Origins of Critical Theory and the Exclusion of the Black Philosopher W. E. B. Du Bois

Abstract

Critical Theory is generative for the advancement of subsequent types of progressive theories that seek justice across multiple spectrums of philosophies. Its origin manifested at the Frankfurt School, among a group of privileged White men seeking to eradicate social ills in Germany during World War II while lacking sufficient global experience and understanding to apply the theory to macro injustices. While critical theory did not redress the limitations of the intellectualized vision, the theory was reconceptualized as more encompassing with its forced relocation to the United States, though still limited in its application to the social ills of woman’s suffrage and the civil rights movement of Blacks in the United States. In flux, the revised critical theory became propagative. Despite its limitations illustrated here in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, Critical Theory gave rise to scholarships that highlight injustices across areas it did not foresee that include race, ethnicity, disability, gender, and anticolonialism. As a result of Critical Theory across modernities, some silenced voices can be heard, despite what some have labeled an exclusionary canon.