Imagine a world where English Literature students were placed in charge of political revolution. Marshalling the full resources of their limited literary perspectives, what might we expect? A preoccupation with anything-goes-readings of the microsymbolic (read: irrelevant), a prioritization over the histories of phrases and words rather than people who speak them, and a perpetual and unending quest to find politically convenient interpretations of culture over and above empirically grounded ones—that is, ones born of correspondence with the actual lived wishes, desires, attitudes, and beliefs of people rather than ones implied by “an interesting textual theory.”
In short, we might expect an analysis of the political to reduce, as with analyses of texts, to the psycho-emotional inclinations of its readers (or activists). Activists who become “readers of the world,” whose production of speculations are not guided by a determined empirical investigation into private histories, societies, people, and their interests—but by the astonishment of the reader herself. Whatever is most outrageous, most interesting, or most satisfying to her mind becomes the basis on which the truth of political reality is elaborated.
Since this is the nightmare-reality of contemporary student politics, I have decided to elaborate on some of its foundational philosophical mistakes.
The present in-vogue academic analysis of literature is severely limited by two key philosophical fallacies, which, if limited to the realm of “the production of interesting interpretations,” has only a minor impact on the intellect, but spread wide to the world, has lead to moral hypocrisy and intellectual catastrophe.
The first of these fallacies infected Kant via the medieval skeptics and is the deceptive absurdity that “knowledge gained via a particular medium can only ever be about that medium.” This principle says that if handed a photograph of a mountain, I could never actually work out how tall the mountain is, how long it would take me to climb it, how far away it is, nor how much gasoline I’d need to drive there. All of these inferences are about you, your actions, the mountain, gasoline, cars, etc. According to this fallacy of limited expression, when handed a photograph, all I could ever learn is that there are certain patterns of ink blobs on a paper—and that is that.
And so too, this fallacy says, “whatever is communicated via language is linguistic”—so if I say “pass me a red pen,” all you really understand is something about language, not in fact, that there’s a pen I’d like you to pass me.
We may now see how this principle has lead to the over-inflated sense of relevance literary analysis has of itself: since nearly all of our knowledge is expressed in language, our knowledge it must be about language (surely not reality!) and so everything is language! Literary analysis turns out to be physics!
Total nonsense, of course. But deceptive nonetheless, it was a commitment to this mistaken principle which lead Berkeley and others in his idealist tradition to say that since reality is expressed in experience, reality must be experience, ie., that knowledge gained via the medium of experience must be about experience. Rather than, of course, reality. Indeed reality need not be considered much more than the non-experiential content of experience. There is nothing more mysterious to mental representation than linguistic representation: one ought not be so consumed by self-doubt so as to see someone passing you a pen upon spoken-request as a miracle. And one ought not to seduce oneself by skeptical fallacies to such a degree that seeing a hand in front of your face becomes a God-like ability.
The second fallacy that possesses modern literary political activism takes the first and runs with it: since—literary activists say—everything is language, and therefore everything is merely an interplay of language—the moral history, structure, and interpretation of language is our moral inheritance. It turns out morality is not about our real actions and their intentions but about the sins encoded in our linguistic conventions.
To see why this is wrong it is important to note that we use two properties of language: first, as with any representational medium, it communicates facts about what it represents. That is, to say “the pen is red” is to say the world is arranged in a particular way such that you may find in it a red pen. We could call this the “referential meaning of representation,” i.e., what a representation means for how the world is arranged. Then there is the “conventional meaning” of language, and as with any medium of representation we can ask why is it that we have chosen this medium, why does “pen” refer to a pen—that is, why do those letters or sounds refer to pens? Or why does my choice of green paint represent the grass? The general answer to questions of this kind is simply points out that understanding occurs in humans, i.e., the input “get me a pen” produces the output of someone getting a pen. The transformation of input to output, that is, from the conventional to referential, is an event happening in us.
When a builder sketches on a piece of paper the four sides of a house, and leans over to his coworker to ask, “Does this look the right size to you?” something that may seem miraculous is happening. He is managing to represent bricks and cement with paper and ink—how does he achieve this? How does he communicate knowledge of brick with expression in pencil? Simply: he asserts a convention, and sticks to it. He and his coworker understand the referential meaning the builder asserted in his drawing—and when his coworker looks at it, his inference relies on this meaning. But his representation works, and so his coworker can provide some helpful advice: knowing line length represents wall length, his coworker can make an estimation. (Confused skeptics are inclined to say “These connections might not hold!” and proceed to construct a metaphysics on the basis that they never do, cf. phenomenology vs., e.g., realism, which says only that they can).
Now, since it is human beings in which convention acquires its referential meaning, i.e., since it’s human beings who understand language, language has an “all too human” history. Yes, vagina originally meant “sheath” in Latin, implying that the contemporary Roman view was to put primacy to the sexual (rather than birthing) functions of the vagina. Supposing that this is a sexist (contra pragmatic) naming, then do we all become sexists to use the word? No. Firstly, we do not inherit sin—nor is it transmitted through one’s race or blood—the actions of my neighbor are not mine, let alone that of a distant ancestor. What I believe is not what a random white person from a century ago believed, and so there is nothing morally important we share: skin color is not a morally important property (that this needs to be said at all is outrageous).
And secondly, when we use the word vagina, all we mean is the object it refers to, we do not mean—nor do many even know—how the word came to refer to a vagina. The phrase, “babies are born through vaginas” is understood by everyone because they possess, as with the builder’s coworker, the representational understanding that relates the letters “a vagina” to a vagina—it is not understood by everyone because they believe women are sheaths for penises.
Nietzsche here, and those of his tradition, seem then the “arch-literary activists,” reading the world as a text and basing their evaluations of it on their own astonishment, outrage, or intrigue—as readers of texts often do. In novels the reader’s experience is the primary truth—there is no more than this to investigate. Given a reality however, our speculator’s astonishment becomes irrelevant—given that we can investigate what people actually believe, we do not have to care at all what a theorist says they do (unlike characters in a story). And as authors and interpreters of novels conspire to give their characters motivations and destinations, we see little more than conspiratorial political philosophies emerge from contemporary activism: that the arc of history is white and bends toward the intentions of men. (The mild hum of women shouting “Slut!” to each other in the background is a “symptom of The Real” as yet unincorporated).
Social reality does not emerge from a textual interplay of worlds—that, Derrida (et al.), is a novel. Our words are about people, and people are not texts. Our morality is about our character and actions, not about our words. Social reality emerges from the beliefs, desires, motivations, and goals of the people who comprise it. We can divide friends from enemies on this basis very simply: all those who do not wish for a pluralist, feminist, (democratic, egalitarian…) world are not with us. Women who believe “a woman’s place is at home” are no more absolved of that belief than a man who believes it—because it is what they believe, not their gender that morally defines them. There is no absolution in a vagina nor condemnation in a penis. No solidarity in a color or in words but in cause: we should “look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Character denoting one’s actual moral commitments and not figments of psychological speculation asserted by literary activists.
Michael Burgess is a senior lecturer teaching topics in applied computer science. He participates in and organizes several philosophical groups in the UK and has recently completed graduate work in physics. His present philosophical hobbies are metametaphysics and the philosophy of computer science with a view to more study in these areas. He has written academically on topics from the philosophy of history to quantum computing.
Image of University of Missouri protests by Mark Schierbecker.
This is the most tone-def article I have ever read on PEL. If you want to comment on, must less *understand* student activism, maybe you should start by getting to know some student activists. Having, incidentally, gotten to know a number of them and seen the important work that they are doing, I am appalled that this straw man of their efforts (not to mention an entire tract of academic work). I have seen students grappling with experiences of sexual assault, and converting that trauma into organized efforts to make campuses safer. I’ve seen students saddled with tremendous amounts of debt from tuition taking action against skyrocketing tuition costs. On a campus with a building named after a white supremacist and a history of donations from the klan (problems not singular to my institution), students of color have been brave enough to speak out for institutional change.
In my experience, it’s not student activism that we should be condemning, but faculty apathy and inaction in the face of a host of injustices and inequities on college campuses and in the political climate that surrounds them. Want student activism to be better? Set an example, instead of hiding behind thin arguments and interdisciplinary prejudice. Exemplary moral action is a great pedagogical tool. Step up.
I have just spent seven years in university education and amongst student political activist groups. I know plenty of them.
That “they care” and “are trying to do good” does not make their conclusions nor their methodology correct. I agree they are well-motivated. In fact, it is activists who assume people who disagree with them are evil or bigoted.
This article is not a “condemnation” of their motivations. Nor of specific successes. In fact as a person deeply invested in their motivations, this article is a plea *internal* to this movement in the hopes that it will use better methods.
One of the recurrent sins of activists is to identify skin colour as a moral property, and to suppose that white people are therefore merely “allies” not in a morally identical position. This is just mistaken, and the white-guilt oft’ pushed by this claim is nonesnese.
Michael,
If you are referring to student movements about race, you are not internal to the student movements to which you refer.
Well that is *exactly* the sentiment that I have most problems with. Though not directly addressed in this article.
What it is to be part of a movement is to have a common cause not a common skin colour – that claim is to me such a profoudnly mistaken and deeply immoral one.
And for a movement whose most important *audience* is white (ie. a lot of white people need convining) – begiining with the nonesense that they can never be part of the movement is not only false, ridiculous, immoral and aburd – it’s the most counterproductive move one could make.
As far as I can tell many “allied white people” of our movements are there by sheer force of emotional blackmail alone – ie. they have been guilted into it. And how ridiculous it is to have, as a precondition for alliance with a movement, guilt for actions that are not your own.
It is no wonder to me why there is such a back-reaction against this appraoch.
Michael,
It’s not a “sentiment,” it’s a fact. You can’t opt-in to any particular group. If a group will not accept you, then you are not part of the group. Further, it cannot be described as counter-productive. Counter-productive to what? THEIR goals? That is to say, NOT your goals. It is even more nonsensical to tell them they have the wrong goals. Wrong in what sense? Wrong for THEM? Then we see the heart of the argument. Paternalism. Paternalism to whom and from whom? From a white guy to black activists.
A movement is a group which aims towards some goal. The movement against racism is, very simply, against racism.
I dont need to be any one’s father in order to evaluate how successful the movement is, nor comment on its failings.
And I make the very simple claim: if a movement draws its boundaries by the skin colour of those “inside it” then it is setting itself up to fail.
This is a very ordinary sort of claim: any one can understand it and determine whether they think it’s right or not.
the world i wish to live in is one without racism, and i wish us to get there – and part of my responsibility, therefore, in being committed to that goal is to criticise actions which I take to be counter productive.
This is a very bad theory of social movements. To see how bad it is, we only need to inquire about how incoherent its results are.
You desire to live in a world without racism. This would entail recognizing racism. Racism consists in, partially, the difference between the lived experiences of people of color and white people and the troublesome history of the latter folks determining the lives of the future folks.
You answer your desire to live in a world without racism by telling people of color how to channel their wants and desires to match yours. This is racism.
You are trying to end racism by doing racism. You are setting yourself up to fail.
You only think that the other activists are setting themselves up to fail because you are projecting your desire onto theirs. Just because you say “I want no racism” and they say “I want no racism” does not mean that you and they want exactly the same things. Why? First, language. Second, the relationship between racism and lived experience.
They are setting themselves up to fail your desires, but this claim is nonsense. They were never trying to please you or meet your desires.
So, I conclude that you deny the validity and legitimacy of their desires with respect not only to their lived experiences but also to their context – i.e. racism – which you claim actually exists. This shows further that you are not even living up to your own empirical values which demand you check things against the world.
When I say I desire to live in a world without racism I mean only that I desire to live in a world where “people are judged on the content of their character” (ie. who they are as people: what they do, what they say…) and not on the colour of their skin.
When I criticise a person for an action I take to be counter productive I am not judging them on their skin colour, I am judging them on the basis they are being counter-productive.
> they were never trying to please you or meet your desires.
I never claimed they were. I’m talking about whether they are being successful in creating the world *they* wish to create.
People all the time act in ways counter-productive to *their own* goals.
Your comments here amount nothing more to “a white person *cannot* criticise a black person”, ie. that for some reason a person who is black has privileged access to the truth and therefore always makes true judgements. And a white person has no access to the truth and always makes false judgements.
If, rather, our access to the truth does not depend on skin colour – then I am equally able to see a mistake as any one else. And if I have seen a mistake, then what? I should keep it to myself and let others be mistaken because they’re black? What an horrific world view, that people’s duties to one another are dependent on skin colour – that I may say something to a white person who has made a mistake, but not a black person.
If truth involves lived experience and racism mediates lived experience, then our access to truth does in fact depend on skin color in some cases. (Specifically cases involving racism.)
Or, again, you can deny the value of lived experience or you can deny that race mediates lived experience.
Which do you deny?
Neither. That’s not access to the truth that’s access to certain facts concerning making a true claim.
That is a person inside is in a worse position, wrt. to the colour of the sky, than a person outside. Both people are equally *capable* of making an assessment of the colour of the sky – but one has more information.
I don’t see how, say, an abitary black person has more information on the nature of language, morality, metaphysics etc. than me. Perhaps some do – and I’d be most interested in hearing from them.
But that someone has experienced racism in their lives does not put them in a better position to assess any of the claims I’ve made here – and indeed, insofar as I’ve made any claims about racism itself I have deliberately quoted MLK – with whom I agree.
It seems you’re saying that somehow a person being black gives them some special qualification with respect to every claim, and a person being white is some special flaw. Given that’s an obviously absurd position, what exactly are you saying?
Because you havent yet made any arguments which engage with what I’ve said, you’ve merely asserted I’m in no position to say it because I’m white. I mean if you hold such a morally abhorrent view, why on earth say anything to me?
“It seems you’re saying that somehow a person being black gives them some special qualification with respect to every claim, and a person being white is some special flaw.”
I am not saying that. In fact I said exactly what I was saying.
I said: “(Specifically cases involving racism.)”
“you’ve merely asserted I’m in no position to say it because I’m white.”
I have asserted this, but not “merely.” It logically follows that in cases involving racism that you do not have access to all of the facts. Again, unless lived experience contains no factual content.
So: If you are white, then you cannot experience the racism felt by a person of color. Further, to be against racism you must be against the thing that the people of color are experiencing. To do this in a way that is not already paternalistic and racist would involve deferring to people with the appropriate type of expertise – expertise in being the subject of racism. That is, not you.
So… Marginalized people must attempt to make allies with the dominant group and tailor their message to a broad audience in order for their message to be fully legitimate?
From your response I gather that you agree with the message, but it’s the method that’s incorrect. Should people have to follow a prescribed method in order to voice their concerns and make demands?
Aren’t method-over-content claims exactly the kind of excuses used by defenders of the status quo everywhere?
Perhaps these student activists aren’t experts because they are students. Perhaps they take theories too far because they’re inexperienced. Perhaps they’re more interested in building the community they identify with than reaching out to a community that has ignored/dismissed/rejected/oppressed them.
> in order for their message to be fully legitimate?
No. I havent spoken of “legitmacy”. I think everyone “has permission” to express anything they like. No one needs a licence to express themsleves.
> follow a prescribed method
Not quite. They ought to follow a method based which leads to the truth. I dont think that can be “prescribed” ahead-of-time – but we can certainly make corrections to the method as we go, where mistakes are identified.
> exactly the kind of excuses
I’m not sure. Equally, aren’t the replies “exactly these kind of excuses” used by fundamentalists everywhere to defend themselves from criticism?
That some else does something says nothing about whether it is right or wrong to do it. My criticisms are either correct or not, regardless of who else in the world my might make them.
> these student activists aren’t experts because they are students.
Here I agree entirely. And a movement with this methodology is inherently unstable as you see if you go to any larger meeting: the *internal* conflicts are huge. So I – somewhat – think there will be some natural evolution. Nevertheless there is nothing wrong with *my* attempting to be part of that evolution.
I am puzzled to find a reference to character at the end of a critique against the epistemic value of such apparent phantoms as symbolism and experience. What exactly is it about a person’s character that we can get at via any method save psychological speculation? Is there a non-hermeneutic, non-symbolically mediated method for discovering a person’s ‘actual moral commitments?’ Surely not. A person’s character is inseparable from their acts and human acts (even those acts which are not speech acts) are inescapably symbolic. Whether or not a given act represents a good character is not inscribed on the outward features of an act. Acts – like words – require interpretation with the moral arena. This is what was argued by the loosey-goosey, Derridian post-structuralist known as Aristotle, anyway. If you want a moral theory that supposes that you are the sole and ultimate arbiter of your own value then Nietzsche is your man after all. There are a lot of interesting philosophical points in this essay, but they serve mostly to obscure whatever nuanced politics they are ‘meant’ to imply.
Character, or ‘moral sentiment’ is just those values one embeddes in orientation towards the world. That is, we say of people inclined to empathise with others that they are ’empathetic’.
That we don’t know for certain what characters people have does not mean morality is not about character. A person of bad character is liable for their bad actions – whether we know they have bad character or not. Of course, it is important we try to find out.
A person who intends to decive and then says “the sky is actually green!” is doing something very differnet than a person who is colourblind and says “the sky is green”. Their actions are the same, but what is morally important isnt that they have said something false – but rather in one case it was out of deception.
But we ought not make the mistake that the process of finding out what a person’s character is purely speculative. To determine a persons character is difficult, so we are certainly not helped by speculation.
This is especially important in interpreting the actions of commedians. Commedians are trying to be funny – and in doing so, because they do not know ahead of time what is funny – they will say a variety of frivilous things in order to see what people’s reaction will be. A commedian does not believe anything they say, and they expect the audience to understand that context driven by their intention. So when a commedian says “the sky is green!” for humours effect she takes us all to know that she does not believe it, nor expect anyone else to. And in fact, often through that implication a commedian uses humour to educate people on what the truth really is.
Thus the contemporay liberal puritianism wrt. commedy is very counter-productive. A comment whose non-funny-context is racist, will often in a funny-context become anti-racist. And if commedy is not a tool we can use to communicate what is wrong with racism then we’re setting ourselves up to fail.
I feel like I would be able to follow this article/post/whatever if I understood what, exactly, is meant by: “we might expect an analysis of the political to reduce, as with analyses of texts, to the psycho-emotional inclinations of its readers (or activists).”
I clicked on the first hyperlink, but it was just a video of a guy bemoaning all that is politically correct. He seemed to be in a sort of frenzy, and his voice was fucking insufferable, so I didn’t get around to finishing the video.
I did watch some 7 minutes of Yale student(s) getting into it with a Yale professor/staffer of some sort.
The situation, much like Mr. Burgess’s post, seems to require contextual information/additional reading to understand.
I guess I would just like to understand what is being said, who is being made fun of, etc.
whoops, it was the third link that i clicked. And I had also not read the author’s response listed above, which sort of answers the questions I was asking. Sorry!
Sure. I wondered if that was too obscure a remark.
Take the claim: “A person who wares a t-shirt that contains illustrations of naked women is sexist”
Here’s the question: what makes that claim True or False?
Here’s how I take the current “theory of sexism”; if I am offended/angry/outraged/upset by it, then it is True.
So the claim above is True if a particular individual, or group of individuals has a certain kind of reaction.
I do not think sexism (& indeed most everything) is in this way a matter of what anyone feel about something.
The way I evaluate “a person who does X is Y” is by looking at their moral character, intentions, actions, beliefs – since I take Y (eg. “is sexist”) to concern those things.
In otherwords, does a person who wears such a t-shirt have: any relevant sexist beliefs, sexist desires/motivations/etc. So the claim is true *of the person* given the properties of the person in question.
I take literary analysis often to rely on the feeling of the person performing the analysis because there is little more to go on. In otherwords “shelock holmes is arrogant” is True *because* I “feel his arrogance” when reading of his actions.
Since “sherlock holmes” doesnt actualy have any moral properties, it doesnt really matter. But, you know, NASA scientists do.
I’m curious: have you ever read any literary analysis? I mean, I get the argumentative work that is done by making literary study the straw man you can topple (and you obviously aren’t concerned with whether or not you are portraying it accurately, since you provide no specific sources/evidence). But I hope you are at least aware that the picture you are drawing of literary analysis is unlike any literary analysis I’ve ever read/any literary analysis that any English scholar would ever read.
“I take literary analysis often to rely on the feeling of the person performing the analysis because there is little more to go on. In otherwords “shelock holmes is arrogant” is True *because* I “feel his arrogance” when reading of his actions.”
It wouldn’t be about anyone “feeling” Sherlock Holmes’s arrogance (which as a statement is pretty much nonsensical). If one wanted to prove that Sherlock Holmes was arrogant (and I’m not sure why anyone would care to prove that), one would argue that his actions/words/beliefs fit with an accepted notion of arrogance. You say that “we can investigate what people actually believe,” but this “investigation” is the same process of interpreting actions, words, and beliefs that the literary scholar would take in building a case for Sherlock Holmes’s arrogance (except she wouldn’t–no literary scholar would care to make that argument).
Well literary analysis of a particular school, mostly towards those psycho-analytically inclined.
Here’s the distinction, and it’s quite a straightforward one.
We can, and often do, make claims about fictional people: in movies, novels, etc. These claims *can be evidenced* (quite easily, or how else would people come up with the claims in the first place). However the evidence for these claims cannot be empirical because they are not about people, they are about fictional people as constructed by author and as intended for an audience. To evidence clams about fictional people (, events, worlds, etc.) one needs a speculative apparatus.
We also make claims, pretty much of the same kind, about real people. However we have quite sound methods of evidencing these claims: we can make much more direct investigation of the people they are about.
Take, for example the case of Tim Hunt linked above. He made a joke about falling in love with his wife in a lab., his sin seems – not the sentiment he expressed, nor his intentions, nor his actions – but the sentiment we might **INFER** from some words he said via some nonesense theory. Ie. you could only call him sexist in this case if you didnt bother actually investigate the guy himself, the situation itself, and the people there involved.
Speculative methods to determine people’s beliefs, intentions, etc. are nearly useless. If we want to accuse a person of being racist (, sexist, etc.) we only need to look to them directly – not strip out some bit of language theyve used and run it through a speculative machine designed to find outrage “somewhere” .
You are probably sick of responding, given the amount of feedback you have received, but I just wanted to make a couple comments.
First, no psychoanalytic criticism that I’ve ever encountered has anything to do with how the reader feels. So, if, according to you, ““literary analysis often to rel[ies] on the feeling of the person performing the analysis because there is little more to go on,” you are not talking about psychoanalytic criticism, you are talking about something like Reader Response Criticism, which most literary critics find to be a particularly weak school of literary criticism. I mention this to just to say that I continue to find your knowledge of literary analysis suspect, so I am still convinced that you are presenting a straw man based on little knowledge of the field you are straw-man-ing.
That bit of quibbling aside, your Tim Hunt example in the above response is more than anything just about the failure to contextualize. Sure, if people apply a speculative method illogically/unreasonably, that is bad. But one of the strongest things English departments have going for them (and believe me, I’m well aware of their not so strong aspects), is that, when they are good, they are able to teach students how to contextualize. Furthermore, I don’t see how English departments are primarily at fault for providing speculative methods (and by this I take you just to mean non-empirical theoretical approaches). Couldn’t you just as easily blame philosophy departments? (Derrida and Nietzsche were primarily philosophers, not literary scholars, after all).
Ok, I guess I was asking because my initial reading of your post left me with a vague sense that you were arguing that literature is not a valid/viable form of communication, and that interpreting literature is the same thing as experiencing it. “Experiencing lit” may sound vague/cliched, but I think there’s more to it than just “psychological inclinations”. E.g., communication. To use your example, if I went to class in a naked woman t shirt I would probably get some negative feedback. Yet this (i.e. the assumption/likelihood that it will be found offensive) is one of many, many other reasons I would not sport such apparel.
On the other hand, if I did wear such a shirt, it would seem reasonable to assume that others would take offense.
I’m not sure I know where I’m going with this, but maybe what I am saying is that our reactions to forms of communication are hopefully indicative of the truth. Whether or not they have much to say about capital T Truth is not something I care to noodle about.
And isn’t what we choose to wear an action we make? Isn’t choosing what/what not to share with one another about ourselves an act of communication?
It sounds like you just want activists to provide QED caliber proofs that their claims are true, which seems like a weird thing to want.
If Sherlock Holmes is a character that wears a shirt that says “I’m f*ckin awesome, I solve every mystery, Watson is my b*tch” …yeah I would probably feel offended as a reader I guess. If that makes sense. But if I wanted to back up the claim that “Holmes is arrogant” I wouldn’t say “because I feel offended”, but rather “because he wore this shirt, and this shirt said these arrogant things”. The point here that I think I am making is that there is a relationship between people being offended and people doing offensive things. Now people get offended easily and often, but sometimes there are good reasons?
> but sometimes there are good reasons?
Certainly. And of course it is right that people take those initial reactions they have as signs that something *might* be up and persue an honest investigation into whether something *is* up.
What would that mean here? Well we might say that “my intuitions tell me that a person wearing this shirt is a sexist” and on that basis we’d have to check our intutitons. We’d look into the history of the guy, his motives and intentions and the specific actions that lead up to this point.
And then we’d fine we were wrong.
A respect for the truth means humility regarding your intutitons. “Being a sexist” isnt a matter of someone feelign that you are, it’s a matter of who you actually are.
So, while I totally agree that people are justified in using their initial intuitions to motivate some investigation, my concern is that people are taking their intuitions as sufficient.
Ok. The Kevin P. guy above said what I was trying to say, except he was way more concise and clear haha.
You’re misreading Nietzsche.
This PEL podcast about Nietzsche on truth shows that the postmodern reading of Nietzsche is mistaken, especially if you read his mature, published works, since it is wholly based on “Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense”, a very early, unpublished work.
The guest, Jessica Berry, places Nietzsche in the skeptical tradition.
http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/08/15/ep61-nietzsche/
I don’t take my view of Neizche here to entail a particularly post-Modern one. I mean, just ready his genealogy or morals – it is not by accident he analyses the history of a word. And his analysis of religion is exactly speculative in the sense I mean: he does not go out and look if people think of God in the “debt-debtor” realtionship, he merely asserts it from his “reading”.
This scepticism is surely, a huge problem, its not absolved of anything by calling it scepticism.
Post-modernism is the view that the world is a text, with an infinite number of readings, and that’s not Nietzsche’s view, as the podcast points out.
Whether or not Nietzsche’s history of morality, as expressed in the Genealogy of Morality, is correct or not, he believes that it corresponds to the facts. Remember that Nietzsche is a trained philologist. So the point is not whether Nietzsche’s etymological research is accurate, but that Nietzsche believes that it is accurate and that it is not just one of a multiple number of readings of the history of morality.
Finally, throughout his work, Nietzsche criticizes religion and conventional morality for lying, that is, he values the truth. In fact, at one point he says that his chief value is intellectual honesty.
So thus whom you criticize in your post for believing that the world is a text either misread Nietzsche or do not follow him at all.
Apply that argument to any other situation to see why it is immediately false.
eg. To know how to deal with poverty, one must be poor – or defer to the poor. (Where, exactly, did socialist poltiical emerge from?)
That is, rather than have knowledge of politics, economics, political philosophy, moral philosophy, culture etc. to deal with poverty, one merely has to be poor.
It’s total nonesense. Being the victim of economic injustice does not provide you with any knowledge of economics.
Understanding what racist abuse amounts to is important for solving it, but there’s nothing mysterious in being the subject of abuse, or injustice. The difficult part is coming up with methods to solve it and to understand the broad social/poltical/economic/philosophical systems which underpin it – and the knowledge required to do that is not contained in a racial slur shouted at you in a street.
You continue to ignore the fact that racism is about power asymmetries. When you fail to defer to the subjects of racism you continue to perpetuate the power asymmetry.
This is like solving sexism by telling women what they should do with their lives.
I’m not criticizing the “world as text” view for its epistemological “anything goes” ism – i’m criticising it for its *method*. A method just lifted straight of out Nietzsche.
That Nietzsche uses this methond *and then* believes he is correct is the problem, and it’s that problem i’m talking about. Not nihilism, but the reverse, a false mechanics of truth.
His method is exactly that which I’ve outline: a claims produced by a speculative literary-philosophical apparatus, ie. claims about how people/etc. works without actually investigating any people.
Indeed you will find very few *arguments* in Neitzsche at all. He mostly just produces analysis (ie. readings) with the intention of impressing the reader or provoking some sentimient in them – as though this feeling goes to evidence his claim.
Again, what more is his analysis of religion other than a pseudo-psychological reading of some religious texts phrased in a manner which appeals to the pretensions of the post-religious?
He moves from the literary-theological to the actual via speculation, and that’s that. He isnt going around surveying people, or analysing their real lived claims and undersandings of their religion.
No, because i’m not telling anyone what “to do with their lives”. I’m making comments about epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of language and how it relates to how we assess moral and political claims about other people.
Suppose a woman were trying to tie a bow-tie on herself, and was making a simple mistake. It is not sexist of me to say, “here – I think you are making a mistake in how you’re tying the knot”. Making a criticism of something a person is doing is not equivalent to devaluing their total identity,
My claim is that many people are wrong about their analysis of moral claims (, and certain other kinds) on the basis of a mistaken theory of language. They arent “worthless people” because theyre wrong, I’m making no comment about their worth: as a staunch egalitarian I think people’s worth is absolute and independent of what their beliefs are and whether they are right or wrong.
This false equivocation between criticism and criticism of one’s value (which in a clinical setting is called narcissism) is another profound flaw in activist thinking and extremely concerning – narcissism is increasingly the mode through which criticism is received.
You claim: “No, because i’m not telling anyone what “to do with their lives”.
Yet, you also claim: “this article is a plea *internal* to this movement in the hopes that it will use better methods.”
Does your plea to the black activist have some other goal than to get them to adjust their goals and strategies because you understand better than they do what they want and how to get what they want?
My view on these issues has some impact on how they live their lives, of course.
As does my view on how to tie a bow-tie. My recommendations might make a woman’s day much happier ( – or not!).
But that does make my claims *about* the value of their lives. Every claim worth making will surely impact someone’s life – but that has nothing to do with making claims about the value of people’s lives.
To say “I agree that we should end racism but I think this particular method is not working” is not to say, “I think the lives and values of black people are worth less than others”.
You’re reading Nietzsche in a totally ahistorical manner.
Nietzsche, as I said, was a trained philologist. He tries to understand Christianity with what was in his time considered to be state of the art method for understanding a doctrine, a study of the texts. In fact, the sociology of religion, as you understand it, did not exist in his time. Durkheim’s classic work on the sociology of religion, probably the first in the field, appeared in 1912, after Nietzsche’s death.
I for one find that Nietzsche’s insights into Christianity, the product, as you note, of reading the texts (as a philologist), are quite accurate, although they lack the precision of sociological field studies, which did not exist in his day.
However, that, as I’ve stated previously, has nothing to do with the post modern theory that the world is a text. Nietzsche reads texts, the Bible, the Greek classics, etc., but does not claim that the world is one.
To say “you black folks aren’t ending racism correctly,” is to say, “hold on black folks, white guy with knowledge has arrived.”
Being an ally is asking if they need help and, if they want it, providing it within the parameters given. Foisting assistance on a person who does not want it is a devaluation of them.
I always accepted that Nietzsche was generally anti-collectivism which would be contrary to a lot of what these activists thrive on: the sort of bullying persuasion of “micro-aggressions” and systemic/endemic racism in all things hetero and white. There’s a chapter on national identity in his BG&E that always chimes on in my head whenever I read about various angst from social justice groups and/or feminism. I’ve only read a few of his books, not Genealogy, but his sentiments seemed more libertarian than what’s spouted by student activists.
Also, I’d like to add that I majored in English/Creative Writing, and one amazingly insane thing to me was that some professors (a minority of them, in fact) espoused a lot on what it means to become uncertain of all language. Plenty of professors are culpable in trying to unseat people in their careers and break down students’ conception of reality in order to lecture on anti-western and illiberal ideas. I would say post-modernism is a lens through which these students and professors are guided to always assume or make educated, non-empirical-backed decisions that all people are subject to internalized wrongdoing whether they like it or not.
Dr. Burgess: I’m a philosopher in the USA who has lots of interactions, both social and professional, with English and cultural theory students and professors. Though I have been devoting quite a lot of time in recent days to trying to “cross the aisle”, as it were, I must say that I am quite sympathetic with the thoughts you’ve expressed here. (I haven’t read all the comments, but I saw enough critical ones that I wanted to write a comment of support.)
It’s no problem. I expect people to be critical, indeed, i’d encourage it. I’m not certain I’m right, and rely on others to point out of if and when I’m wrong.
It is my duty to end racism independently of anyone else. I’m not going to accept the “parameters” outline by a bunch of woefully under-informed teenagers. The hubris!
I do not need a licence from the psychologically abused to create a world in which I want to live: an egalitarian world.
Nor do I need to check the poor have the latest theories on the financialization of credit, or accept “the parameters” outline by illiterate afraicans having their land stolen under a process they dont even comprehend.
This view, that the oppressed have some profound insight into the way the world works is absolutely and totally spineless. Have some regard for you own ability to think and feel, to reason moral and intellecually. Your ability, and my ability, and everyone’s ability to reason what is good, bad, true and false is not dependent on us having been abused. This “epistemological survivor guilt” is madness.
I am eager to hear your plan for creating egalitarianism using, as a first step, a declaration of your moral superiority and radical independence to save everyone.
I am eager to hear your plan for ending racism using, as a first step, a declaration that young people of color who are protesting are woefully uninformed.
(To be clear, I am not eager to hear either of these because they would be racist and non-egalitarian.)
It is good though to find finally the raw, angry, privileged core at the heart of your white theory of social change. You seem to equate “thinking for myself” as “thinking by myself.” I can understand that abuse exists without having been abused, but it is ridiculous to claim that you can understand the phenomena of abuse without consulting with the abused. I do not mean studying the abused as if they were objects; I mean entering into a dialogue with them. It may be that they are unable to see themselves entirely (who can), but they are nonetheless able to see things about themselves that the un-abused cannot see without inspection.
Recognizing your cognitive and experiential limits is neither spineless, madness, or without self-regard. It is the oldest maxim of the western tradition of philosophy. Do not pretend to knowledge that you do not have.
You’re right that you have a duty to end racism, but it seems like you still do not understand what racism is. If you continue to believe that you can know about racism without consulting with those experiencing it, then you will fail in that duty.
> “thinking by myself.”
No. Hence writing an article… You have not yet offered any criticisim of *what* I wrote, only my legitimacy in making it.
> Do not pretend to knowledge that you do not have.
Again you’re repeatedly and disingenuously conflating my making claims about language with claims about “racist experiences”. I have made no claims about what it is to experience racisim – I’m in no position to.
> know about racism without consulting with those experiencing it, then you will fail in that duty.
I have, I do, and that’s totally irrelevant to everything I’ve written.
> , a declaration of your moral superiority
No. Moral EQUALITY. *You* are the one claiming *I* am inferior to those abused or oppressed. That I cannot know anything, or reason about anything or infer anything unless I have been abused myself. *YOU* are the one pushing inequality.
I say of everyone, equally, that anyone who wishes to, can make the case that something is true or not, right or not. No one needs permission from anyone else to express what they take to be true or right.
You are the one saying I need permission from some mythical consensus representatives from “The Black Community” to tell me what the parameters of my reasoning abilities are.
You are the one suggesting that my being white puts me outside of the duty to create a moral world. You are the one suggesting that only those who are abused can own an equal future. You are the one saying of me, that owing to my being white, I’m in an inferior moral position than others who are not.
This morally abhorrent position you have, and many in the movement have, got themsleves into is outrageous. And as far as I can see the current tactic is to emotionally blackmail people into believeing all this: to shame and guilt white people into taking themsleves to be horribe in virute of their skin colour – not what they believe.
And for those who would take that to be a gross mischaracterization, or to be an absurd reading – I offer exhibt A: the comments of George HG.
No, I am saying that you being white makes you unable to meet the duty to act morally in this case without deferring to those who are suffering the plight that you wish to end because, in this case, the plight you wish to end is founded exactly on the failure to defer to the individuals in question about their ability to determine their lives.
I am not claiming you are morally inferior, I am claiming that subjectivity is a thing and you lack access to a set of particular experiential facts. This is uncontroversial, unless you deny that racism mediates lived experience (which is a denial, essentially, of racism).
This requires no guilt nor shame. It just requires not re-articulating racism. It requires not doing the paternalism that MLK accuses moderates of in Letter from the Birmingham jail.
Yes, but I have made no comments or arguments or analysis of what it is to experience racism.
Unless you think that conducting the philosophy of language and metaethics requires experiencing racism, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.
That conclusions in these fields have an impact on these political movements doesnt mean the claims are *about* peoples experiences.
Economics has an impact on the lives of the poor. A debate about whether, let’s say, negative taxation would increase income to the poor doesnt require any knowledge of what it is like to skip a meal.
Who is impacted by a particular debate will change given the time of year, decade, century and location. But the truth of the matter will not.
The arguments I have made above concern how we establish moral responsibility, what the use and role of language is, and what it properties of a person are morally important. These positions are either right or wrong – and they affect everyone on the planet, not just some movement. I need not have every experience ever in order to defend them.
I have directed these criticism towards a certain kind of person who I take to be liable to these mistakes, a certain kind of activist – but these mistakes are mistakes (or not) on the basis of conclusions within various branches of philosophy and not contingent on my skin colour or “experiences”.
http://www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/reflections/7-the-antinomies-of-privilege
this article addresses many of the themes which have been debated here…
The problem of power.
Michael Burgess: “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” – Francis Crick, nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist
Alternative to eliminative materialism: “The idea that we could think that the brain is not only part of the story, but the whole story, is, well, it is unfounded. It is religious in its scope and reach. Mental phenomena are not neural phenomena. We have no better reason to think that mental lives happen in our brains than we do that speech happens in our mouths.” – Alva Noe, Beyond Brain Reading: Making Sense Of Brain Behavior from NPR Blogs: 13.7: Cosmos And Culture
Michael is a very persistent in his so called metametaethics which is simply eliminative materialism as a staunch position which he defends meticulously. What his materialism eliminates for example is mental states in that he is arguing for not a metametaethics but more of a super-physicalism–all brain states can be reduced to neurology, and all language issues can be reduced to materiality, which thus makes his assertions right when argued as such, but ultimately reductionistic (no reductionism does not lead to clarity).
More problematic than this ideological error is how this ideological error is being used by Michael (hello Witgenstein) for power purposes, not just as a Whitey, but as Truth arbiter (which he reliably denies). Examine the power path and you will find the truth.
As can be seen, he stands immovably on the two feet of Eliminative and Materialism, which he uses to trounce arguments against him, and arguments against him being Whitey, and he must have several other encounters by now. Rather than saying to those with whom he is inexperienced in racism: “I do not and will never understand what you have gone through, and that must be a disgusting, life changing experience of degredation that I would not wish on my worst enemy,” he is assaulting their position (right or wrong). Well, this surely is Whitey on the warpath again, but in Michael’s case, he is not just Whitey by his power position, but Arbiter of Truth (the ultimate power position). The church used the same tactics to overwhelm the populace with it’s claims of transcendental Truth, and now Michael uses the tactics of empirical materialism to attain his power position as Right and White. Why? To avoid his false feelings of guilt (but that would be addressing a fictious mental state). As Michael says, maybe I’m wrong. (P.S, Wallerstein has Nietzsche correct)
Dare I ask: who should be in charge of the political revolution and what (tacitly un-) limited perspective should they marshal?
Behold: the neoliberal white engineer has arrived! Plans of action will be formulated; synergies will be realized; efficiencies will be instituted; redundancies will be eliminated; iniquities shall be eradicated!
Your criticisms of the contemporary student movement would be much more apposite if they engaged properly with the philosophical issues rather than simply offering polemic and many of your claims are not only false, but not even tenable philosophical positions (i.e. that the reader’s experience is the only reality in a novel (see Fredric Jameson, ‘The Political Unconscious’)).
For example, your misrepresentation of the relationship between word and referent has been extensively discussed and rejected in post-Saussurean linguistics. Laclau and Mouffe would argue that the fundamental arbitrariness of the relationship signifier-signified is what ultimately leads to a ground where politics can occur – that is to say, without this constitutive gap between word and referent there would be no agency, just the structure of language. As a result, articulation of concepts is always a political act, and language possesses material force – the opposition thought-reality is therefore removed.
Instead of privileging the phenomenal over the noumenal as you imply, Butler, Laclau and Zizek have all attempted in different ways to traverse the distinction between the two and theorise how particular identities are universalised. In other words, I agree with you that it is insufficient to argue that experience is a privileged site of knowledge, since all identities are by nature particular, not universal, because if a full, closed identity is a contingent moment universalised to the status of an objective structural element then on those grounds the idea that any subject can possess privileged knowledge based on their position in the structure must immediately be disqualified. In fact, this idea was originally developed by Marxists in order to disprove the ontological centrality of the working class.
So, at least at this level, your suspicion of privileged access to knowledge on the part of particular subjects is legitimate. However, there are two important things to bear in mind here:
1) If the objective is a universalisation of a contingent moment, then your argument about word and referent is in tatters. and your inferral that meaning is not political can only be false, since its articulation as a closed, objective element is a political gesture par excellence. In other words, even if literary theorists are wrong to claim that groups have privileged ontological and epistemological status, they are right to argue that the structures which we encounter in our experience are historically conditioned.
2) Even if many members of student groups have an imperfect grasp of some of these philosophical concepts, the student movement is just that: a movement; these people are activists engaged in political action. I have my doubts about the efficacy of identity politics, but I’m not going to criticise it on the grounds that some identities preclude my involvement.
I agree that there are definitely theoretical issues in much of the student movement, and some areas of cultural studies and literary theory, but you haven’t achieved much by not engaging with the literature on its own terms, since all of your criticisms have been discussed endlessly and many have been dealt with. And, ironically, my criticism of you and the student movement is the same: you’re both beholden to a Kantian problematic (phenomenal-noumenal), you’re just on different sides.
I’m familiar with the metaphysics of Zizek et al. and it is a mere redefinition of subjectivity and objectivity to “overcome” distinctions – ie. using the general definitions of subjective, all phenomenologies are subjective – and merely define an “objectivity grounded in the subjective”. That overcomes nothing and is a useless result – as much as Kants – born of fearing scepticism too much and making the same tired confusions (eg. that anything articulated in experience is experiential).
Here is a more precise treatment of the terms: http://blog.mjburgess.co.uk/2015/12/objectivity-and-humility.html .
> signifier-signified
I am not talking about the relationship between the symbol and the concept – that is “the conventional meaning of words”. I’m talking about the relationship between the concept and the world – that is “the refential meaning of words”.
“Rhetoric” occurs in the space between signifier and signfied, yes – because “cool” can signify “low temperature” or “awesome” – but the *concepts* sufficiently distinguished, refer to the world: ie. “the glass is cool – where cool signifies low temperature” is a claim about the way the world is and *either true or false in virute of the way the world is* not on our psychology of language.
> that the reader’s experience is the only reality in a novel
I’m not claiming this is an actual position. I’m claiming only that it is implied by the claims activists make. Look at the method Nietzsche uses to criticise Christianity – is it anything more than “feeling his way around conventional meaning”? No. It is not, for example, an analysis of anything anyone *actually* believes (etc.) because he didnt ask anyone.
Politics is not *just* “the gap between signifier and signified as felt by theorists” that neglects the fact a world exists.
Michael Burgess,
I don’t see that your criticisms of activists are very different than Nietzsche’s criticisms of Christians. Neither you nor Nietzsche has done extensive fieldwork in what Christians or activists “actually believe”. Both of you analyze texts: Nietzsche analyzes texts that Christians read and you analyze texts that activists read. I imagine that you’ve talked to lots of activists, just as Nietzsche, the son of a Lutheran minister, talked to lots of Christians and from your experiences of reading texts and talking to Christians or activists, both of you reach certain conclusions.
It’s interesting that our discussion here mirrors exactly the discussion between Geras and Laclau and Mouffe – their response can be found in Ernesto Laclau, ‘New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time’. Geras argued that discourse theory was untenable because there were things-in-themselves which had to be accounted for and that theories based in linguistics couldn’t account for this.
Laclau’s answer questioned whether things-in-themselves had any meaning outside their social context (he did not question whether there are things outside discourse, since it is obvious that there are). A falling brick clearly exists, but whether we interpret it as an act of God or a manifestation of the Butterfly Effect depends upon the discourse in which the brick finds itself.
I actually agree with your general point that, especially viewed from Europe, the contemporary student movement can be rather baffling since it deploys a lot of concepts which have their origins in US literature departments. I find that much of the analysis breaks down quite quickly when philosophical concepts are introduced. For example, the well-trodden concept ‘cultural appropriation’ establishes identity as property, but this cannot be sustained in the face of a Lacanian or Marxian critique since this would clearly qualify as a false commodity which cannot be owned and traded in the same way as a real commodity.
What I really wanted to argue is that your insistence on asserting the objective has been endlessly discussed and that it would be more effective if you engaged with the literature rather than polemicising about things-in-themselves. A little ontological sympathy goes a long way.
Well even in critique of others we are often caring about nothing more than our own prejudices. In this case, having spent several years as an idealist and verging on endorsing a Zizekian metaphysics in toto, perhaps i’m somewhat concerned to spread the message of my own realisation: that systems of this kind are fundamentally mistaken.
I am not here trying to “solve the philosophical problems of student activism”, i’m merely relating one or two common fallacies to certain elements of student activism because I have an independent interest in these fallacies.
I’ve been thinking about this post and the comments which followed it a good deal in the last few days, and I keep getting stuck in the same place. While I mostly agree with the objections raised (the straw-man depiction of literary theory, the general tone of privileged bratiness, etc…) from a philosophical angle, from a _political_ angle I think Mr. Burgess is right, more or less. Political strategies derived from post-modernism, speaking broadly, are losing political strategies. They make it very hard to build and maintain cohesive groups that can work towards a goal and bring something concrete into the world. I saw this kind of thing all over the place at Occupy Chicago: the best intentions ended in squabbling. And the rhetoric of deconstruction, or queer theory, or whatever, is easily co-opted into the service of reactionaries. You can even catch some of this in the public utterances of the beastly Trump. A lot has been said here already, so I don’t want to drone on. But I wonder what others think about this. Is there a way to make the philosophy line-up with the politics in a useful way, or does one have to be sacrificed?
I hesitate to engage any further in this discussion, but your question seems like not just a good one but one that has already been answered by a lot of helpful thinkers.
Reframe it this way – if my philosophy gives me political rhetoric which is not persuasive, what ought I to do? Socrates answers this question in pretty much every single dialogue. Say what you will about Platonism (I’m not Platonist), but the structure of his answer has something to recommend itself. What Socrates (and really anyone with a sincerely revolutionary politics) will insist on is to focus only on what kind of world is made with some set of ideas. It’s a weird kind of Kantian view, maybe, but it’s totally coherent. If you want something more modern, Habermas provides the same thing. Is his model in Between Facts & Norms persuasive? That’s for the audience to decide. Habermas is worried about legitimacy. Rawls is worried about fairness. Nozick is worried about freedom. Who is worried about persuasiveness as a first principle other than Thrasymachus?
Surely you will rightly respond that persuasiveness really ought to be an important political principle. But the first principle? That kind of view would be the basest form of instrumentality. Not even a strawman Utilitarian or Pragmatist would prioritize effectiveness over effect.
If Critical Race Theory is right about racism, then why should I worry that some individuals refuse to be persuaded? This is a caricature, of course, of our options. Ironically, though, the other option besides clever rhetoric will only be had by way of critical theories of education, courtesy of those dirty, dirty continentals or modern, non-analytic positions like Dewey’s pragmatism.
I also think that, ultimately, you’re wrong to think that all these perspectives are losing strategies. It’s not possible to judge the success of a political movement simply by how people immediately respond. By that sort of measure you might think that Malcolm X didn’t matter.
I don’t mean to imply that persuasiveness should be a first principle, or any kind of principle at all really. Rather, I think the problem is that there is no first principle, and the very structure of post-modern politics is such that there never can be one. This lack of a first principle means that what gets privileged is immediate personal responses and feelings, which have their uses, but make it very hard to construct arguments or to think about them critically. Even if we say the first principle is something like Equality and Human Dignity, if the only language we have to talk about that is “I feel or don’t feel equal to X,” then persuasion and argument remain impossible.
Take your final point about Malcolm X. Much of the power of Mr. X was a result of his rhetoric being bound up with an eternal moral order he took very seriously. Being bound up with the Nation of Islam. I don’t think you can pull those two things apart. Communism didn’t work out too well, but who questions that much of its appeal derived from giving people a Big Idea to attach themselves to – and a sense of community to boot. I don’t see that leftist politics, as being played out on campuses right now, give you any ground for community, except among people who feel similarly aggrieved. (Much as Mr. Trump’s fans have no common thread except similar feelings of indignation).
Not to say that oppression and injustice aren’t real or somehow aren’t problems. And not to say that Critical Race Theory hasn’t done some useful work connecting abstruse concepts to concrete politics. But… but it’s quite clear how you get from CRT and Post-Modern Liberalism to Occupy Wall Street and microaggressions and trigger warnings and renaming the Woodrow Wilson building, The value of such can be debated. What’s not at all clear is how you get from either of those things to large-scale social change beyond the universities, what that change would look like, or if it would be desirable.
I hate to be morbid, but 14 people got shot in California, and this seems to have driven at least 20% of America so mad with fear they are ready to elect a populist demagogue president. What happens if actual terrorists blow-up a bridge during rush hour or something? Can Rawls or Habermas or Derrick Bell stand-up to that? If not, why not?
Sorry to have made this all about absolute principles and extreme cases: you may not be a Platonist, but I sometimes fear I am.
No need to apologize. At least I can see how your argument works.
I think the way that we differently understand the role of Malcolm X is helpful. As I understand it, without Malcolm X, MLK Jr. would have been far less successful. That is, it is very different to judge a social movement from within that movement than without. That’s one of the reason why I so violently disagree with the OP’s original argument. As much as he claims otherwise, he’s providing a critique of a movement from outside of the movement while asserting he’s not “really” outside.
Movements are deliberative communities a bigger deliberative community. Even pretty politically non-revolutionary positions like Rawls’ require (or at least would flourish) with a pluralistic community. I think it’s wrong to think that you get from some specific movement to some specific change. It’s all negotiated.
I think this is the big mistake that a lot of exclusionary liberals make with respect to movements like #BlackLivesMatter or the various student movements. Many liberals want a single, unified liberal movement, but that won’t work (or else it will work in such an abstract way that it won’t look like a traditional social movement).
I don’t know what we’ll get from all these protests either, in some exact sense. This is a challenge for the protesters too. What will we get? No one knows what we’ll get because we’ve yet to really see an America that is honest about racism and honest about dealing with it. Maybe the students will change their mind in 20 years. (That’s sort of the point of having more students.) We don’t have to build a community out of any given movement. We have to build a community with all the movements.
These are super different things politically and rhetorically.
I think you overstate your case a bit in the last paragraph.
Because people are social are communication can be very important. Words are sometimes action in a sense – plotting a murder in words is a moral act.
I’m not much of a fan of identity politics, as I guess you aren’t either. But I think words have a greater role in our lives than you allow.