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Key insights from

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody

By Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay

What you’ll learn

Where does our new “woke” language come from? Why is it so harmful to actual progress in the realm of social justice? The Social Justice movement that dominates the thinking of contemporary society didn’t always exist. Rather, it originated in 1960s French academia through an intellectual movement called postmodernism, a way of thinking about reality that disregards objective truth and meaning. Later, in the 1980s and 90s, postmodern thought produced Critical Theory which supplies the current Social Justice movement with a majority of its ideas. Liberal thinkers Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay illustrate the rise of Social Justice movements in culture and the academy, advocating for a return to true liberalism as a means to question reality without forsaking objectivity.


Read on for key insights from Cynical Theories.

1. Postmodernism’s “radical skepticism” denies our ability to know anything—culture creates truth.

As a reaction against modernism, modernity, and the Enlightenment, postmodernism denies objectivity of all kinds. While the Enlightenment of the 18th century emphasized human reason and science, 20th century modernism and modernity started to distrust this tradition grounded in human ability and rationality. By the postmodern period, thinkers grew completely disillusioned with humanity, meaning, and truth, desiring to break with it totally. Thinkers were discontent with the way technology and humanity had fueled the many tragedies of the 20th century and decided it was time to change. Traditional postmodernism arose in the 1960s and 80s. This school of thinking shifted in the 1980s and 2000s to what the authors call applied postmodernism. In the growth of Theory and then particular Critical Theories, we find applied postmodernism. The Critical Theories are individual schools of thought that employ postmodern principles of the denial of truth and a distrust of language to particular social movements. Now, social movements view our language through a lens that seeks to uncover any potentially hidden patterns of racism, sexism, or bigotry; in the view of Critical Theories, language does not exist to reveal truth, but functions to hide our systemic prejudices.  

These Critical Theories include: postcolonial theory, a study concerned with the impacts of colonialism; queer theory, a way of thinking that wants to free gender and sex from normal categories; Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, frameworks that analyze racism and prejudice in society; feminism and gender studies, lines of thought that interrogate the construct of femininity; disability studies, a theory that looks at the way disability functions as a societal constraint; and fat studies, an approach to disrupting the normalizing categories of body size in culture.

Social Justice scholarship and the movements you know from your social media feed today begin here. The authors call this third and final stage of postmodernism reified postmodernism. It started in the 2000s and 2010s and makes seemingly abstract, theoretical concepts into hard truths. We must agree with these truths online and in our own minds in order to be accepted within society as moral members of social progress. 

The authors target original postmodern thinking as the root of what we know today as cultural relativity, which claims that other cultures and belief systems cannot be truly evaluated from an outside perspective; because other cultures and beliefs cannot be evaluated, then all of them must be equally true and acceptable. Philosopher Richard Rorty says that truth is a developed, created construct rather than a found object. This change in how culture confronts truth presents a radical evolution in epistemology, or in the way people think. Truth is no longer transcendent. Our ways of knowing and conceiving truth are products of a cultural structure which determines what we’re allowed to count as “knowledge” or “truth” in the first place.

Other tenets of postmodernism include an overarching refusal of objective knowledge and the belief that power-relationships drive a person’s ability to attain knowledge. Theorist Michel Foucault calls this theory “power-knowledge,” which shows that powerful language which he terms “discourse” decides what is true and worth knowing. This gives way to his idea of “episteme,” which is another word for the circle of values and beliefs we inhabit in society. These theories present us with a wholly inescapable framework of knowing, in which we are dependent upon a system that we unconsciously perpetuate through our language, thoughts, and actions. We can’t escape ourselves, and if we wanted to, there would be nothing else to turn to. Truth doesn’t exist anymore.

2. Postmodernism needed to change, so it decided the world needed to change too—with the help of some Theory.

A lack of meaning can’t survive. The sense of hopelessness original postmodernism created left people feeling bound up and depressed, with no reason to act or to live. As the authors note, it gets pretty boring, too. By the 1980s, the first phase of postmodernism fizzled out, and though most academics believe that the entire movement lost ground in the 1990s, it didn’t really pass away—it changed. Employing the deconstructive methods of postmodernism, this new Theory sought to unravel the societal systems that support social injustice. Make way for Critical Theory.

Prominent scholar of postcolonial theory Edward Said argued that the aim of unravelling the systems of society simply doesn’t do enough to correct societal injustice. In his renowned work entitled Orientalism, he expresses that systems must be remade within a renewed and unbiased understanding, one not permeated by the dominant Western perspective. Oppression and injustice are real truths in life that must be addressed beyond simply recognizing that they’re apparent in societal systems. Theorist Gayatri Chakavorty Spivak draws on Said’s work to assert the same thing while showing how integral language is to constructing power relationships; according to Spivak, there is no reality beyond our language and the systems created by our words. 

According to Critical Theory, social injustice is an objective fact that fuels unfair systems of the dominant and the dominated. Critical Theory and its many forms desire to dismantle society and put it all back together again—on the terms such Critical Theory itself pushes.

3. Critical Theory unravels discourse to prove that language creates identity.

Theory abounds in contemporary society, though it often wears the mask of Social Justice movements. At the foundation of every individual sect and field of study within Critical Theory, from postcolonial theory to gender studies, is the underlying distrust of language. In Critical Theory, the words we use are inherently biased vehicles that produce power imbalances and prejudice.

Postcolonial theory is the first of these theories to grow from postmodernism, and its main advocate Edward Said sought to expose the ways in which the West “others” the East, setting itself up as the polar opposite of the East through language. In other words, the West constructs the East as its own not-so-evil but not-as-good twin, and through this construction, makes itself superior. Words like ‘exotic’ or ‘quaint’ are examples of Said’s “othering” language.

Similarly, queer theory recognizes the same ability of language to build power inequalities, which can be seen in the work of one of its most prominent founders, Judith Butler. Her work argues that key components of one’s identity, such as gender, sex, and sexual orientation, are literally built by society and by the language circulated throughout culture. Queer theory also aims to challenge categories initially perceived as normal, and Butler’s idea of gender-performativity asserts that gender is a social act that’s performed in society as an accepted behavior passed down over time.

The language of science is another harmful aspect of cultural norms, according to various Critical Theories. Foucault’s idea of biopower means that society tends to view ideas expressed with biological and technological language as absolute, unquestionable facts. Queer theory works against this by challenging the assumption of biological knowledge concerning gender and sex. Additionally, disability studies refuse the notion that science should have the final word in determining the place and value of disabled people in society. This theory supports disassembling the binary of disabled and able-bodied people; instead, disability is a construction forced upon people who don’t fit with what our culture considers “normal.” Fat studies also refuse the authority of science in fields like nutrition and health in order to advocate for obesity as an equally healthy and positive way of life for people. In all cases, language is the tool of creation—one that typically favors the “normal” and the “usual” in society.

While it’s beneficial for all people to recognize and attempt to repair our unintentionally biased language, deconstructing our language also lulls us into perpetual suspicion and disbelief in the value of objective truth and science. Despite what Critical Theory says, we are more than our words. Biology proves it.

4. Identity determines the capacity for power and knowledge, but identity politics wants to turn this on its head.

Language builds identity. Identity determines the degree of power and knowledge a person is allowed to hold within society. Identity politics wants to turn this all around, using an individual’s identity to reassert it as one of importance. Critical Race Theory, feminist theories, and intersectionality embody this part of identity politics. They’re also the most prominent Critical Theories in Social Justice movements and scholarship today. 

Initiated in the 1970s through studies of race in law, Critical Race Theory is ultimately rooted in the belief that race is a man-made construct. History proves that race was merely a tool to establish slavery as a proper, socially-acceptable course of action. In contemporary society, Critical Race Theory calls for the recognition of racism as an inherent part of the human condition, a fact so woven in society that it infects nearly everything. One of its main proponents, Kimberlé Crenshaw expanded this theory into that of intersectionality, which looks at the ways in which people are discriminated against based upon multiple overlapping, conflicting minority identities. By establishing racism as an objective fact of experience, Critical Race Theory calls for the reestablishment of race as a source of identity, something liberalism aimed to get rid of thereby equalizing people of different backgrounds. 

Initially, feminism was grounded in the same objective of achieving material equality for both genders, but by the early 2000s, it adopted Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. In doing this, intersectional feminism, which is popular in scholarship now, attempts to read our language as an embodiment of power inequalities. By recognizing this disjointed nature of language, feminist theorists derived that what an individual knows depends on their “standpoint,” or their position and identity in society. According to intersectional feminist theorists, reasserting one’s distinct identity allows for a better diagnosis of potentially harmful discourse. In turn, recognizing one’s identity paves the way for the acknowledgement of her unique knowledge as being just as true and valuable as supposedly empirical facts and objective truth.

Identity politics prevents progress by continuing to harp on the factors that make us different from one another. The reality of difference and diversity is beautiful, but when we continue talking about it, things can go awry.

5. You can’t prove Social Justice scholarship, but you can’t argue with it either.

The form of reified postmodernism found within Social Justice movements and scholarships claims that otherwise abstract theoretical ideas are objective facts. Despite the distinguishing characteristic of postmodernism and Critical Theory as the denial of absolute truth, knowledge, and reality, Social Justice scholarship accepts the very refusal of fact as fact. Social Justice scholarship pokes and prods contemporary discourse in search of anything that might portray a faulty system or an unjust hierarchy. While it may seem unthreatening and even beneficial that schools instruct students in the ways they can better society through their intellectual work and beyond, the authors foresee a danger in this conflation of politics with education.

At its more threatening core, Social Justice scholarship aims to destroy the overarching narrative of human perfectibility and trust in reason and science. Though this is a well-intentioned goal, it goes too far. Instead of leaving the place of science and reason unoccupied, Social Justice inserts itself as the new objective reality; Theory is king. One of Social Justice scholarship’s main tenets is standpoint theory, or the belief that people retain distinct but equally valid experiences of reality dependent upon their identity and position in society. In standpoint theory, the more privileged you are, the less you can see the issues Social Justice scholarship wants to correct. Privileged members of society are epistemically unable to recognize racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

Universities are replete with Social Justice scholarship, due in part to the widespread popularity (and notoriety) of books like Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 White Fragility, a work that implicates all white people in the ills of unavoidable racist thinking. DiAngelo argues that racism is an ever-present plague that’s infiltrated our cultural consciousness. Questioning her premise only serves to prove her point, because such questions are a supposed defense mechanism employed by the privileged to secure their comfort. Such thinking refuses to question the dogma of Social Justice scholarship, and those daring intellectuals who do attempt to prod the agenda do so at their own peril. This new form of unfalsifiable morality shook the ground of campuses and libraries around the world, and now, we’re beginning to see its shockwaves echo into everyday culture.

Everyone wants social justice—it’s a beautiful product of a morally progressing society. But when a culture is stripped of its voice to question reality and citizens are told what they can and cannot understand, no true social justice is obtained. Rather we wind ourselves in circles, rootless and floundering, picking battles with illusions as if they’re true.

6. At the core of liberalism is a desire to question, empathize, and repair.

For decades, liberalism existed as the core of true advancements within social justice. Without it, society can’t survive—it simply consumes itself. The authors argue that traditional liberalism is the only way society can escape the maddening cycles of anger, guilt, and stagnancy the Social Justice movement enables. They assert that postmodernism’s questions about the capacity of liberalism to inspire lasting change rest on inaccurate grounds. Though numerous inhumane horrors occurred in the 20th century, the Enlightenment values of freedom, thinking, and progress didn’t cause the tragedies. Rather, the rise of authoritarian, totalitarian, and other explicitly illiberal governments allowed for the use of science and technology to be manipulated for terrible ends. Liberalism is a corrective. Though it has its fair share of shortcomings, such failures are corrected over time, a fact proven throughout history.

Liberalism’s ability to assess and correct its mistakes is grounded in its openness to questioning. In his 1992 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Jonathan Rauch calls for a return to what he terms a “liberal science” which questions reality and experience through verifiable information rather than abstruse theoretical claims. Contrary to what the Social Justice movement says, science and reason are objective tools that belong in the hands of all people. Ripping these away in favor of Theory perpetuates the bigoted, irrational, and divisive mindsets liberalism sought to unravel a long time ago. 

Harkening back to groundbreaking thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill, we must reinstate the capacity for questioning and the expectation of strong evidence before we allow ourselves to be swayed by a theory dressed like law. Only when we practice authentic openness to others can real social justice beyond fleeting movements be achieved. Questioning is a timeless quality of freedom; any movement, theory, or school of thought that seeks to undermine the power of free thought must itself be questioned.

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