Marxian dialectics and Freudian psychoanalysis equally emphasize a hidden agenda beneath our surface dimension – things are not what they seem. Critical theory follows them in attempting to tease out that agenda. Freud posits a discrepancy between our conscious “surface life” and the unconscious depth which is the unseen, unacknowledged controlling force. “Drives” at an instinctual level dictate much of what we say and do at a conscious level. Dreams, sexual abnormalities, neurotic pathologies will break through the disguises of conscious normality. Drives may be frustrated or displaced for a
...more
