ABSTRACT
I assume that cultural criticism and media pedagogy require social theory and that critical social theory in turn should draw upon media and cultural studies and the methods of cultural criticism to gain key insights into the texture of contemporary social life. This project thus combines methodological strategies, theories, and concepts from both modern and postmodern theory in the attempt to provide critical perspectives on salient cultural and social phenomena of the contemporary era. I draw upon and elaborate key ideas set out in my other works of the past years and continue to delineate the trajectories of theory, culture, and politics in the contemporary era. Inspired by the Frankfurt School project that attempts to provide theoretical articulations of the present moment, these studies should be read as examples of cultural critique which provide fragments of a critical theory of society and, hopefully, some inspiration for a new future politics of liberation.
