Cynical Theories
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity— and Why This Harms Everybody
By: Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay
“This book ultimately seeks to present a philosophically liberal critique of Social Justice scholarship and activism and argues that this scholarship-activism does not further social justice and equality aims.”
This book has everything you need to know about Critical Theory. But before you check out because you don’t find this interesting or relevant, I would like to encourage you to still engage in the material.
I don’t know if most people know what critical theory is or if it even matters. Perhaps you know what critical theory is but don’t believe it’s relevant or something widely advocated for. Perhaps you only think of critical race theory when you hear critical theory.
The authors of Cynical Theories are not saying that all the facets of critical theory are necessarily widely accepted and promoted. The main point of this book is to trace the history of critical theory and its roots in postmodernism and then expose how these ideologies have formed into various studies (i.e. critical race theory, queer theory, etc) and how they are currently influencing our world, largely unrealized under the guise of social justice.
This book has a ton of information in it so I’m going to do my best to summarize the main points. I’ve also been compiling a Glossary of Terms to help navigate the jargon that goes with critical theory, social justice, and other related topics.
I think it’s important to understand critical theory beyond just critical race theory. I think it’s important to understand where many widely accepted beliefs today have been rooted in. Many theories sound good on paper but don’t hold up to scrutiny. Critical theory falls into this category.
There is a lot to think about with critical theory and if we don’t take ownership of understanding influential ideologies, we might find ourselves misled into a culture that does more harm than good.
The authors argue, and I would agree, that the social justice widely advocated for today, because it is rooted in these postmodern ideas, is not actually accomplishing what they proclaim.
Regardless of your current view of critical theory or critical race theory, please consider the information and think for yourself.
[See the end of my review for some other books I’ve found really interesting for this topic)
Throughout the whole book, the authors keep coming back to two principles and four themes of (applied) postmodernism influential to the origins of critical theory. For each critical theory study they discuss how these principles and themes exhibit themselves.
Two Principles of Postmodernism:
The knowledge principle: Skepticism about whether objective truth is attainable; ‘truth’ or knowledge is a construct
The political principle: Society is formed by systems of power and hierarchies who decide what can be known and how
Four Major Themes of Postmodernism:
The blurring of boundaries- pushing against established categories that have widely been accepted as true
evident in the fluidity and ambiguity of gender/sexuality categories
The power of language- belief that language controls society because of how you communicate about things and is inherently dangerous and unreliable
evident in the use of the words as verbal violence, microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings
Cultural relativism- critiquing other cultures is a weapon and oppressive; meaningful critique of any culture can only be done from within lest one culture be viewed superior to another
The loss of the individual and the universal - the individual and the universal—humanity regardless of race, gender, class, sex— is a myth; focuses on collectives of people grouped according to their position in the world often based on race, gender, class, sex, etc
evident in identity categories, identity politics, and standpoint theory
To sum up the history side of this: postmodernism arose out of the 1960s and began with theorists like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard who, after the First and Second World Wars, grew skeptical of technology and science and pessimistic about liberalism and the culture that collapsed in front of them.
“Their summary of this state took the form of an extremely radical skepticism and profound cynicism, particularly about language, knowledge, power, and the individual.”
They rejected the boundary between objective and subjective truth and viewed any one ‘Truth’ as a power play.
“Because of their focus on power dynamics, these thinkers argued that the powerful have, both intentionally and inadvertently, organized society to benefit them and perpetuate their power. They have done so by legitimating certain ways of talking about things as true, which then spread throughout society, creating societal rules that are viewed as common sense and perpetuated on all levels…”
Postmodernism took what the authors refer to as an ‘applied turn’ in the 80s and 90s. Instead of being a directionless group aiming merely to disrupt and problematize everything, they turned these ideas into actionable goals under the term ‘Social Justice’ to not just disrupt the systems they viewed as unjust, but to completely dismantle them.
“Theory assumes that objective reality cannot be known, “truth” is socially constructed through language and “language games” and is local to a particular culture, and knowledge functions to protect and advance the interests of the privileged.”
They also believe:
“If knowledge is a construct of power, which functions through ways of talking about things, knowledge can be changed and power structures toppled by changing the way we talk about things.”
Pluckrose and Lindsay spend a chapter on each of these studies in-depth on what it teaches. I will attempt to summarize them here.
Postcolonial Theory
“[Postcolonialism] proceeded upon the assumption that the European powers had a right to expand their territories and exert their political and cultural authority over other peoples and regions.”
This facet of critical theory is striving to dismantle anything that is white and Western. Most commonly this is the idea that rationality and science were weapons of the white West to colonize and dominate other cultures “dumber” than them.
There is also discussion here about revisionist history (editing history in favor of a political agenda) and research justice (only using/citing research from non-white males).
“Indian postcolonial scholar Meera Nanda argues that, by assigning science and reason to the West and traditional, spiritual, experiential beliefs to India, post-modern scholars perpetuate Orientalism and make it very difficult to address the many real issues that can best be tackled using science and reason.”
This is important because instead of rejecting the idea that people in other cultures can be rational and scientific, postcolonial theory confirms the belief that other cultures are not and instead rejects science and rationality as oppressive. Instead of viewing everyone equally, they affirm distinctions and just try to flip the power to the marginalized group.
Queer Theory
“Queer Theory presumes that oppression follows from categorization, which arises every time language constructs a sense of what is ‘normal’ by producing and maintaining rigid categories of sex (male and female), gender (masculine and feminine), and sexuality (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and so on) and “scripting” people into them.”
Here critical theory is dismantling anything considered normative. They view categories as oppressive because of expectations they imply and because basically it confines people to boxes they don’t feel comfortable in.
True to postmodernist influence, queer theory rejects science in the form of biology because categories of sex and sexuality are social constructs created in a system of unjust power (completely ignoring the very real biological requirements of procreation). People are taught to ‘perform’ according to their gender and perpetuate the system by complying (gender performativity).
Instead of the liberal goal of changing prejudiced attitudes toward non-normative gender and sexual identities, queer theory strives to unmake the entire concepts themselves. This is actually at odds with the larger philosophy of LGBT communities.
Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality (my longest section because it’s most recognized)
“Critical race Theory holds that race is a social construct that was created to maintain white privilege and white supremacy.”
The authors differentiate between material theorists and postmodern theorists. The former focusing on economic, legal, political systems, the latter on linguistics and social systems involving implicit biases. Derrick Bell, a material theorist, is the major forefather of CRT and said this:
“progress in American race relations is largely a mirage obscuring the fact that whites continue, consciously or unconsciously, to do all in their power to ensure their dominion and maintain their control.”
Radical black feminists including bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Patricia Hill Collins piggy-backed off of this theory mixing it with gendered injustices. They employed standpoint theory which looks at your place in society based on your identity groups and how your positioning influences how you understand the world and are understood by it.
This directly leads to intersectionality which identifies those specific identity groups and labels them as oppressed or oppressors. They are constantly seeking out instances of prejudice, bigotry, and biases, not questioning IF they are present, but HOW they are present.
A main tenet of CRT is that “racism is present everywhere and always, and persistently works against people of color, who are aware of this, and for the benefit of white people, who tend not to be, as is their privilege.” They claim reason disadvantages women and racial minorities. They claim every disparity is because of discrimination instead of considering other possible causes— after all correlation does not equal causation. We must seek truth not prejudice.
Another complication of intersectionality is that all of these complex identity groups conflict with each other leading followers of intersectionality to claim surprising things: “straight black men have been described as the ‘white people of black people’” or “Lifelong human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was accused of racism for criticizing black rap musicians who sang about murdering gay people.”
The authors are clear that there are injustices that need to be righted and that we need to study our systems to identify where these might be occurring. But they rightly criticize the CRT definition of racism— “privilege plus power”— which I talk more about in my reviews of other books listed below.
They quote The Coddling of the American Mind, a phenomenal book which studies many of these ideas at work on university and college campuses, saying: “If we train young people to read insult, hostility, and prejudice into every interaction, they may increasingly see the world as hostile to them and fail to thrive in it.”
This also creates problems when we consider the postmodern knowledge principle as it pertains to CRT and intersectionality— knowledge obtained through lived experience from marginalized groups is authentic and authoritative and cannot be disputed— therefore, if someone says that a comment or an action is racist, it MUST be racist and cannot be questioned. We can see the dangers of this.
“It is bad psychology to tell people who do not believe that they are racist— who may even actively despise racism—that there is nothing they can do to stop themselves from being racist— and then ask them to help you. It is even less helpful to tell them that even their own good intentions are proof of their latent racism.”
Depending how familiar you are with CRT and intersectionality, these considerations may be alarming or surprising to you. Perhaps you believe few people actually adhere to this ideology. But this is the ideology found in the books White Fragility and How to be an Antiracist (among others)— both NY Times bestsellers for many months— as well as the widely praised BLM organization in general. The influence of this thinking (more than postoclonial or queer theory) is greater and more widespread than you realize.
“By seeking to divide humans into marginalized identity groups and their oppressors, Social Justice risks fueling our worst tendencies— our tribalism and vengefulness.”
Feminism and Gender Studies
“‘Feminism’ in its most basic definition, means ‘belief in gender equality,’ and, in these terms, the majority of the population is now feminist.”
But, as the authors point out, feminism has branched into different camps, some more radicalized, that go beyond just gender equality to emphasizing patriarchy and capitalism’s role in female oppression, and viewing women as an oppressed group and men as an oppressor group.
Intersectional feminism is the most popular right now which draws on CRT, queer theory, and postcolonial theory as it challenges the categories of men and women, resists the expectation to conform to ‘white male’ ways of knowing things and operating in the world, and gives special attention to amplify the black female voices in the world.
“By centralizing social constructivist ideas of gender from radical feminism and queer Theory, biological explanations for why, on average, men and women make different life choices, display different degrees of psychological traits, have different interests, or exhibit different sexual behaviors cannot be included within intersectional feminist analysis. As there is considerable evidence that such differences exist and that they actually increase when women are free to make their own choices…”
All of these factors really complicate any scholars’ ability to even study gender studies in any meaningful way.
Disability and Fat Studies
“It’s original aim was to make society more accommodating and accepting of disabled people, and thereby improve their quality of life. Much of this was achieved by increasing disabled people’s access to the opportunities available to the non disabled…”
Reading this chapter was insane. I thought— this has to be a fringe idea that few buy into— but then I saw a bunch of viral TikTok videos about these and realized it’s bigger than I thought:
Again, true to the postmodern ideals, disability and ‘fatness’ are viewed as social constructs, not reality. It draws on queer theory in that ‘abled’ or ‘skinny’ are seen as normative so ‘disabled’ or ‘fat’ are non-normative and therefore marginalized and we must rid the world of these categories.
The authors don’t define what constitutes as a disability or what is considered ‘fat’ which would be more helpful in understanding this I think. But they do reference autism and deafness and refer to diagnoses from doctors of obesity.
What was insane to me about this chapter was that adherents to this theory believe that to try to fix someone’s impairment or tell someone to lose weight for their health is oppression and hate. To view a disability or obesity as a negative thing is oppressive. They say that disabled people who desire to ‘be fixed’ have “internalized ableism” reinforcing the oppressive categories. (See also CRT’s use of this ‘internalization’ of their oppression on black people who disagree with CRT)
They believe these not to be disabilities or negative things but a core part of their identity. Some disabled and overweight people would agree with this but I think the majority of disabled people would like a better quality of life. How is denying cochlear implants for deaf people helping them? How is demonizing doctors who diagnose obesity and recommend weight loss to subvert heart disease and diabetes helping people?
Heart disease, scientifically connected to obesity, is one of the leading causes of death in America.
Read this response Linda X. Z. Brown (autistic disability rights activist) gave to someone wondering if they were autistic:
“Well, it’s not up to me to tell you how you should or should not identify, but I don’t believe in giving power to the medical-industrial complex and its monopoly over getting to define and determine who counts and who does not count as Autistic.”
I wonder what kind of doctor she would request if she needed heart surgery. Surely not a doctor with a monopoly on doing heart surgeries. Because a doctor is just a person “with letters behind their name” right?
What started off as a legitimate crusade to improve the quality of life for a lot of people derailed pretty fantastically.
Social Justice and Critical Theory
Hopefully after reading through my brief (ha!) synopsis of these critical theories you have a better understanding of how pervasive these beliefs really are and what some of the dangerous implications are.
Social justice is an imperative. We must seek to reform and eliminate prejudice and injustice. But the ideology found in critical theory is not doing what it thinks it is. It is not creating unity and eliminating racism. It is dividing, categorizing, labeling, and encouraging people to find MORE racism and prejudice.
It is claiming oppression everywhere which takes away attention from actual injustices. We are focused on the wrong things and the actual oppressed and marginalized are only further oppressed and marginalized.
It is creating a culture of animosity, an us vs. them mentality, and the celebration and elevation of victimhood. None of these are helpful in cultivating a culture of peace and unity.
The conclusion of this book brings us back to its premise: the postmodern ideas of the 60s have adapted and fragmented into various critical theories that have formidably worked their way into “intersectional Social Justice scholarship and activism and have begun to take root in the public consciousness as allegedly factual descriptions of the workings of knowledge, power, and human social relations.”
The knowledge principle is ‘realized’ saying “patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, cisnormativity, heteronormativity, ableism, and fat phobia are literally structuring society and infecting everything”
The political principle is ‘realized’ as “absolute certainty that all white people are racist, all men are sexist, sex is not biological and exists on a spectrum, language can be literal violence, denial of gender identity is killing people, the wish to remedy disability and obesity is hateful, and everything needs to be decolonized.”
Critical theory is not presented as a theory but as Truth with a capital T. Disagreement is not tolerated and regularly demonized or ‘canceled.’ Dissenting voices must be silenced lest the dominant voice of privilege prevail once again over the marginalized. And to talk about any of these issues at all, one must use an approved vocabulary and validate standpoint theory and identity politics.
The dangers of eliminating dissenting voices are severe and easily recognized.
“It is not exaggeration to observe that Social Justice Theorists have created a new religion, a tradition of faith that is actively hostile to reason, falsification, disconfirmation, and disagreement of any kind.”
“The idea that social justice is best served by restricting what can be said, and by banning some ideas and terminologies and enforcing others, is unsupported by history, evidence, or reason.”
The authors very strongly propose that true liberalism is the obvious and flawless-but-not-flawless solution to critical theory and the answer for correct social justice. I disagree with much of their reasoning on the basis of my own biblical worldview but regardless, we can agree that the critical theory ideology is harmful to people and actually a perpetrator of social injustice.
There are many more compelling arguments and points made in Cynical Theories that I can’t keep adding here. I would highly recommend you read the book and be more fully informed as you make a judgement on whether you think critical theory is a good influence on your world.
“Although most people— including the owners of the companies themselves—probably do not subscribe to Social Justice ideas, these ideas are clearly influential, as demonstrated by the fact that tech, broadcasting, and retail giants are ready to placate their advocates.”
I would also highly recommend the books I’ve listed below.
I’ll leave you with an interesting and relevant quote from the book 1984:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The Coddling of the American Mind- written by a sociologist and a first-amendment lawyer fighting for free speech on campuses, this is a really insightful book on how the principles in Cynical Theories are playing out in universities and why that matters for the rest of the world. This book was quoted a lot in Cynical Theories.
Fortitude: American Resilience in an Age of Outrage- this is a really relevant book that speaks into victimhood culture and how we need to pursue resilience rather than celebrate victimhood; I think people will write this book off because it was written by a Republican but I didn’t feel it was a partisan book but spoke to society as a whole with a lot of solid, relevant information and encouragement.
Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth- this is the best book I’ve read on social justice from a biblical worldview. Endorsed by John Perkins, a black civil rights activist, the book proposes 12 questions we need to ask about our version of social justice to see if it’s actually going to do what we want it to. Balanced, thoughtful, and practical.
Live Not by Lies- this book presents compelling evidence that we are heading towards a ‘soft totalitarian’ type country; it recognizes that this Social Justice Truth with a capital T is being enforced in alarming ways that is reminiscent to many people of their experiences in other countries under totalitarian regimes. It covers much of the same issues as Cynical Theories but in a more informal writing style and a Christian viewpoint.
The Intolerance of Tolerance- D.A. Carson discusses how the definition of tolerance has changed to ironically be quite intolerant and exposes the inconsistencies of this ‘new tolerance’. He discusses freedom of speech, truth, and relativism.
How the Nations Rage- an essential book for Christians trying to navigate faith and politics. There is a really interesting discussion on separation of church and state. He also talks about how the church and Christians should each engage with politics, view legislation, and practice biblical social justice.
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self- very academic look at what historical figures/influences have changed the way we see ourselves and this new self-focused trend has influenced our culture. Ironic how this still applies even as postmodernism seems to think it is rejecting the individual and trying to only see identity groups, this book helps explain how some of these identities have come to be so important.
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