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There was a dustup a day or so ago at a school board meeting in Loudon Country, Virginia—a large number of parents came out to protest critical race theory, and were shut down by the board. It seems that the general public was unaware of just what was going on in the schools—perhaps until the pandemic let them listen in on their children’s classes—and now that they know, there is a backlash. With luck, it will carry the day.
But critical race theory is just one tentacle of an academic octopus called critical theory. It has really been around for a long time, and has spread far beyond the public schools, in one form or another. It was around already when I was in grad school back in the 1970s, although it did not have the name “critical theory” yet. I think it has been around, in essence, at least since Nietzsche.
A recent journal article gives an overview of the state of the field. It is no doubt not unimpeachable, but it is at least from the Trojan horse’s mouth: a declared critical theorist.
Our author, a professor at the University of British Columbia, identifies three intellectual strands making up “critical teory”: postmodernism, Marxism, and postcolonialism. He does not include feminism. Feminism and critical theory used to be conjoined, but there has been a recent falling out. The goals of feminism clash with the goals of transgenderism, and transgenderism has won the intersectionality sweeps. Feminism requires the assumption that there are such things as women. Postmodernism will not allow the premise.
Postmodernism holds that nothing is real. We just make things up as convenient. In the words of the present author, “meanings are neither fixed nor singular, but rather multiple and ever-shifting.”
Marxism insists that everything is at the group or social level, and everything is about power. In the words of our author, Marxism “thinks in binary terms between the oppressor and the oppressed,” and everyone must be one or the other.
Traditionally, Marxism sees this in economic terms, with the bourgeoisie as the oppressors, and the proletariat as the oppressed. Postcolonialism switches this to race instead of class. If anything is less than desirable in the world, as determined by whomever wields the arbitrary power to determine it (for nothing, according to postmodernism, can ever be good or bad in itself) it is the fault of “Whites” or “Europeans.” For they are uniquely “colonizers.”
Put together and examined in this way, it is the very same ideology as Nazism, with “Whites” replacing “Jews” as racial scapegoats.
It is, of course, aside from being malicious, malicious nonsense.
Postmodernism is immediately self-contradictory. The present author, for example, ponders the question, “What does criticality really mean?”--without realizing the question is now nonsensical. There are no meanings, and is no “really,“ according to criticality.
Marxism, rather than being immediately self-contradictory, is merely disproven. Marx’s plan was to put the study and management of society on a “scientific” basis: Marxism was “scientific socialism.”
The proof of any scientific contention is in its ability to predict: this is what experiment is about. But every prediction made by Marx about the subsequent course of human history has been false. He expected a growing proletariat, and a shrinking bourgeoisie. The opposite has happened. He postulated growing wealth inequality. The opposite has happened. He anticipated a worldwide revolution led by the proletariat, happening first in the most developed countries. Nowhere has this happened, including in Russia or China. By scientific standards, he was simply wrong.
Postcolonialism maintains that colonization and empire are a uniquely European creation. This is easily disproven by a study of history. Most parts of the world have been empires and colonies throughout recorded time. The peculiarly European innovation was the nation state—in a word, postcolonialism is what Europe brought to the world. Leaving “postcolonialism” arguing against itself.
Where has such obvious nonsense come from?
I suggest it is from the secularization of our education system. Until perhaps a hundred years ago, or roughly until Darwinism became popular, the universities and the schools were founded on religious principles. This sense of cosmic direction is necessary for education to work: if you do not know where you are going, you cannot know how to get there. Theology was Queen of the sciences, and the most advanced academic degree was “doctor of philosophy.”
But somewhere about the turn of the 20th century, that place was taken by physical science. Physical science is inadequate to the task. It is simply a tool, and offers no goal or meaning or reasons.
Since then, we have seen the emergence of a series of “scientific” pseudo-religions to fill the vacuum: Freudian psychology, fascism-Nazism, Marxism, and so forth. Each has, after a few decades, failed in turn. Critical theory is basically the current synthesis. Marxism, disproven by science, has been put on life support by asserting, through postmodernism, that science itself is of no value. Postmodernism is nonsense, but postmodernism refuses to acknowledge sense. Postcolonialism allows all standards failed by either postmodern theory or Marxist theory to be dismissed as a racist white cultural imposition.
It actually smells very much like desperation. I would be surprised not to see it all collapse within the next few years.
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