Helen PluckroseRezensionen

This book is really unsuitable for me as it is written entirely and specifically for young adults. I guess I'll have to read "Cynical Theories" instead.

On the good side, I have formed a more systematic point of view on Theory by reading the book, which helped in framing the whole story.

On the improvable side, I would have preferred more actual data on prevalence on these views in academia (and activism) and on how nuanced they get (the takeaway from reading the chapters seems to be "90% academics in these disciplines are extreme Theorists"", which seems improbable).

I'm also not sure many of the quotations cited in the book are as damning as they are thought to be (with the notable exception of the later chapters, especially from the "educators").

It also feels like the celebration of liberalism (which I agree with) is too handwavy, especially coming from someone who is complaining about the theoretical incoherence of Theory: flaws are recognized, yes, but the topic is far from explored with a remotely comparable depth.

Finally, I would have greatly appreciated a more critical discussion of Foucault and Deridda in the initial chapters: ideas, yes, but also what was good, what was bad, and why.

I think Critical Theory and many of its derivatives are pretty cool, because they give some great overviews of society's power structures and a great lens for understanding why a supposed meritocratic society always seems to push certain people away from power.

I was looking forward to reading this book because I'd love to hear the holes in Critical Theory... what is it getting wrong? What could be improved?

Unfortunately, that's not what this book provides. I'd say it provides a very detailed and willful misunderstanding at best... if someone told the authors "we should feed the starving children of the world", I feel the authors would interpret this to mean "we should deny food to everyone else who is currently well-fed" and would go on to list all the charities that feed children and point out the charities' silence around the well-fed, presenting it as evidence of their malicious intent.

Actually, yeah. Pretty much every chapter is the above, only about a specific marginalized group.

The other recurring theme is this idea that somehow, Critical Theory has clear and unified suggestions on what to do about social problems, and that's to control thought. I'm not sure there's anyone who suggests this, but the authors argue as though that were the case.

There's a HUGE difference between a queer person saying "huh, I feel this way because society has prescribed gender roles that I don't conform to... cool, that helps me understand myself, the world, and my place in it a bit better" vs "thinking the concept of gender is a thoughtcrime". It's strange and fascinating to me that the authors so consistently take the former and mentally twist it into the latter.

All that having been said, the authors do give an attempt to explain some of the subject matter evenhandedly once in a while, which I did appreciate, but by-and-large this book is a critique of something that's not real -- it critiques a version of Critical Theory that doesn't exist.

It's fascinating and telling to see the mental hoops the authors needed to jump through to so thoroughly twist the messages, but that's probably the most valuable part of the book.

An unpleasant book attacking an unpleasant trend “post-modernism.”

I’m an old-fashioned liberal science-lover, more or less. I don’t really understand post-modernism (and this book only helped a little) but whenever I run across it I feel like I can almost smell it, and I don’t react well to it. I’m so averse to post-modernism that even reading a book disputing it was difficult.

It’s too bad because post-modernism theory is such a clearly influential set of ideas, especially with intellectuals and young people. One good thing I got from the book is how -religious- post-modernism is, it’s more a creed than a philosophy.

This book looks at the rise of "Critical" everything. The authors examine several key issues and how they have been consumed into postmodern theory and created havoc. It is well written and well researched. I found I was not able to agree with all they said, but that doesn't render the book moot. Their failure to comprehend that language does play a role in oppression, even if only part of one and maybe not the major one, is a big downside. Their cheerleading for capitalism could be offputting; even for a non-Marxist like myself, I found it questionable to state that capitalism is the only system that can generate equality. There are systems that have not yet been tried or even thought of, and there is no evidence that capitalism is doing such a great job. In short, they fall into a trap they are pointing out to others: they see the information on those items that they wish to see, and shut out that which doesn't conform. In short, they have absorbed the weak studies done to show cognitive and behavioral differences supposedly innate between the sexes, but fail to realize these are not robust studies and they really don't show that at all. Other than that and some similar annoyances, it is a worthwhile and important book.½

I have followed James Lindsay (who co-authored the book with Helen Pluckrose) since the Grievance Studies Hoax of 2018. He has been an important part of my intellectual development since that time. That being said, the book has a way of getting mired in the details of the system he is criticizing, as though the authors do not have a firm grounding outside of it.

When I review conservative books that take on social issues, postmodern thought, and progressive/socialist politics, I often bemoan and bewail the fact that the book is "preaching to the choir" and will not be read by anybody that doesn't already agree with the premise. This book (and perhaps Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity) is perhaps the exception. Written by two scholars in academe, both liberals in the classic philosophical sense and liberals in the progressive political American sense, they might be listened to not just by conservatives, but political progressives and undecided moderates too. In fact, some of the things that they said rankled me as a conservative. But, anyway, they tackle what they call "Theory," the cynical "critical" theory that has grown from Foucault, Derrida, and other postmodernism/poststructuralists and has now invaded much of academic discourse and, since politics is downstream from academe, political, societal, and cultural thought. They give a good background and history of postmodernism, its "applied turn," and then follow it through various "studies" or fields: postcolonialism, queer theory, critical race theory and intersectionality, gender studies, disability and fat studies, and social justice theory. Along the way they provide evidence of Theory's illogicality, weirdness, and political misuse. They then offer hope and a game plan for the future. A good book that should be read by every undergraduate college student and every professor in America. Will it be? No, not yet. But, something has got to give. When Theory can destroy SCIENCE and MEDICINE (chapters 4 and 7, respectively), then something has got to give.

Required reading for any college-age student (and beyond).½

Reading this back to back with Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher gave me a clear view of what Western Civilization is up against. CRT is poison introduced in our society. It's like putting anti-freeze in a cabernet bottle and asking people to drink it. It is horrifyingly being adopted in our school system, higher ed, government and large corporations. Its benign sounding lingo belies a tyrannical movement.½

I was expecting this to simply be a takedown of Theory and Woke and such in the world of business and politics, but most of the book was devoted to explaining these for people who were not already (thankfully) very exposed to the academic side. Even though the purpose was to show why they were bad (and how traditional liberalism and freedom are good), it was fingernails-on-chalkboard painful listening to detailed explanations of Critical Race Theory, etc. The author does a pretty good job of making the pro-Liberalism case, but this is a case where deeper understanding doesn't really change my beliefs or behavior.

(It still is probably the best summary of this shit if you really feel the need to understand it, though, but "fuck these people" is a perfectly reasonable conclusion without doing any more research, and the only additional piece of insight needed is "don't become what you are fighting", etc.)

Still considering this in the light of "wokeness" in academia. This work seems flawed. Good critique at Hoadley-Brill, S. (2020, August 19). The Cynical Theorists Behind Cynical Theories. Liberal Currents. https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-cynical-theorists-behind-cynical-theories/