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Very interesting article. I'd hypothesize that this comes out of the fact that this is rooted in the idea that "the personal is political". This has led to th

Very interesting article. I'd hypothesize that this comes out of the fact that this is rooted in the idea that "the personal is political". This has led to the growing idea that not taking a stand on an issue is supporting the status quo and therefore just as political. Therefore, everyone must "pick a side". This is reflected in the attacks on people who don't condemn political movements, but refuse to support them. While this isn't directly related to the situation with Scott Alexander, it sets the precedent that everyone is now "fair game".

diffrinse 6y ago
>I'd hypothesize that this comes out of the fact that this is rooted in the idea that "the personal is political". A lot of these concepts are derived from the French historian Michel Foucault (he was not a philosopher or a "critical theorist", he was the chair of history at a major French university) and bear out the interpretations that won out in American humanities departments and trickled down to street level as a generation of grad students hit the streets after 2008 as humanities depts shuttered left and right. Occupy Wall Street wouldn't happen today because it was the last vestige of '68 style old school European Left politics. In 2008, good ol' class consciousness was the last thing critical theory and Humanities depts were discussing. 'Identity politics', itself the evolution of 80/90s Critical Race Theory, had already started to dominate academic circles in the late 90s/early 00s, to the point that the popular, heralded Slovenian Marxist Slavoj Zizek dedicated a whole book to the topic, arguing on behalf of good ol' universality as pivot point for politics against popular writers like Judith Butler (gender/sexuality) and Wendy Brown (race). Coming to software as I did from continental European philosophy study it's been quite fascinating watch a species of Foucault interpretation become the mainstream Left ideology in America (and one that differs in my reading by quite a bit).

diffrinse 6y ago

>I'd hypothesize that this comes out of the fact that this is rooted in the idea that "the personal is political". A lot of these concepts are derived from the French historian Michel Foucault (he was not a philosopher or a "critical theorist", he was the chair of history at a major French university) and bear out the interpretations that won out in American humanities departments and trickled down to street level as a generation of grad students hit the streets after 2008 as humanities depts shuttered left and right. Occupy Wall Street wouldn't happen today because it was the last vestige of '68 style old school European Left politics. In 2008, good ol' class consciousness was the last thing critical theory and Humanities depts were discussing. 'Identity politics', itself the evolution of 80/90s Critical Race Theory, had already started to dominate academic circles in the late 90s/early 00s, to the point that the popular, heralded Slovenian Marxist Slavoj Zizek dedicated a whole book to the topic, arguing on behalf of good ol' universality as pivot point for politics against popular writers like Judith Butler (gender/sexuality) and Wendy Brown (race). Coming to software as I did from continental European philosophy study it's been quite fascinating watch a species of Foucault interpretation become the mainstream Left ideology in America (and one that differs in my reading by quite a bit).