Cultural critic

A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.

Terminology

Contemporary usage has tended to include all types of criticism directed at culture.

The term cultural criticism itself has been claimed by Jacques Barzun: No such thing was recognized or in favour when we [i.e. Barzun and Trilling] began — more by intuition than design — in the autumn of 1934.^[1]^[2] In contrast, a work such as Richard Wolin's 1995 The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (1995) uses it as a broad-brush description.

Victorian sages as critics

Cultural critics came to the scene in the nineteenth century. Matthew Arnold^[3] and Thomas Carlyle are leading examples of a cultural critic of the Victorian age; in Arnold there is also a concern for religion. John Ruskin was another. Because of an equation made between ugliness of material surroundings and an impoverished life, aesthetes and others might be considered implicitly to be engaging in cultural criticism, but the actual articulation is what makes a critic. In France, Charles Baudelaire was a cultural critic, as was Søren Kierkegaard in Denmark and Friedrich Nietzsche in Germany.

Twentieth century

Further information: Critical theory and Frankfurt School

In the twentieth century Irving Babbitt on the right, and Walter Benjamin^[4] on the left, might be considered major cultural critics. The field of play has changed considerably, in that the humanities have broadened to include cultural studies of all kinds, which are grounded in critical theory.

Examples of contemporary usage

Notes

↑ Remembering Lionel Trilling, (1976), reprinted in The Jacques Barzun Reader (2002).
↑ Casey Nelson Blake, a professor at Columbia University where Barzun and Trilling were, uses the term in the 1990 book title Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford.
↑ His much-cited Culture and Anarchy was subtitled An Essay in Political and Social Criticism.
↑ E.g. Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption (1994), series Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism, 7.
↑ A Cultural Critic Answers His Own
↑ Scholar, cultural critic Gates to give Kent Lecture
↑ Self-description .
↑ Recently I was introduced to an audience as a cultural critic, and I think this probably says it best. .

External links

Joseph Wood Krutch as a Cultural Critic by John Margolis

Culture

Outline

Sciences	Anthropology Cultural astronomy Cultural ecology Cultural entomology Cultural neuroscience Cultural studies Culturology Culture theory Neuroculture

Subfields	Bioculture Cultural analytics Cultural anthropology Cultural economics Cultural geography Cultural history Cultural mediation Cultural psychology Culturomics Cross-cultural psychology Intercultural relations Philosophy of culture Popular culture studies Semiotics of culture Sociology of culture Sound culture Theology of culture Visual culture

Types	Constructed culture Dominant culture Folk culture High culture Individualistic culture Legal culture Low culture Official culture Political culture Civic Popular culture Urban Primitive culture Subculture Alternative culture list Super culture Vernacular culture Culture by location

Aspects	Acculturation Cultural appropriation Cultural area Cultural artifact Cultural baggage Cultural behavior Cultural capital Cultural communication Cultural conflict Cultural cringe Cultural dissonance Cultural framework Cultural heritage Cultural icon Cultural identity Cultural industry Cultural invention Cultural landscape Cultural learning Cultural leveling Cultural memory Cultural pluralism Cultural practice Cultural property Cultural reproduction Cultural system Cultural technology Cultural universal Enculturation High- and low-context cultures Interculturality Manuscript culture Material culture Non-material culture Organizational culture Print culture Protoculture Safety culture Technoculture Trans-cultural diffusion Transculturation

Politics	Colonial mentality Consumer capitalism Cultural assimilation Cultural attaché Cultural backwardness Cultural Bolshevism Cultural conservatism Cultural deprivation Cultural diplomacy Cultural environmentalism Cultural exception Cultural feminism Cultural genocide Cultural globalization Cultural hegemony Cultural imperialism Cultural intelligence Cultural liberalism Cultural nationalism Cultural pessimism Cultural policy Cultural radicalism Cultural retention Cultural Revolution Cultural rights Cultural safety Cultural silence Cultural Zionism Culture change Culture minister Culture of fear Culture war Dominator culture Interculturalism Intraculturalism Monoculturalism Multiculturalism Security culture

Related	Animal culture Archaeological culture Bennett scale Bullying culture Coffee culture Cross-cultural Cultural bias Cultural center Cultural Christian Cultural Mormon Cultural competence Cultural critic Cultural diversity Cultural encoding Cultural evolutionism Cultural institution Cultural Judaism Cultural lag Cultural literacy Cultural mosaic Cultural movement Cultural Muslim Cultural probe Cultural relativism Cultural tourism Pop-culture Cultural turn Cultural sensibility Culture gap Culture hero Culture industry Culture shock Children's culture Culturalism Cyberculture Deaf culture Death and culture Emotions and culture Intercultural competence Languaculture Media culture Oppositional culture Participatory culture Permission culture Rape culture Remix culture Tea culture Transformation of culture Urban culture Welfare culture

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