Starvin Larry

“What makes a woke theory “Critical?”
Understanding what the woke mean when they use the term “critical,” and how that differs from the enlightenment liberal notion of “critical thinking.”

If there was a single word that summed up the thinking at the heart of Critical Social Justice (AKA wokeness) it is the word ‘critical.’ In the academic world Critical Social Justice Theorists have come up with a great number of theories which they call critical: Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, Critical Queer Theory, Critical Race Pedagogy, Critical Dietetics, Critical Legal Studies, and so on. All of these are “Critical Theories,” and all of these are explicitly concerned with what is commonly called wokeness, or, in the words of Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, Critical Social Justice1 (there’s that word ‘critical’ again).

At this point we ought to ask what is to be made of all this criticism, and why is there such an emphasis on being critical? Why is it that the term “critical” takes such a central place Social Justice oriented literature, and what is going on when Critical Social Justice (AKA woke) oriented academics say they are being “critical?”

https://wokaldistance.substack.com/p/what-makes-a-woke-theory-critical?publication_id=934601&isFreemail=true