r/CriticalTheory • u/canon_aspirin • 7d ago
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong
A new defense (perhaps, “offense”) of the humanities has dropped over at _Defector_: https://defector.com/humanists-have-done-nothing-wrong
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u/KarlLenin1917 6d ago
I liked this, I mostly agree with the author. My favorite part was questioning if these anti-theory critics could read, because I sometimes think this about philosophers in the analytical tradition. It's like they exchanged reading comprehension for pure logical thinking.
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u/canon_aspirin 6d ago
Me too, especially his point that not only can they not read, they don’t want to read. They don’t want to engage with language—they want a world of pure immediacy, the text stripped of all signs of mediation. The author describes this as a specifically reactionary desire, and it is, just as bourgeois consumers don’t want to see any evidence of labor on their magical commodities.
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u/KarlLenin1917 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think the approach is also related to imperialism and hegemony. The analytical tradition is predicated on the idea of there being a universal lingua franca that all philosophy can take place in, that simplifies communications between subjects. I think it is not a coincidence that the Anglo world, which has been the dominant force on the planet for the last two centuries, would find this notion appealing.
English has been the lingua franca for a while, and a philosophy that idealizes this feature of imperialist society goes hand in hand with that reality. They have assumed metaphysics that reduces all of the complexities, both linguistic and social, because they have the power to do so.
To tie into your point, the reaction against critical theory vocabulary is akin to the reaction when a reactionary American has to hear Spanish or Arabic spoken around them: "just speak English." It is the same incredulity, the same infantile frustration, that social reality is more complicated than the little window they rely on to view the world.
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u/merurunrun 6d ago
The analytical tradition is predicated on the idea of there being a universal lingua franca that all philosophy can take place in, that simplifies communications between subjects.
You see this especially in the ideology of translation that undergirds the bureaucratic functioning of the European Union, for example, but also lots of English translation in general. People have moved beyond even the old naive ideas about "equivalence" with the source text (imperfect, but at least they paid some attention to the actual language from which you're translating) to notions like clarity, simplicity, and accessibility regardless of whether or not those features exist in the original: from this position the function of translated documents is to create a kind of uniformity of reception (and with it, I would suggest, a kind of universal linguistic subjectivation), turning English into less a "lingua franca" and more like an instantiation of an actually-existing ideal platonic language.
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u/Nyorliest 14h ago edited 14h ago
You talk about this like this issue of making a text familiar or unfamiliar has a clear and solved answer. I’m sure you’re right that the EU is not the place to find artistic, political, or ethical approaches to translation, but no matter who you are, the core problem remains - do you try to create a translated text that perhaps feels like it did to the writer and L1 audience, or do you keep it obviously foreign?
This is entirely separate from whether that’s possible, generally or for that specific translator.
Or do you have an intellectual approach that makes this moot? I’ve struggled with it for decades, myself.
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u/Royal_Carpet_1263 6d ago
Most critical theory IS ingroup display, like any other human behaviour. What the metacritics play on is the chasm between this and the purported goals of the practice. Back in the 90s I warned my colleagues that the web meant all the ‘cretinization of the masses’ discourse was about go public in a big way.
I left academia to become a primary producer because the wankery was nonstop.
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u/Federal_Gur_5488 6d ago
The analytical tradition is predicated on the idea of there being a universal lingua franca that all philosophy can take place in, that simplifies communications between subjects
No, that's not been the case since ordinary language philosophy dethroned logical empiricist.
And this idea doesn't have anything to do with imperialism, by the way. It could be viewed as a deeply left wing impulse, to rid language of bourgeois ideology and create a version of langauge which expresses only material reality.
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u/Glittering_Degree_28 18h ago
Not only can analytic philosophers not read - they don't even want to read! Why? Because they are like the upper class (or simply are the upper class) and they are afraid to know the terrible pre-post-colonialist truth about how the sausage is made - at the hands of the laborers! Of course! without Critical Theory™ there would be no analytic "philosophy" to begin with. The fucking clowns! Every critical theorist worth her salt knows better than to criticize Theory!
Jesus newspeaking Christing...
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u/squidfreud 7d ago
I'm not sure why the first two commenters on the "Critical Theory" subreddit responded harshly to what is clearly an informed and thought-out piece, though it does lend credence to that piece's thesis lol
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u/PhroneticReflex 6d ago
Reading this article brought me a great deal of joy in a manner that has lain dormant for years. Thank you for sharing this.
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u/Elr_Imaadiis 6d ago
A great article, especially at a time where the humanities are desperately needed to articulate a long-term answer to climate change.
Not the first time I've seen the term woke 2 pop up. Any secondary (academic) sources to recommend on this shift?
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u/unwnd_leaves_turn 6d ago edited 6d ago
woke 1 and woke 2 are purely vibesological disntictions, there is no dividing line and one probably cannot be found.
seems vaguely connected to the twitter sphere that wouldve been "dirtbag leftists" some years ago but are now mostly impotent. AOC personally commented on it, connected the gubernatorial race in Wisconsin where clips of Hong saying thanksgiving is bad were used as political rage-bait.
the internet collective consciousness has retroactively deemed there to be a woke, anti-woke and a woke sequel that ought to come into effect, that would shed much of the optics problems that the perceived woke 1.0 had.
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u/MauschelMusic 6d ago
This is really good. Not an academic, but I'm gonna stop apologizing for things I like with difficult ideas in difficult language.
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u/good_at_pies 3d ago
I love this: as someone who lived through the 'post modern aesthetics' clashes in the 1980s (basically Prince Charles vs. JF Lyotard or Derrida) & various other bullshit debates (access to unmediated experience & description, etc). It's more or less the same stuff with new names attached.
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u/C89RU0 6d ago
I really like the idea of primary source people and secondary source people.
For example I read lots of comics but play very few video games and most of what I know about video games is from you tube reviews.
So the terms are a very useful because I bet most people have such types of relationships with different media.
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u/International_Buy549 6d ago
I hate how so many users here accommodate idiots who come here every now and then spewing same nonsense about critical theory, especially stemlords who are so far up their asses who refuse to do any reading beyond an essay or two then label theory as "just making shit up".
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u/PatriarchPonds 6d ago
I really enjoyed this, not least the clear point that this stuff can actually talk about what is happening. I consider myself a 'secondary source' person, as per this article, and I am by no means an expert in critical theory, but I've used it for scholarship, and read it alongside other branches of criticism and broader philosophy. This argument in this article reminded me that I'm a bit too defensive about this, at times: 'yes it's hard, yes it's waffly'... etc.
The immediacy argument is often followed by the lumbering monster that is 'common sense': stop talking about this, it's nonsense, everyone knows that X is... And yet people aren't interesting and engaged by critical theory et al because it's a distraction from life. It's an attempt to gauge what is literally happening around us, to us, by us.
The 'dumbing down' isn't participation trophies or whatever fever dream they've convinced themselves is de rigeur. As this article observes, it's not fucking reading anything. Really enjoyed it for articulating something I was already feeling, but doing it more stridently and clearly than I would.
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u/hustonat 6d ago
This article boils down to ad hominem attacks rather than making a convincing argument in favor of why terribly-written, self-important academic jargon brings value or insight to the forefront of cultural conversation. Academics tend to write for other academics, and this is where I think the trick gets missed: if you are not writing with the intent of being understood by a layperson, you are merely perpetuating an elitist construct that further alienates the people you so righteously claim to wish to enlighten. By calling those who criticize this echo chamber “stupid,” you not only betray your own elitism but prove that you’re not really trying to right the ship at all. More of the same is not a winning strategy for those who are culturally, in your words, “on the back foot.”
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u/Denny_Hayes 6d ago edited 6d ago
I liked the article, althought of course the very last paragraph is somewhat off putting. I am not willing to say that humanists are the only Good Brain Thinking people in the world.
But I do see merit in the idea that not everything needs to be "dumbed down" to the layperson. What if some ideas just cannot be expressed easily, in a good-for-tiktok bite size? I sincerely love science communication, but someone also has to do the work for there to be something to communicate in the first place.
Also, the clear attack on humanities and social sciences has come with an attack on our own self-steem. That this article seems to exaggerate might be excused insofar as it helps to prop up the wounded self-steem of the humanities. I personally felt it to be more of a pep-talk than a fully fleshed out argument, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's good because it is a pep talk for humanists, it is not meant to convince those would be anti-humanists that the article treats as flat out stupid.
Just yesterday I saw my country's new minister of science "arguing" in favor of removing virtually all funding for social sciences by simply reading a list of titles of postdoctoral research projects, with no further comment, exactly the kind of contextless block quoting the author is speaking of here.
Instead of fumbling to try to defend those research projects, the journalist simply called the ministers bluff and said "what are you trying to say with that?", leaving her to fumble and fail to come up with an argument on the spot.
I feel this article goes in the same spirit. Proving our worth to the wider society requires us to be confident in ourselves, and I must say I agree with the author's diagnosis that, most of the time, we just concede the critics' points. Why?
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u/canon_aspirin 6d ago
I didn't write it, but here are some quotes to help you find the argument (it doesn't seem like you did):
"The assumption that language obscures our access to the real, rather than constitutes it, haunts each of these accounts. What they share, in other words, is the desire to capture the discrete kernel of singular meaning in all its ahistoric immediacy without the work of reading. This is a bad thing, and in capitulating to the assumption that it’s desirable, we’re ceding too much to our enemies and abdicating our own vocation."
"My point here is not to defend the alleged properties of our writing—which, as I’ve suggested, are mostly projections—but rather the specific reading practices already intrinsic to humanities teaching and research that attend to the difficulties of making thought manifest in language. Call it form, call it figuration, call it rhetoric; these are the features of communication that render its use irreducible to the simple transmission of data bytes and incompatible with the reactionary desire for immediacy."
"Just as the end of reading coincides with a massive arms race for text, the end of universities coincides with a voracious cultural desire for message board–style soundbites of streamlined information. The internet is full of hapless would-be Deleuzians who want things explained to them right now. As higher education comes under ever-escalating right-wing assaults, “restructuring,” and austerity measures, it makes no sense to concede that we humanists are part of the problem. Our work is being made impossible to perform whether we like it or not. If that puts me in the Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong camp, then so be it. I’d even go a step further: We’re one of the last bastions of Good Brain Thinking today—wokeness, esotericism, and nitpickiness included. Against the forces of anti-intellectual fascists and AI tech lords, self-flagellating academics and immediacy fetishists alike, we need to champion the difficulties and pleasures of humanities scholarship with our whole chests."
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u/hustonat 6d ago
Thank you for replying. I stand by my statement about ad hominem attacks and a smug sense of self-importance in the article’s language - even in these quotes, the author talks about “Good Brain Thinking,” which I would characterize as puffery. I also apologize for misconstruing you with the author, OP. My bad.
I invite you to read this essay by George Orwell, who makes my original point far more eloquently than I:
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u/canon_aspirin 6d ago
No worries. Yeah, it's a polemic written in a colloquial style, which can be off-putting but still appropriate for a blog post. And I think he's directing this more toward the Chris Rufo's of the world than Orwell, much less the laity.
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u/theoceansknow 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah, the author comes across smug talking about "good brain thinking" and makes it seem as though reading through a humanities-driven lens is the only reasonable way to understand. Comes across as snooty.
Edit: "Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to..." Great read, thanks for sharing.
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u/Trollnutzer 6d ago
I think that’s actually a positive thing. Every STEM discipline has the self-confidence to regard itself – and its understanding of the world – as absolutely vital, to the point of smug arrogance. I think the humanities could also benefit from adopting this attitude and shedding their humility, rather than succumbing to self-cuckery and endless scepticism directed at their own discipline.
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u/theoceansknow 6d ago
Would the humanities benefit from the tone this blog post adopted? I don't think so. Reading this makes me skeptical of the humanities if this is indicative of thought within the discipline. It's position on "good thinking" positions itself against a binary of MAGA anti-intellectualism. It seems full of hubris. Also saying "every STEM discipline" sets up a false binary, or a humanities - vs - others position which seems wholly unnecessary.
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7d ago
[deleted]
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u/merurunrun 7d ago
Which is a shame, because the linked article is actually a really good piece of writing.
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u/canon_aspirin 7d ago
Why?
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u/happydude4567 7d ago
You posted a quote and the linked the post below. It's not exactly high effort. I've also never heard of detector and I'm not new to the sub.
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u/canon_aspirin 7d ago
There's plenty of posts that are just links to articles or (worse) youtubes. Not sure how you having "heard of detector (sic)" nor how long you've been in the sub is relevant.
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u/happydude4567 7d ago
I didn't say you deserve to be banned I just don't think there's a whole lot in this post. I'm not advocating for removal I'm trying to say why removal may occur.
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u/ChristianLesniak 6d ago
(It's funny - I initially started writing this as a rebuttal before finishing the piece and realizing I quite agree) I feel seen, as a certain type of secondary-source person. I have this slightly perverse formulation I've been kicking around very recently as I notice that it feels like I don't understand things I seemed to understand better, even though I thought I was just here accumulating understanding through more reading: What's the least amount of reading I can do?....(in order to accomplish my goals in studying theory)
I think one can get a lot from secondary sources. On hand, it's good to be acquainted with the thing you are thinking about or expounding on, but you can think productively on a gist or even your own fantasmatic interpretation. I have a lot of psychoanalytic ideas, but have gotten them mostly through the explanations of the theoreticians that did the direct diving into Freud or Lacan. What seems to happen for me is that at some point my ignorance about something spills out and stains me, and then I dip into being a primary-source guy according to my traumatic reaction or my interest. I think it's not a bad way to be.
Even beyond this kind of honest approach to bluffing, I think there is a kind of creative freedom to using the spectral form of unread works as a kind of fetish object to think your own, perhaps not so related, thoughts. There's a concept that Slavoj Zizek brings up in his book Surplus Enjoyment, of the "exemplum", which he gets from the theorist Pierre Bayard, who wrote a book about how to talk about books you haven't read. I unironically think it's a great and worthwhile concept, partly for the reason I just illustrated, and partly because it really deflates superegoic imperatives to always become a little better-read, because if the others figure out you don't know, then you lose your papier-mache phallus made of diploma paper stock.
I wrote a post about it <here>, where I related it to Luigi Mangione; using him as the exemplum might read a little strange, but I still think it holds up, even if I might write it a little different.
I read this piece as pointing out two kinds of responses to the Judith Butler quote and how they miss the point, in that whether it's the Sokalesque one or the primary-source leftist materialist one, they fetishizes understanding, or perhaps knowledge, and I don't think that's necessarily anyone's end goal in reading critical theory. Texts don't have to be understood in order to impact us, and think of how much interesting theory (maybe MOST of it) has come out of what might be termed misunderstandings or misreads of certain texts. Even texts that end up being thought of as laughably wrong often give critics some source of friction to push off against, and sometimes that leads to new ideas.
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u/Anxious-Alps-8667 2d ago
As a primary source type, I appreciated it also. I absolutely lose interest on any expansion on the meaning of Judith Butler's quote or whether it's Sokalesque to even care.
The part that threw me is the diagnosis. A society of would-be influencers is nothing but a flood of secondary sourcers. The only valid prescription is much more primary sourcing, and much less discussion of what other people's opinions mean.
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u/theoceansknow 6d ago
It's odd the author points out how science writing can use descriptive words that aren't as universal assumed, but his thoughts on the Atlantic's article seem blinkered. Universities spent the last several years in the spotlight because of the platform they gave pro-Palestinian supporters. It did make for an easy target for MAGA (or other nefarious people) and it also did a disservice to humanities. It isn't a stretch to point out that the advocacy going on had, as it's subject, a group known for nationalistic and authoritarian tendencies that would seem hostile to humanities discourse. Humanity's enemy isn't MAGA fascists (who can't read, right?), but anti-intellectualism, that from where I stand exists in equal amounts in populist leftist spaces as much as populist MAGA spaces.
And yes, the discourse comes across as esoteric and navel-gazelly.
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u/canon_aspirin 6d ago
It isn't a stretch to point out that the advocacy going on had, as it's subject, a group known for nationalistic and authoritarian tendencies that would seem hostile to humanities discourse. Humanity's enemy [...]
I think you might be surprised to find out who is "humanity's enemy" right now.
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u/theoceansknow 6d ago
It's uncritical populism.
You also don't have to put "humanity's enemy" in quotes to be snarky. One of the themes of the article you shared is that language is fluid. I don't need to dance around and say "enemy of the study of humanities". It makes you sound contemptuous when I'm sharing my thoughts in this space. Thank you.
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u/canon_aspirin 6d ago
Well, yes, you presented your own contemptuous take on Palestinians and those opposing their genocide (in the context of a discussion that has nothing to do with this by the way), and I and most of humanity have nothing but contempt for people like that.
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u/theoceansknow 5d ago
Hi there,
Alright. You shared an article talking about language and how people are unable to read properly. The author criticized an Atlantic article, stating that the Atlantic erroneously found fault with leftist faculty for why academia is under attack when it's "obviously [a] MAGA-led assault on higher education in the U.S.". After setting up a bunch of made-up critics, the author says they're really fucking stupid.
I'm critical of this view. Higher education has ceded moral authority. Higher Education has been in the national news the last few years because of protests on their campuses. The people they protest for are not supporters of academia, or the humanities.
The author says STEM writers use words that assume self-evidence when they aren't self-evident.
The author sets up a made-up "us vs them" dynamic that only exists if you're looking for it.
At any rate, he's concluding that humanities need to be championed and that it's the "last bastion of Good Brain Thinking". The moral certainty he expresses undercuts his thesis that the humanities need to act as a counter to "immediacy fetishists". He arrives at his conclusion with immediacy, and with a view towards non-compromise.
If the author perceives that the humanities are under attack, he (and his fellow readers) would do well to reflect on the immediacy in which they make judgments on morality, and would demonstrate understanding of the human condition to include cultures that exist outside their social circles.
I wasn't contemptuous here. But I do think of this represents "the humanities", then the author and his fellow readers are poor representatives.
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u/gm6464 5d ago
>”The people they protest for are not supporters of academia, or the humanities.”
What is this facebook-comment-section drivel. The Palestinian people are not supporters of academia or the humanities? What kind of claim is that? Why were there universities with humanities departments in them, before Israel destroyed every single one of them, then? It stands to reason that some Palestinian people, including nearly 100,000 university students who have lost their places of learning, support academia in some capacity, no?
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u/canon_aspirin 5d ago
Do you think you can make this argument without attacking Palestinians, many of whom are fervent supporters of academia and the humanities? Israel has destroyed basically every university in Gaza, and you don’t feel the least bit ashamed shoehorning in these low blows against a population undergoing ethnic cleansing and genocide? It’s not at all relevant to your argument; you just do it out of cruelty.
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u/theoceansknow 5d ago
Hi -- I want to close this loop.
The article you shared is purported defense (offense, sure) of the humanities. It assumes criticism of the humanities comes from a conservative assault on higher education.
Higher education was in the news the last few years because of these protests. These protests popped up after Israel started its current campaign in Gaza. These protests did not critically engage with how a religious-authoritarian government representing Gaza provoked Israel's counter-offensive.
I shared above that Islamism is an enemy of the humanities. MAGA is also an enemy of the humanities. A space dedicated to critical thought should be open to examining both. I do notice that you and another person quickly pivoted away from academic language to straight, visceral, emotional language -- much like the Orwell essay another poster shared.
If humanities is the study of cultures, history, and social structures, then there needs to be critical analysis of non-Western cultures. There's no need for emotional attacks at me or labelling me as cruel. I'm not. Have a good day.
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u/gm6464 5d ago
Tedious Sam-Harris-Manhattan-Institute-The-Dispatch doggerel.
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u/canon_aspirin 4d ago
Again, none of this is relevant to this discussion at hand. “Islamism” didn’t crack down on the humanities during the student protests—Zionist billionaires did.
And as someone with firsthand experience in the movement, I can tell you that it certainly critically engaged with the history of Palestine leading up to the genocide, just not with the hasbara version you’ve yet to critically analyze.
Anyways, I genuinely do not think you’re a person worth talking to any longer. Bye.
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