Both versions of critical theory have focused on the processes by which human communication, culture, and political consciousness are created. This includes:

• Whether it is through universal pragmatic principles through which mutual understanding is achieved (Habermas).
• The semiotic rules by which objects obtain symbolic meanings (Barthes).
• The psychological processes by which the phenomena of everyday consciousness are generated (psychoanalytic thinkers).
• The episteme that underlies our cognitive formations (Foucault),

There is a common interest in the processes (often of a linguistic or symbolic kind) that give rise to observable phenomena and here there is some mutual influence among the different versions of critical theory. Ultimately, this emphasis on production and construction goes back to the revolution in philosophy wrought by Kant, namely his focus in the Critique of Pure Reason on synthesis according to rules as the fundamental activity of the mind that creates the order of our experience.