The statements of affirmation at the end of this piece are noble and something I'm 100% behind, for everybody. But it troubles me that this author does not see

The statements of affirmation at the end of this piece are noble and something I'm 100% behind, for everybody. But it troubles me that this author does not see a connection between her work ("reading “against the grain” of dominant cultural or critical texts [...] and identifying problematic elements in texts") and this atmosphere of "extraordinarily harsh and total self-criticism" that she rightly identifies as toxic. There is nothing wrong with analyzing cultural or critical texts and offering new perspective on them. And I can't speak to this specific author's work, because I haven't read any of it. But in my experience of reading a lot of this cultural criticism, it is rarely dispassionate analysis. It is usually passing harsh judgment on whatever it deems "problematic." This judgment is not always overt; it often takes the form of tying an entire history of slavery and wrong to the actions of anyone who is perceived as reinforcing any social pattern that can be tied to historical forms of oppression. I have compassion for anyone who has gotten to the point that they can't recognize their own goodness and accomplishments. But how much of that result has come from subscribing to a system of thought where any misstep could mean that you too have become "problematic"? These writers have constructed a new story of "original sin," but this time there is no Jesus to wash it all away. And their "Garden of Eden" -- a world where nothing is "problematic" -- is just as much of a fairy tale as Genesis.