Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 4:50 pmConsul wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 4:33 pm
I have copies of Lindsay's books and even read them. I'll leave it up to political scientists specializing in (the history of) Marxism to decide whether his work is "consistently good". Note that, being a mathematician, Lindsay isn't one of them!
Anyway, I am by no means saying that any right-wing criticism or critique of the
actual, real (Cultural) Marxism (including Neo- & Post-Marxism) is unfounded and unwarranted.
Let me ask this: If you think Lindsay’s work is incomplete or let’s say inferior, then who would you suggest is doing better critical work?
First of all,
"not consistently good" and
"consistently bad" aren't synonyms.
Lindsay’s books do contain good stuff (that survives fact-checking); but what I don't like about
Race Marxism,
The Marxification of Education, and
The Queering of the American Child (whose main author isn't Lindsay but Logan Lancing) is that the justified criticism therein is overshadowed by a wild rhetoric of demonization, distortion, and exaggeration.
"What we are witnessing is a cultural revolution in America. It is Maoism with American characteristics, and that implies that it is an ancient esoteric cult religion put into destructive practice so that it might save the world by destroying it completely.“
(James Lindsay, in: Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 221)
What he doesn't mention is that
brute violence (terror, torture, incarceration, execution) was part and parcel of Mao's "cultural revolution". Do we see queer activists doing the same in American society, at American kindergartens, schools, and universities?
This is not to say that purely psychological indoctrination is harmless—it isn't!—, but the comparison with Maoism is nonetheless very flawed.
Lindsay coined the term "Race Marxism" (for Critical Race Theory), and in the latest book we find "Queer Marxism" (for Queer Theory). The entire contemporary "Woke Left" (post-70s Academic Cultural Left) with all the various cultural/critical studies/theories it spawned is demagogically denounced as part of the World Marxist Conspiracy—the conservatives' & fascists' favourite bogeyman.
But how genuinely Marxist are (e.g.) critical race theory and queer theory
really? Lindsay & Lancing don't seem to be much interested in an objective, scientifically defensible answer. What matters most to them
for propagandistic purposes is that their conservative audience reads the term "Race/Queer Marxism" as a name of Pure Evil: "Wokeism" = "Woke Marxism/Maoism/Stalinism"!
The entire Woke Left is portrayed as a satanic brood of "abnormals" with evil intentions—Lindsay's & Lancing's political message being:
Let's make America great again by making it normal again!
"America’s children shall not be queered, and their future will be bright and normal."
(James Lindsay, in: Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 222)
For example,
Brian Leiter writes that
"CRT is not by any stretch of the imagination a "Marxist" theory (and has little to do with Frankfurt School Critical Theory), so what is it about?"
See:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ ... schoo.html
———
As for your question: I'm not a political scientist, and I have no ready-made list of competent right-wing critics of the left; but, for example, Roger Scruton's
Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left (2019) is recommendable.
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 4:50 pmWhat are your thoughts on Lindsay’s view of
queering?
"The practice of Queer Theory is called “queering.” The word “queer,” in this sense, is a verb. “To queer” is “to destabilize the social, cultural, and political normalizing structures that work to solidify identities and in doing so skew power toward the “norm.” Put simply, “to queer” is to challenge and eliminate normalcy. “Normalcy” means “the condition of being normal, as in usual, typical, or expected.” So, to queer is to challenge and eliminate the idea that anything can or should be considered normal.“
(Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. p. 17)
"As Janet Jakobsen outlines, we can differentiate the uses of “queer” in three ways (1998, 516-517 ["Queer Is? Queer Does? Normativity and the Problem of Resistance"]):
* As a noun (example: “this is the queer space”).
* As an identity that resists traditional categories (example: “I identify as queer”).
* As a verb (example: “let’s queer gender!”).
These ways of using “queer” are often in tension with one another. Jakobsen suggests that the last option – queer as a kind of doing rather than being – holds the most political potential because it focuses on resistance (rather than description) and practice (rather than identity).
To undertake “queering” is to deploy queer as a verb, to challenge and resist expectations or norms. For example, “queering femininity” might mean thinking about how femininity can be more than an oppressive gender ideal, and can be embodied in non-normative ways (McCann 2018 [Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation])."
(McCann, Hannah, and Whitney Monaghan. Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures. London: Red Globe Press, 2020. p. 3)
First of all, there is a relevant distinction between
ethical normality ("normative normality") and
statistical normality ("frequentative/quantitative normality"). If most people are straight, being straight is
statistically normal—which is not to say that it is also
ethically normal, in the sense that being straight is
how one ought to be, that straightness is
the only good, right, "natural", "healthy" sexual orientation.
I'm anything but a fan of queer theory, which does abound with rubbish and abstruse, impenetrable prose; but what is positive about it is that it dares to analyze and criticize ethical normalities (social norms) which are usually taken for granted by most people, as if they were unalterable laws of nature. Traditional norms such as
"Only straight sex is morally good/right!" deserve to be questioned!
""Good" sex: Normal, Natural, Healthy, Holy" vs. ""Bad" sex: Abnormal, Unnatural, Sick, Sinful, "Way Out""
(Rubin, Gayle. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." In Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Carole S. Vance, 267-319. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. p. 282)
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 4:50 pmYou seem here to soften, or to broaden, your first statement of contrast between Kellner’s essay and that of the second reference you submitted.
Where does
legitimate criticism begin?
It must be
fact-based, i.e. faithful to what people actually (mean to) say and (intend to) do,
fair, and
charitable, in the sense of not reading everything (indiscriminately) in the most negative way as an expression or indication of irrationality, stupidity, insanity, immorality, or perversity.
For example:
"Michel Foucault, a French communist who escaped allegations of pedophilia only in death, is widely considered the progenitor of Queer Theory. Foucault’s influence can’t be overstated. He is one of the most cited researchers of all time, and contemporary Queer Theory publications are riddled with his name. Queer Activists use Foucault’s ideas about power, knowledge, and normalcy as a lens through which they view and interpret society, sex, gender, and sexuality."
(Lancing, Logan, & James Lindsay. The Queering of the American Child. Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024. pp. 33-4)
The part beginning with "…is widely…" is faithful to the facts, but what Lancing writes before about Foucault is untrue and unfair:
1. The allegations of pedophilia are still nothing more than unsubstantiated rumours.
2. Yes, Foucault had been a member of the French communist party
for almost a year. Nevertheless, he was not a communist. (Nor was he an orthodox Marxist.)
See: Gabriel Rockhill:
Foucault: The Faux Radical
———
"Foucault’s most obvious political separation from Sartre appears in his attitude toward Marxism and the Communist Party that was its primary representative. Early on, Foucault did feel the tug of the Marxist viewpoint. ‘I belong’, he told an interviewer, ‘to that generation who as students had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology, and existentialism’ (RR, interview, 174). (The influence of existential phenomenology—especially of the early Heidegger—on Foucault is most apparent in his long introduction to the French translation of Ludwig Binswanger’s essay Traum und Existenz.) Particularly because of the influence at the École Normale of Louis Althusser, who was the leading theoretician of the French Communist Party, Foucault’s early intellectual attachment to Marxism was strong. In his first book, Maladie mentale et personnalité, he characterized non-Marxist approaches, including the existential, as providing only ‘mythical explanations’, and maintained that mental illnesses arise ultimately from ‘contradictions’ determined by ‘present economic conditions in the form of conflict, exploitation, imperialist wars, and class struggle’ (86). In one sense, Foucault went even further than Sartre, and was for a time a member of the French Communist Party. But he was very soon disillusioned with both the theory and the practice of Marxism. He quit the Party after only ‘a few months or a little more’ (‘Michel Foucault répond à Sartre’, DE I, 666)—in fact, it was closer to a year—and, in a 1962 second edition of his book on mental illness (retitled Maladie mentale et psychologie), covered his tracks. He eliminated almost all Marxist elements, including his entire concluding chapter, which had argued that Pavlov’s theory of the reflex was the key to understanding mental illness, and added an entirely new historical dimension based on his just-published doctoral thesis, The History of Madness.
Foucault’s subsequent attitude toward Marxism was complexly ambivalent. The Order of Things, for example, made the shocking claim that Marx’s economic thought was not at root original or revolutionary, that the controversies it occasioned ‘are no more than storms in a children’s wading pool’ (OT, 262). But when pressed on this point in a later interview, he explained that he was speaking only of Marx’s significance for the specific domain of economics, not of his unquestionably major role in social theory (‘Sur les façons d’écrire l’histoire’, interview with Raymond Bellour, DE I, 587). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, throughout his writings, Foucault took Marxism quite seriously but was quite happy to tweak the pretentious sensibilities of contemporary French Marxists, for whose sake he would introduce teasing remarks into his writings and interviews. So, for example, he says, to the reproach that he doesn’t cite the text of Marx in places where this would be appropriate, that of course he does refer quite obviously to Marx on many occasions, but doesn’t bother to give explicit footnotes to guide those who don’t know their Marx well enough to pick up the reference (P/K, ‘Prison Talk’, 52). On the other hand, Foucault is quite explicit in acknowledging in Discipline and Punish the importance of the Marxist work of Rusche and Kirchheimer for his history of the prison.
Foucault’s most direct statement of his attitude toward Marxism occurs in an interview with Paul Rabinow about a month before his death: ‘I am neither an adversary nor a partisan of Marxism; I question it about what it has to say about experiences that ask questions of it’ (‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations’, EW I, 115). Here Foucault is treating Marxism as an example of what, in this interview, he calls ‘politics’, by which he seems to mean a general, theoretically informed framework for discussing current political issues. His point is that such frameworks should never be simply assumed as an adequate basis for political decisions, but should be regarded merely as resources that may (or may not) suggest viable approaches to problems we face."
(Gutting, Gary. Foucault: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. pp. 23-4)
