The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 23
Aufheben is a German word that, in Critical Theory, means to “abolish” or to “negate” in the way that Critical Theorists do. It’s a somewhat complicated term in that it means both to abolish and to keep or to keep safe, and the Critical Theory use taps into the so-called dialectical process to attempt to use aufheben to tear apart and, as the Marxists translated it, “sublate” whatever cultural artifact they are targeting onto a “higher” level of understanding, namely the one that empowers Critical Theorists and induces misery in everyone else. This process was widely pushed by the Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School under a doctrine of Aufheben der Kultur, abolishment of culture, and it continues in the Woke movement today.
One of the latest big targets of Aufheben der Kultur is Dr. Seuss and his wide body of popular children’s literature. Why? Because of its success. Seuss becomes a cultural anchor point for hundreds of millions of children and adults, and by tainting Seuss, his legacy, and your own memories of him with accusations of racism and “harm,” they can abolish that shared cultural anchor and make more room to advance their own agenda, in which every text is “decolonized” and geared to indoctrinate you and your children into Critical Theory, especially Critical Race Theory. Join James Lindsay in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast to dig into the Critical Dr. Seuss academic literature to see where this Aufheben der Dr Seuss comes from and how it works.
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7 comments
As a German I gotta play the grammar Nazi and point out that it has to say “Die Aufhebung des Dr. Seuss” if you actually want your German to actually mean what you think it means instead of just being gibberish. BTW. I sent you an item from my grandfather – Nazi medal with Swastika and hammer and sickle, did you get it?
Your comparison to the hoax papers is so true – in fact, it made me wonder if Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian had a side project writing this Dr. Seuss paper to prank you.
Seriously, this is another great podcast. Your work on this, particularly topics like Marcuse, Gramsci, and pseudo-reality, have been extremely useful for my own understanding and to try convey to others what CRT and wokeness is actually about.
Keep fighting the good fight.
This kind of literature cancellation has been going on in the science fiction/fantasy world for about a decade. Recent targets include John W. Campbell (an award named after him was changed over a year ago), H. P. Lovecraft, and Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr. Campbell and Lovecraft committed the sin of racism, while Sheldon’s murder/suicide with her husband decades ago suddenly became an issue two years ago. There was also the oddly-named “Puppygate” controversy involving the Hugo Awards and supposed racism in SF awards ( https://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/). Oh, and Asimov is now dismissed for his misogyny.
This makes me feel angry, this makes me feel sad,
It makes me feel sorry for children we’ve had.
For when Seuss the good doctor gave us all of his stories
To delight and amaze us with drawings of lories.
We had no idea we were brainwashed in school,
That we hated our friends, that our teachers were fools.
Oh, please, Mr. Lindsay, please say it ain’t so,
That old Mr. Geisel ain’t brought down so low.
For when green children, blue children, yellow or red,
Get in their pajamas and ready for bed,
They don’t give a hoot about fuss and shiziggle,
They just want to laugh, and feel good with a giggle.
It is risky to compose a title in a language that one doesn’t know, unless perhaps one aims to give amusement by one’s ineptitude. When the writers of *The Simpsons* needed a title for a script about Mr. Burns selling the nuclear power plant to some Germans, they fake-translated “Burns Sells the Power Plant” into German by simply looking up each word (other than “Burns,” of course) in a German-English dictionary and putting what they found in place of the English original. The result, “Burns Verkaufen Das Kraftwerk,” is not grammatical German, but it is amusing to anyone who knows German.
The title of this piece is similarly mangled pseudo-German, but it seems to be intended to be actual German. “Aufheben der Dr. Seuss” and “Aufheben der Kultur” are both ungrammatical, though the second phrase contains fewer grammatical errors than the first. If these are meant to be noun phrases then they should be “Aufhebung des Drs. Seuss” (“cancellation of Dr. Seuss”) and “Aufhebung der Kultur” (“cancellation of culture”), respectively. If they are meant to be infinitive verb phrases, they should be “Dr. Seuss aufheben” (“to cancel Dr. Seuss”) and “die Kultur aufheben” (“to cancel culture”).
By the way, the translation of “aufheben” as “sublate” is not, as far as I know, due to any “Marxists.” It was Hegel who first used that verb as a kind of technical term. In ordinary German, it carries different meanings in different contexts, and a translator of ordinary German prose would translate it now as “cancel” now as “lift up,” now as “keep,” according to the context. Since Hegel plays with all the three meanings, his first English translators faced a difficulty in translating the verb as he used it. The best that they could do was resort to Latin, in which the irregular verb *tollo* (infinitive *tollere*, past participle *sublatus*) carries at least two of these three meanings. As English verbs derived from Latin generally use the Latin past participles, this one was adapted into English as “sublate.” Translators of Marx then followed suit. Whether any of these translators were themselves Marxists I don’t know.
Hi James,
interesting parallels!
In German, unfortunately, the heading does not really make sense. Whereas the word’s gender of ‘Kultur’ is female (_die_ Kultur), and – since the noun’ s case is genitive – this translates to _der_ Kultur, Dr Seuss’ word gender is masculine (_der_ Dr Seuss’), which in the genitive transposes to _des_ Dr Seuss’.
So the heading should read “Aufheben des Dr. Seuss'”, however, this sounds totally weird to German ears, as would a simple “Aufheben der Kultur” as heading.
The reason dir this is that “aufheben” originalky is a simple verb (‘to abolish’, ‘to lift’, ‘to cancel’) converted into a noun’ “das Aufheben” (‘the abolishment, the lifting, the cancelling) by means of capitalization. However, then – at least in ‘standalone-mode’ as in a heading – such a noun at least reqires an article (a/an/the) or ‘Ein’ or ‘Das’, respectively).
To make matters even more complicated, however, “Das Aufheben des Dr. Seuss” – lliterally ‘the cancelling (or lifting) of Dr Seuss’ could refer to both his being cancelled (passive) as well as him cancelling (active).
One would thus choose a different strategy to transform the verb “aufheben” to a noun, one which adds some more weight to the intended passive form, as we would in English (e.g. ‘cancellation’ rather than ‘cancelling’ ) , and this should translate to “Die Aufhebung” (des Dr Seuss’).
To rule out remaining ambiguities, however, one would maybe choose the passive directly (‘Dr Seuss is cancelled/lifted”), or “Dr Seuss wird aufgehoben”.
Best, Jens
Jens, I took German in college about 40 years ago, and I’ve forgotten most of the grammar I learned. But I really enjoyed reading your little excursion into German grammar.