The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 40
It is not normally appropriate to liken one’s ideological opponents to something like a virus, but what should we do when the people who hold that ideology liken themselves to viruses like HIV, Ebola, and SARS? This circumstance may seem strange and unlikely, but it is exactly what we encounter with Critical Social Justice. In 2016, two feminist scholars, Breanne Fahs and Michael Karger, both of Arizona State University, published a bizarre academic paper doing exactly that. They called this paper “Women’s Studies as a Virus: Institutional Feminism, Affect, and the Projection of Danger,” and in it, they (almost unbelievably) characterize viruses like those named above and also cancer as an ideal metaphor for what their ideology hopes to accomplish and how it should do it. This has to be seen (or heard) to be believed, so in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay reads through the entire paper, offering his commentary as he goes. Join him to hear this unbelievable characterization of Critical Social Justice (that is, Woke) ideology in its own words.
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5 comments
Not quite a virus, it’s a parasite which eats out the host and then kills it – and then spreads in the winds. There are parasites like this in the insect world, and the proper response is to kill the parasite. Viruses just use hosts to reproduce, their evolutionary strategy is to evolve so that they can spread – and weakening and killing the host quickly doesn’t do that. So we get the Delta variant which is highly infectious – it spreads – but isn’t virulent – it doesn’t kill people – it basically turns into the common cold, another coronavirus-caused disease…
So grievance studies fields should be eradicated from universities altogether – *especially* those paid for with tax dollars – and any money which formerly went to those parasitic fields go to teaching people the useful and practical arts and sciences…
What if someone on the inside is actually doing a sokal-squared. They would have to make it superficially flattering to the wokes (to keep there jobs and actually get it through), while actually planting strategic detonators or rotten scaffolding within the structure. There is at least a chance (right?) that the authors are not crazy, actually do hear themselves, and are doing it on purpose. If there were a prisoner in there tapping out messages on the wall, they’d have to disguise it so the gaurds don’t catch on…would we be able to tell what it is?
Dunno. It’s all so crazy guess I’m reaching for whatever the “real” explanation could be here. (Though Danila’s explanation might be better….a half-baked hail mary to reclaim the title of the real revolutionaries, who should definitely for sure seriously guys get to keep their funding.)
“Hail Mary” is exactly the term I was thinking of. I think the authors want readers (in women’s studies and in their competition/administration) to see their brilliance at finding a new metaphor. That’s why they follow its implications out. Furthermore, a new metaphor can be their intellectual brand: whenever anyone talks about a critical field as a virus, they have to cite the authors!
Does the fact that (IMO) this is for internal consumption in academia make it less dangerous than it would be if it were a manifesto: “Let’s make our students into viruses and here’s how to do it”? Not really. Anyone who adopts this metaphor, anyone who even discusses it positively (i.e., critical scholars in any field) legitimates and normalizes it. Helen said on a podcast last year, critical thought has no brakes, and people get points for finding something new. I foresee professors assigning students to work out the implications of their statuses as viruses, in real life, in specific fields… Horrific.
I wonder if the authors’ advocacy of the transformative (revolutionary) value of the discipline “women’s studies” is a response to claims within the academy that women’s studies is no longer relevant and should be dissolved into those disciplines it has affected, mainly but not entirely Gender Studies. The authors try to give other women’s studies academics an argument that they can use to protect their jobs: See, we still have something unique to contribute to the transformative project!
The metaphor of a virus, while deserving all of James’s scorn, still is less a manifesto to the general public than an argument for the continued relevancy of their field.
As I listen to this I’m actually reading this:
https://kathleenstock.com/women/
I wouldn’t describe Stock and Lindsay as ideological bedfellows, but the excoriation of academic feminism by Stock and her description of how it spreads outside academia was uncanny while listening to Lindsay describing just that!