Jonathan Kay: When Disagreement Becomes Trauma

Behold, the consequences of the radioactive synthesis of leftist identity politics and bad Continental philosophy.

   Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this to my mind is how the worst of literary-philosophical gobbledygook is treated as if it were not only intelligible but such a matter of course that policy can be based on it --to the point, incidentally, of destroying academia without so much as a discussion of whether that might not be the best idea ever. This is, of course, accomplished in part by banning disagreement. So you can't criticize the gobbledygook because the gobbledygook says you can't criticize it.

   Back in my day, nonsense like the following was the subject of endless ridicule by everyone in the philosophy department (other than the radical feminists):

Of course you don't have to be an analytic philosopher to deride such overt bullshit...anyone with more than half a working brain should feel like throwing up after reading it. It barely makes any sense at all. But almost more amazing is how many dumbshit ideas and crackpot buzzwords they manage to pile on top of each other. I mean, substantial parts of feminist epistemology get crammed in there in like two words--"situated" and "embodied" (knowledge). Oh, excuse me--"knowing." That stuff alone is so controversial that you'd never get past it in a decent philosophy department--or anywhere that hasn't gone completely woke stupid. Hopefully it'd be thrown out as soon as that shit arose. But in this thing, they just race off (as it were) to cram in another hundred or so buzzwords into the thing. Anyone who thinks that you get to plop down a document that presupposes seventy-five or a hundred radical ideas without argument...that somehow something like that could get presumption...well...no.

   But there it is. And that's exactly what happened. And I know from experience that you cannot reason with progressives about this stuff. If you say "You can't presuppose anything that controversial," they'll say that it isn't controversial!  It's been proven by the very most advanced and highly theoretical work in the social "sciences"...

   And that, my liege, is how we know the world to be banana-shaped...