This method is used in the study of cultural forms in philosophy and the social sciences and humanities. Immanent critique pays close attention to the logic and meanings of the ideas expressed in the cultural text. Immanent critique further aims to contextualize not only the  object of its investigation, but also the  ideological basis of that object: both the object and the category to which it belongs are shown to be products of a historical process . Immanent critique has its roots in the dialectic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the criticisms by Karl Marx. Today it is strongly associated with the critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno as well as literary theorists such as Fredric Jameson who, in his seminal work The Political Unconscious, explored the idea of an immanent analysis of texts to argue the primacy of political interpretation. Roy Bhaskar has advocated it as one of the key methodological elements of critical realism.Bhaskar, R. (2008) [1975], A Realist Theory of Science (Routledge 'With a new introduction' edition), Abingdon: Routledge. Adorno contrasted immanent critique with "transcendent" critique, which typically reduces a set of ideas to their political uses or to the class interests they express. Transcendent critique, unlike immanent critique, adopts an external perspective and focuses on the historical genesis of ideas, while negating the values expressed in the cultural text.Adorno, T. (1982), Prisms, MIT Press: Cambridge. The purpose of immanent critique, instead, is the detection of societal contradictions that suggest possibilities for emancipatory social change. It considers the role of ideas in shaping society. An immanent critique of a cultural text discusses the ideal principles (overt or implicit) proposed by the text. It highlights the gaps between what something stands for and what is actually being done in society. Immanent critique tries to find contradictions  and indirectly provide alternatives, without constructing an entirely new theory. It has the power to appeal to people's shared ideals while highlighting how far society has to go before those ideals are realized. Quoting Marx, Robert J. Antonio writes in the British Journal of Sociology, "'Setting out from idealism ... I hit upon seeking the Idea in the real itself. If formerly the gods had dwelt above the world, they had now become its center.' Marx concluded that immanent principles were necessary weapons in the struggle for progressive social change, because they provide a basis for critique within historical reality. Later, this immanent grounding became the axis of his emancipatory critique of capitalism.""Immanent critique as the core of critical theory." British Journal of Sociology Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 333 (1981) According to David Harvey , Distinguished professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center, CUNY,
As a method for the critique of ideology, immanent critique analyzes cultural forms in philosophy , the social sciences and humanities. Immanent critique pays close attention to the logic and meanings of the ideas expressed in the cultural text. It further aims to contextualize not only the specific cultural object of its investigation, but also the broader ideological basis of that text: It aims to show that the ideology is a product of a historical process and does not reflect timeless truths. Immanent critique has its roots in the dialectic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the criticisms by Karl Marx. Today it is strongly associated with the critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno as well as literary theorists such as Fredric Jameson who, in his seminal work The Political Unconscious, explored the idea of an immanent analysis of texts to argue the primacy of political interpretation. Roy Bhaskar has advocated it as one of the key methodological elements of critical realism.Bhaskar, R. (2008) [1975], A Realist Theory of Science (Routledge 'With a new introduction' edition), Abingdon: Routledge. Adorno contrasted immanent critique with "transcendent" critique, which typically reduces a set of ideas to their political uses or to the class interests they express. Transcendent critique, unlike immanent critique, adopts an external perspective and focuses on the historical genesis of ideas, while negating the values expressed in the cultural text.Adorno, T. (1982), Prisms, MIT Press: Cambridge. The purpose of immanent critique, instead, is the detection of societal contradictions that suggest possibilities for emancipatory social change. It considers the role of ideas in shaping society. An immanent critique of a cultural text discusses the ideal principles (overt or implicit) proposed by the text. It highlights the gaps between what something stands for and what is actually being done in society. Immanent critique tries to find contradictions in the internal logic of the cultural text and indirectly provide alternatives, without constructing an entirely new theory. It has the power to appeal to people's shared ideals while highlighting how far society has to go before those ideals are realized. Quoting Marx, Robert J. Antonio writes : "'Setting out from idealism ... I hit upon seeking the Idea in the real itself. If formerly the gods had dwelt above the world, they had now become its center.' Marx concluded that immanent principles were necessary weapons in the struggle for progressive social change, because they provide a basis for critique within historical reality. Later, this immanent grounding became the axis of his emancipatory critique of capitalism.""Immanent critique as the core of critical theory." British Journal of Sociology Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 333 (1981) According to David Harvey :
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