Critical Race Theory

News & Guts reports:

"While dozens of Republican lawmakers around the country speak out against critical race theory, there have been questions about whether these politicians actually know what they are fighting against."

Imagine how much time and energy might have been spared if more people had taken a similar approach with Jordan Peterson and postmodernism and Marxism!

Perhaps some people learned from the case of Peterson, and are better prepared this time around.

Who knows. It would be nice to think that there are people out there somewhere who are actually learning things, and therefore behaving in a more sensible and effective manner than they used to. 

Do Peterson and Republican wingnuts and similar idiots actually have a new positive effect, by acquainting people with things so as postmodernism and Marxism and critical race theory, things with which they were previously unfamiliar?

I should probably end this post pretty soon, I seem to be in danger of getting carried away by silly amounts of optimism. I like optimism generally but I believe that it can be overdone. 

Although I must mention before ending, for the benefit of those who haven't already read it in this blog, that it actually took Jordan Peterson for me to finally learn what postmodernism is and that I am a postmodernist, even though I'm about a year older than Jordan Peterson.

It takes what it takes, whatever it is.

How This Postmodern Thing is Going So Far

For over 57 years, I managed to avoid learning enough about postmodernism to have any idea what it was. (Would it have been possible for me to remain ignorant about it for so long if I had lived in Paris? That's a non-rhetorical question. I have no idea to what extent postmodernism precepts might be a "part of the air" in Paris. I don't know whether it would be as difficult to live in Paris and not know what postmodernism is as it is to live in the US and not know the rules of baseball.) I heard mostly negative remarks about it and mostly accepted those remarks. Then, just a few months ago, I heard about Jordan Peterson for the first time, because Peterson was annoying some of my friends. Some negative remarks he made about postmodernism caught my attention because they sounded so absurd. So, for the very first time ever, I looked for postmodernists and what they themselves said about what postmodernism was. Very soon, I had my hands on a copy of Derrida's Of Grammatology. I devoured that magnificent book, and exclaimed,

"I'm a postmodernist!"

Unfortunately, however, the remarks I heard about postmodernism, apart from those made by actual postmodernists, continued to be the sort of negative remarks I had heard all my life, and had little or nothing to do with what postmodernists actually said. Although I'd started to call myself a postmodernist, I am not against technology, or against reality, or against authorship. Neither are Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard...

I am against patriarchy, colonialism, over-simplification, racism, sexism. Far from being opposed to technology or science or reality, since this cataclysm which has resulted in my identifying as postmodern, I have greatly intensified my study of advanced mathematics, electromagnetism, industrial manufacture, quantum theory and other STEM subjects.

As far as being "against authorship" -- what could that possibly mean, for an author, such as myself, to be "against authorship"? I suppose that this particular misunderstanding of postmodernism comes from the incomprehension of the very basic postmodern insight that the effect of any piece of writing depends just as much upon its readers as upon that which was actually written.

Perhaps this last insight can help me somewhat when I see people claiming all sports of nonsense about an entire group of people, the postmodernists: just as any author cannot control how his readers will understand or misunderstand what he or she writes, so postmodernists cannot control what people will say or write about us. All we can do is persevere in our own efforts. Perhaps if, now and then, we notice that someone actually understands something we've said, we can recognize that recognition. That might be better than trying to chase down the endless nonsensical things said about us, like a man trying to chase down a swarm of bees because one of them has bitten him.

Perhaps I should be hesitant to apply the label of postmodernist to myself so soon after having begun to study postmodernist literature.

Perhaps it would be good for me to keep in mind how seldom those who are considered the major figures of postmodernist literature actually referred to themselves as postmodernists. Perhaps it would be better for me to say that I've read some Derrida and found him to be profoundly delightful and not at all incomprehensible (perhaps because I share many of his interests). I haven't really had a comparable experience yet with any of the other postmodernists (as they are known by others, and much more rarely to themselves).

I think it makes sense to keep the postmodernist label for now, a couple of months after having so hastily adopted it. Although I have so far only read one postmodernist with great enthusiasm, I have a great deal in common with most of those in the group: a lack of recognition of anything I can call absolute truth; as I mentioned above, an opposition to patriarchy, colonialism, over-simplification, racism, sexism; the realization that relativity occurs not only in physics but also in ethics; a suspicion of claims of having found "the answer," whether those claims have been made in the name of Buddhism, Christianity, Marxism or what have you; a particular concern for the environment -- those sorts of things.

And if eventually the nonsensical definitions of postmodernism by people claiming to be its adherents, its opponents or its more or less sympathetic observers -- all three can be quite annoying -- prove to be to much, then I can reject the postmodernist label -- and I will have that, too, in common with many of the great postmodernists.

Jordan Peterson Accidentally Helped Me Realize I'm a Post-Modernist

Can it really be less than 24 hours since I began to read Derrida? Yes. It be.

About a week and a half ago, I first started to notice the existence of Jordan Peterson, in the remarks of otherwise seemingly sedate and reasonable people expressing extreme distaste for him. I soon heard Peterson, on YouTube, describing what he asserted was postmodernism. I was hazy about what exactly postmodernism was, but not so hazy that I couldn't see that what Peterson was saying had to be inaccurate.

More precisely: Peterson is warning us all about neo-Marxist postmodernists. He claims neo-Marxist postmodernists want to destroy Western civilization. That they say people belong in groups determined by their ethnicity and gender, and that all these groups are condemned to war against each other forever.

So I did what I could have done decades ago: I turned to actual Marxists and postmodernists for their definitions of Marxism and postmodernism, and learned that, outside of the imaginations of people like Peterson and his fans, neo-Marxist postmodernists don't exist: a defining characteristic of postmodernism is a skepticism toward all meta-narratives, and Marxism IS one of those very meta-narratives.

Now: Marxists and postmodernists will agree about SOME things. Such as that Jordan Peterson is constantly making stuff up and selling it at high prices as invaluable truth. But any reasonable person of any political or philosophical tendency will see that, if he or she takes a little time and effort to examine the matter.

A huge bell went off in my head, because, for decades, I had been skeptical toward all meta-narratives. I'm always insisting that things are more complicated than that. You know that episode of "The Simpsons" where Lisa is reading some Buddhist literature, and has a sudden epiphany and yells, "I'M A BUDDHIST!" Same thing happened to me, except I didn't yell, and I realized I'm a postmodernist, not a Buddhist.

Yesterday, I began reading the 40th anniversary revised edition of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's English translation of Derrida's On Grammatology, with an introduction by Judith Butler and a new Afterword by Spivak, and, people: these are my peeps.

And we don't want to destroy Western civilization or war against all other groups. Derrida is a total Western-civilization-phile from Homer to Heidegger.

My advice, besides checking out Derrida and Spivak and Butler, is to not believe anything Peterson says. About anything. At all. Ever. When Peterson disses a dead writer like Derrida or a living one like Butler, READ THAT WRITER.

Man, wouldn't it be a huge irony if Jordan Peterson, of all people, unintentionally caused people to read more good books?

It was with some reluctance that I sought out an English translation of a book by Derrida, rather than the French original, but undergraduate French classes were a long, long time ago. In the case of Of Grammatology, I was fortunate -- we all are fortunate -- because Spivak, the translator of Of Grammatology, is a tremendous writer in her own right. I have no idea, yet, what the quality of other English translations of Derrida or other French postmodernists might be.

Jordan Peterson is Not an Intellectual, He Just Plays One on YouTube

PZ Meyers sez we should call Jordan Peterson what he is: an anti-intellectual. I'm down with that. (And it's nice to be able to agree with PZ Meyers about something for a change.)

This takedown of Peterson by Nathan J Robinson in Current Affairs is wonderful. I take exception with Robinson referring to Peterson as an intellectual. But Robinson makes it clear that he uses the term very loosely:

"In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot that one hopes not to get seated next to on a train. But we do not live in a reasonable world."

And I also take issue with Robinson's... okay, I was about to say that I take issue with Robinson's characterization of Peterson as "the intellectual we deserve," and giving some of the responsibility for Peterson's success to the sorry state of the Left -- but then I remembered the Occupy movement and their position that "it's okay not to have goals" and how that has always struck me as a particularly poor attitude for a (supposedly) political movement to take.

But in this post, I'm about accentuating the upside. I see intellectuals (real ones) being energized by Peterson. If anyone ever could energize and unite Marxists, postmodernists, intersectional feminists, philosophers in general, English teachers, evolutionary biologists, comparative mythologists and other (real) intellectuals who normally don't necessarily all get along so well with each other, then surely it's Mr Go Clean Up Your Room There Bucko. If any one person ever could inspire us to go grab the public by its mental lapels and explain to them just who really does and does not deserve to be called an intellectual, it's Peterson, with his constant and thorough misrepresentation of who we are and what we do and say and want.

Oh and by the way, let me take the opportunity to address the reason I've seen most often proposed by writers on the Right for the Left's hostility to Peterson: the amount of money that he makes. That's absurd. George Clooney has made over a billion dollars so far, many times as much as Peterson, and we're not pissed off at him. Because Clooney isn't constantly talking out of his ass.

I'd also like to address the excuses so often being made for him by critics on the Left: he's not so bad, they say. Yes, very many of his fans are alt-right and antisemitic and brimming with toxic sexism and otherwise atavistic, but he's not far-right. How much longer will the non-Right keep giving Peterson this thoroughly undeserved concession? Wake up and smell the barbed wire: he's far-right. That's why all of those fans of his are far-right (and very often deny that they are, perhaps oftener than not). I know of only one admiring description of Peterson from the Left -- except, to be precise, it's from an author, a fellow mythologist, who sez "I'm a Leftist and I like Peterson." I'm not sure whether anyone else sez that that guy is a Leftist.

Jordan Peterson, Marxism and Postmodernism

Jordan Peterson is a horse's ass, a pseudo-intellectual, someone that stupid people can follow and believe that they're engaging in intellectual discourse.

One of Peterson's favorite topics are the neo-Marxist postmodernists who have taken over our campuses and are busy enslaving the minds of our youth. Peterson goes into very great detail about the history, motives and goals of this movement of neo-Marxist postmodernists, as if he were a great authority on the subject of neo-Marxist postmodernism.

Here's an example of how far Peterson is from being a real intellectual, or a real authority on anything at all: there is no such thing as a Marxist postmodernist, neo-Marxist or not, and there is no such thing as a postmodernist Marxist. One of the most central and basic features of postmodernism is a skepticism toward all-encompassing theories of society. Marxism IS such an all-encompassing theory: namely, the theory that all human history has been the history of economic class struggle. Marxism insists that it all boils down to that. Postmodernism, in response to Marxism and to any other theory which insists that person A responds in manner X because of condition 1, for example, Freudianism and its insistence that all human behavior can be reduced, ultimately, to the sexual impulse, says that people are free and can respond differently, that they are not bound by economic or sexual forces or by any other universal conditions. Postmodernism is always insisting that things are a little more complicated.

As for historical context, postmodernism arose in the form of philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida in opposition to a Marxist domination of certain parts of French academia in the 1960's. At the time, the Marxist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was about as popular as Peterson is in the US right now. Fortunately for France, Sartre was very far from being a horse's ass.

But why take my word for any of this? Some Marxist works written in opposition to postmodernism include Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism: The Cultural logic of Late Capitalism, David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity, Perry Anderson's The Origins of Postmodernity, and Alex Callinicos' Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critque

As to Peterson's assertion that we can learn from the social hierarchies of lobsters, if you're not already laughing out loud, you can ask an evolutionary biologist about that one. Probably just about any evolutionary biologist would do.