Tag Archives: critical theory

I Saw Dinesh D’Souza’s Documentary, “2016”

I finally got around to seeing Dinesh D’Souza’s hatchet job documentary on Barack Obama, 2016 (it’s out on DVD). What I hoped for was a serious and thought-provoking conservative take on the nation’s first black president. D’Souza, after all, is … Continue reading

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Thinking Critically about Critical Theory

First thought. The broad takeaway insight of postmodernism is the following: there is always more in a text than the author knows or intends. This goes rather nicely with Nietzsche’s claim that “there are no facts, only interpretations.” But before … Continue reading

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Does Critical Theory Kill Aristotle or Does Aristotle Kill Critical Theory?

Within the humanities, contemporary critical theorizing typically entails left leaning political commitments accompanied by some line of attack or qualification on Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle—his idea that every communicative act necessarily requires three things: an author or speaker (Greek: ethos), a … Continue reading

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Anti-Science and Conspiracy Culture: Is Postmodernism to Blame?

How much responsibility should postmodern academics assume for America’s pervasive anti-science and conspiracy culture? A helpful route into thinking about this question is Bruno Latour’s 2003 essay, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters … Continue reading

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Who Is Stephen Greenblatt? Why Should You Care?

Stephen Greenblatt (b. 1943) is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, a Shakespeare biographer, and a recent recipient for general nonfiction of the Pulitzer Prize, but most importantly, he is the founder of “the new historicism,” and … Continue reading

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Practice Makes Perfect: David Hume Teaches Us How To Read Closely And See

In 1757, the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) published four essays under the title, Four Dissertations, one of which he called “Of the Standard of Taste.” In it, Hume attempts to tackle the question of why people vary in opinion … Continue reading

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Zeev Sternhell’s Question: What Is To Be Done About The Anglo-French Enlightenment?

In The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition (Yale 2009), Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell (b. 1935) sees a fault line running through much of contemporary global culture: what to do about the Anglo-French Enlightenment. By the Anglo-French Enlightenment, he means the intellectual movement initiated in 17th … Continue reading

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Bruno Latour’s Question: Are There Things We Shouldn’t Deconstruct?

In his essay, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern” (2003), historian of science Bruno Latour (b. 1947) worries that the intellectual atmosphere in the humanities—in which many scholars, including him, have … Continue reading

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Martha Nussbaum’s Question: How Can We Activate Our Imaginative, Critical, And Moral Intelligences Against Invisibility?

In her essay, “The Narrative Imagination” (1997), Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947), a classicist, philosopher, and legal scholar who contributes regularly to the New Republic and teaches at the University of Chicago, writes the following: When a child and a parent … Continue reading

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Ask an Interesting Question, Get an Interesting Answer. Stephen Knapp and Walter Benn Michael’s Anti-Critical Theory Question: What Happens if We Don’t Separate Meaning from Intention and Knowledge from Interpretation? Will This Kill Critical Theory?

Within the humanities, contemporary critical theorizing typically entails political commitments, predominantly from the left, accompanied by some line of attack or qualification on Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle (his idea that every communicative act necessarily requires a speaker or author, a message, … Continue reading

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God: The Ghost Writer Who Isn’t There?

At Slate this month, Jesse Bering reflects on the human inclination to project mental properties (such as beliefs and purposes), not only onto people, but animals, inanimate objects, and God: When others violate our expectations for normalcy or stump us with … Continue reading

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A Great Quote on Theory Sludge

This quote comes from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, writing in the New York Times Book Review recently: The study of literature as an art form, of its techniques for delighting and instructing, has been replaced by an amalgam of bad epistemology … Continue reading

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