For the non-academics in my feed, "critical" and "theory" are both commonplace modifiers for most any subject throughout the humanities and social sciences. So, this is really about banning discussion of race, racist histories, and racial justice from American schools. Just fyi.
My own home fields play host to critical digital studies, media theory, critical bibliography, and textual theory. For example.
Yes, you read that right. "Critical bibliography." I admit, to the uninitiated, it maybe sounds a little silly. But the "critical" part serves mainly as a marker of self-reflection and distancing from some of the more foundational work in the field. It's an academic shorthand.
"Critical" does not mean one who hates everything (as in a mean ol' critic), nor does it mean vital or indispensable. Likewise, the "theory" part probably connotes a certain orthodoxy (like The Theory of Relativity) but theory in the humanities is almost always *pluralistic*.
Anyway, just a humble little explainer. The reality, of course, is that the partisan objections (and now the partisan legal restrictions) are not about the first or the last words in the sequence, but the middle one. That's what's got them going.
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