Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan continue to delve into philosophical issues raised by our interview with Fukuyama. Chiefly, he recommends a "creedal national identity" as a solution for tribalism. Does this work? More abstractly, Fukuyama takes this "demand for recognition" issue as coming from Hegel (or rather Kojeve's interpretation of Hegel, which is much easier to understand Continue Reading …
Ep. 209: Guest Francis Fukuyama on Identity Politics (Part One)
We interview Francis Fukuyama about his 2018 book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. What motivates people? Economists point to desire, and to rationality as a way of efficiently getting what we desire. Frank says this misses out on the third aspect of the soul that Plato identified in the Republic: thymos, or spiritedness. Our thymos makes us Continue Reading …
Ep. 209: Guest Francis Fukuyama on Identity Politics (Citizen Edition)
We interview Francis Fukuyama about his 2018 book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment and then continue the discussion on our own. What motivates people? Economists point to desire, and to rationality as a way of efficiently getting what we desire. Frank says this misses out on the third aspect of the soul that Plato identified in the Republic: Continue Reading …
Bonus Discussion: Identity Politics Preliminaries (Citizens Only)
Wes and Mark try to figure out whether anyone wants us to have a full episode on identity politics, maybe reading Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment by Francis Fukuyama or some Ta-Nehisi Coates. We've already covered a number of elements of this: white privilege and James Baldwin, electoral strategy with Rorty and our free-form political episode, Continue Reading …
The Real Redneck
The return to the soil, to nature, is a recurring preoccupation of the civilized. Whenever a society reaches a state of high development it seems a repeating pattern that a segment of the population begins to yearn for the good ol’ days of yore. Ironically, even the ancients knew this temptation. Recall Cicero’s lament: “O the times! O the morals!” But even the Greeks reached a Continue Reading …
Why Identity Politics is Illiberal (Belly Dancing, Ctd)
In my post on the identity politics of belly dancing, in which I argued that Randa Jarrar’s recent tirade against white belly dancers must imply the moral inferiority of white women, I bypassed – because I thought it particularly weak – the notion that white belly dancing unwittingly perpetuates racist stereotypes about Arabs, even if there is nothing inherently mocking or Continue Reading …
On the Identity Politics of Belly Dancing
Novelist Randa Jarrar has been mocked – and accused of racism – for telling the world that she “can’t stand” white belly dancers. As Eugene Volokh notes, if we were to universalize Jarrar’s objections to “cultural appropriation,” then we might object to East Asian cellists or Japanese productions of Shakespeare, rather than treating the arts as they ought to be treated: as the Continue Reading …
The Problem with Academia Today: Corporatism, Not Identity Politics
Andrew Delbanco, author of his own book on what ails today's university, gives the thumbs down to another critique that tilts at feminists and queer theorists: The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind. Delbanco is sympathetic to the notion that identity politics has taken its toll on academic life (as am I). But apparently Continue Reading …