Critical theorists can't win a debate by simply asserting that everyone who disagrees with them is irrational or badly motivated and it's cringe that they're trying.
A major roadblock to reformation of academic thinking and methods is the comfort and security that critical theory provides. The pursuit of objective truth is very hard because of our limitations in thinking and the fragility of our egos. We are constantly confronted by our ignorance. Much of learning is challenging what we think we know. It is very discomfiting to lose one’s sense of what one thinks he knows, to question his theories, to exist in uncertainty. Critical Theory obviates these “problems” by discarding reason, logic, and consistent and disciplined adherence to the pursuit of objective truth and replacing them with my truth, my lived-experience. Critical Theory provides security for ego by tearing others down. Notice that the critical theorist doesn’t ever build anything. His ego is dependent upon how bad he can present others. Critical Theory provides the appearance and accolades of academic integrity and rigor without the need and drudgery of actual work. Confront reality or secure comfort by indulging in self-centered critical destruction of others. The hard road or the easy road. The red pill or the blue pill.
> In the wake of WWII they came to think of formal reason (what was often called instrumental reason) as being one of the primary culprits for the atrocities of the 20th century. The argument was that carried to its logical extreme that formal calculating, instrumental rationality led to the horrors of twentieth-century barbarism.
It is fascinating to see the little rocks of truth that people attempt to build their churches upon:
Reason pursued in so cold a fashion that humans were treated like cogs or pieces of clay to be sculpted and/or discarded led to mass atrocities...ergo reason is suspect or just another mask for power.
Nationalism and the sacralization of the nation-state also led to mass derangement and mass atrocities...ergo the nation-state is inherently suspect and dangerous and needs to be erased in the name of one-world global governance.
America has a brutal history of racial bigotry, esp against black people...ergo everything and everyone in America is eternally inescapably bigoted and the only solution is "antiracism" where the whip changes hands and yesterday's slaves are tomorrow's masters.
I am mostly a proponent of the Middle Way, which means in this case that I rarely have a problem with any idea that's voiced, but just with the vehemence and certitude it's expressed. But I guess you don't get ahead in politics or academia preaching sanity and nuance. History is written (and directed) by the fanatical.
American academia should have the same slogan as Dante's Inferno:
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter.
There were many wise brilliant people who tried to fight against the Crit Theory takeover of culture and academia—Steve Pinker, Camille Paglia, Chris Hitchens, Allan and Harold Bloom, Robert Hughes among others—but they were all denounced or ignored by liberals, who were (and are) terrified and neutralized by the threat of bigotry accusations (the superweapon of the New Left), and who just don't have the moral authority or vocabulary to oppose any demand made by a minority—an example being Jesse Jackson leading the protest at Stanford to end the Western Civ requirement: there was no way any prof or admin not explicitly conservative could have opposed this, as it would have made them the public opponent of a Civil Rights leader, which is a liberal heresy.
And as for conservatives, they ignored universities and the Humanities and were happy to appoint their golf buddies to be Trustees even in red states, because they were more focused on their 401ks and "those darn kids'll grow out of it when they hit the real world!" But now their grandkids all hate them, their country, their skin color, and sometimes even the bodies they were born in—ooops!
The Crit Theory takeover is a lock and a sealed deal, every college-educated person under age 30 spouts their jargon and wields their morality. It will have to collapse on its own, it cannot be dislodged.
I thought the real problem with Paw Patrol - in the words of Saturday Night Live - is that six dogs can't protect a city roughly the size of San Diego, and they're run by a kid with no parents who doesn't go to school.
This criticism would have resonated 20 years ago; in my view, many if not most social theorists cannot be lumped together, nor can critical theory, which comes in a lot of flavors (some of them damn tiresome). The academy is not full of any one thing, thank goodness. It is, however, top-heavy with administrators and at risk from lazy political interventions.
Just so. Blame me. As someone who was schooled in "critical theory" I advocated for many decades for a "progressive" (now read: revisionist) approach to most things. Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Eagleton, Rorty, the whole Frankfurt famdamnly. However, criticality in opposition is one thing - different, imaginative, challenging, exciting even. Taking things apart (deconstruction) is fascinating. But when in the majority rather than in opposition, as we are seeing now, criticality becomes uniform, dogmatic, authoritarian virtue signaling and, fundamentally... dull. How dangerous is a question. Whether stoppable is another. On the Democrat/progressive side, I get a sense of resigned acceptance. There's a great Dylan song that captures this situational ennui. Great version here with Johnny Cash: https://dai.ly/x3gptrf
A major roadblock to reformation of academic thinking and methods is the comfort and security that critical theory provides. The pursuit of objective truth is very hard because of our limitations in thinking and the fragility of our egos. We are constantly confronted by our ignorance. Much of learning is challenging what we think we know. It is very discomfiting to lose one’s sense of what one thinks he knows, to question his theories, to exist in uncertainty. Critical Theory obviates these “problems” by discarding reason, logic, and consistent and disciplined adherence to the pursuit of objective truth and replacing them with my truth, my lived-experience. Critical Theory provides security for ego by tearing others down. Notice that the critical theorist doesn’t ever build anything. His ego is dependent upon how bad he can present others. Critical Theory provides the appearance and accolades of academic integrity and rigor without the need and drudgery of actual work. Confront reality or secure comfort by indulging in self-centered critical destruction of others. The hard road or the easy road. The red pill or the blue pill.
> In the wake of WWII they came to think of formal reason (what was often called instrumental reason) as being one of the primary culprits for the atrocities of the 20th century. The argument was that carried to its logical extreme that formal calculating, instrumental rationality led to the horrors of twentieth-century barbarism.
To be fair, they weren't wrong.
It is fascinating to see the little rocks of truth that people attempt to build their churches upon:
Reason pursued in so cold a fashion that humans were treated like cogs or pieces of clay to be sculpted and/or discarded led to mass atrocities...ergo reason is suspect or just another mask for power.
Nationalism and the sacralization of the nation-state also led to mass derangement and mass atrocities...ergo the nation-state is inherently suspect and dangerous and needs to be erased in the name of one-world global governance.
America has a brutal history of racial bigotry, esp against black people...ergo everything and everyone in America is eternally inescapably bigoted and the only solution is "antiracism" where the whip changes hands and yesterday's slaves are tomorrow's masters.
I am mostly a proponent of the Middle Way, which means in this case that I rarely have a problem with any idea that's voiced, but just with the vehemence and certitude it's expressed. But I guess you don't get ahead in politics or academia preaching sanity and nuance. History is written (and directed) by the fanatical.
Can it happen? How will we turn this if the academy is saturated? It seems an almost insurmountable task.
Agreed. There is no baby in the bath water.
American academia should have the same slogan as Dante's Inferno:
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter.
There were many wise brilliant people who tried to fight against the Crit Theory takeover of culture and academia—Steve Pinker, Camille Paglia, Chris Hitchens, Allan and Harold Bloom, Robert Hughes among others—but they were all denounced or ignored by liberals, who were (and are) terrified and neutralized by the threat of bigotry accusations (the superweapon of the New Left), and who just don't have the moral authority or vocabulary to oppose any demand made by a minority—an example being Jesse Jackson leading the protest at Stanford to end the Western Civ requirement: there was no way any prof or admin not explicitly conservative could have opposed this, as it would have made them the public opponent of a Civil Rights leader, which is a liberal heresy.
And as for conservatives, they ignored universities and the Humanities and were happy to appoint their golf buddies to be Trustees even in red states, because they were more focused on their 401ks and "those darn kids'll grow out of it when they hit the real world!" But now their grandkids all hate them, their country, their skin color, and sometimes even the bodies they were born in—ooops!
The Crit Theory takeover is a lock and a sealed deal, every college-educated person under age 30 spouts their jargon and wields their morality. It will have to collapse on its own, it cannot be dislodged.
Have to say I agree. I have been in academia for 15 years. It is a wasteland.
Spot on and well said.
I thought the real problem with Paw Patrol - in the words of Saturday Night Live - is that six dogs can't protect a city roughly the size of San Diego, and they're run by a kid with no parents who doesn't go to school.
This criticism would have resonated 20 years ago; in my view, many if not most social theorists cannot be lumped together, nor can critical theory, which comes in a lot of flavors (some of them damn tiresome). The academy is not full of any one thing, thank goodness. It is, however, top-heavy with administrators and at risk from lazy political interventions.
CT is illogical and cannot be taken seriously. Most likely started by communists to destroy America .
Just so. Blame me. As someone who was schooled in "critical theory" I advocated for many decades for a "progressive" (now read: revisionist) approach to most things. Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Eagleton, Rorty, the whole Frankfurt famdamnly. However, criticality in opposition is one thing - different, imaginative, challenging, exciting even. Taking things apart (deconstruction) is fascinating. But when in the majority rather than in opposition, as we are seeing now, criticality becomes uniform, dogmatic, authoritarian virtue signaling and, fundamentally... dull. How dangerous is a question. Whether stoppable is another. On the Democrat/progressive side, I get a sense of resigned acceptance. There's a great Dylan song that captures this situational ennui. Great version here with Johnny Cash: https://dai.ly/x3gptrf
Thanks for the post.
Edit needed: “This sort of reasoning has now permeated humanities departments, and for reasons *to* numerous to list here…”