Critical Commentary: Critical Western

The Critical Western consists of different schools of thought. These are Post-Modernism, Cultural Marxist, the Birmingham School of Culture Studies, Traditional French Culture Studies, and the Feminist theory. Each school of thought introduces different approaches or philosophies on tackling culture, but one thing in common is that they all came from the western side of the globe, mostly in Europe. These schools of thought have set standards and started the spread of ideas all around the globe, but its demise is its focus only on the western culture, and marginalizing the orient. With its goal of questioning the certainty of science and empiricism, the Critical Western produced different philosophies that focused on culture, but at times these philosophies are similar and sets aside other cultures and perspectives.

There are a number of ideas that for me sound similar. The first is the Cultural Hegemony of Gramsci and the Frankfurt school’s dominant mass culture. Cultural hegemony is the philosophical idea that a ruling class dictates ideologies that becomes the norm. Similar to this, is the theory of the Frankfurt school that mass culture produced by the elite becomes the standard or the norm due to underlying messages within the medium. On the other hand, both have two different methods on dismantling the norm. Gramsci looks into counter culture to counter act the ideologies from the social elites, while the Frankfurt school urges a critical understanding on dominant mass culture. Their similarities may come from similar issues with in their territory, because influence from one school to another is difficult due to the distance.

The second, and the last, similar ideas I found are the theories of Post-Modernism and Traditional French Culture Studies. The theory of post-modernism drifts away from the constant and definitive answers of positivism and realism, and commits to the theory that ideas and words are relative to the individual. Similar to this is the theory of French Cultural Studies that focuses on the grand narrative of the individual and not famous literature that may seem to be the norm. I found both similar, because of its focus on the individual and the individual’s perspective as the basis of meaning and culture. Because both schools of thought aim to depart from the empirical and scientific, this may have caused the similarity.

Other than the similar ideas, the marginalization of the Critical Western to the Asian culture is also apparent. It can be seen in Feminism, where women from the west are reclaiming their right to earn, but on the expense of the nanny, who will take care of the house and the child of the western woman. Another example would be the propaganda of the west that Asia is the “White man’s burden” (Birch, 2001). These propaganda and societal set ups imposes that the orient is the ‘other’ of the west. This may have lead to the creation of Post-Colonial theories.

Overall, Critical western ideas are focused on the western life and culture. It opposes the control of the few, which may be the elite or the empiricist. But, it still has its failure, which is to much focus on western set-up of removing marginalization, but, on the other hand, marginalizes those who are not western. With the downsides of these theories will give way to new theories that will try to answer our questions. It will be just be a matter of time.