Apopleptic Now

I very much enjoyed the image of Brent Kesler falling into an apopalectic fit over the terrible prose in my post Blind to Postmodernism. I am sad that his outrage over my writing ability led him to spell "apopleptic" incorrectly. I plead guilty to sometimes taking this weblog posting less seriously than other pieces of writing, as I view it as more part of a conversation.

I do appreciate Mr. Kesler's criticisms. Has Mr. Kesler read an earlier post of mine, "Postmodern Conservatives'? I ask because I do not think Mr. Kesler mentions it. The original point of my criticism in this thread was to disagree with Mr. Stevenson's talk about race being a 'postmodern' social construction; I noted that this point does not logically lead to Stevenson's position that the government should be absolutely race-blind and race is no longer useful. Stevenson's response did not specifically respond to my points about the government using racial data to enforce civil rights laws and racial profiling (race is useful there, isn't it?). Stevenson focused on my criticism at the end of my post, which questioned his suspicious use of academic jargon. Hence, my (admittedly poorly edited) post "Blind to Postmodernism" focused on the jargon issue. Unless I remember incorrectly, the context in which I was questioning Stevenson's (mis)use and (mis)understanding of postmodernism and academic jargon, was my argument that it was invalid for Stevenson to tie social constructions and race-blindess together. As I noted before, I hope Stevenson will specifically respond to my examples about race. I will say more about race-blindness in the future. For now, the rest of this post will respond to Mr. Kesler¡¯s criticism of my post, "Blind to Postmodernism."

First let me say that Brent Kesler's 'point by point' refutation of my criticism of Stevenson completely ignores my comment that John wrongly said critical theorists were part of postmodernism. John's misunderstanding of postmodernism means he apparently does not realize that so-called 'diversity advocates' come in many more stripes (such as those Critical Theorists, like Habermas, who are opposed to postmodernists, and liberal multiculturalists like Will Kymlicka). If you were aware of these different traditions, you know people can be a lefty type who believes in multiculturalism and yet not rely on Foucault, postmodernism, or radical moral relativism. Mr. Kesler told us later that he did not know anything about Critical Theory. My question is: does Mr. Stevenson? I only have only seen evidence to the contrary.

What Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Kesler spent much space on was my questioning of Stevenson's claim that these diversity advocates were "Nietzschean in its methodology, Marxist in its ontology, and Foucaultian in its analysis." My initial response was "huh??" Marx's ontology (theory of being) specifically relied on class, and excluded race and gender, very important categories to diversity advocates. Mr. Kesler entered the fray and said I was wrong because Marx's ontology was one of dialectical materialism, and 'diversity advocates' rely on dialectics. First, that's not entirely true: not all them do rely on dialectics. Second, the other diversity advocates share only the dialectics, not the materialism. And Marx's dialectical materialism referred to class antagonisms connected with the modes of production, hence my original claim. I stand by my point that Marx did not have an 'ontology' of race or gender. If you want to say that Marx and ¡®diversity advocates share something because they both analyze large groups, wouldn't it be preferable to say what is shared is Marxist analysis (or something besides ontology)? But if Mr. Stevenson now wants to make the more limited claim that some diversity advocates share part of Marx's ontology (if dialectics can properly be considered part of ontology), then I share no deep disagreement I care to get into.

Mr. Kesler has two interesting interpretations about how the idea the ubermensch relates to diversity advocates and their being Nietzchean in their methodology. I'm skeptical, given the structure of Mr. Stevenson's sentences, about one of those interpretations, but I think I'll wait at least until Mr. Stevenson says what he has in mind (I'd rather have him address my substantive criticism about race).

As I noted before, I never questioned that many diversity advocates rely on at least some of these thinkers, even if not in the way Mr. Stevenson outlines. I cannot see the relevancy of Mr. Kesler's points about these diversity advocates not having to have read Foucault et. al specifically to rely on them. I'm not sure what essence of Foucaultian analysis that Mr. Kesler think is shared all of these diversity advocates.Besides, what I asked was whether Foucault would actually separate the tools we use to analyze the world from the ontology of the world, which would be contrary to Mr. Stevenson's earlier statement. Mine was a question not an assertion, but Mr. Kesler strangely doesn't even address my only specific point.

In any case, I specifically noted I was not sure about my questioning on my points about Foucault and Nietzche. While my writing is unclear, when I'm uncertain of something I try to make that clear. I expect to be challenged if I assert with authority something that others do not agree with, as I did to Mr. Stevenson, and Mr. Kesler did to me. There are other minor things Mr. Kesler said that I could dispute, but I do not think this is very important. I will note that many of my challenges to Mr. Stevenson's assertions have gone unanswered. A minor one is that he asserted the authority of Adam Smith (on another matter) but didn't answer whether he had actually read Smith's book. But the major one is that though Stevenson has restated he wanted to transcend race, John Stevenson has so far not responded to my specific questions of him earlier about whether his race-blindness is absolute and how he can defend this based on the original arguments he gave. I was not at the Race Matters conference, so I obviously can't speak to the specific speakers there, but I just want Mr. Stevenson to acknowledge that the diversity advocates are a diverse bunch and realize his criticisms are necessarily limited by his apparent lack of knowledge. Again, his use of 'postmodernist' logic to argue for an absolutist position on race does make sense. The logical implication is that race should never be used for anything by the government is that we should not use it to track and stop discrimination and stop enforcing civil rights laws. And if he's not willing to go that far (and I've asked him several times to be specific), his major basis for attacking the diversity advocates (that race was not real and a social construction) falls apart.


Posted by Timothy at 7:34 PM |