Overview

Criticality has attained the status of a buzz-word within academia, in particular, within the social sciences. Nowadays, every research project brazenly shouts its critical credentials from the roof-top. But what exactly is this sought-after, chimerical entity? Who is critical and who is performing criticality in order to keep up with the Joneses? Is criticality a perspective, a discursive practice, an ideology, an activity or as one student of mine once sneeringly put it, 'just a teenage temper tantrum'? Can it be formally taught or is it a series of life-events that has to be experienced? It is the argument of the present work that there are different varieties of criticality being taught, studied and practiced. The most radical, and therefore subversive, form aims to synthesise academic and everyday knowledge in a praxis aimed at emancipation. In this day and age, emancipation cannot be anything other than going beyond global capitalism and its numerous anti-working class, sexist, racist, disabilist, superstitious, alienating and homophobic tendencies. An introductory essay discusses different forms of criticality before it is demonstrated in topics ranging from psychotherapy to sociology of sport, sexuality, cinema, history and politics. The texts chosen for this anthology do not merely critique various aspects of capitalism- they aim to pose alternatives beyond it.

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9781780352794

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Babak Fozooni obtained his PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University. He is an associate lecturer at the Open University where he teaches critical social psychology as well as critical psychotherapy, and where for his sins, he is also painfully (and ever so slowly) trekking through a sixth degree. He has previously taught at Birkbeck College, Westminster University and The University of East London.

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