"the revolutionary energy of whatever it is Maoists believe"
It's communism, Frank.
I loved reading about this also. Still going to be thinking about this for awhile, but I think an interesting question is why this style of thought, critical theory, comes from a specifically Marxist tradition. You associate it here with the postmodernists, but it doesn't originate there, it was developed by regular ol' modernists (a lot of whom who actually found postmoderism 'pretty sus'). I'll grant you that looking at it from outside, as it's actually being used in debate circles, it is pretty postmodern, since it's within a ludic simulation where truth and representation are all a bit weird. But I mean, the arguments they're actually employing are much closer to classic Critical Theory with a Capital C (er, Kapital K?) of Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, etc etc. One and all of these guys (they were all guys) are Marxists of various stripes.
What I think is funny, and worth thinking about, is why it might be that these ideas about verbs over nouns -that is, examining underlying structures as causative forces- should necessarily have such a strong leftwards pull? Why does examining the constructed systems of the world predispose one to human liberation and egalitarianism? Makes you think.
"the revolutionary energy of whatever it is Maoists believe"
It's communism, Frank.
I loved reading about this also. Still going to be thinking about this for awhile, but I think an interesting question is why this style of thought, critical theory, comes from a specifically Marxist tradition. You associate it here with the postmodernists, but it doesn't originate there, it was developed by regular ol' modernists (a lot of whom who actually found postmoderism 'pretty sus'). I'll grant you that looking at it from outside, as it's actually being used in debate circles, it is pretty postmodern, since it's within a ludic simulation where truth and representation are all a bit weird. But I mean, the arguments they're actually employing are much closer to classic Critical Theory with a Capital C (er, Kapital K?) of Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, etc etc. One and all of these guys (they were all guys) are Marxists of various stripes.
What I think is funny, and worth thinking about, is why it might be that these ideas about verbs over nouns -that is, examining underlying structures as causative forces- should necessarily have such a strong leftwards pull? Why does examining the constructed systems of the world predispose one to human liberation and egalitarianism? Makes you think.