Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody Hardcover – August 25, 2020

This is a very important book and I will try to review it appropriately. Bear with me. First, the jacket art is misleading. It makes the book look like an 'advocacy' book of the sort usually associated with contemporary politics. It advocates for a point of view, but it is a densely-argued, densely-written scholarly book. It is, at many points, painful to read because the ideas which are being depicted and countered are both wrongheaded (or banal) on their face but of immense influence. How did we ever allow ourselves to get here? (we scream to ourselves), but that is where we are and it is a very dangerous place, initially destroying whole segments of universities and now finding its way into the external, real-world society.The book is written in three acts; it explains postmodernism and its progenitors (a nexus of ideas already passé in the 80's); shows how postmodernism was applied (creating ". . . Studies" departments, and so on) and then reified, with Social Justice (to be distinguished from social justice) warriors in the streets. It then offers a coda, an alternative to this nexus of ideas and activity: traditional liberalism. This is largely rational liberalism (the defense of reason, logic and evidence; the necessary openness to a multiplicity of ideas; the refusal to be force-fed ideological dogma) and nearly every conservative would subscribe to the alternative which the authors offer (or at least 98% of it).The argument is very detailed; we get down to the nitty gritty of individual articles published by race/gender/identity theorists and see how even obscure programs ("fat studies") have been initiated.The argument is persuasive and, I believe, scrupulously fair, but it lacks the liveliness and punch of the critiques of individuals such as Camille Paglia who have exposed the nudity of these reigning emperors and empresses for decades. It is strong medicine; we receive detailed depictions of the syndromes in the best scholarly fashion, but there is less outright and passionate debunking than many would prefer.I would love to see this book as the 'common read' for a university but that will never happen. Students should realize that the dogma they are about to be force-fed is nonsensical. We receive a bit of the anticipated counterattack in the coda, where issues are faced head-on. An example:WE AFFIRM that sexism remains a problem in society and needs to be addressed.WE DENY that Theoretical approaches to gender issues, including queer Theory and intersectional feminism, which work on blank slatist theories of sex and gender, are useful to address it as we believe it is necessary to acknowledge biological realties to address such issues.(The authors' orientation is secular and scientific in many senses of the terms, so that their go-to authority for support is often Steven Pinker.)I would recommend the following supplementary books, each of which is more 'conservative' and, with one exception, a livelier read:Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral, THEORY'S EMPIRE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF DISSENT. (47 essays by principal thinkers, including [memorably] Chomsky).Roger Scruton, FOOLS, FRAUDS AND FIREBRANDS: THINKERS OF THE NEW LEFT. (Note that the title is more hyperbolic than the book, written by the principal conservative voice of our time.)Heather Mac Donald, THE DIVERSITY DELUSION: HOW RACE AND GENDER PANDERING CORRUPT THE UNIVERSITY AND UNDERMINE OUR CULTURE. (The title and subtitle are self-explanatory. Written at the nexus of top-flight journalism and serious scholarship.)Paul Boghossian, FEAR OF KNOWLEDGE: AGAINST RELATIVISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM. (The premier philosophic counterattack by a preeminent analytic philosopher. Not for the casual reader.)Stephen R. C. Hicks, EXPLAINING POSTMODERNISM: SKEPTICISM AND SOCIALISM FROM ROUSSEAU TO FOUCAULT, Expanded Edition. (The only one of these books that is listed in the authors' bibliography. It is crucial for an important argument which the authors mention twice, though largely in passing—the notion that the French Nietzscheans were devastated by the collapse of communism and the oceans of blood it left in its wake. They knew that it could not stand up against the forces of history, evidence, logic and reason and so they assaulted the truth claims associated with the Enlightenment, 'removing' the foundations for, in effect, rational discourse that could be tested in the arena of ideas.)One final point: this is (given the current ethos) a brave book. It proclaims what may be obvious but what is now forbidden to say—that there is such a thing as the individual and such a thing as common humanity and, yes, human nature (p. 257). It also says, without qualification, that "we must oppose the institutionalization of [reified postmodernism's] belief system" (p. 264). "We must object to any requirement of an orthodox Social Justice statement of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or mandatory diversity or equity training, just as we would object to public institutions that required a statement of Christian or Muslim belief or attendance of church or mosque" (p. 264). Amen.

I’ve now read three chapters of this book and I must admit that I find it excellent. I am still concerned about the relationship between the authors, particularly James Lindsay, with Sovereign Nations, and no one will answer my questions about it. But reading this book, it is easy to ignore that for the moment. Interesting in this connection, however, the authors make an oblique reference in their introduction that some scholars will find them to be nothing but right wing reactionaries, but that this charge would not survive a fair reading of their book (p 20). I believe on the basis of what I’ve read, that is likely true. But it is nonetheless a perfectly legitimate question, one I think the authors owe their readers an answer to.That said, the book seems to have two over-riding sections. The first is on postmodernism and the second, the longer section, is on applied postmodernism, known as Social Justice. If I had to summarize, I might argue that they have presented the phenomenon as a professionally sophisticated kind of gaslighting, “a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality.” The attack on reality is presented in the first part, as in the wake of the postmodernism of the 60’s to the 80’s or 90’s, there is really nothing left that anyone could call real. It was why, according to this book, that postmodernism died in the academy. It literally had “nothing” to offer. The power acquisition comes from the applied postmodernism that is Social Justice, which assumed the critical method of its predecessor but added the one thing its predecessor denied to itself and everyone else, something real. That something is oppression, the only inevitable outcome of all human activity, which leads to the one activity worthy of doing, exposing it.That is what all of the disciplines under the banner of social justice do, they expose the unavoidable inequities of power and seek to change them. And I think it would be fair to say that given the existential nature of power inequities, that is all the advocates of Social Justice see. It is, therefore, just a bit difficult to acquire any reasonable grasp of what the “Justice” in their Social Justice would look like. Indeed, the authors lay this out convincingly in the chapter 5, “Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality.” We learn there that because a marginalized racial group has unique knowledge, their voice must be regarded as authentic and authoritative in such a way as to foreclose any disputes about their reading of any given situation. That means that racism, and other forms of oppression along the intersectionality scale, is whatever the oppressed say it is. Oppression must be continually identified, analyzed, and challenged. No one is ever done. That suggests the proverbial joke about how the beatings will continue until morale improves.The other aspect of that chapter that is excellently explained is what I want to euphemistically call “the tower of Babel.” We seem to be well on our way toward a perpetually expanding list of marginalized subcategories, some competing with others for marginalized bona fides, and some suggesting that others should be dropped from the intersectionality scale altogether. My favorite, I think, is the suggestion that straight black men are now the white people of black people. (p 129) But I emoted a grimacing laugh at the controversy when an “ethnic minority beautician essentially misgendered a person claiming to be a trans woman by declining to wax around her testicles on grounds that their religion and customs prohibited contact with male genitlia.” (p 129)But the real concern that the book brings out is the sustained rejection of the Enlightenment heritage, which is based on 4 central ideas. That there are truths independent of any individual mind and thus in some sense universal. That it is possible to have some objective knowledge of them. That reason is the best way to achieve and justify such knowledge. And that acting rationally in response to such knowledge is the grounds for human progress and increases our chances of achieving progressive aims. All of this has been rejected by postmodernism and its contemorary practitioners, leaving only power and the zero-sum game of Social Justice in its wake.

"Cynical Theories" is a thought-provoking book that delves into the evolution of postmodernism and its impact on contemporary discourse, particularly in the realms of social justice and identity politics. Authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay critically examine the development of critical theories, such as postmodernism and critical social justice, and their influence on academia and society. They argue that these theories have led to a polarized and divisive intellectual landscape, where ideology often supersedes rational discourse.

Es un excelente estudio sobre el origen del movimiento SocialJustice.

Great book despite on some parts it depicts a dense reading for someone without a background on Social Sciences. I would definitively recommend it!

This book gives a detailed insight into the origins of the many 'woke' ideas plaguing our societies at the moment. These origins are in the largely worthless ideas of the French postmodern philosophers of the 1960s and 70s. These were people such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and others. They expressed their ideas in incomprehensible prose. These ideas have morphed over time into the anti-science and frequently preposterous nonsense of modern wokeism.The book requires concentration due to the abstruse nature of the subject matter but really gives a detailed and accurate history of the background. A valuable resource.

which deconstructs(!) the various facets of wokenism and sheds light into the absurdity and reactionary character of many aspects of so-called postmodern critical "theory"