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A review by josiahdegraaf
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity — And Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay
4.0
I didn't expect to like this book. Most of what I'd seen from Lindsay beforehand on Twitter had seemed like bland, surface-level culture war fighting, and I wasn't terribly interested in reading a whole book like that.
But that wasn't what this book was! It was surprisingly intellectual and careful compared to my expectations going into it, and I thought that the authors made a compelling argument about how postmodernism morphed into a variety of different critical ideologies. There were a number of good comparisons and connections here. And I also appreciated how the authors didn't use their critiques as an excuse for dealing with the very real problems of racism, misogyny, and power abuse that really do exist today. They acknowledged several of the actual problems we face along with critiquing poor solutions to those problems.
I will say that I'm not as avidly pro-Enlightenment-thinking as they are. Their argument that education should be value-neutral and shouldn't be trying to develop humans' moral character was not one I can readily accept as a classical teacher. (On the contrary--morality is one of the most important things developed through education!) And occasionally, while their critique overall tended to be balanced, the authors seemed to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater at times, particularly with the shade cast on sensitivity readers or other considerations made in the literary world. While things can go too far, I think there's value in considering such things meaningfully in the fiction world.
Overall, though, while I don't agree with everything this book had to say, I was pleasantly surprised by it and was glad I read it for book club.
Rating: 3.5-4 Stars (Good).
But that wasn't what this book was! It was surprisingly intellectual and careful compared to my expectations going into it, and I thought that the authors made a compelling argument about how postmodernism morphed into a variety of different critical ideologies. There were a number of good comparisons and connections here. And I also appreciated how the authors didn't use their critiques as an excuse for dealing with the very real problems of racism, misogyny, and power abuse that really do exist today. They acknowledged several of the actual problems we face along with critiquing poor solutions to those problems.
I will say that I'm not as avidly pro-Enlightenment-thinking as they are. Their argument that education should be value-neutral and shouldn't be trying to develop humans' moral character was not one I can readily accept as a classical teacher. (On the contrary--morality is one of the most important things developed through education!) And occasionally, while their critique overall tended to be balanced, the authors seemed to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater at times, particularly with the shade cast on sensitivity readers or other considerations made in the literary world. While things can go too far, I think there's value in considering such things meaningfully in the fiction world.
Overall, though, while I don't agree with everything this book had to say, I was pleasantly surprised by it and was glad I read it for book club.
Rating: 3.5-4 Stars (Good).