The Critical Turn in Education: Chapter 5 Analysis
A Feminist and Social Constructivist spin on Educational Philosophy
This chapter focuses on a set of ideas that emerged within Critical Pedagogy rather than the contributions of a particular person. From this point forward, all the individuals involved are essentially part of the same school of thought regarding education, but, in a predictable development for Marxists, had differing views on whose voice was authoritative. These differences led to the introduction of new methodologies in teaching and ultimately into the entire Critical Social Justice Movement.
Summary: Situated Knowledge and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology
The Poststructuralist Feminists made two essential additions to the corpus of Critical Pedagogy: the concept of situated knowledge, and the method of standpoint epistemology. This chapter is split between explaining the meaning of these new ideas and describing how they were used to criticize previous figures in the movement. However, this criticism shouldn’t be viewed as a rejection of the ideas of Giroux and Freire, but rather an assertion that their presence as authorities in the movement was antithetical to their goal of true liberation. Merely having authoritative voices, it was argued, introduced an oppressive element into the movement that needed to be excised.
Postmodernist Critique of Everything
A full discussion of the postmodern thinkers that influenced the poststructuralist feminists is a topic for another book (once again, I strongly recommend Stephen Hicks’s, Explaining Postmodernism1), but the postmodernist focus was on criticism of narratives. In their view, a narrative is any description of events or phenomena that identified a coherent pattern or made predictions of future events. Any such “narrative” is suspect because it is a tool that some powerful person or group is using to further their own interests. While there are obvious parallels to the theme of omnipresent oppression in Critical Pedagogy, this postmodernist addition would require some modification before it could be useful to the leftist philosophy of education.
An essential aspect that was imported directly from postmodernism was the argument that objectivity and rationality were invalid goals. Any attempt to be objective constituted a desire to look at things from a “God’s eye view,” which was impossible because human beings are not capable of separating their minds and ideas from their own context and situation. Various postmodernists have used this angle to attack everything from theoretical science to basic grammar, but within Critical Pedagogy, the Poststructuralist Feminists had different targets.
In the late 1980s, several different feminists, including Patti Lather and Elizabeth Ellsworth began to publish criticisms of Giroux’s formulation of Critical Pedagogy.2 The essence of their critique was that any attempt by the teacher to instill a critical consciousness was, in fact, maintaining the current, oppressive, system because it situated the Critical Pedagogue as a sort of authority who was imposing his own, oppressive will on the students. Furthermore, since the originators of Critical Pedagogy were mostly white men, they were fundamentally incapable of understanding the oppression that women and racial minorities were experiencing. The feminist analysis argued that all teachers attempting to practice Critical Pedagogy brought their own forms of “learned oppression” with them. Because critical educators thought of themselves as an emancipating force, rather than an oppressive force, they never became fully cognizant of their assumptions and biases that maintained systems of oppression.
Around this time, Kathleen Weiler published a very similar criticism of the ideas of Paulo Freire—he was mistaken when he had envisioned the teacher as an enlightened intellectual rather than someone who had a whole slew of oppressive tendencies that needed to be identified and rooted out. But there was an additional problem with Freire’s epistemology—he believed that his narrative was a universal truth. Postmodern analysis argued instead that every person or group has a degree of subjectivity that must be identified and engaged with. This meant a rejection of Freire’s universalizing narrative of oppression.
These critiques did run the risk of degenerating into moral and political skepticism. After all, if everything can be reduced to a narrative that someone tells to preserve their own power, doesn’t this mean that moral principles and political advocacy are nothing more than arbitrary narratives? The tools that the poststructuralist feminists developed are as much to avoid this postmodern trap as they are to criticize their predecessors in Critical Pedagogy. The first tool served to exempt a particular kind of narrative from postmodern critique: the narrative of the oppressed.
Priesthood of the Oppressed
The essence of the feminist critiques of Critical Pedagogy came down to the fact that those who originated the ideas could not truly understand the oppressed, and thus, could not have knowledge about the best way to achieve their liberation. Giroux’s basic assumptions about a dominant culture oppressing smaller, less privileged groups remained intact, along with Freire’s moral commandment to attain solidarity with the oppressed. What changed was who would have the authority to speak about the nature of oppression and articulate the desired social policies.
The concept of knowledge as “situated” was central in the Poststructuralist criticism of Critical Pedagogy and of Western culture at large. Gottesman defines feminist situated knowledge as “knowledge [that] emerges from the particular lives and experiences of women.”3 I don’t think this is to be read as claiming that knowledge only emerges from the lives of women, but that knowledge claims are essentially contingent upon unique experiences of the individual making them. Though there are similarities, situated knowledge should not be confused with the idea that all knowledge is subjective, or that “everyone’s truth” is equally valid for them. The claim that “knowledge as situated” still leaves open the idea that knowledge claims can be valid, but the essential validity check is the identity of the speaker, rather than adherence to the facts. More concisely, “who speaks is more important than what is said.” (Emphasis in original)4 Within the movement of Critical Pedagogy, this led to the charge that, because the originators were intellectuals, they were motivated by their desire to be the spokesmen for the oppressed rather than to achieve genuine liberation.
On this view, true epistemic authority was attained by being oppressed. It was the origin of the knowledge claim rather than the knowledge claim itself that was relevant to its truth (more on this so-called, “standpoint epistemology” in the Prescriptions section).
Up to this point, the oppressed held a privileged moral position within Critical Social Justice. Their betterment was the purpose of social activism, and spiritual renewal was attained by siding with them, joining their struggle, and teaching them to see themselves as revolutionary change agents. The addition from the Poststructuralist Feminists was that oppression conferred a standpoint that granted access to greater levels of truth. In addition to being morally sacred, the oppressed were elevated to an almost clergy-like status in which greater oppression gives greater weight to one’s pronouncements.
It’s Different, But it’s the Same
On the surface, it looks like these new developments in Critical Pedagogy have taken it well beyond the bounds of Marxism to the point where even the intellectual character of Marxists was accused of being oppressive because it retained the Western “myths” of objectivity and universal truth.5
That said, Freire’s goal of liberation through eliminating false consciousness remained unchanged, there was just some contention over who should be guiding it, and how it was to be done. The social activist agenda formulated by Neo-Marxists remained intact, though the authorities organizing such activism would be somewhat different going forward. And the cultural critique originated by Giroux remained the main line of attack against Western culture. The moral and political values of Critical Pedagogy remained thoroughly Marxist. The only real change is who would be elevated to the vanguard (which is somewhat ironic considering how much the Poststructuralist Feminists decried vanguardism).
Even when claiming to offer “scathing critiques” of the movement, it’s clear that Critical Pedagogy retained its deep connection to Marxist convictions. Why? Simply, a Marxist critique of Marxism can only result in more Marxism, but when looking for the fundamental element emanating from Marx to the Poststructuralist Feminists, it’s helpful to look for the rawest essence of Marx. I believe this is to be found in his love for the character of Mephistopheles from Goethe’s Faust. Marx’s favorite quotation was, “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”6 It was this sentiment that animated his advocacy of, “Ruthless criticism of all that exists.”7 It turns out that the poststructuralists were after the same thing, and frankly, they were better at it.
Situated knowledge and standpoint epistemology led to a movement obsessed with wound-collecting for the purpose of establishing a pecking order on the Progressive Stack, which not only conferred praise and adulation, but authority. Authority to condemn people, ideas, and organizations with any number of “ist-a-phobe” monikers. The strategy behind these tactics is also consistent. Whether it’s an individual, an institution, or a cherished principle, there is only one directive: it must conform to Critical Social Justice or it must cease to exist. Either be torn down now or turn yourself into something that tears other things down…and then be torn down later. For examples, look to J.K. Rowling, once prominent amongst social justice activists, who is now relentlessly attacked for “transphobia.” Look to universities that are harshly criticized for establishing “non-inclusive” free speech zones on campuses where freedom of expression was once the most sacred responsibility. Look to the condemnation of the colorblind equality for being essential to “white supremacy.” Marx could only have dreamed of a movement so effective at bringing about the demise of all that exists.
Prescriptions and Ideas for Education
Standpoint Epistemology
Standpoint epistemology is the concept of situated knowledge applied to acquiring and evaluating new ideas or principles. The first question asked when evaluating any claim is, “who said it?” Immediately followed by, “what privilege or oppression does the speaker have?” The more privilege the speaker has, the more suspect the claim, the more oppressed the speaker can show themselves to be, the more seriously the claim should be taken.
It's through standpoint epistemology that something like “lived experience” is elevated from anecdotal claim to the strongest evidence imaginable, provided it’s from the right source. Only those who can demonstrate enough oppression have their lived experience elevated beyond refutation, while others have their knowledge claims devalued precisely because their lived experience lacks the golden stamp of oppression.
The standard objection to anecdotal evidence is that it contains the biases inherent to the person who had the experience. Standpoint epistemology claims the opposite. The very experience of oppression elevates one’s perspective because it allows you to see the situation from the angle of one being subjugated by the hegemony in addition to the hegemonic narrative that is available to everyone. In this sense, to rely on lived experience (assuming one is oppressed), “[does] not weaken objectivity by introducing bias, rather, it [makes] objectivity stronger by bringing experience, history, and values to the situated (and always normative) process of knowledge production and consumption.”8 In short, the experience of being oppressed makes one more than merely, “objective.”
Practically, this leads to the presentation of stories in place of facts and arguments. A cogent example of this is the widespread belief that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist who went on a reckless spree in which he killed numerous black people during the riot in Kenosha, WI. No part of this claim was backed up by anything Rittenhouse has ever said or done, by his family history, or by the recorded video evidence of the incident. Such details are not relevant according to standpoint epistemology. If this story about Rittenhouse “feels right,” if it matches the lived experience of an oppressed group, it is irrelevant whether or not it conforms to facts. If someone’s lived experience tells them that blacks are routinely hunted by white supremacists, then the story about Rittenhouse is valid. And it should absolutely inform how Rittenhouse is judged in court and treated by society.
Self-Reflexivity
The Poststructuralists argued that it was essential for Critical Pedagogy to include the practice of identifying and rooting out any individual biases or preconceptions that perpetuate oppression. They call this the practice of being “self-reflexive.” The criticism of both Freire and Giroux came down to the fact that the two men were not sufficiently self-reflexive to offer a pedagogical method that would fully liberate people from oppression.
On the face of it, this may look like a new strain of thought in the movement telling the originators that they were doing things wrong, but it turns out that there is quite a bit more to being self-reflexive than a power struggle within Critical Pedagogy. It represents a form of psychological manipulation that both intimidates those new to Critical Social Justice and reinforces the loyalty of those within it.
It's no accident that an essential aspect to nearly every DEI workshop is some sort of admission of guilt. Whether it’s an “invitation” to confess racist or homophobic thoughts, acknowledge the land theft from the indigenous peoples who once populated your locality, or just recite the ways in which you have benefited from an “oppressive society,” to participate is to engage in this self-reflexive act.9 The reason for this is that it sets the stage for a call of unity in fighting oppression. By admitting guilt or complicity with oppression, it generates a social and psychological tension that can only be resolved by some sort of commitment to the movement that opposes such oppression—Critical Social Justice. Furthermore, in admitting guilt, one also gives tacit approval to whatever means the Critical Social Justice movement deems necessary to correct for the injustice of the past. In effect, this admission makes it much more difficult to object to actions taken in the name of social justice.
In Critical Pedagogy, self-reflexivity has permeated every aspect of the educational philosophy, from the training of educators to the kindergarten classrooms because through this process a person becomes psychologically invested in Critical Social Justice. This is especially true for younger students who do not yet have the mental fortitude, knowledge, or prowess to endure the discomfort and argue against it.
Abolition of Authority
Another major change brought about by the Poststructuralist viewpoint was the removal of the authority of the teacher. The claim was that placing teachers in the position of authority only causes the teacher’s internal tendencies to perpetuate oppression and prevent liberation. The alternative presented is that the teacher should instead be something like the first among equals who opens threads of discussion or inquiry but largely allows the students to determine the direction things go.
We see elements of this view in the advocacy for the teacher to be a “guide on the side” as opposed to a “sage on the stage” in many discussions of education today. However, the Poststructuralist view is somewhat more extreme because rather than formulating a new way in which the student and teacher interact to most effectively develop the student’s mind, it characterizes the very existence of authority in the classroom as harmful to the endeavor of education (though again, for Critical Pedagogues, education is not about developing a student’s mind, but about raising their consciousness).
In accordance with Standpoint Epistemology, the primary role of the teacher is to encourage the students to validate (or in some cases, invalidate) the contents of their own mind by critically investigating their own privilege and oppression. Note that the Poststructuralist Feminists don’t truly advocate for a complete abolition of authority from the teacher (they don’t believe, for example, that turning students loose in the woods would yield educated adults). In practice, the teacher acts as a sort of curator of reality who presents (explicitly and implicitly) a particular worldview (that of Critical Social Justice) and method of cognition (standpoint epistemology), then allows children to go where they will within that framework.
The method and results of this practice of abolishing authority in education (and parenting) is best seen in the modern phenomenon of trans-children. Central to the claim that children can be transgender is the idea that the child should be leading the discussion about the nature of their own gender. However, before the child can lead, he must be exposed to the perspective that gender and biological sex are essentially unrelated, that emotional or mental difficulties may be signs of transgenderism, and that being transgender amounts to being sacred.10 It’s unsurprising that there has been an explosion in the number of transgender children since this perspective has gained traction among their parents and educators.
Only Useful Theories
As previously mentioned, when a movement crosses over into using Postmodern methods to attack the status quo there is a very real possibility that they may find that the tactic of deconstruction turns against their own narrative and ideals. After all, if everything deserves to perish, then so does the movement of Critical Social Justice.
Even the method of standpoint epistemology can be turned against them. What happens when someone who has been massively and legitimately oppressed staunchly opposes Critical Social Justice? What are they to do with someone like North Korean defector Yeonmi Park, who endured oppression the likes of which no human being should have to go through, but who also comes out firmly against Critical Social Justice time and again?
The Poststructuralist Feminists headed off these difficulties by adopting a pragmatist position that, ultimately, it did not matter if a theory was true, it only mattered if it was useful. Useful for what? Jean Anyon, who was a leading critic of education in the 1970s and 80s, argued that,
“By useful, I intend that such theory would make useable recommendations to those who work for a more humanitarian, more equitable society, and consequently, this theory will have a progressive effect on society itself.”11
In other words, “useful” is what advances the agenda of Critical Social Justice. Once again, we see that the one thing that is never to be done is to question the righteousness of Leftist social and political goals.
It’s worth noting that the adoption of this notion of “only useful theories” has made the conglomeration of movements under the umbrella of Critical Social Justice ever more logically inconsistent. For example, to be transgender is to be embraced and celebrated, but to be transracial is to be guilty of countless sins. An oppressive patriarchy is to be condemned as omnipresent in the West, but is virtually ignored in countries where young girls have their genitals mutilated. Lockdowns, masks, and vaccine requirements are necessary for public health, but the mere suggestion that spending time outside in the sun would be beneficial for COVID outcomes was met with scorn, condemnation, and even ridiculous policies like filling skate parks with sand and blocking basketball hoops to prevent them from being used. The method to this madness is that even amidst these logical inconsistencies the Critical Social Justice movement always cranks the ratchet to the Left.
Jargon & Crossover Terms
Situated Knowledge
Motte
Knowledge claims must be understood within the context of the lives of those who made them. The emphasis is not on whether or not the knowledge claims are valid, but rather understanding why the claim was made.
Bailey
The primary determinant of validity of knowledge claims is the situation or context of the person or group making the claim. The emphasis is on using the context or situation not to understand why the claim is made but to determine if the claim is valid.
Strategy
This idea is utilized by Poststructuralism in an attempt to use a subjectivist view of knowledge to criticize opposing viewpoints without applying those same criticisms to their own arguments.
On a subjectivist view of knowledge, most claims can be dismissed (or at least critiqued) because subjectivity is always at play and the bias associated with this subjectivity makes any claims suspect at best. This is an extremely useful tactic for those who are unwilling (or, more often, unable) to analyze arguments for misinterpreted facts or logical inconsistencies because the mere existence of a thinking subject serves as a sufficient objection to the argument. There is no need to find specific biases because they must always be present (though the universality of the claim that “all knowledge is subjective” does present some problems).
But the subjectivist view isn’t politically useful because it prevents you and your side from making strong claims to truth as well. Situated knowledge is an attempt to sidestep this drawback. On this view, there is subjectivity associated with being a member of an oppressor group because as an oppressor it is impossible to truly understand the experience of the oppressed. However, as a member of an oppressed group, you understand things from your perspective, and because you also live in an oppressive society, you can comprehend things from the oppressor’s perspective as well. This means that your situation automatically gives you cognitive superiority to those not as oppressed as you. And this advantage should be the deciding factor when determining the validity of knowledge claims.
Seize the Motte and Bomb the Bailey
Understanding the context of people who formulated the variety of philosophical, historical, and scientific claims we have today can give insight into why and how they made the claims they did, but personal context is neither necessary nor sufficient for accepting or dismissing most knowledge claims. There is no evidence that being from a certain social class, having certain economic experiences, or enduring traumas makes your mind any more or less likely to conform to the facts of reality. And this is the standard by which knowledge claims must be evaluated—whether the claim is consistent with the facts, not what oppression the claimant has experienced. We must identify that this view of situated knowledge amounts to the idea that reality will conform to the “facts” of an oppressed mind. The absurdity of this claim speaks for itself.
Social Construct
Motte
A descriptor applied to ideas, methods, and institutions to indicate that they are fundamentally dependent upon the underlying values of the society in which they were created. This idea is often used to distinguish between practices and institutions that reflect optional values of society (such as whether or not to eat meat) and practices that reflect adherence to reality (such as the need to work in order to obtain food).
Bailey
A descriptor that can be applied to any object, process, or framework in which human ideas make some contribution. Under this view, anything within a society, or involving social interactions is a social construct. The bailey holds the motte’s evaluation of social constructs (that they reflect optional values) but drastically broadens the scope of what falls into the category of social construct.
Strategy
Both the motte and bailey are used to question the universality or necessity of cultural values, practices, or institutions. The motte definition of social construct is intended to identify if institutions, cultural products, or ideas are essentially dependent on their time and place as opposed to being essentially dependent on the facts of reality. An example of a concept that could be rejected because it might be considered a social construct is the idea of “race.” Simplified, this concept was developed to categorize people from around the globe based on their skin color. The idea was that skin color and other aspects of appearance signified a commonality that could be defined through the concept of race. But the similarities were thought to be more than just appearance; it was also considered useful in describing both the origins and capacities of the different races. Today, it is understood that concepts like language groups and genetic lineages are more valid for classifying the origins of groups of people, but also that these classifications have relatively little to say about the potential of a given individual member of such groups. Race can be considered a social construct because the idea people of a certain skin color were, in some way, either superior or inferior was baked into the formulation of the concept. Ultimately, the causal connection between skin color and capacity was shown to be based more on social consensus rather than the facts of reality. The concept of race either needs an a priori social conviction that the concept is needed, or it needs to be abandoned.
The bailey view attempts to widen the scope of what can be considered a social construct while maintaining that all such constructs are fundamentally contingent upon social values, and hence, arbitrary.12 The formula that Poststructuralists tend to follow is to make the claim that “X is a social construct” followed by, “therefore X is invalid.” X might be a field of knowledge like science, philosophy, law, or medicine; X might be a broad concept like reason, logic, morality, or gender; or X could be a specific idea like natural rights, supply and demand, or Newton’s Laws of Motion. When asked to provide evidence for such a claim, social constructivists will point to the necessity of society or social interactions to formulate such ideas, which makes them social constructs. Then they proceed to criticize the values and culture of the society that constructed those ideas or institutions as a method of invalidation. A simple critique would look something like, “White, European societies perpetuated oppressive regimes around the globe, hence this tendency to oppress is inherent to the formulation of science because it was largely developed by white, European men.” There is no attempt to even define the scientific method, let alone argue that the method as such relies on oppression, there is only a criticism of the society and culture that gave rise to the method.
BOMB the Motte and Bomb the Bailey
I would argue that usage of the term social construct should be abandoned entirely by those who are arguing in good faith. Like the idea of systemic racism, the term itself is usable in such a way that it can encompass nearly everything the user wants to criticize. The aspect of truth in the idea is that sometimes social values influence the development of certain modes of thinking in a way that makes them unfit to offer explanatory power for real-world phenomena. However, the mere fact that an idea had a social component or that those who developed it had their own value system does not mean that it is arbitrary. The idea always needs to be tested against reality. That the scientific method offers better predictive power than shamanistic ritual has nothing to do with who constructed it, and everything to do with the characteristic that it adheres to reality more consistently. Any culture could develop a method of knowledge production as effective as science, but only if it took correspondence to reality as seriously as the scientific method does.
Authoritarian
Motte
A political system in which absolute power rests with an individual or governing body and obedience to that authority is rigidly enforced.
Bailey
Any social arrangement in which one individual is placed in a position of authority over another, with a strong preference for use of the term if the authority is not consonant with Critical Social Justice.
Strategy
The idea behind this framing is to destroy the distinction between legitimate authority and illegitimate authority.13 Essentially, a legitimate authority is a person or institution who has earned the right to be listened to, generally through a demonstration of some sort of competence. An illegitimate authority on the other hand is not competent to exercise the authority they have.
Authoritarian governments are, by their nature, illegitimate authorities because no person or institution is competent to wield absolute power over the lives of their subjects. The goal of the Poststructuralist is to classify all positions of authority as being equivalently oppressive and unfit to use their power effectively. This includes the authority of both teachers and parents—if an authority of any kind overrides (or even attempts to sway) the will of another, it is considered authoritarian. Once again, this allows for an avenue of criticism of nearly anything with next to no knowledge of the subject. Merely identifying that someone holds a position of authority or decision-making power is enough to characterize it as “authoritarian.”
The “alternative” offered claims to reject such positions of authority, but in practice it does not. Because the leftist social and political goals remain axiomatic, the desire for critical pedagogues to use education for the purpose of “consciousness raising” remains as well. And to raise a critical consciousness requires a careful selection of information, activities, and psychological manipulation to guide students on the path to becoming leftist activists. This is certainly not what rejecting authority would look like. It is worth noting that leftists resolve this contradiction through the belief that true freedom or liberation is only possible for one who has a critical consciousness. Thus, anything that advances this goal cannot be considered authoritarian.
This new perspective on authority can also lead to more subtle uses of power along the lines of what might be found in Thaler and Sunstein’s “Nudge Theory” as against what would be practiced in Chinese thought-reform prisons.14 However, as with Nudge Theory, more overt uses of control are always on the table, but it’s often considered more effective to merely “nudge” students in the right (or more accurately, the left) direction.
Seize the Motte and Bomb the Bailey
Classifying a person or institution as legitimately authoritarian is and should be a serious charge. Furthermore, it is a uniquely political statement because it indicates a willingness to use political authority to enforce absolute obedience. Positions of authority as such do not imply authoritarianism, nor do they imply that the authority is illegitimate. When the charge of authoritarianism is leveled at a person or institution by the left, this is almost certain to be incorrect, but the real argument is over the legitimacy of authority as such. When engaging in an argument over whether something is authoritarian, we must be careful not to concede that the authority is illegitimate. By adopting their terms for the discussion we frequently do this without realizing it. It is essential to be clear what we are arguing for. For example, when confronting a claim like traditional teaching models are authoritarian, it would be a mistake to engage the argument on those terms because it degenerates into a political discourse when in fact the real issue is if teachers should hold positions of intellectual and disciplinary authority. For those of us who hold to more traditional models of education, we must realize that the real issue we are addressing is why young students need guidance to develop their mental capacities and behavioral norms.
Questions
How did Giroux not see this coming?
A major focus of this chapter is the feminist critiques of both Giroux and Freire. According to Gottesman, the main way that those in Giroux’s camp addressed these criticisms was to accuse the person of careerism by claiming that the arguments were made in an attempt to make a name for oneself by taking aim at the biggest names in Critical Pedagogy. Given that this “response” ducks the issue entirely (basically by throwing the first accusation that came to mind), few people found it convincing. And why would they? The Poststructuralists were merely applying Giroux’s critical method to Giroux’s system itself. Within Critical Pedagogy, Giroux was hegemonic, thus according to Giroux himself, this necessitated some form of internal oppression. Characters like Patti Lather and Kathleen Weiler merely pointed out that Giroux’s Critical Pedagogy oppressed “other ways of knowing” that were prevalent among oppressed groups of people. But in a world dominated by oppression dynamics, if it wasn’t this, it would have been something else, so how could Giroux have missed that this was the logical progression of his ideas?
Was “wound-collecting” the goal?
Up to this point, the purpose of Critical Pedagogy was to enter solidarity with the oppressed, but not necessarily to portray oneself as one of the oppressed. The oppressed were the moral purpose of the movement, but they were not its intellectual authorities. With the advent of standpoint epistemology being part of the oppressed group did not just grant you sacred status but access to special knowledge that made you uniquely qualified to speak about, well, anything. A predictable result of this shift has been a transformation of scholarship into a practice in which one provides a litany of grievances, disadvantages, and traumas in place of evidence or argument. Effectively, this amounts to excuse-making as merit. Was this the point? I am hard pressed to think of another system that could make people obsess over the desire to interpret every experience as some form of pain and oppression. Was the goal to turn people into monsters who preferred to ruminate on the oppression (real and imagined) they experienced instead of trying to make choices and take actions that improved their lives?
Do they see the next logical step?
I have to wonder if these feminists realized how easy it would be to use the tools they pioneered to criticize and ultimately destroy the concept of “woman” as nothing but a social narrative. We’ve seen many intellectuals and celebrities who have been considered leftists get pilloried by the Critical Social Justice movement over this very issue. Gender-critical feminists have been decried as transphobic for emphasizing the statement that trans-women (biological males) are not women and should not have access to women-only spaces, sports, or prisons. At the same time, a new strain of feminist thought has arisen that proclaims, “trans-women are women.” In many ways, this evolution of feminist thought is a natural consequence of the Poststructuralist ideas. Initially, the social aspects of gender were critiqued as social constructs. But, given the nature of standpoint epistemology, it was only a matter of time before biological sex received the same treatment. I must wonder if the feminists who made these contributions to Critical Pedagogy saw this coming, and if so, was that their ultimate intent?15
Hicks, Stephen. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition). Expanded. Ockham’s Razor, 2011.
Gottesman, Isaac H. The critical turn in education: from Marxist critique to poststructuralist feminism to critical theories of race. p. 94 New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.
TCTiE p. 95
TCTiE p. 106
TCTiE p. 107
Historan Paul Kengor elaborates on Marx’s love of Mephistopheles in an interview that can be found on YouTube:
This quote can be found in a letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge around 1843.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm
TCTiE p. 110
Just one example I was able to find is an activity offered by the Avarna Group involves something called the “Privilege Walk” wherein all participants take steps depending on the amount of privilege they possess.
https://theavarnagroup.com/resources/?category%5B%5D=31
This is best demonstrated in the recent play “I, Joan",” which portrays Joan of Arc as non-binary and literally opens with the phrase “Trans people are sacred. We are the Divine.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/theater/joan-of-arc-nonbinary-globe.html
TCTiE p. 112
The YouTuber King Crocoduck has an excellent video analyzing the question “Is Science a Social Construct?”
James Lindsay has repeatedly identified that a major defect of Critical Social Justice is the inability to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate authority: https://newdiscourses.com/2022/10/onlysubs-defining-ignorance-the-left/
Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R. Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness.
Lindsay has argued that this while this may not have been the intent, it was nevertheless a clear and logical progression from Poststructuralist Feminism to Trans Ideology.
https://newdiscourses.com/2023/04/feminism-is-feminist-gnosticism/