James Lindsay's Cynical Theories: Exploring How Activist Scholarship Changed Our Perception of Race, Gender, and Identity

Colin W: This book gives a detailed insight into the origins of the many 'woke' ideas plaguing our societies at the moment. These origins are in the largely worthless ideas of the French postmodern philosophers of the 1960s and 70s. These were people such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and others. They expressed their ideas in incomprehensible prose. These ideas have morphed over time into the anti-science and frequently preposterous nonsense of modern wokeism.
The book requires concentration due to the abstruse nature of the subject matter but really gives a detailed and accurate history of the background. A valuable resource.

United Kingdom on Dec 24, 2023

william: "Cynical Theories" is a thought-provoking book that delves into the evolution of postmodernism and its impact on contemporary discourse, particularly in the realms of social justice and identity politics. Authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay critically examine the development of critical theories, such as postmodernism and critical social justice, and their influence on academia and society. They argue that these theories have led to a polarized and divisive intellectual landscape, where ideology often supersedes rational discourse.

Canada on Sep 06, 2023

Jose M.: which deconstructs(!) the various facets of wokenism and sheds light into the absurdity and reactionary character of many aspects of so-called postmodern critical "theory"

Spain on Mar 05, 2023

Maru: Es un excelente estudio sobre el origen del movimiento SocialJustice.

Mexico on Aug 11, 2022

MARCAO: Great book despite on some parts it depicts a dense reading for someone without a background on Social Sciences. I would definitively recommend it!

Brazil on Sep 25, 2021

Richard B. Schwartz: This is a very important book and I will try to review it appropriately. Bear with me. First, the jacket art is misleading. It makes the book look like an 'advocacy' book of the sort usually associated with contemporary politics. It advocates for a point of view, but it is a densely-argued, densely-written scholarly book. It is, at many points, painful to read because the ideas which are being depicted and countered are both wrongheaded (or banal) on their face but of immense influence. How did we ever allow ourselves to get here? (we scream to ourselves), but that is where we are and it is a very dangerous place, initially destroying whole segments of universities and now finding its way into the external, real-world society.

The book is written in three acts; it explains postmodernism and its progenitors (a nexus of ideas already passé in the 80's); shows how postmodernism was applied (creating ". . . Studies" departments, and so on) and then reified, with Social Justice (to be distinguished from social justice) warriors in the streets. It then offers a coda, an alternative to this nexus of ideas and activity: traditional liberalism. This is largely rational liberalism...

United States on Sep 20, 2020

Francis J. Casper: I’ve now read three chapters of this book and I must admit that I find it excellent. I am still concerned about the relationship between the authors, particularly James Lindsay, with Sovereign Nations, and no one will answer my questions about it. But reading this book, it is easy to ignore that for the moment. Interesting in this connection, however, the authors make an oblique reference in their introduction that some scholars will find them to be nothing but right wing reactionaries, but that this charge would not survive a fair reading of their book (p 20). I believe on the basis of what I’ve read, that is likely true. But it is nonetheless a perfectly legitimate question, one I think the authors owe their readers an answer to.

That said, the book seems to have two over-riding sections. The first is on postmodernism and the second, the longer section, is on applied postmodernism, known as Social Justice. If I had to summarize, I might argue that they have presented the phenomenon as a professionally sophisticated kind of gaslighting, “a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality.” The attack on reality...

United States on Aug 31, 2020