Reading EP Thompson’s critique of Althusserian structuralism “The Poverty of Theory” started my wheels turning: So much of what we call woke or anti-racism DEI is rooted in a Marxist materialism of this sort, only social identity has replaced economic class.
The favored theory becomes the starting point and referee of what can be considered just and true, and all objections rooted in reason or experience are dismissed as “ideology” because it is supposed the structure makes reason and experience corrupt and unreliable.
Social structures determine identity, and identity determines consciousness, and neither reason nor experience can break the spell-- only the favored theory can reveal truth.
Whiteness, for example, is just an updated form of bourgeois class consciousness, and white supremacy is the base to the capitalist superstructure. There is nothing new in any of this, except it is being presented to the unsuspecting and naive as what it means to be educated and good.
Even history is subordinate to theory.
In short, the rhetorical game is fixed from the beginning: there is no point in debate because all disagreement is evidence of complicity in injustice, so all that is left to do is to submit and obey Theory.
Reading EP Thompson’s critique of Althusserian structuralism “The Poverty of Theory” started my wheels turning: So much of what we call woke or anti-racism DEI is rooted in a Marxist materialism of this sort, only social identity has replaced economic class.
The favored theory becomes the starting point and referee of what can be considered just and true, and all objections rooted in reason or experience are dismissed as “ideology” because it is supposed the structure makes reason and experience corrupt and unreliable.
Social structures determine identity, and identity determines consciousness, and neither reason nor experience can break the spell-- only the favored theory can reveal truth.
Whiteness, for example, is just an updated form of bourgeois class consciousness, and white supremacy is the base to the capitalist superstructure. There is nothing new in any of this, except it is being presented to the unsuspecting and naive as what it means to be educated and good.
Even history is subordinate to theory.
In short, the rhetorical game is fixed from the beginning: there is no point in debate because all disagreement is evidence of complicity in injustice, so all that is left to do is to submit and obey Theory.