[noemon]

How studying the classics became racist

A US professor’s theory of white supremacism threatens to rip out the roots of western culture
Melanie Phillips

Watching last month’s riot at the US Capitol on TV, Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a respected Princeton University classicist, noted certain features with particular grimness.

In the crowd of Trump supporters, he saw a man wearing a T-shirt printed with a golden eagle and fasces, the bundle of rods that symbolised Roman law, below the logo 6MWE, which stands for “Six Million Wasn’t Enough,” a reference to the Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

He also saw flags embroidered with the phrase that the Spartan king Leonidas is said to have uttered when ordered by Xerxes to lay down his arms: molon labe, classical Greek for “come and take them” and the slogan of American gun rights activists.

This played into his own preoccupation, which is threatening the centuries-old world of classical studies. For he has said he hopes that the classics will die out.

As recounted in an article about Padilla in The New York Times, the professor believes that the classics have been embraced by the far right, whose members hold up the ancient Greeks and Romans as the founders of so-called white culture. Online racists have adopted classical pseudonyms: the white-supremacist website Stormfront once displayed an image of the Parthenon in Athens alongside the tagline “Every month is white history month,”


But surely such claims by white supremacists should be dismissed as the product of twisted minds? Why should we take them seriously? After all, the fact that the fasces were adopted into the term fascism doesn’t mean that teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Aeneid, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations or Cicero’s great orations caused the Holocaust.

Yet Padilla insists that there’s a direct line from the classics to today’s neo-Nazis. Indeed, he says, “the production of whiteness turns on closer examination to reside in the very marrows of Classics”. As a result he believes that ever since antiquity classical texts have been used to justify slavery, racism, colonialism, Nazism and fascism. One can only conclude, he argues, that the classics have been instrumental to the invention of “whiteness” and its continued political and cultural domination.

What? Where does one even begin with such nonsense? Slavery, exploitation and colonialism existed in societies that predated, or existed alongside, ancient Greece and Rome. True, a line can be traced from Greece and Rome into 20th-century fascism. However, that thread developed out of the 18th-century Enlightenment, which drew upon classical antiquity to shape our modern age for both good and ill. The study of antiquity helped promote liberty and democracy as well as totalitarianism. An entire culture cannot be written off as wholly bad and neither can the great literature that defines it. Sadly, today’s devotees of identity politics, which draws on the dogma of “critical race theory”, do just that.

This dogma holds that western culture is defined by “whiteness”, which embraces racism, colonialism and slavery. Adherents ignore the existence of black racism, colonialism and slavery, and insist that only white people can be guilty of such things, failing to see that this makes them as bigoted as their opponents. White supremacists look at people’s white skin and think that makes them good. Critical race theorists look at people’s white skin and think that makes them bad. Even more tragically, in defining black identity by skin colour, some black race identity activists have fallen for the notion that skin colour determines worth.

The study of Classics, which entranced Padilla as the gifted child of Dominican immigrants to America, rescued him from poverty and turned him into a brilliant scholar. Instead of valuing the classics and the society that recognised his gifts, he has now turned on both. He doesn’t just want to do away with the label “Classics”, he wants to do away with the roots of western culture.

Last June, as American cities burned during riots after the death of George Floyd, Padilla and others wrote an open letter to Princeton University which stated “anti-blackness is foundational to America”. It proposed forming a committee to “oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviours, incidents, research and publication”.

Challenged over this seemingly illiberal desire to punish people for attitudes he deemed impermissible, Padilla said: “I don’t see things like free speech or the exchange of ideas as ends in themselves. I see them as a means to the end of human flourishing.”

In his book The Western Canon, an impassioned argument for the study of great books from Dante onwards, the literary critic Harold Bloom wrote in 1994 that the universal values embodied in classic texts were being overturned by the petty, short-term agendas of social change. “We no longer live in a society in which we will be allowed to institutionalise memory,” he observed.

As Padilla and his fellow thinkers attempt to erase the literary legacy of Greece and Rome, Bloom’s lament is even more relevant today and serves as an elegy not just for the study of classical texts but for the society they helped to create.

[wat0n]

Will American Ideas Tear France Apart? Some of Its Leaders Think So

Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a threat to French identity and the French republic.

By Norimitsu Onishi
Feb. 9, 2021
Updated 11:39 a.m. ET
Lire en français

PARIS — The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France’s intellectual and cultural heritage.

The threat? “Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,’’ said President Emmanuel Macron.

French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.

Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture.

Pitted against them is a younger, more diverse guard that considers these theories as tools to understanding the willful blind spots of an increasingly diverse nation that still recoils at the mention of race, has yet to come to terms with its colonial past and often waves away the concerns of minorities as identity politics.

Disputes that would have otherwise attracted little attention are now blown up in the news and social media. The new director of the Paris Opera, who said on Monday he wants to diversify its staff and ban blackface, has been attacked by the far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, but also in Le Monde because, though German, he had worked in Toronto and had “soaked up American culture for 10 years.”

The publication this month of a book critical of racial studies by two veteran social scientists, Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel, fueled criticism from younger scholars — and has received extensive news coverage. Mr. Noiriel has said that race had become a “bulldozer’’ crushing other subjects, adding, in an email, that its academic research in France was questionable because race is not recognized by the government and merely “subjective data.’’

The fierce French debate over a handful of academic disciplines on U.S. campuses may surprise those who have witnessed the gradual decline of American influence in many corners of the world. In some ways, it is a proxy fight over some of the most combustible issues in French society, including national identity and the sharing of power. In a nation where intellectuals still hold sway, the stakes are high.

With its echoes of the American culture wars, the battle began inside French universities but is being played out increasingly in the media. Politicians have been weighing in more and more, especially following a turbulent year during which a series of events called into question tenets of French society.

Mass protests in France against police violence, inspired by the killing of George Floyd, challenged the official dismissal of race and systemic racism. A #MeToo generation of feminists confronted both male power and older feminists. A widespread crackdown following a series of Islamist attacks raised questions about France’s model of secularism and the integration of immigrants from its former colonies.

Some saw the reach of American identity politics and social science theories. Some center-right lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities and singled out “guilty’’ scholars on Twitter.

Mr. Macron — who had shown little interest in these matters in the past but has been courting the right ahead of elections next year — jumped in last June, when he blamed universities for encouraging the “ethnicization of the social question’’ — amounting to “breaking the republic in two.’’

“I was pleasantly astonished,’’ said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who last month helped create an organization against “decolonialism and identity politics.’’ Made up of established figures, many retired, the group has issued warnings about American-inspired social theories in major publications like Le Point and Le Figaro.

For Ms. Heinich, last year’s developments came on top of activism that brought foreign disputes over cultural appropriation and blackface to French universities. At the Sorbonne, activists prevented the staging of a play by Aeschylus to protest the wearing of masks and dark makeup by white actors; elsewhere, some well-known speakers were disinvited following student pressure.

“It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture,’’ Ms. Heinich said.

To others, the lashing out at perceived American influence revealed something else: a French establishment incapable of confronting a world in flux, especially at a time when the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic has deepened the sense of ineluctable decline of a once-great power.

“It’s the sign of a small, frightened republic, declining, provincializing, but which in the past and to this day believes in its universal mission and which thus seeks those responsible for its decline,’’ said François Cusset, an expert on American civilization at Paris Nanterre University.

France has long laid claim to a national identity, based on a common culture, fundamental rights and core values like equality and liberty, rejecting diversity and multiculturalism. The French often see the United States as a fractious society at war with itself.

But far from being American, many of the leading thinkers behind theories on gender, race, post-colonialism and queer theory came from France — as well as the rest of Europe, South America, Africa and India, said Anne Garréta, a French writer who teaches literature at universities in France and at Duke.

“It’s an entire global world of ideas that circulates,’’ she said. “It just happens that campuses that are the most cosmopolitan and most globalized at this point in history are the American ones.’’

The French state does not compile racial statistics, which is illegal, describing it as part of its commitment to universalism and treating all citizens equally under the law. To many scholars on race, however, the reluctance is part of a long history of denying racism in France and the country’s slave-trading and colonial past.

“What’s more French than the racial question in a country that was built around those questions?’’ said Mame-Fatou Niang, who divides her time between France and the United States, where she teaches French studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Ms. Niang has led a campaign to remove a fresco at France’s National Assembly, which shows two Black figures with fat red lips and bulging eyes. Her public views on race have made her a frequent target on social media, including of one of the lawmakers who pressed for an investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities.

Pap Ndiaye, a historian who led efforts to establish Black studies in France, said it was no coincidence that the current wave of anti-American rhetoric began growing just as the first protests against racism and police violence took place last June.

“There was the idea that we’re talking too much about racial questions in France,’’ he said. “That’s enough.’’

Three Islamist attacks last fall served as a reminder that terrorism remains a threat in France. They also focused attention on another hot-button field of research: Islamophobia, which examines how hostility toward Islam in France, rooted in its colonial experience in the Muslim world, continues to shape the lives of French Muslims.

Abdellali Hajjat, an expert on Islamophobia, said that it became increasingly difficult to focus on his subject after 2015, when devastating terror attacks hit Paris. Government funding for research dried up. Researchers on the subject were accused of being apologists for Islamists and even terrorists.

Finding the atmosphere oppressive, Mr. Hajjat left two years ago to teach at the Free University of Brussels, in Belgium, where he said he found greater academic freedom.

“On the question of Islamophobia, it’s only in France where there is such violent talk in rejecting the term,’’ he said.

Mr. Macron’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, accused universities, under American influence, of being complicit with terrorists by providing the intellectual justification behind their acts.

A group of 100 prominent scholars wrote an open letter supporting the minister and decrying theories “transferred from North American campuses” in Le Monde.

A signatory, Gilles Kepel, an expert on Islam, said that American influence had led to “a sort of prohibition in universities to think about the phenomenon of political Islam in the name of a leftist ideology that considers it the religion of the underprivileged.’’

Along with Islamophobia, it was through the “totally artificial importation’’ in France of the “American-style Black question” that some were trying to draw a false picture of a France guilty of “systemic racism’’ and “white privilege,’’ said Pierre-André Taguieff, a historian and a leading critic of the American influence.

Mr. Taguieff said in an email that researchers of race, Islamophobia and post-colonialism were motivated by a “hatred of the West, as a white civilization.’’

“The common agenda of these enemies of European civilization can be summed up in three words: decolonize, demasculate, de-Europeanize,’’ Mr. Taguieff said. “Straight white male — that’s the culprit to condemn and the enemy to eliminate.”

Behind the attacks on American universities — led by aging white male intellectuals — lie the tensions in a society where power appears to be up for grabs, said Éric Fassin, a sociologist who was one of the first scholars to focus on race and racism in France, about 15 years ago.

Back then, scholars on race tended to be white men like himself, he said. He said he has often been called a traitor and faced threats, most recently from a right-wing extremist who was given a four-month suspended prison sentence for threatening to decapitate him.

But the emergence of young intellectuals — some Black or Muslim — has fueled the assault on what Mr. Fassin calls the “American boogeyman.’’

“That’s what has turned things upside down,’’ he said. “They’re not just the objects we speak of, but they’re also the subjects who are talking.’’

Norimitsu Onishi is a foreign correspondent on the International Desk, covering France out of the Paris bureau. He previously served as bureau chief for The Times in Johannesburg, Jakarta, Tokyo and Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

I found this quite interesting. What are the views on this matter in other countries in Continental Europe?

[Julian658]

I found this quite interesting. What are the views on this matter in other countries in Continental Europe?

I have said many times that I prefer the French system of "EVERYBODY IS FRENCH forget group ID politics". I believe it works much better than what we have in the USA. America is on it way to balkanization with the crapola of group ID politics. In Columbia everybody is Columbian whether an indigenous black guy who is poor or a lawyer of Spanish ancestry that is wealthy. They have within a certain range the same culture and enjoy the same food and music. They speak the same language with the same accent.

A single unifying culture does not get rid of poverty or classism, but it is a whole lot better than multiculturalism and diversity.

Here is an American trying to impose race ID politics in France: HE FAILs! Watch the interviews at 2:00 minutes. The American is stunned with the absence of race ID politics.

[QatzelOk]

How studying the classics became racist

This is interesting because Rome and Greece - the West's main sources of classical thought, were both slave-owning societies with private banking. So beyond the racism of these societies, there is the nasty question of slavery here. And of imperialism as well.

A single unifying culture does not get rid of poverty or classism, but it is a whole lot better than multiculturalism and diversity.

Both Greece and Rome became "multi-culti" as they gathered slaves and wiped out other nations. Isn't this how the USA, France, and other Western entities became multi-cultural as well?

We may want to look at slavery as the possible "bad thing" in our classics - rather than multiculturalism. Choose your witches wisely.

[Julian658]

This is interesting because Rome and Greece - the West's main sources of classical thought, were both slave-owning societies with private banking. So beyond the racism of these societies, there is the nasty question of slavery here. And of imperialism as well.


Both Greece and Rome became "multi-culti" as they gathered slaves and wiped out other nations. Isn't this how the USA, France, and other Western entities became multi-cultural as well?

We may want to look at slavery as the possible "bad thing" in our classics - rather than multiculturalism. Choose your witches wisely.

Greece and Rome perished. Naturalized Roman citizens were not patriotic reverted back to their tribes when times were difficult. The West is committing the same mistake. Once the West is gone we will have dark ages again until another power house emerges. I guess that would be China.

[QatzelOk]

Greece and Rome perished. Naturalized Roman citizens were not patriotic reverted back to their tribes when times were difficult. The West is committing the same mistake. Once the West is gone we will have dark ages again until another power house emerges. I guess that would be China.

If we repeat that same civilization-ending and ecological-destroying pattern another time, it might be the last time.

Repeating the same dangerous mistakes is a sign of ignorance, not a sign that we are "following the classics" or "the classic playbook."

[Julian658]

If we repeat that same civilization-ending and ecological-destroying pattern another time, it might be the last time.

Repeating the same dangerous mistakes is a sign of ignorance, not a sign that we are "following the classics" or "the classic playbook."

The clashes of very different people in world history is almost never a happy ending. The arrival of Europeans to the Americas destroyed the native civilization. The west will be similarly destroyed by the arrival of others. The only hope to avoid total destruction is by mixing and creating a new ethnicity. The Vikings tormented the British Isles for three centuries but eventually intermarried.

Let’s not forget how the Cro magnon man eventually replaced the Neanderthal man by sheer numbers. In Argentina indigenous people are rare. However, one could look at this in a different manner. Adopting a monoculture provides a chance for success. The French know this and this is why they avoid group identity politics.

[noemon]

This is interesting because Rome and Greece - the West's main sources of classical thought, were both slave-owning societies with private banking. So beyond the racism of these societies, there is the nasty question of slavery here. And of imperialism as well.

While all the other civilisations were not slave-owning? How is one accused for non-slave owning in a slave-owning world?

Classical texts are important because they teach people how to think independently and see reality raw.

Greece and Rome perished. The West is committing the same mistake.

Greece and Rome "perished" about as much as the "west is perishing" today.

[Julian658]

Both Greece and Rome became "multi-culti" as they gathered slaves and wiped out other nations. Isn't this how the USA, France, and other Western entities became multi-cultural as well?

We may want to look at slavery as the possible "bad thing" in our classics - rather than multiculturalism. Choose your witches wisely.

Oops, I did not see this. Slavery was universal back in the day. I still don't know why people use presentism to judge the past.

[Pants-of-dog]

The author of the Times piece discussing Dan-el Padilla Peralta and his theories is a woman named Melanie Phillips. Her Wikipedia article is....very entertaining.

Mr. Padilla, on the other hand, is only interesting insofar as he is an exceptional scholar and at the same time, an undocumented immigrant.

I am interested to see what he really says.

[Unthinking Majority]

I really don't get why studying "the classics" has to be so darn political. They're works of art. Like any work of literature you should dissect them using critical thinking skills. These are books that reflect the period they were written in, as any art is, and can reflect the local attitudes including those about women, minorities, slavery etc. The Old Testament talks about slavery and misogynist things too, it is what it is, it's no reason to throw it in the trash. A bunch of hip-hop talks about gang-banging and womanizing, but i still like listening to it and the lyrics can be critically dissected too, and i'm not going to say "blackness" is all about those things. Instead of "omg this is misogynst, ban these lyrics" we should be asking things like "what is the environment, history, and culture in which these people live, what are these people thinking and saying, and why are they saying it?" etc. In other words, let's study them critically and talk about them, which is what academics is.

I read Plato's Republic. It's a very interesting book. It forms some of the basis for western political thought that virtually every great western philosopher has read and built upon it. It brings up interesting questions about how society and government should be run. Someone in the book also brings up ideas about eugenics. Ok so what? Dog breeders practice eugenics too. It's just a book about people having a discussion, it's not going to make people turn into Nazis. "Politics" comes from the Greek word "polis" which means "city", so "politics" literally means "things concerning the city", which is exactly what The Republic discusses. Plato literally founded western political philosophy, he and Socrates and Aristotle were geniuses. If you want to understand our current society, you have to understand where it comes and the history of ideas that formed it. That's the entire point of studying these works. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. If you want the best education you should learn from all the great works and ideas from all civilizations.

I think people really need to get over themselves. I'd like to think most people are still capable of having adult conversations about ideas without moral panic and identity activism always setting in.

[Pants-of-dog]

After reading this fellow’s Wikipedia article, right after reading the one on Ms. Phillips, I doubt that there are many people in this world who understand more about classical literature and its effect on our society.

But do not worry. This fellow is black and an undocumented immigrant. He will not have the power to make any changes for the foreseeable future, even if we assume he is wrong about the classics.

[QatzelOk]

Classical texts are important because they teach people how to think independently and see reality raw.

I don't think one can honestly call the writings and thoughts that are made (by slave-owners) inside a slave-owning society "raw."

The writers have spent their lives - not acting out in a raw, natural way - but are instead exhibiting the sinthomes (or "symptoms") of a constricting civilizational order.

Thus, to think that Plato or Aristotle or "classical writer x" revealed "natural human character" is to ignore the fakeness of their civilizational position and lifestyles. Their vantage point. Rousseau seemed to get this, as do many of the post-modern philosophers.

Greece and Rome "perished" about as much as the "west is perishing" today.

The West is perishing at a much larger scale because its environmental and social destruction(s) have been much larger due to increased technological violence over time.

It takes more and more behaviorism and environmental damage to maintain the same kind of disciplinary institions (and imperialist thougt) as Rome and Greece had.

[Rancid]

I really don't get why studying "the classics" has to be so darn political. They're works of art. Like any work of literature you should dissect them using critical thinking skills. These are books that reflect the period they were written in, as any art is, and can reflect the local attitudes including those about women, minorities, slavery etc. The Old Testament talks about slavery and misogynist things too, it is what it is, it's no reason to throw it in the trash. A bunch of hip-hop talks about gang-banging and womanizing, but i still like listening to it and the lyrics can be critically dissected too, and i'm not going to say "blackness" is all about those things. Instead of "omg this is misogynst, ban these lyrics" we should be asking things like "what is the environment, history, and culture in which these people live, what are these people thinking and saying, and why are they saying it?" etc. In other words, let's study them critically and talk about them, which is what academics is.

I read Plato's Republic. It's a very interesting book. It forms some of the basis for western political thought that virtually every great western philosopher has read and built upon it. It brings up interesting questions about how society and government should be run. Someone in the book also brings up ideas about eugenics. Ok so what? Dog breeders practice eugenics too. It's just a book about people having a discussion, it's not going to make people turn into Nazis. "Politics" comes from the Greek word "polis" which means "city", so "politics" literally means "things concerning the city", which is exactly what The Republic discusses. Plato literally founded western political philosophy, he and Socrates and Aristotle were geniuses. If you want to understand our current society, you have to understand where it comes and the history of ideas that formed it. That's the entire point of studying these works. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. If you want the best education you should learn from all the great works and ideas from all civilizations.

I think people really need to get over themselves. I'd like to think most people are still capable of having adult conversations about ideas without moral panic and identity activism always setting in.

Agree.

[Rich]

All Politics *IS* Identity politics. It;s always been with us. It's not new.

There is always a culture war going on as various groups try to control the narrative the influences society.

Humans are political animals.

Now come on Pugsville, you stole those words right out of my brain. Yeah if you want to see real hard core identity politics, try looking at some pre-civilised tribal groups. And when tribes split they go out of their way to make themselves different.

[noemon]

I don't think one can honestly call the writings and thoughts that are made (by slave-owners) inside a slave-owning society "raw."

The writers have spent their lives - not acting out in a raw, natural way - but are instead exhibiting the sinthomes (or "symptoms") of a constricting civilizational order.

Thus, to think that Plato or Aristotle or "classical writer x" revealed "natural human character" is to ignore the fakeness of their civilizational position and lifestyles. Their vantage point. Rousseau seemed to get this, as do many of the post-modern philosophers.

Your nihilism is boring, everything you say can be applied to anybody, anywhere.

The Classics are the honest reports of the problems and contradictions of civilised society, logically laid out for critic, dialogue, memory and the benefit of future generations.

Classical education is designed to create thinking humans that can rationalise and deconstruct complex political, historical, philosophical and mathematical concepts. They are exercises for the mind and the soul as it enables the coherent structure of deeper ethical and ontological questions.

The more people turn the backs on the classics the more privileged the ones who train their children on them and the wider the educational gap will become.

[wat0n]

I really don't get why studying "the classics" has to be so darn political. They're works of art. Like any work of literature you should dissect them using critical thinking skills. These are books that reflect the period they were written in, as any art is, and can reflect the local attitudes including those about women, minorities, slavery etc. The Old Testament talks about slavery and misogynist things too, it is what it is, it's no reason to throw it in the trash. A bunch of hip-hop talks about gang-banging and womanizing, but i still like listening to it and the lyrics can be critically dissected too, and i'm not going to say "blackness" is all about those things. Instead of "omg this is misogynst, ban these lyrics" we should be asking things like "what is the environment, history, and culture in which these people live, what are these people thinking and saying, and why are they saying it?" etc. In other words, let's study them critically and talk about them, which is what academics is.

I read Plato's Republic. It's a very interesting book. It forms some of the basis for western political thought that virtually every great western philosopher has read and built upon it. It brings up interesting questions about how society and government should be run. Someone in the book also brings up ideas about eugenics. Ok so what? Dog breeders practice eugenics too. It's just a book about people having a discussion, it's not going to make people turn into Nazis. "Politics" comes from the Greek word "polis" which means "city", so "politics" literally means "things concerning the city", which is exactly what The Republic discusses. Plato literally founded western political philosophy, he and Socrates and Aristotle were geniuses. If you want to understand our current society, you have to understand where it comes and the history of ideas that formed it. That's the entire point of studying these works. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. If you want the best education you should learn from all the great works and ideas from all civilizations.

I think people really need to get over themselves. I'd like to think most people are still capable of having adult conversations about ideas without moral panic and identity activism always setting in.

They seem to question the notion that Western culture should be analyzed and taught from a Western-centered perspective, and could/should be analyzed and taught in the same way one would do in the case the culture of a Native American or East Asian society.

This is simply another application of deconstruction, in the sense that if one adopts this kind of view then classical Western thought has no essential meaning (and value), and thus there is no reason to put it on a pedestal. This is actually one of the deepest contradictions in our current strain of identity politics, because on one hand postmodern thinkers will take any identity category (for instance, gender and the Western classics) on one hand and use this to justify the creation of all sorts of new instances of this category (such as all sorts of nonbinary identities and gender fluidity in the case of gender) or giving emphasis to different existing instances of it (such as the idea that all cultures have equal value and, as a corollary, that there should be no special treatment for Western classics in both their analysis and teaching to children in the school system) yet on the other hand engage in hardcore essentialism by actually caring about and paying tribute to the instances of the categories themselves, to their essence (sometimes even mentioning part of their essential traits), in the most extreme and often absurd ways possible (including the cancellation of people who don't comply with demands to do so), with the result of (indeed) turning all sorts of stuff into a culture war.

This is simply part of the current strain of irrationalism we are currently living in - after all, it is hard to reconcile both ideas from a rational point of view, and it festers at least in part because of some of the multipliers I pointed out here. And hence why some people are both tired and cynical about it, and also why some people regard this development as a threat (particularly since it leads to fanaticism and, in this case, involves some pretty in-your-face Orwellian doublethink).

[Pants-of-dog]

It seems impossible to access the actual words of Dr. Padilla. They are behind a NYT paywall.

[Unthinking Majority]

They seem to question the notion that Western culture should be analyzed and taught from a Western-centered perspective, and could/should be analyzed and taught in the same way one would do in the case the culture of a Native American or East Asian society.

This is simply another application of deconstruction, in the sense that if one adopts this kind of view then classical Western thought has no essential meaning (and value), and thus there is no reason to put it on a pedestal.

I don't see why the "classics" should be on any sort of pedestal. I took courses on the classics, and I took courses on African history. Why? Because I didn't know much about those things and wanted to learn more. No different than when I wanted to learn about Islam and economics and psychology. I didn't take them for reasons of identity politics.

The only difference, in my mind, between the classics and learning about eastern philosophy or African culture, is that the classics have had more historical influence on western society and institutions, so for a student growing up in the West the classics are like an archeology of ideas in order to understand the society they currently live in. Just as Walt Disney has had more impact on Western culture than Japanese anime, but that doesn't mean I don't like anime.

This is actually one of the deepest contradictions in our current strain of identity politics, because on one hand postmodern thinkers will take any identity category (for instance, gender and the Western classics) on one hand and use this to justify the creation of all sorts of new instances of this category (such as all sorts of nonbinary identities and gender fluidity in the case of gender) or giving emphasis to different existing instances of it (such as the idea that all cultures have equal value and, as a corollary, that there should be no special treatment for Western classics in both their analysis and teaching to children in the school system) yet on the other hand engage in hardcore essentialism by actually caring about and paying tribute to the instances of the categories themselves, to their essence (sometimes even mentioning part of their essential traits), in the most extreme and often absurd ways possible (including the cancellation of people who don't comply with demands to do so), with the result of (indeed) turning all sorts of stuff into a culture war.

Well first, that's the longest sentence of all-time lol. Second, yes it's all about turning this stuff into a culture war. Apparently now learning about and defending the classics is about defending and upholding a white supremacy hetero-normative patriarchy, and the only alternative is to destroy the field and throw the works in the trash bin. I've never heard of anything so stupid.

Historians still study Mein Kampf. They don't study it to uphold Nazism, they study it because it's there, because it reveals some of the thoughts of an important political and historical figure so that we can figure out why 60 million people died during WWII.

If some white racists outside of academia worship the classics and Mein Kampf because of identity reasons that shouldn't invalidate the academic study of history and ideas. There's a fine line between when more diversity and inclusivity turns into cultural genocide. If you want to set up an African studies department next to the classics department in a western university that's great. If you want to set up an African studies department and then close down the classics department because of identity politics reasons then we're entering the territory of cultural genocide.

@noemon has said that they are Greek. I assume they don't want their Greek culture shat on and erased by political activists trying to deconstruct power hierarchies in education, and that when you take a giant dump on somebody's ancient culture that may upset them. I assume a black kid wants to learn about their cultural history too, hence something like Black History Month.

[wat0n]

I don't see why the "classics" should be on any sort of pedestal. I took courses on the classics, and I took courses on African history. Why? Because I didn't know much about those things and wanted to learn more. No different than when I wanted to learn about Islam and economics and psychology. I didn't take them for reasons of identity politics.

The only difference, in my mind, between the classics and learning about eastern philosophy or African culture, is that the classics have had more historical influence on western society and institutions, so for a student growing up in the West the classics are like an archeology of ideas in order to understand the society they currently live in. Just as Walt Disney has had more impact on Western culture than Japanese anime, but that doesn't mean I don't like anime.

Right, but you also have to consider that school curricula needs to be standardized to some extent, and when it comes to cultural studies Western societies will tend to focus on... Well, Western culture, i.e. their own. That's part of what they are fighting against.

Well first, that's the longest sentence of all-time lol.

Yeah, now that you mention it

But it's a cogent one

Second, yes it's all about turning this stuff into a culture war. Apparently now learning about and defending the classics is about defending and upholding a white supremacy hetero-normative patriarchy, and the only alternative is to destroy the field and throw the works in the trash bin. I've never heard of anything so stupid.

Historians still study Mein Kampf. They don't study it to uphold Nazism, they study it because it's there, because it reveals some of the thoughts of an important political and historical figure so that we can figure out why 60 million people died during WWII.

If some white racists outside of academia worship the classics and Mein Kampf because of identity reasons that shouldn't invalidate the academic study of history and ideas. There's a fine line between when more diversity and inclusivity turns into cultural genocide. If you want to set up an African studies department next to the classics department in a western university that's great. If you want to set up an African studies department and then close down the classics department because of identity politics reasons then we're entering the territory of cultural genocide.

@noemon has said that they are Greek. I assume they don't want their Greek culture shat on and erased by political activists trying to deconstruct power hierarchies in education, and that when you take a giant dump on somebody's ancient culture that may upset them. I assume a black kid wants to learn about their cultural history too, hence something like Black History Month.

I don't disagree, I was simply pointing out part of the postmodernist culture warriors' internal contradictions here. What you are mentioning is basically an essentialist view of cultural studies, something that postmodernists are supposedly against. In theory, they are all for deconstruction and pointing out that form is more important than essence, indeed, that essence itself often does not exist and thus we can and should reassess the foundations of our thought and they apply this to (in this case) Western classics (or Western culture in general). Yet at the same time they engage in what you are describing, which is a hard essentialist position in this affair, without even attempting to deconstruct the alternatives to Western classics or the study of Western culture.

And no, they don't think there is any contradiction or doublethink going on here.