The term ‘critical theory’ has a long history. Traditionally – often in the singular and upper case – it refers to the thinkers of the Frankfurt School, the generations of philosophers and sociologists who have succeeded one another at the helm of that city’s Institut für Sozialforschung

Critical theories are theories that more or less comprehensively challenge the existing social order. The criticisms they formulate do not concern particular aspects of this order, like the imposition of a tax on financial transactions (the ‘Tobin tax’) or some measure relating to pension reform

The apogee of the New Left occurred from around 1968 until about 1977 (the Italian autonomist movement)

Marxists now produced hermetic knowledge, inaccessible to ordinary workers, about fields without any direct relationship to political strategy

When these intellectuals are members of the organizations in question and, a fortiori, when they are leaders of them, the constraints of political activity are clearly visible in their publications

The End of Ideology by the American sociologist Daniel Bell dates from 1960, but it was only during the 1980s that this leitmotif reached France and found expression in all areas of social existence

Now, there clearly exists a Marxism of Sorelian descent, of which Gramsci and Mariatégui, two authors with considerable influence on the new critical theories, count among the representatives

What Jean Fourastié was subsequently to dub the trente glorieuses – the ‘long wave’ of economic growth following the Second World War – accelerated the rural exodus, raised living standards, generalized leisure and created a ‘new working class’

The doctrine of power developed by Foucault is therefore relational, not substantive. Most structuralist and poststructuralist thinkers defend approaches of this type. The concept of ‘rhizome’ developed by Deleuze and Guattari, like the idea of ‘societies of control’, is an example of it.

The semiology developed by Barthes conceived the social world as a whole as a system of signs, as illustrated by the studies collected in Mythologies