Discuss why the authors feel critical theorists’ primary theoretical orientation is collectivist and rationalist.
What will be an ideal response?
Despite the multidimensionality of their conceptual tool-kit, we consider the critical theorists primarily collectivist and rationalist in their theoretical orientation. This view is based on a distinction between the critical theorists’ view of the world as it should be and how it actually is. Undoubtedly, the critical theorists yearn for the creation of a society in which social order is maintained according to dictates of individuals’ true needs and desires, where society allows for the realization of goals and aspirations that are determined by the individual’s own consciousness and autonomous capacity for reason. But the progress of civilization has not unfolded under such an individualistic dynamic. Instead, repressive, dehumanizing collectivist forces (the culture industry, technology, modes of economic production) have undermined the ability for individuals to develop a society free from domination. Although such forces are the products of human creativity, they have become reified or seemingly immutable. As such, they now confront their creators as alien, abstract powers that operate according to their own logic.
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