Postmodernism has sex with Critical Theory ...

and produced a deformed child called Social Justice. This is a thick book and though Helen Pluckrose is easy to listen to, one can drift off requiring a double take by rewinding. However even with one reading, you get the historical arch of where we are today with on-line campus student struggle sessions and the secular faithful imposing only one truth around modern society. It is also a way to understand the coded language of Social Justice activists, where words have meanings that the average person misunderstands as something else. This is an important book regarding the concerns of liberal humanists and people who believe in the universality of human rights. We are again moving into troubling social times with identity politics and dog whistles not only coming from the nationalistic right but also the deconstructing everything left. Will the center of Western Liberal democracies hold? Only time will tell. But if you are worried and confused, this book helps with understanding what the f**ck just happened since 2010.

5 people found this helpful

Why Trump Banned Critical Race Theory

Clearly explains the history and meaning of these confusing ideas: post-modernism, deconstructionism, queer theory critical race theory (CRT) and others. The book White Fragility is debunked in a handful of sentences. I don't think the authors are Trump supporters but after understanding what CRT is, you may agree with the US government decision to ban the teaching of CRT at state funded institutions. This book helps you tell the difference between good social justice and bad Social Justice.

Two criticisms: (1) There were a few times they left bad takes in the recording. I mean the narrator would start a sentence and then repeat it but this wasn't edited out. (2) Post-modernism is hard to understand and sometimes it's hard to tell if the narrator is reading a quote or reading her writing. In print, this would be obvious. I kind of wish I had read the book instead of listening to it.

This book is very good. I hope that its defense of Liberalism and skillful counter arguments against bad Social Justice become more popular. I hope that we can salvage whatever is useful from post-modernism etc and discard the rest.

3 people found this helpful

Some interesting points but often missed the point

The authors seem to judge the overarching idea of Postmodernism by its most extreme tangents. Akin to the co-opting of Nietzschian philosphy to Nazism.

Many times the author miss attributed terms to Postmodernism when the Postmodern terms have already evolved. For example, on several occasions they insisted that Postmodernists referred to "disabled people" and "black people" putting their intersectional identity first but in reality the post modern term would be "people with a disability" and the overarching term "people of color". The author used these linguistic arguments throughout the book to highlight that Postmodernists put more weight on the differences in people than their similatities, this is not true.

I understand that in a book refuting theory they are going to argue against the most extreme points but any rational Postmodernist thinker is not going to argue for these same extremes. Several of the arguments against Postmodernism in this book are textbook strawmen. They argue against the absolute extremes while ignoring the moderate all together.

This book did a great job supporting its claim that liberalism is the way forward in an increasingly polarized world. Their idea however, that Postmodernism is incompatible with Liberalism is absurd. You can believe in the idea of subjective and objective truths while also being accepting and accommodating of the subjective truths of others.

Liberalism is a way to live but Postmodernism is a way to think.

2 people found this helpful

Good overview of Post Modernism...

Poor defense of objectivity.

They should have conviction in their own field and think that if all government funding for universities was dropped her field would go on, and not the SJW stuff. They call for not defunding those departments because they know they can't on principle ask for it to be defunded without all university funding being pulled. And yet also calls for a separation of church and state which the underlying principle is that man should be free to think for himself, to not support ideas that he doesn't hold. But by the way tax me and do support this entire university by expropriating my own values that I produced by my own effort.

Overall worth the time.

2 people found this helpful

Best Book of 2020

One of the greatest books I've ever read. Initially I was hesitant to dedicate my time to reading it, but I can assure you that this book is absolutely worth every second of your time.

Thank you

Like Richard Dawkins gave us the language and arguments to beat off magical thinking so Pluckrose and Lindsay provide us with all the tools we need to marginalize Social Justice Theory in all its insidious forms. Bravo!

Great listen

The language can be a bit tricky to get used to if you aren't familiar with a lot of it, but you'll understand the deeper into it you get. It all ties together nicely.

Necessary work but a slog

This book needed to be written: a careful survey of social justice ideology in the academy and criticism of it. Thank you Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian for your service. But it's just tough to listen to so much nonsense and cynical, extortionate rhetoric. I will listen to it again, especially the introduction and last chapter, for the sake of making a few notes, but I can't call this an enjoyable read.

Not an easy listen...

This book was extremely interesting, seemingly a more moderate left wing refutation of far left social Justice theory; a perspective not often heard.

Due mainly to the subject matter, the work is quite academic at times and can be hard to follow/difficult to get into, especially for the layperson.

That being said, it is also quite informative and supremely interesting.

A Pragmatic Geneology of Morals

Cynical Theories provides an historical analysis of the roots of postmodernism as well as the pragmatic understanding of where-we-are-now. Perhaps the biggest contribution of this book is the exploration of what they call "applied post-modernism". Applied post-modernism, they argue, derives an 'ought' from what 'is'. However, as a rightfully (and classically) liberal institution, the academy should openly investigate what "is" through a dialectical process, rather than to establish an orthodox belief structure on what "ought" to be,. It is not their business to establish profanity laws in an attempt to control public discourse. Controlling public discourse circumvents the dialectical process; it does not transcend it as the new Elect of the academy would have us believe. The Sacred and the Profane is the province (or providence) of religious institutions.

Their argument is essential John Milton's argument: "Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"