Title:
Cynical theories : how activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity-and why this harms everybody
Author:
Pluckrose, Helen, author.
Personal Author:
Edition:
First edition.
Publication Information:
Durham, North Carolina : Pitchstone Publishing, [2020]
©2020
Physical Description:
351 pages ; 24 cm
Summary:
"Outlines the origin and evolution of postmodern thought over the last half century and argues that the unchecked spread and application of postmodern ideas -- from academia, to activist circles, to the public at large - presents an authoritarian ideological threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself"--
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Pluckrose and Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs ideas like these, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Pluckrose and Lindsay warn that the unchecked proliferation of anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself. -- adapted from jacket
General Note:
In title "Cynical" appears above the word "Critical", which is presented with a strikethrough.
Language:
English
Contents:
Introduction -- Postmodernism: a revolution in knowledge and power -- Postmodernism's applied turn: making oppression real -- Postcolonial theory: deconstructing the West to save the other -- Queer theory: freedom from the normal -- Critical race theory and intersectionality: ending racism by seeing it everywhere -- Feminisms and gender studies: simplification as sophistication -- Disability and fat studies: support-group identity theory -- Social justice scholarship and thought: the truth according to social justice -- Social justice in action: theory always looks good on paper -- An alternative to the ideology of social justice: liberalism without identity politics.
Added Author:
ISBN:
9781634312028
Format :
Book
