Critical theorists

Jean-Luc Godard (UK: GOD-ar, US: goh-DAR; French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; 3 December 1930 – 13 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork. His most acclaimed films include Breathless (1960), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966), Weekend (1967) and Goodbye to Language (2014).During his early career as a film critic for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Godard criticised mainstream French cinema's "Tradition of Quality", which de-emphasised innovation and experimentation. In response, he and like-minded critics began to make their own films, challenging the conventions of traditional Hollywood in addition to French cinema. Godard first received global acclaim for his 1960 feature Breathless, helping to establish the New Wave movement. His work makes use of frequent homages and references to film history, and often expressed his political views; he was an avid reader of existentialism and Marxist philosophy, and in 1969 formed the Dziga Vertov Group with other radical filmmakers to promote political works. After the New Wave, his politics were less radical, and his later films came to be about human conflict and artistic representation "from a humanist rather than Marxist perspective."Godard was married three times, to actresses Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films, and later to his longtime partner Anne-Marie Miéville. His collaborations with Karina — which included such critically acclaimed films as Vivre sa vie (1962), Bande à part (1964) and Pierrot le Fou (1965) — were called "arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema" by Filmmaker magazine. In a 2002 Sight & Sound poll, Godard ranked third in the critics' top ten directors of all time. He is said to have "generated one of the largest bodies of critical analysis of any filmmaker since the mid-twentieth century." His work has been central to narrative theory and has "challenged both commercial narrative cinema norms and film criticism's vocabulary." In 2010, Godard was awarded an Academy Honorary Award.

Jürgen Habermas (UK: , US: ; German: [ˈjʏʁɡn̩ ˈhaːbɐmaːs] ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of epistemology and social theory, the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, albeit within the confines of the natural law tradition, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. Habermas is known for his work on the concept of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. He has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and poststructuralism.

Teresa de Lauretis (Italian: [teˈrɛːza de lauˈreːtis]; born 1938 in Bologna) is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, feminism, women's studies, lesbian- and queer studies. She has also written on science fiction. Fluent in English and Italian, she writes in both languages. Additionally, her work has been translated into sixteen other languages.
De Lauretis received her doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures from Bocconi University in Milan before coming to the United States. She joined the History of Consciousness with Hayden White, Donna Haraway, Fredric Jameson and Angela Davis. Has held Visiting Professorships at universities worldwide including ones in Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Argentina, Chile, France, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Mexico and the Netherlands.
She currently lives in San Francisco, CA, but often spends time in Italy and the Netherlands.

François Cusset (French: [kysɛ]; born 9 March 1969) is a writer, intellectual historian, and Professor of American Civilisation at the University of Nanterre.
Cusset was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Saint-Cloud. He has been an associate researcher at The National Center of Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique or CNRS), teacher of contemporary French culture at Reid Hall, and professor at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. He is the brother of the writer Catherine Cusset.

Charles Bernard Renouvier (French: [ʁənuvje]; 1 January 1815 – 1 September 1903) was a French philosopher. He considered himself a "Swedenborg of history" who sought to update the philosophy of Kantian liberalism and individualism for the socio-economic realities of the late nineteenth century, and influenced the sociological method of Émile Durkheim.