Posts in cultural politicss
Chapter 2: Becoming Deplorable. Excerpt from Springtime for Snowflakes
Criticism of political correctness was supposed to be the exclusive province of the rightwing. For most observers, it was almost inconceivable that an anti-P.C. critic could come from another political quarter. Unsurprisingly, then, the majority of people who discovered my case, including some reporters, simply assumed that I was a conservative. As one Twitter troll put it: "You're anti-P.C.? You must be a rightwing nut-job." But as I explained in numerous interviews and essays, I was not a Trump supporter; I was never a right-winger, or an alt-right-winger; I was never a conservative of any variety. Hell, I wasn't even a classical John Stuart Mill liberal.
In fact, for several years, I had identified as a left communist. My politics were to the left (and considerably critical of the authoritarianism) of Bolshevism!
academia, discourse analysis, George Holyoake, Historical Inter-Field, catastrophism, cultural politicss, Darwinism, David Bloor, dissidence, dissidents, global, leftism, libertarianism, Mao, Maoism, "academic freedom", political-correctness, public sphere, social justice, STS, TrumpismDylan Rectenwald June 16, 2019 Comment
Communist Professor Took The Red Pill, and Reality Changed His Life
Click on title above for video.
"Michael Rectenwald was a professor at New York University who described himself as a full blown Communist. But when he committed the mortal sin of [against] collectivism, which is to question the wisdom of the party line …. The process was enlightening because it allowed Professor Rectenwald to see that leftist ideology is merely a velvet glove that covers an iron fist."
Corrections: The bias reporting hotline was instituted in the fall of 2016, not 2014. Two, I was never fired from NYU but rather retired voluntarily and on "amicable" term.
Professor Rectenwald will be a speaker at Red Pill Expo in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 7 at 2:30 PM.. His topic is Leftism, Leftism Everywhere. Tickets are available here.
academia, activism, corporate-socialism, cultural politicss, dissidence, dissidents, leftism, leftist political crimes, Marxism, political-correctness, politics, protest, social justice, "academic freedom"Dylan Rectenwald June 5, 2019 Comment
Excerpt from Chapter 6 of Springtime for Snowflakes: Villains and Laughing Stocks, The Gender Jackpot, Transgressing the Boundaries
Obviously, I had by now known and accepted the premise that English Studies was a battlefield of "textual politics," and that the players made no bones about their agendas. Previously, critics in the field, like the old New Critics with their plodding close reading of texts, had pretended to be neutral, but their neutrality was merely a thin scrim for cultural domination. Dead white men had ruled the English canon long enough. But this was only the most flagrant of offenses. Other suspects were singled out for prosecution – including an exclusive focus on the text itself (New Criticism), assuming the centrality or superiority of European culture (Eurocentrism), implicitly endorsing heterosexuality as a norm (heteronormativity), believing that humanity is exceptional and that individual humans have unitary selves (humanism), believing in an essence of human nature and/or in the essence of essential types of humans such as racial groups and women and men (essentialism), the belief that neutral knowledge is discoverable by scientific means (positivism), the belief that words might faithfully represent an external reality (logocentrism), and the privileging of the masculine in the construction of meaning (phallogocentrism) – among others. Every one of these notions or beliefs has been treated as a villain, a laughing stock, or both.
academia, Barry Barnes, Bruno Latour, cultural politicss, David Bloor, George Lukacs, history-of-science, literature, Marxism, Nietzsche, philosophy-of-science, Science Studies, science-and-culture, Science-and-Literature, SSK, STS, evolutionary theory, Darwinism, social constructivism, social constructionism, Sokal Hoax, Science Wars, epistemology, epistemological solipsismDylan Rectenwald May 28, 2019 Comment
What is the "Point de Capiton" of "Leftist Ideology?"
This brings me to the ultimate question of this essay: since, according to Žižek and others, a non-ideological perspective is impossible, and, as the le point de capton is the "kernel" of ideology, what is le point de capton of leftist ideology, generally considered—that is, what is the common organizing principle of leftist ideologies?
cultural politicss, dissidents, Lenin, Maoism, Mao, Marx, Marxism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, morality, objective morality, protest, ideology, leftism, Zizek, ideology critique, political criminality, leftist political crimesDylan Rectenwald May 21, 2019 Comment
Libertarianism(s) versus Postmodernism and "Social Justice" Ideology
Some major corporations now intervene in social and political issues and controversies, partaking in a new corporate activism. The newly "woke" corporations support activist groups and social movements, while adding their voices to political debates. Woke capitalism has endorsed Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo Movement, contemporary feminism, LGBTQ rights, and immigration activism, among other leftist causes .… The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed, was delivered at the Mises Institute on March 22, 2019. The video of the talk can be found here. Originally published in the new English review the New English Review.
libertarianism, postmodernism, politics, cultural politicss, corporate-socialismDylan Rectenwald April 1, 2019 Mises InstituteComment
After "Social Justice": New Paradigms for the Humanities and Social Sciences
In this talk, I review critiques of social justice then point to several emergent paradigms gaining attention outside of the academy. in New English Review February 2019 February 2019.
academia, cultural politicss, other, politics, protest, social justice, Nietzsche, neo-reaction, integral-theory, meta-modernism, neo-modernismDylan Rectenwald February 1, 2019 Comment
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: How Marx Predicted the Fate of Marxism
A few months ago, I was surprised and disappointed to learn that Marx's famous statement, the title of this essay and a rejoinder to Hegel's supposed remark—"that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice"—had been appropriated by the contemporary Slovenian Marxist and psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek, for the title of one of his books. I was disappointed because I had considered using the title myself. I was surprised because, not having read Žižek's entire oeuvre, I hadn't known of his appropriation. Further, quite apart from my own intended (and past casual) use, I was astonished to see how unselfconscious and lacking in intentional irony Žižek had been in naming a book about capitalism First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009).
socialism, politics, other, Marxism, dissidents, dissidence, libertarianism, cultural politicssDylan Rectenwald January 1, 2019 Comment
On the Origins and Character of "Social Justice"
One of the great ironies of Western political history involves the term "social justice." Although a core idea within liberalism and socialism for at least 175 years, the background and origin of "social justice" was a cultural and political conservatism. The irony of the "cultural appropriation" of social justice by liberalism and socialism has recently redoubled. Suggestive of a seemingly undeniably intangible good—that is, of just, fair, well-ordered, and harmonious social relations—social justice is now implicated in fierce and sometimes violent antagonisms. Social justice crystallizes in two words some of the most contentious issues roiling North American politics today. Contemporary social justice bears little resemblance to the original social justice or even more recent movements that have gone by the same name.
19thc, cultural politicss, other, philosophy, religion-non-religion, social justiceDylan Rectenwald August 1, 2018 Comment
"Social Justice" and Its Postmodern Parentage
At the moment postmodern theory lay dying in the academy, it bore a child, namely, "social justice." Social justice gestated within the university as postmodern theory ruled the roost. It was nursed during the Occupy movement and the Obama era. The financial crisis left its hapless followers in search of empowerment. It took root on the internet on social media. But because its parent had taught it that the object world is not real, or else that the world at large was beyond one's purview, the child of postmodern theory could only change itself, as well as, so it imagined, those who bore signs of its oppressors. In Academic Questions. 31.2. (10 April 2018): 130-139.
academia, activism, cultural politicss, postmodernism, social justiceDylan Rectenwald April 10, 2018 Comment
(Part of The New Thought Police – Social Justice Warriors) (Video).
As a growing body of scholars and public intellectuals suggest, nothing less than a moral revolution is underway in liberal society, broadly construed. The old rules of speech and behavior are giving way to a new package of moral and political imperatives. As illustrated regularly on college campuses and beyond, the advocates of this new moral creed aim to enforce adherence to their beliefs with the ferocity of religious zealots. The political and quasi-religious creed is known as "social justice," and the rationale for its enforcement is to protect and promote the members of marginalized identity groups. Far from being limited to a few student activists…social justice has also traveled far afield of academia, exerting a growing influence on social media, mass media, corporate America, and other elements of the broader culture….Vox News. 14 June 2017.
cultural politicss, social justice, philosophyDylan Rectenwald June 14, 2017 Comment
The Inauguration of Trump and the Early Opposition to Trumpism
I have been asked what I think about the protests and marches against the inauguration of Donald Trump, as well as what to say in response to liberals, leftists, women, feminists, trans* persons and others participating in them. This essay represents an answer to the question. In CLG News. 23 January 2017.
cultural politicss, other, Trump, Trumpism, politics, activism, protestDylan Rectenwald January 23, 2017 Comment
Introduction: Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age
One of the great ironies of Western political history involves the term "social justice." Although a core idea within liberalism and socialism for at least 175 years, the background and origin of "social justice" was a cultural and political conservatism. The irony of the "cultural appropriation" of social justice by liberalism and socialism has recently redoubled. Suggestive of a seemingly undeniably intangible good—that is, of just, fair, well-ordered, and harmonious social relations—social justice is now implicated in fierce and sometimes violent antagonisms. Social justice crystallizes in two words some of the most contentious issues roiling North American politics today. Contemporary social justice bears little resemblance to the original social justice or even more recent movements that have gone by the same name. [n Michael Rectenwald, Rochelle Almeida and George Levine, eds. Global Secularisms in a Post- Secular Age. Boston: De Gruyter (2015): 1-24.
secularism, post-secularism, global, religion-non-religion, cultural politicss, George HolyoakeDylan Rectenwald October 7, 2015
What's Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" (And Its Critics)
The problem with identity politics, then, is that it is one-sided and undialectical. It treats identities as static entities, and its methods only serve to further reify those categories. It aims to liberate identity groups (o members thereof) qua identity groups (or individuals), rather than aiming to liberate them from identity itself Identity politics fails not because it begins with various subaltern groups and aims at their liberation, but because it ends with them and thus cannot deliver their liberation. It makes identities and their equality with other "privileged" groups the basis of political activity, rather than making the overcoming of the alienate identity, for themselves and all identity groups, the goal. The abolition of the one-sidedness of identity – as worker, woman, man, or what have you – represents real human emancipation. Always failing this, identity politics settles for mere linguistic emancipation, which is offered (and policed so assiduously, as Fisher notes) by the defenders of the sanctuary of identity.
activism, cultural politicss, Cultural_Revolution, Felix Holt, Maoism, politics, identity politics, Intersectionality, New Left, leftism, Marx, MarxismDylan Rectenwald December 2, 2013 Comment
The Construction and Deconstruction of Science in Middlemarch
The fictionalizing of science happens to be a meta-theme in Middlemarch, and one which, I will argue, Eliot sets out consciously and masterfully to interrogate. In the process, I hope to show that Eliot's use of science is far from naive or merely syncretic. To the contrary, I will venture to argue that in Middlemarch Eliot actually anticipates a greater discursive shift in scientific theory of which Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (l962) is the watermark in the philosophy of science, and which Michel Foucault marks and notes in his various archaeologies of knowledge. In Victorian Web. 1 December 2008.
philosophy, other, cultural politicss, George_Eliot, Science-and-Literature, history-of-science, George Holyoake, philosophy-of-science, science-and-cultureDylan Rectenwald December 1, 2008
Science in the Popularis Aura: Opening Statement delivered in defense of the dissertation: "The Publics of Science: Periodicals and the Making of British Science, 1820-1860"
As Thomas Carlyle quipped in 1829 in "Signs of the Times," in the nineteenth century, "every little sect among us, Unitarians, Utilitarians, Anabaptists, Phrenologists, must have its Periodical, its monthly or quarterly Magazine;-- hanging out, like its windmill, into the popularis aura, to grind meal for the society." In my dissertation, "The Publics of Science: Periodicals and the Making of British Science, 1820-1860," I have endeavored to study the "machinery" for the production and dissemination of science in culture—to examine how various sects or publics provided scientific "meal for the society." Examining several periodicals from early to mid-nineteenth-century Britain, my dissertation is an account of emerging sites for the production, dissemination, negotiation, and appropriation of knowledge amongst various participants—authors, publishers, editors, reviewers, critics, readers and others—as they vied for (and against) cultural authority on the basis of beliefs claimed as "scientific."
19thc, academia, cultural politicss, history-of-science, literature, philosophy-of-science, science-and-culture, Science-and-Literature, secularism, SSK, Bruno Latour, periodical studies, Habermas, public sphere, publics of scienceDylan Rectenwald October 4, 2004
The Beat Generation Meets The E-Generation
Review of Orpheus Emerged by Jack Kerouac, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday, February 11, 2001.
book-reviews, Allen_Ginsberg, cultural politicss, other, literature, Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, novelsDylan Rectenwald February 11, 2001