Critical Race Theory, CRT is a variant of Critical Social Justice Theory. I'm not looking at what it says but at where it derives its 'logic' from. CRT derives its logic from postmodernism, pomo, in a few fundamental ways.
- Diversity. This is the reason CRT and other CSJT derive from pomo. Pomo more than any other ideology, or philosophy, tries to celebrate différance, subversion, and hidden voices.
- Epistemology. The characteristic of pomo epistemology is that it has no theory of truth. There is no truth in pomo. Everything is another story or narrative. Everything is a perspective, and all perspectives should be 'celebrated'.
- Critique. More on this later.
These two elements of pomo: celebration of subversion (Diversity), and its relativist theory of knowledge (Epistemology) make it an ideal foundation for CRT. Because the combo make it easy for one to make it up. To say whatever one wants to and claim it's valid, scholarly and important. The worst anyone can do to one's ideas is deconstruct them!
But there's a 3rd important element from pomo which CRT elides: critique, or rather its absence. Pomo does not do critique it does 'deconstruction'. A critique examines something from the standpoint of an ideal or, at least, an improvement to be made. Call them standards or values even, against which one can judge. But generally enlightenment values which were universal. Back in the late 1960s and 1970s when pomo began it wanted to distance itself from all things it saw as Enlightenment. Especially: Marxism, and 'Critical Theory'. Universal values were soon thown out, in favour of particularism. Pomo decontructs critique to find only a ghost motivated by a totalizing perpective and control freak mentality. Pomo sees critique as dated, oppressive, totalising, and inevitably wrong. Inevitably: because a critique is just another perspective or story, biased at that. Better to let a thousand voices sing so that a multiplicity of perspectives can be brought to bear on an issue.
Critique is totally alien to pomo. CRT had to forget this essential element of pomo when stripping the corpse to steal the clothes. The replacement of critique by deconstruction partly explains why pomo took off with liberals. Safe for the establishment. How can an ideology which disdains critique as totalising, and wrong, be harmful to the establishment?
Yet, the reader is no doubt aware that CRT, is called critical race theory, not deconstructive race theory. 'Critical' gives it an edge, weight, and importance among academics. Gives it its sense of importance, even a frisson; which 50 years ago deconstruction claimed for itself!
Finally, those of you ignorant of philosophy are asking what's wrong with a pick-n-mix approach? CRT takes what it wants from pomo: relativism and celebration of hidden voices. To this they add critique. No. You cannot do that. For a start: a critique based on a relativist theory of truth isn't a critique. Add to that: the trivializing and relativising of critique is fundamental to pomo. It's essense. More or less it's raison d'être. If you want to steal pomo's clothes you must take the underwear too. You cannot just take the sparkly, designer, outer garments.
No comments:
Post a Comment