"A double challenge to liberal democrats is both to reject the right in full voice, yet make clear their profound separateness from the far left... They must fully recognize how their progressivism differs from the ever-accumulating transformative regimes of the far left"
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So, that (somewhat cut) is clear enough. The aim here is to distinguish a liberal desire for progress from the ideological mess on the far-left. To do so, requires understanding said ideological mess.
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"Many people have come to identify a necessary disambiguating idea for this recognition as that of postmodernism." Yes, that would be me. "I believe a deeper understanding — the more essential, yet particular and activating difference — can be found in “logocentrism.”" Do go on.
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So, logocentrism is commonly understood to be the idea that language reliably refers to what is out there. Derrida, particularly, rejected this. Everything is a text and every understanding of a text is an interpretation.
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Adler argues that a better understanding of 'logocentrism' is a more literal breakdown of the word. Making language the centre and reality secondary to that. He says that this is what the New New left is doing & understanding this makes so much else clear.
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I have argued that it is essential to understanding so much of what seems bewilderingly nuts on the postmodern left to understand the degree to which language (discourses) are understood to construct reality. We cannot get anywhere if we miss this vital part of the puzzle.
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This is essentially the same point but Adler breaks it down and pinpoints the reversal that has happened much more distinctly and how profound an epistemological shift this is.
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"...we might claim that the far left bookoisie cannot think without continually revising the means of thinking, the instruments of knowledge production. Epistemology is ontology. To know is to be, and how you know is how you be."
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"Thus, the far, New New Left has turned logocentrism on its head, jettisoning one sense of it for another, truer sense of the word. The new form seeks knowledge not *through* language, but *in* language." Language is not a tool, for them. It is the construction material
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"Instead of seeking knowledge in the belief that thought and word are roughly, reliably coordinate to the world they reference, true logocentrism finds free-floating meaning almost religiously in the word itself. "
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This profound epistemological shift has impact "What has all this meant in political practice? In political practice, true logocentrism produces a turn to subjectivity: subjective experience is raised in value over the objective description that is no longer warranted as valid."
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Identity politics emerge. "It has produced a particular nexus of anti-free speech linguistic correctness aimed at protecting interior lives — human subjective experience — politically represented on the level of group identity."
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True Helen. I got about halfway through. Tough slogging for me.
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Yes, it is tough. But worth it. I also appreciate the strategic use of the language but recognise that people who are not familiar with it might not see what he is doing with it and why it's so amazing.
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You shouldn’t have had to translate. That you did so indicates the piece is badly written, and needed a firmer editorial hand. Also far too long.
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I loved it on many levels but I recognise that other people didn't. I'd like him to write two versions in future and we could publish the simple one linked to the full version.
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Next time you get one like that send it to me and I’ll turn it into ‘Economist House Style’ for you. It’ll finish up 2000 words max and perfectly comprehensible to the ‘educated general reader’.
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We have plenty of those tho. That's simple enough. That one was a bit special tho.
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The Economist regularly has to explain comparative advantage (much harder conceptually) to the ‘educated general reader’. The ideas here are not particularly complex and the job could be done in clear, comprehensible prose.
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Yes, of course it could. There's nothing easier than clear, comprehensible prose.
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