction of gender roles here – the women are passive victims and the men active. The girl cannot save herself and requires a savior in the huntsman – a man with the means to use violence.

 

The fate of the wolf is also interesting. For one thing, the huntsman does not kill him. In fact, it is Red Cap who puts stones in his stomach, causing the wolf’s death. Perhaps this is also a part of her growing up. She must transfer her childish affinities with nonhuman animals to an affinity with humans only. As such, she needs to demonstrate her maturity by killing the wolf. We also note that the huntsman removes the wolf’s fur. Now there is a double profit from killing the wolf. Not only has the huntsman proved his masculinity by saving the women, but he has turned the wolf into a commodity to be sold. Interestingly, skinning the wolf also brings up the possibility of humans wearing the wolf’s skin. Perhaps the huntsman will do this. Humans dressing like wolves suggests a blurring of the boundaries between humans and wolves, between the good men and the bad ones, between the hunter and wolf. What the story initially sets up in opposition ends up with the potential for contamination.

 

Ultimately, the tale does not just describe gender roles, but it actively produces them. It ends with Little Red Cap thinking to herself: “Never again will you stray from the path by yourself and go into the forest when your mother has forbidden it.” If the listener had not already worked out the “moral” of the story, they are hit over the head with it in the final lines. The second person “you” is emphatic – yes, it is the girl talking to herself, but more powerfully, it is the parent talking to the child as they read the story.

 

So we now have a few ways of understanding the story in terms of sexual difference. In one sense, pre-existing male and female roles are reproduced in the story since the characters fill conventional and conservative social positions. More than this, the tale actively confirms these gender roles and even reinscribes them to a new generation of children. 

 

It is, however, possible to read the tale in a less conventional way. First, it tells us something about gender roles. The very fact that masculine and feminine traits have to be enforced in the story demonstrates that they are culturally constructed and not “natural.” The dangerous moment when Little Red Cap strays from the path demonstrates that other possibilities exist - that women can be active and that there is pleasure in acting on sexual desires. Second, the story exposes the violence of patriarchy. There is nothing inherently wrong with straying from the path and collecting flowers, but girls are taught not to act on their desires since unscrupulous men will harm them. The problem, then, is neither with the desires or with sex; the problem is men. And it is not just the wolf who is the problematic male since this setup is very convenient for the hunter, or the decent and civilized men. The hunter benefits from the actions of the wolf – not only does he materially benefit from the wolf’s pelt, but he also has Little Red Cap under his protection by the end of the tale. Ultimately, the tale offers no moral reasons for sticking to the path, the problem that the story exposes is male violence against women. 

 

The above analysis uses theory to bring out some of the ideological drives and tensions of the tale. Of course this is just one possible reading. We have not uncovered the real secret meaning of the text, as if there is such a thing, but used ideas and techniques from critical theory in order to add depth and sophistication to our understanding of the story. With any luck, this sort of practice will make us think carefully about the stories we tell our children.