Glossary of Terms
of or related to critical theory, social justice, or culture in general
[Definitions taken directly from books or internet searches; many of these words have been recently redefined and we should consider whether these new definitions should be realized]
Appropriation:- draws on the idea of standpoint theory, in which knowledge is rooted in ‘lived experience’ and it is considered abhorrent for a character with a marginalized identity to be created or depicted by someone who is not a member of her group.
Biological essentialism: belief that a person’s personality or specific quality (intelligence, creativity, sex, gender, etc) is an innate and natural essence— not a product of circumstances, upbringing, or culture) Also related: gender essentialism.
Cisgender: a person who experiences a “feeling of belonging” to the gender category that does match their biological sex
Cognitive dissonance: having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes especially related to behavioral decisions
Correspondence theory of truth: the position that there are objective truths and that they can be established as true by their correspondence with how things actually are in the world.
Critical education theory: holds that it is dangerous to allow students to express disagreement. Disagreement would allow dominant discourses to be reasserted, voiced, and heard, which theory sees as not safe.
Critical Legal Theory: argued that individual justices were motivated not only by personal whims, but by social forces; believed that the law was a mechanism by which the ruling class imposed its will on the populace, shoring up its dominance and protecting its interests.
Critical Race theory: an area of knowledge created to challenge and interrogate the ways in which race, racism, racial power, and white supremacy are constructed and manifested, specifically in legal culture, and, more broadly, in society.
Critical pedagogy: its mission is to teach students ways of identifying and mapping how power shapes our understandings of the world. This is the first step toward resisting and transforming social injustices. (per Alison Bailey)
Cultural constructivism: belief that knowledge and reality are a product of their cultural context; see also discursive construction
Decolonization: the systematic undoing of colonialism in all its manifestations and impacts.
Deconstruction: a way of understanding how something was created; becomes antagonistic when applied as a theory (see below)
Deconstructionist theory: A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings
Discourse: ways of talking about something
Discursive construction: basically that something exists because a collective group of people asserted and agreed that it exists. Per critical theory this would include race, gender, sex, etc.
Emotivism: language of morality is really nothing more than the language of personal preference based on nothing more rational or objective than sentiments or feelings; presents preferences as truth claims
Empiricism: belief that all concepts are knowable through experience
Epistemic privilege: the privilege a person has of knowing something from firsthand knowledge of a particular subject.
Epistemic violence: having one’s cultural knowledge repressed by that of a dominant culture; the damage of a group’s ability to speak and be heard
Epistemology: theory of knowledge or method of knowing and understanding
Eroticism: the glorification of sexual desire and the establishment of it as the disruptive norm and need to reconstruct human personhood and society.
Essentialism: a belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence.
Expressive individualism: holds that human beings are defined by their individual psychological core, and that the purpose of life is allowing that core to find social expression in relationships; a combination of ideas, intuitions, and social practices that serve to reinforce a sense of the self.
Expressivism: sentences that use moral terminology (i.e. good, wrong, just, etc) hold no truth value but are expressions of attitudes; denies moral facts
False consciousness: ways of thinking that prevent someone from being able to ascertain the realities of her situation. A Marxist idea that people don’t recognize their own oppression or inequality because it is so prevalent and normalized in their society and they misperceive their own standing within it.
Fatphobia: form of bigotry that equates fatness with ugliness, inferiority, and immorality; any study of obesity as a dangerous and (usually) treatable medical condition.
Feminism: in its most basic definition, means ‘belief in gender equality,’ but has now fragmented and can be grouped into four (highly simplified) camps, all interested in women’s rights, roles, and experiences in society, but differing widely on how they understand these: liberal feminism, radical feminism, materialist feminism, and intersectional feminism.
Gender: (as a verb) reinforcing patriarchal expectations and exploiting women in the material sense by ‘gendering’ certain actions, behaviors, or products to a particular gender. For example, to present washing dishes as a woman’s task is to gender washing dishes.
Gender Identity: the feeling of belonging to a socially recognizable category of people
Gender Role: external presentation of gender according to social conventions- male, female, androgynous
Gender performativity: belief that gender roles are taught and learned— often unwittingly, through socialization— as sets of actions, behaviors, manners, and expectations, and people perform those roles accordingly, making them reality. Gender is a set of things a person does, not something to do with who they are. People are unable to help learning to perform their gender ‘correctly,’ as though playing out a rehearsed script, and thereby end up perpetuating the social reality called ‘gender.’ (coined by Judith Butler)
Healthism: belief system that ranks the personal pursuit of health above all else; often seen in relation to fatphobia
Hegemony: “The dominant group maintains power by imposing their ideology on everyone… ideology refers to the stories, myths, explanations, definitions, and rationalizations that are used to justify inequality between the dominant and the minoritized groups… the minoritized group accepts their lower position in society because they come to accept the rationalizations for it…”
Hermeneutical death: a failure to be understood so profoundly as to destroy the person’s sense of self.
Hermeneutical privacy: the right not to be understandable at all; one might choose to not have to be understood and it must be respected
Historical revisionism: rewriting history, often in the service of a political agenda— by accusing rigorous methods of being ‘positivist’ and thus biased.
Identity politics: a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.
Ideology: a philosophy plus a moral imperative
Interest convergence thesis: This thesis holds that whites have allowed rights to blacks only when it was in their interest to do so
Internalized misogyny: describes women who accept the social enforcement of women’s inferiority as normal and natural. Women who don’t view men as an oppressor group is said to be internalizing misogyny. This is part of the unfalsifiability of critical theory.
Kaleidoscopic consciousness: having multiple oppressed identities allows extra dimensions of sight giving the oppressed a richer, more accurate view of reality— hence we should listen to and believe their accounts of it.
Lived experience: personal knowledge about the world gained through firsthand experience rather than representations constructed by other people; the new authentic and authoritative source of ‘truth’ especially from marginalized groups
Meritocracy: the idea that people get ahead based on their accomplishments rather than, for example, their parents' social class. This would be an anti-critical theory idea
Metanarrative: interpretation of circumstances and events that provide a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences
Microaggression: a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.
Mimetic view: regards the world as having a given order and a given meaning and thus sees human beings as required to discover that meaning and conform themselves to it
Moral relativism: belief that there is no absolute or universal set of moral principles (FYI- this is not a biblical belief)
Patriarchy: a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
Pedagogy: the method or practice of teaching, especially a theoretical concept
Phallogocentrism: the idea that social reality is constructed by language that privileges the masculine
Poiesis: a way of seeing the world that puts the creation of meaning and purpose in the hands of the individual (contrast with a mimetic view)
Queer: refers to anything that falls outside binaries (male/female; masculine/feminine; heterosexual/homosexual) and to a way of challenging the links between sex, gender, and sexuality. To be queer allows someone to be simultaneously male, female, or neither, to present as masculine, feminine, neuter, or any mixture of the three, and to adopt any sexuality— and to change any of these identities at any time or to deny that they mean anything in the first place. Can also be used as a verb. OR as one adherent defined: “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.”
Racism: Critical Race Theory: has always adopted a broader definition of racism that allows it to see racism not just as interpersonal, but as institutional, systemic, and structural. [Institutional racism- a particular bank has adopted racist policies or practices; Systemic racism- the entire banking system has adopted racist policies or practices; Structural racism- capitalism as a whole is racist.
Reified: made into a real thing; refers to abstract concepts that are treated as though they were real. (i.e. most critical theory beliefs)
Research justice: acts upon the belief that science, reason, empiricism, objectivity, universality, and subjectivity have been overvalued as ways of obtaining knowledge while emotion, experience, traditional narratives and customs, and spiritual beliefs have been undervalued. Thus people deliberately do not use or cite research from white, Western males.
Sexual revolution: the radical and ongoing transformation of sexual attitudes and behaviors that has occurred in the West since the early 1960s. Various factors have contributed to this shift, from the advent of the pill to the anonymity of the internet. The normalization of things like homosexuality, pornography, and sex outside the bounds of marriage.
Shadow texts: alternative ways of speaking or thinking about the concepts at hand that provide a way to avoid being challenged by them.
Social imaginary: refers to the myriad beliefs, practices, normative expectations, and even implicit assumptions that members of a society share and that shape their daily lives. It is not so much a conscious philosophy of life as a set of intuitions and practices.
Standpoint theory: the belief that knowledge only comes from the lived experience of different identity groups, who are differently positioned in society and thus see different aspects of it.
Symbolic violence: “is the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity.”
Therapeutic moralism: system of beliefs that say God exists and wants people to be good, that the central goal in life is to be happy and feel good; God is only needed to resolve problems ; basically morality is determined by whatever feels good and makes me happy (in case this needs to be known- this is not a biblical worldview)
Toxic masculinity: socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence. (as coined by Terry Kuipers)
Transgender: a person who experiences a “feeling of belonging” to the gender category that does not match their biological sex