Cynical Theories: Difference between revisions

But suddenly going all fascist on everything is neither necessary nor productive. {{Author|Helen Pluckrose}} and {{Author|James Lindsay}} are not the first to set all this out, of course — {{author|Douglas Murray}}’s magnificently scathing {{br|The Madness of Crowds}} ploughed the same furrow, but unlike Murray, Pluckrose and Lindsay hail from the left, so are harder for Theorists to dismiss out of hand. And where Murray hurls (well-aimed) thunderbolts, {{br|Critical Theories}} ''examines'' the various strains of Theory in measured, careful tones. Its dismemberment is all the more effective for it.

{{Br|Cynical Theories}} is thorough enough to be a fascinating review of modern philosophy in itself — there are a small number of ''vastly'' influential thinkers, from the original French post-structuralists like Foucault, Derrida and Lacan in the “first wave” — all tenured, privileged, middle-aged, white European men, of course — through to Judith Butler, Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks and Candace West; not so pale, stale or male but similarly blessed — privileged? — with tenure, through which almost all the Theory literature flows. For an ideology so inimical to power as expressed through language, that is yet another great irony. But then, in Theory, ironies abound.