Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history,

a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th century by two German philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism encompasses Marxian economic theory, a sociological theory and a revolutionary view of social change that has influenced socialist political movements around the world. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of material conditions, taking at its starting point the necessary economic activities required by human society to provide for its material needs. The form of economic organization, or mode of production, is understood to be the basis from which the majority of other social phenomena including social relations, political and legal systems, morality and ideology arise (or at the least by which they are greatly influenced). These social relations form the superstructure, of which the economic system forms the base. As the forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient and stifle further progress. These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie), and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat). Taking the idea that social change occurs because of the struggle between different classes within society who are under contradiction against each other, the Marxist analysis leads to the conclusion that capitalism oppresses the proletariat, the inevitable result being a proletarian revolution. Marxism views the socialist system as being prepared by the historical development of capitalism. According to Marxism, Socialism is a historical necessity (but not an inevitability [1]). In a socialist society private property in the means of production would be superseded by cooperative ownership. The socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through worker's revolution. Capitalism according to Marxist theory can no longer sustain the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing military aggression. A socialist economy would not base production on the accumulation of capital, but would instead base production and economic activity on the criteria of satisfying human needs - that is, production would be carried out directly for use. Eventually, socialism would give way to a communist stage of history: a classless, stateless system based on common ownership and free-access, superabundance and maximum freedom for individuals to develop their own capacities and talents. As a political movement, Marxism advocates the creation of such a society. A Marxist understanding of history and of society has been adopted by academics studying in a wide range of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology,[2] media studies,[3] political science, theater, history, sociological theory, art history and theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, and philosophy.[4]

-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s.[1][2] The label primarily encompasses the intellectual developments of prominent mid-20thcentury French and continental philosophers and theorists.[3] The post-structuralist movement is difficult to summarize, but may be broadly understood as a body of distinct responses to Structuralism. An intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century, Structuralism argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure-modeled on language (ie., structural linguistics)that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and the organization of ideas and imaginationa "third order."[4] The precise nature of the revision or critique of structuralism differs with each poststructuralist author, though common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures.[5] Writers whose work is often characterised as post-structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva. The movement is closely related to postmodernism. As with structuralism, antihumanism, as a rejection of the enlightenment subject, is often a central tenet. Existential phenomenology is a significant influence; one commentator has argued that post-structuralists might just as accurately be called "post-phenomenologists."[6] Some have argued that the term "post-structuralism" arose in Anglo-American academia as a means of grouping together continental philosophers who rejected the methods and assumptions of analytical philosophy. Further controversy owes to the way in which loosely-connected thinkers tended to dispense with theories claiming to have discovered absolute truths about the world.[7] Although such ideas generally relate only to the metaphysical (for instance, metanarratives of historical progress, such as those of dialectical materialism), many commentators have criticized the movement as relativist, nihilist, or simply indulgent to the extreme. Many so-called "post-structuralist" writers rejected the label and there is no manifesto.[8 Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics.[1] Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism appeared in academia in the second half of the 20th century and grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic fields concerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society. The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, and architecture. The most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include the linguist Roman Jakobson, the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the literary critic Roland Barthes.[1] As an intellectual movement, structuralism came to take existentialism's pedestal in 1960s France.[2] Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structuremodelled on languagethat is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imaginationthe "third order".[3] In Lacan's psychoanalytic

theory, for example, the structural order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary"; similarly, in Althusser's Marxist theory, the structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct both from the actual, real agents involved in its relations and from the ideological forms in which those relations are understood. According to Alison Assiter, four ideas are common to the various forms of structuralism. First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning.[4] In the 1970s, structuralism was criticised for its rigidity and ahistoricism. Despite this, many of structuralism's proponents, such as Jacques Lacan, continue to assert an influence on continental philosophy and many of the fundamental assumptions of some of structuralism's critics (who have been associated with "post-structuralism") are a continuation of structuralism.[2]

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REALISM AND ANTIREALISM

Realism and antirealism are two sides of a philosophical debate behind the whole basis of accepted scientific truth. by Martyn Shuttleworth (2008)

These contrasting views dictate how the observations generated by science are applied to the world. Whilst applicable to science, the wider debate involves many areas, including religion, politics and everyday life. In science, the debate is a very important undercurrent, questioning the boundary between theory and applied science. Whilst a student performing an experiment to determine the acidity of lemons should not worry too much, areas such as quantum physics are questioning how we see the universe. Theorists and researchers are pushing the boundaries of reality, and are hypothesizing particles that are seen only indirectly, so the debate takes on great relevance.

WHAT IS REALISM?
The basis behind realism is the acceptance that non-observable phenomena actually exist.

A great example of assuming existence is black holes. No scientist has ever seen a black hole, but theory predicts that they exist. The observation of vast clouds of matter swirling around super-dense objects leads many physicists to state that they should be regarded as truth.

Interestingly, quantum physicists believe that the Large Hadron Collider will create micro-black holes, so the boundary between realism and antirealism may soon be tested. The main support for this idea is that science should be regarded as approximately true, a process closely allied with Poppers falsifiability. Because no scientific research can ever be accepted as fact, the boundary between theory and research is blurred. There is no clear distinction or definition, between theory and law. Paradigm shift is an example of changing truth-values, where scientists now have to debunk beliefs that they originally thought of as true. The realism and antirealism debate asks questions about the very core of the scientific method.

WHAT IS ANTIREALISM?
Antirealists take a diametrically opposite view, that a theory should never be regarded as truth.

Proponents believe that science is full of theories that are proved incorrect, and that the majority of theories ultimately are rejected or refined. Great theories, such as Newtons laws, have been proved incorrect. Looking into history, there are many theories that sound absurd to modern scientists, such as the idea that heat is an invisible liquid called phlogiston. These were all perfectly logical theories, at the time, using the empirical data available, but have passed into the backwaters of science. Even such huge theories as Darwins Natural Selection and Einsteins Relativity have needed modification and adaptation. The antirealists believe that theories are merely useful tools, often used after they are proved wrong. For example, Newtons laws, and Relativity, are still useful in majority of cases, but have limitations at sub-atomic levels.

REALISM AND ANTIREALISM WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

The realism and antirealism debate is very complex and, as with most philosophy, there is a vast grey area.

For example, I have never been to Australia, but I am sure that it exists. I have no solid evidence to base this upon, but it is accepted by fact by most people in the world. Only the esoteric metaphysical philosophers, questioning being, and self, raise any objections.

By contrast, if I say "I have never seen a quark, but I believe that they exist", this is part of a more complex debate. Theorists have only ever seen quarks indirectly, but there is a chance that other phenomena may be responsible. Delving even further into the realism and antirealism debate, talking about superstrings is on the boundaries of pseudoscience. In this respect, there is a small dividing line between extreme science and religion. Saying that God exists is not too dissimilar to saying that Quarks exist, although it is more likely that empirical evidence will become available for the latter. Because there is no clear dividing line between what can be accepted as truth, and what is conjecture, most scientists do not stray into this area. They slowly build upon accepted theories that only a major paradigm shift, or the refuting of a fundamental principle, can alter. For example, the speed of light in a vacuum is assumed to be approximately 1.08109. If this were proved incorrect, either the laws of physics would collapse, or at extensive modification would be in order. The slow accumulation of observations, and the testing of small hypotheses, in order to construct a larger theory, is one way of avoiding potential problems with realism and antirealism. Even in theoretical physics, empirical data always takes priority over theory, avoiding the worst of the debate. The slow and patient research into the structure of the atom by J. J. Thomson, Rutherford, and Bohr slowly built up proof for the existence of an electron. Even if they could not directly see elementary particles, their proof has come to be accepted as true. This is the attitude of most scientists; they try to ignore the debate and let the philosophers decide the fine details about the nature of reality!

Read more: http://www.experiment-resources.com/realism-and-antirealism.html#ixzz1cveHGHT7

Psychoanalytic literary criticism refers to literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalytic reading has been practiced since the early development of psychoanalysis itself, and has developed into a heterogeneous interpretive tradition. As Patricia Waugh writes, 'Psychoanalytic literary criticism does not constitute a unified field....However, all variants endorse, at least to a certain degree, the idea that literature...is fundamentally entwined with the psyche'.[1]

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Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche. One interesting facet of this approach is that it validates the importance of literature, as it is built on a literary key for the decoding. Freud himself wrote, "The dream-thoughts which we first come across as we proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in which they are expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by our thoughts, but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes and metaphors, in images resembling those of poetic speech" (26). Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so forth within what may well be a disunified literary work. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as in dreams) through principles such as "symbolism" (the repressed object represented in disguise), "condensation" (several thoughts or persons represented in a single image), and "displacement" (anxiety located onto another image by means of association). Despite the importance of the author here, psychoanalytic criticism is similar to New Criticism in not concerning itself with "what the author intended." But what the author never intended (that is, repressed) is sought. The unconscious material has been distorted by the censoring conscious mind. Psychoanalytic critics will ask such questions as, "What is Hamlet's problem?" or "Why can't Bront seem to portray any positive mother figures?"