Cynical Theories

How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay

• Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781634312035
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice
• Index: Social Sciences

Wall Street Journal,  USA Today, and  Publishers Weekly Bestseller!

Times, Sunday Times, and  Financial Times Book-of-the-Year Selection!
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society?

In this probing and intrepid volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Today this dogma is recognizable as much by its effects, such as cancel culture and social-media dogpiles, as by its tenets, which are all too often embraced as axiomatic in mainstream media: knowledge is a social construct; science and reason are tools of oppression; all human interactions are sites of oppressive power play; and language is dangerous. As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself.

While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose and Lindsay break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities it claims to champion. They also detail its alarmingly inconsistent and illiberal ethics. Only through a proper understanding of the evolution of these ideas, they conclude, can those who value science, reason, and consistently liberal ethics successfully challenge this harmful and authoritarian orthodoxy—in the academy, in culture, and beyond.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Postmodernism: A Revolution in Knowledge and Power
• 2 Postmodernism’s Applied Turn: Making Oppression Real
• 3 Postcolonial Theory: Deconstructing the West to Save the Other
• 4 Queer Theory: Freedom from the Normal
• 5 Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality: Ending Racism by Seeing It Everywhere
• 6 Feminisms and Gender Studies: Simplification as Sophistication
• 7 Disability and Fat Studies: Support-Group Identity Theory
• 8 Social Justice Scholarship and Thought: The Truth According to Social Justice
• 9 Social Justice in Action: Theory Always Looks Good on Paper
• 10 An Alternative to the Ideology of Social Justice: Liberalism Without Identity Politics
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• About the Authors