Critical Media Research: Something Old, New, and Unfinished

Abstract

The etymologically related concepts of ‘critical’, ‘criticism’, and ‘critique’ figure in a number of different discursive contexts; there are three broad sets of usages of these terms. On the one hand, the adjective ‘critical’ is an attribute that is often associated with science, the arts, and the pursuit of knowledge more generally, a legacy of its largely Enlightenment origins (its roots of course go back to ancient Greece). It most often involves an analysis of the merits and deficiencies of a particular work, as in ‘literary criticism’; such an analysis results in a ‘critique’. On the other hand, these terms also cluster around political analysis of social and cultural phenomena, which signals the intellectual lineage that runs from Hegel to Marx, and on to a variety of traditions on the Left, including the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and many contemporary currents; here critique is seen as an emancipatory project that challenges domination.