Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Another Crappy Response To Chait on PC

Wow this, by Brittney Cooper, is awful.
The shitty methods of reasoning common on the illiberal left are on display fairly clearly here.
tl;dr: Jonathan Chait is a white male

1 Comments:

Anonymous Critical Spirits said...

Aww Winston what're you doing on Salon!?

Just kidding. Although, I'm curious as to what goes on over there. Is the piece that you've posted representative of their content on the whole? (I suppose that I could try and find out for myself)

I don't have much patience for reading things like this anymore. I usually end up reducing many PC "arguments" (is it okay to use scare quotes here?) to psychological projection (as you seem to gesture at in the comments of the article). Cooper is unduly committed to the concept of race and sees it as fundamental in her inquiry--par for the course. I think that this evidenced by her cack-handed attempt at designating just which feminists are "black feminists." Like, does it make any difference as to what race a feminist happens to be? And is this not something that a five-second Google search couldn't make clear? I dunno, that kind of thing irks me for some reason.

What is the utility of reading these kinds of pieces? This isn't a loaded question, I'm genuinely curious. My guess is something that I've picked up in my studies of Plato, which is that by studying opposing positions/arguments/theses we allow ourselves to better anticipate objections to our own positions, and thereby become more efficient dialecticians...maybe?

Or: is it for the shock value? I admit that there's some of that in there for me at least. But as I said, I don't read these kinds of articles, nor visit Salon, very often.

I also wager that the PCs aren't wrong all the time.

9:56 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home