Transformation through Social "Networking"

 [Re: The Captivity of the Dimensions of Alienation, Part III...I am still hard at work on it...]

The Perceptive Factor at Work: The Liberal Imagination

To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions—including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination.

From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normative dimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values, norms, or "oughts," or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.

~from Wikipedia, Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School, Liberal Imagination

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Amazing, isn’t it, they seek total “emancipation” from the ‘normative’ “oughts” but end up by replacing them with their own absolutist “in terms of espoused values”---through the liberal imagination---and “expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination” through “social transformation and their critical theory”, i.e., they now use their “interpretive norms” to apply criticism in every ‘social’ area.