From: jimruttshow8596

“Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody” is a book co-authored by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose [00:10:59]. The book explores the history of postmodernism and how it has morphed into a series of theories that underpin much of contemporary public discourse [00:42:26]. It is presented as an indispensable reference for those seeking to deconstruct deconstructionist arguments, notable for its careful writing, thorough research, and extensive footnotes [00:52:27]. The authors aimed for a scholarly, fair, and clear treatment of the subject [00:11:12].

Parody Scholarly Articles (Grievance Studies Affair)

James Lindsay, along with Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, famously participated in creating a number of parody scholarly articles to satirize postmodernist rhetoric [00:19:30]. Several of these articles were accepted for publication [00:19:34]. One notable example maintained that the penis should be seen not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity [00:19:38].

The trio wrote 20 articles within a span of about 10 months; seven were accepted, and four were published [00:03:04]. One of these published articles even received an award for excellence in scholarship [00:03:15]. While the project was humorous, it also revealed a depressing reality: the people involved in these fields genuinely believe the concepts being parodied [00:02:22]. This stunt was similar to Alan Sokal’s hoax in the 1990s, though with a more radical sense of humor [00:03:47].

Postmodernism: History and Core Principles

Postmodernism emerged in art and literature around the 1940s, initially questioning rigid structures and rules, often to demonstrate their arbitrary nature [00:44:45]. By the 1950s and 1960s, French philosophers like Jacques Derrida (a post-structural linguist) and Michel Foucault (who performed “archaeologies” and “genealogies” of history) became deeply involved with structuralism, studying the interrelation of language and power [00:46:50]. Their aim was to show that societal rules were arbitrary and often contained the seeds of structural oppressions [00:47:27].

The fundamental conclusion of these thinkers was that all knowledge and claims to truth ultimately result from political processes, serving to advance power rather than to describe reality [00:49:17]. This perspective often included a disregard for science, stemming from a perceived jealousy of science’s prestige and power [00:50:37]. They would selectively highlight science’s historical failures while ignoring its self-correcting mechanisms [00:50:50]. From their view, the objective truth of a claim doesn’t matter; what matters is the politics of how that truth was established [00:51:48]. This nihilistic and despairing perspective often arose from their frustration with the failures of Marxism and communism and the rise of fascism [00:52:00].

The book condenses postmodern thought into two core principles [00:41:06]:

  • Postmodern Knowledge Principle: Knowledge is socially constructed, generally in service of power, implying no access to objective truth [00:41:11].
  • Postmodern Political Principle: Dominant groups within society have the ability to construct knowledge and thus their own power, leading to an ethical imperative to dismantle these powerful discourses [00:41:19].

These principles inform four core themes [00:42:01]:

  1. Blurring of Boundaries: The attempt to erase distinctions between categories (e.g., man/woman, knowledge/storytelling) to make everything seem equivalent [00:42:09].
  2. Almighty Power of Language: An exaggerated focus on the power of language, believing words act almost like magic spells to structure society [00:42:24].
  3. Cultural Relativism: Both ethical and epistemological, claiming that one culture’s ethics or knowledge system (e.g., science) cannot judge another (e.g., witchcraft), as they are products of distinct cultures [00:42:35].
  4. Dissolution of Universal Humanity and the Autonomous Individual: The belief that individuals are merely products of their social groups, rejecting the idea of a universal human experience or inherent individual autonomy [00:43:14]. This leads to the idea that groups cannot genuinely understand each other due to differing ethics and epistemologies [00:44:09].

Applied Turn of Postmodernism

By the mid-to-late 1980s, postmodernism underwent an “applied turn” [00:45:39]. Radical activists from the 1960s and 1970s, including Marcusian activists, critical theorists, Black Power proponents, and radical feminists, had lost influence [00:45:41]. They then adopted postmodern tools, specifically by setting aside universal deconstruction and asserting that the experience of oppression was real and could only be deconstructed by those with privilege [00:46:17]. This led to a simplified postmodernism focused on deconstructing powers that create oppression, while exempting oppression itself from deconstruction [00:46:44]. This is where identity politics explicitly became central to postmodern principles and themes [00:46:58].

Strategic Essentialism

A key concept in applied postmodernism is strategic essentialism, defined by postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak in the mid-1980s [00:49:18]. This involves adopting negative stereotypes about oneself—often in a self-aware, ironic manner—as a weapon of resistance against a powerful group [00:48:26]. The cynical aspect is the desire to preserve existing hierarchies but reverse the power dynamics within them [00:50:37]. For example, instead of dismantling the hierarchy between men and women, they aim to flip it to “girl power” [00:50:11]. This approach explains why social justice activists often appear to get everything backwards; they preserve the hierarchy and merely reverse the power, rather than challenging the hierarchy itself [00:51:04].

Decolonizing Fields and the Rejection of Reason

Within applied postmodernism, there is a belief that everything is a property of the culture that invented it [00:52:52]. Thus, concepts like reason and scientific reasoning, having originated in a European context mostly through white men, are deemed the “property” of white Western men [00:53:00]. Therefore, teaching science or reason to non-Western cultures is seen as a colonial act, an attempt to impose white and Western values and erase indigenous cultures [00:54:03]. This perspective is considered deeply conservative, as it advocates for leaving cultures in a pre-modern state, viewing any deviation from that as an intolerable oppression [00:57:52]. This view ignores the utility and widespread desire for modern advancements like electricity or internet access in developing regions [00:58:30].

The Hermetically Sealed Worldview

The “Social Justice” (capitalized as a term of art) movement operates within a hermetically sealed worldview [01:03:39]. Its theories and arguments are largely ungrounded in facts or empirical data, actively ignoring historical analysis beyond their narrow scope [01:02:48]. Like medieval Catholicism, questioning or presenting contradictory evidence is perceived as a “sin” [01:03:08]. This worldview has a completely different epistemology (relationship to knowledge) and ethics [01:04:24]. Truth and falsity are irrelevant; what matters is whether an idea is “problematic” and aligns with the “lived experience” of someone in an “oppressed social position” [01:04:42].

Research Justice

A blatant manifestation of this approach is “research justice,” which asserts that historical research has systemically excluded certain ideas and voices due to methodological rigor or actual power dynamics [01:06:06]. This perspective believes that because “white Western men” historically defined science and academic canons, their politics are inherently “baked into” this knowledge [01:06:25].

Therefore, “research justice” dictates that scholars should stop citing white Western men and instead prioritize marginalized voices, particularly black women [01:07:02]. This extends to curricula, where materials from other contexts are inserted and white Western materials are minimized [01:07:20]. The identity of the author becomes paramount for citations and curriculum choices [01:07:56]. This is a deliberate attempt to manipulate academic standing and reputational credit for activists with specific identity markers [01:08:16]. This ideological capture has even begun to affect mathematics education, with calls to make math “less individualistic” and questions about who determines “right answers” [01:10:47]. Some even argue that “two plus two doesn’t equal four” because it excludes “other possible values” [01:11:36].

Queer Theory

Queer theory posits that anything normal or normative must be constraining and should be dismantled [01:19:24]. It radically rejects the idea of stable categories [01:19:55]. For queer theorists, even the legalization of gay marriage is considered a “loss” because it makes being gay more normative, thus removing its “radical divergent” status [01:19:32]. The aim is to “queer” categories—to make them seem unstable and laughable [01:19:59].

The most extreme manifestation of queer theory is the view that biological sex itself is not real, but rather a social construct, similar to gender [01:21:01]. Judith Butler, a prominent theorist, questioned the immutable character of sex, suggesting it is as culturally constructed as gender [01:21:08]. This stems from the belief that if biological science states there are men and women, this knowledge can be used to justify sexism; thus, the concept of biological sex itself must be rejected [01:23:45].

Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality

Critical Race Theory (CRT) began with the true claim that biological notions of race were invented in the 16th century onwards to justify racism, slavery, and colonialism [01:26:51]. While liberalism has gradually reduced the social significance of racial categories, moving towards a “color-blind” ideal (as articulated by Martin Luther King Jr.), CRT aims to reverse this progress [01:27:39].

Drawing from the Black Power movement and specifically from Kimberly Crenshaw’s work, CRT asserts an “identity-first” approach, prioritizing racial identity over universal humanity [01:28:28]. This perspective believes that black culture is intrinsically in opposition to white culture, which is described as inherently anti-black [01:32:52]. Consequently, values such as productivity, reliability, loyalty, and punctuality are labeled as “white supremacy” [01:33:10]. This approach is seen as deeply problematic, intentionally creating cultural barriers and leading to disastrous outcomes by defining cultures in opposition to effective principles [01:33:48].

Psychological Impact

The rhetoric of Critical Race Theory can be psychologically devastating for those it claims to help [01:36:34]. By promoting the idea that the entire world is systematically arrayed against them, it fosters paranoia, cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism [01:38:33]. It is described as “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy,” making individuals more sensitive to slights and prone to catastrophizing [01:38:21].

How to Counter the Trend

To counter the tide of these cynical theories and their influence, several actions are suggested:

  • Listen Better: The only valid point from the proponents of these theories is a need for better listening [01:41:27].
  • Assert Liberalism: It is crucial to re-assert and remind people about the principles of liberalism, especially since civics education has been lacking [01:41:51]. This includes understanding the rule of law, due process, the value of scientific processes, and why objective standards reduce cronyism [01:43:14].
  • Show Up and Speak Up: Activists from these movements often fill bureaucratic and committee positions because they make time for it. To counter this, those who disagree must become informed, understand their jargon, and show up in numbers to meetings and public forums [01:42:22].
  • Don’t Back Down: Opponents of these theories should not be intimidated by name-calling or complex definitions used to silence dissent [01:45:06]. They are often playing word games with shifting definitions [01:45:52]. Standing firm and asserting one’s position, recognizing the moral and epistemological high ground of liberalism, is essential [01:46:05].
  • Grow a Backbone: The moment one feels afraid to speak up is precisely the moment to do so, as the situation will only worsen otherwise [01:46:30].