Alan Jacobs vs. Que Sera Sera

Further to my fretting over the health of the North American Liberal Tradition:

“You ever ask yourself, 'Just what is the freakin' point"??”

Alan Jacobs is helpful.

“Critical Theory” is a dog-whistle that tends to get my fur up — as I was finishing up my undergrad I was made to understand this would increasingly be my focus were I to proceed any further. Buh-bye. I’ve subsequently blamed the academy’s failing health on its blind adherence to a po-mo hash of CT dogma.

Jacob’s consideration of CT and the problem with such generalizations dispels much of my long-held prejudice toward it.

Similarly the en vogue media concern with intersectionality. I could not articulate quite why I was uncomfortable with the model, aside from it placing me (as a SWM in his mid-50s) squarely in the locus of maximum culpability. Jacobs notes, “The doctrine of intersectionality tends ... to focus on intersections that intensify but to ignore intersections that cancel each other out.” That is hardly the last word on intersectionality, but again — it’s helpful.

And, of course, he’s got this thing for demons. Man, that’s not a dog-whistle — that’s catnip!

More anon, I am sure...

Post-script: Jacobs, being firmly in the “code or be coded” camp, constructed his very own blog template. Alas, it isn’t particularly great at archiving in sequential order. He’s got a lot on his plate, so with regards to his thoughts on critical theory I’ll go ahead and archive it myself over here: Post 1, Post 2, Post 3.