Dan Davenport's De-Pantsing

[Koltar]

move this discussion over to rpg.net, thanks...

Thats mostly impossible for at least 60% of the people on here....and you should know that by now.


- Ed C.

[Géza Echs]

Thats mostly impossible for at least 60% of the people on here....and you should know that by now.

Considering that you weigh in on every single thread related in however tenuous a way to RPG.net, you're not the one to be throwing stones.

[B.T.]

If you think that "white privilege" is the calling card of Marxist thought, you don't know anything about Marxist thought. Case in point, the link you used doesn't actually have any references to "white privilege". Or "white". Or "privilege".

Let's do a little investigation.

White privilege:

In critical race theory, white privilege is a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses as much on the advantages that white people accrue from society as on the disadvantages that people of color experience.

Critical theory:

In the sociological context, critical theory refers to a style of Marxist theory with a tendency to engage with non-Marxist influences (for instance the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud).[1]  Modern critical theory arose from a trajectory extending from the nonpositivist sociology of Max Weber and Georg Simmel, the Marxist theory of Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci, toward the milieu associated with Frankfurt Institute of Social Research.

Critical pedagogy:

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action."[1]

Based in Marxist theory, critical pedagogy draws on radical democracy, anarchism, feminism, and other movements that strive for what they describe as social justice.

Cultural Marxism:

Cultural Marxism is a generic term referring to a loosely associated group of Marxists who have sought to apply critical theory to matters of family composition, gender, race, and cultural identity within Western society.

...The Frankfurt School is the name usually used to refer to a group of scholars who have been associated at one point or another over several decades with the Institute for Social Research of the University of Frankfurt, including Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Wolfgang Fritz Haug and Jürgen Habermas. In the 1930s the Institute for Social Research was forced out of Germany by the rise of the Nazi Party. In 1933, the Institute left Germany for Geneva. It then moved to New York City in 1934, where it became affiliated with Columbia University. Its journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was accordingly renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. It was at that moment that much of its important work began to emerge, having gained a favorable reception within American and English academia. Among the key works of the Frankfurt School which applied Marxist categories to the study of culture were Adorno's "On Popular Music," which was written with George Simpson and published in Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences in 1941[4], Adorno and Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", originally a chapter in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)[5], and "Culture Industry Reconsidered", a 1963 radio lecture by Adorno[6].

After 1945 a number of these surviving Marxists returned to both West and East Germany. Adorno and Horkheimer returned to Frankfurt in 1953 and reestablished the Institute. In West Germany in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a revived interest in Marxism produced a new generation of Marxists engaged with analyzing matters such as the cultural transformations taking place under Fordist capitalism, the impact of new types of popular music and art on traditional cultures, and maintaining the political integrity of discourse in the public sphere.[7] This renewed interest was exemplified by the journal Das Argument. The tradition of thought associated with the Frankfurt School is Critical Theory.

...The work of the Frankfurt School and of Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci was particularly influential in the 1960s, and had a major impact on the development of cultural studies, especially in Britain.

Cultural studies:

Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural anthropology and ethnic studies in both objective and methodology. Researchers concentrate on how a particular medium or message relates to matters of ideology, social class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and/or gender.[1]

Yes, you are being brainwashed by Marxists.

[Géza Echs]

Wow. Okay, let's do this quickly and succinctly:

1. You incorrectly conflate "critical theory" with "critical race theory". The latter is a subset of the former.

2. You incorrectly conflate "critical theory" with "critical pedagogy". The latter has some application as a subset of the former, but is (as your quote states) a philosophic domain rather than an articulation of critical theory proper.

3. You incorrectly conflate "cultural Marxism" with "critical theory". The former is a subset of the latter, though Marxist theory is, of course, not limited to its presence within critical theoretical discourse. Frankfurt school Marxist theory does trend towards cultural Marxism, but it is generally more engaged with social analysis than it is strict economic modelling.

4. It also seems strange that you'd hold a school of thought established in the 1930s for modern conceptions of "white privilege", much less the 99% movement.

5. You make a logical leap from "cultural Marxism" to "cultural studies", conflating the two with "critical theory" along the way. Cultural studies is a branch of humanities and arts scholarship that is devoted to the analysis of cultural artifacts in terms of their creation and reception. But "cultural studies" and "critical theory" are not synonymous -- cultural studies scholars deploy varying forms of critical theory in order to do their work. Marxist theory is one such form, but it is far from the only, or even the most prevalent, one.

6. I find it ludicrous for you to claim that I'm being "brainwashed by Marxists". I've been done my coursework for the past three years, but when I was actively studying the last time I did any work on Marxist theory was one unit in a generalized theory class back around 1999. Oh, and there was some discussion of Walter Benjamin's Marxist background when I did a course on Benjamin and post-structuralism. That's somewhere around 0.01% of the coursework total. Hardly brainwashing.

In short, you don't know what you're talking about.

Edit: Also, I find it really funny that you'd link to Wikipedia pages as evidence when you're trying to persuade someone with more than a decade's worth of experience in this field. Thanks, I have a B.A (hons) and an M.A in this domain; I don't think Wiki-fucking-pedia is going to reveal anything new to me.

[B.T.]

1. You incorrectly conflate "critical theory" with "critical race theory". The latter is a subset of the former.

I'm not conflating anything.  Marxism --> critical theory --> critical race theory.  This isn't that hard to follow.

2. You incorrectly conflate "critical theory" with "critical pedagogy". The latter has some application as a subset of the former, but is (as your quote states) a philosophic domain rather than an articulation of critical theory proper.

Again, I'm not conflating anything.  I'm demonstrating how the two are linked.

3. You incorrectly conflate "cultural Marxism" with "critical theory". The former is a subset of the latter, though Marxist theory is, of course, not limited to its presence within critical theoretical discourse. Frankfurt school Marxist theory does trend towards cultural Marxism, but it is generally more engaged with social analysis than it is strict economic modelling.

Cultural Marxism is the use of critical theory based upon Marxism.  The two are inextricably linked.

4. It also seems strange that you'd hold a school of thought established in the 1930s for modern conceptions of "white privilege", much less the 99% movement.

It might also seem strange that modern conceptions of morality in Western society are linked to the sayings of a Jewish man who was crucified two thousand years ago.

5. You make a logical leap from "cultural Marxism" to "cultural studies", conflating the two with "critical theory" along the way. Cultural studies is a branch of humanities and arts scholarship that is devoted to the analysis of cultural artifacts in terms of their creation and reception. But "cultural studies" and "critical theory" are not synonymous -- cultural studies scholars deploy varying forms of critical theory in order to do their work. Marxist theory is one such form, but it is far from the only, or even the most prevalent, one.

Critical theory (based in Marxism) is used in cultural studies.  Again, they are intertwined with one another.

6. I find it ludicrous for you to claim that I'm being "brainwashed by Marxists". I've been done my coursework for the past three years, but when I was actively studying the last time I did any work on Marxist theory was one unit in a generalized theory class back around 1999. Oh, and there was some discussion of Walter Benjamin's Marxist background when I did a course on Benjamin and post-structuralism. That's somewhere around 0.01% of the coursework total. Hardly brainwashing.

If you believe in that "white privilege" garbage, you're brainwashed, plain and simple.  Your studies are hopelessly inundated with Marxist hogwash--they are awash in it, permeated to their very core--and you are unable to see it.

[Dog Quixote]

4. It also seems strange that you'd hold a school of thought established in the 1930s for modern conceptions of "white privilege", much less the 99% movement.

If that wikipedia link taught me anything new, it's the strange sense of the influence of the Frankfurt school being much more overwhelming than it is, that is held by some of the American conservative movement.

Since the early 1990s, paleoconservatives such as Patrick Buchanan and William S. Lind have argued that "Cultural Marxism" is a dominant strain of thought within the American left, and associate it with a philosophy to destroy Western civilization. Buchanan has asserted that the Frankfurt School commandeered the American mass media, and used this cartel to infect the minds of Americans.

Okaaay.  I wonder what Adorno would have thought about the idea that the American mass media was somehow his doing.

[Géza Echs]

I'm not conflating anything.  Marxism --> critical theory --> critical race theory.  This isn't that hard to follow.

Yes, it is, because you're fundamentally wrong. You consistently conflate critical theory with Marxism; the two simply are not the same thing. Marxist theory is a subset of critical theory, not the whole as you claim.

Anyway, you're either being hilariously wrong, intentionally wrong, or tragically wrong. In any of those cases I have no interest in arguing the point further. You don't have any clue about what you're talking about. Like, seriously, none at all. You don't even have a first-year's understanding.

[Géza Echs]

If that wikipedia link taught me anything new, it's the strange sense of the influence of the Frankfurt school being much more overwhelming than it is, that is held by some of the American conservative movement.

True that. The Frankfurt School's influence is strong, since the work tends to be persuasive (despite having strong areas of weakness, like the Marcusean conception of popular culture). But it's stupid to claim that it's somehow a creeping infection within theoretical discourse, let alone an all-pervasive one.

And that's leaving aside claims like B.T.'s monstrously dumb "it's all Marxist brainwashing!" arguments.

Okaaay.  I wonder what Adorno would have thought about the idea that the American mass media was somehow his doing.

Hah! Yeah, that would strike him as... Wacky, at best. Next they'll be claiming that he was responsible for the resurgence of jazz in the 1990s.

[misterguignol]

Next they'll be claiming that he was responsible for the resurgence of jazz in the 1990s.

Don't be silly; everyone knows that the jazz resurgence was Edward Said's doing.

[Géza Echs]

Don't be silly; everyone knows that the jazz resurgence was Edward Said's doing.

Snerk!

[Machinegun Blue]

Hey B.T., where did you get your interesting opinions on the subject of Marxism? I ask because someone of your mental caliber usually doesn't come to these conclusions on his own.

[B.T.]

Haha, oh, wow, a brainwashed Marxist who believes in white privilege telling me I don't understand anything?  That's rich.  Enjoy your HIV+ anti-Western indoctrination in which everyone quietly loathes you for being a white male.  Though I'm not sure how someone with a Catholic background could handle the guilt of the Crusades and Galileo's trial.

[B.T.]

Hey B.T., where did you get your interesting opinions on the subject of Marxism? I ask because someone of your mental caliber usually doesn't come to these conclusions on his own.

It was a long journey that began with my disillusionment with the Republican party.

[Dog Quixote]

It was a long journey that began with my disillusionment with the Republican party.

For being too Marxist?

[Géza Echs]

Haha, oh, wow, a brainwashed Marxist who believes in white privilege telling me I don't understand anything?  That's rich.  Enjoy your HIV+ anti-Western indoctrination in which everyone quietly loathes you for being a white male.  Though I'm not sure how someone with a Catholic background could handle the guilt of the Crusades and Galileo's trial.

You're describing... somebody's politics, but it sure isn't mine.