A Veteran in College: The Problem With Identity Theories
Cultural Studies in the Military My fifteen-year career in the military seemed to last an eternity. At twenty years old, I found myself involved in the initial push into Iraq…
Posts by tag
Identity Politics
18 posts
Irshad Manji’s “Don’t Label Me”: Book Review
It’s hard to know how to respond to the culture wars, which are raging all around us. Of course, we all know how we should respond: by practicing mutual respect,…
The Politics of Slavoj Zizek
Slavoj Žižek recently debated Jordan Peterson, in a conflict that was somewhat dramatically hailed as the intellectual duel of the century. One of the most amusing moments came when Peterson…
Racializing Environmentalism
A new study claims that whites disproportionately harm blacks and other minorities in regards to the pollution they emit relative to the pollution they consume. This is a pristine example…
Literature, Authenticity and Race
As Cathy Young observes in a recent essay, the media has not given J. D. Salinger a warm welcome into his centennial year. Two days before the celebrated author’s birthday, the Washington…
Rahaf Mohammad and the Need for Universal Human Rights
Rahaf Mohammed’s epic escape and rescue have once again demonstrated the pressing need for humanity to join together to protect human rights irrespective of caste, color or creed. The incident…
Identity: Knowing What It’s Like To Be Something
Like most people who hang around on social media, now and again I come across an exchange which goes like this: “I think such-and-such,” “How dare you think such-and-such? You’re not…
A Persian Popinjay. A Review of the Film Bohemian Rhapsody
Warning: contains spoilers. The Demands of the Narrative The film opens with a close-up of star Rami Malek’s eye, a circlet of pale blue-grey iris clearly visible around a wide…
The Case For Identity Politics
Identity politics has become the punching bag of liberals and conservatives alike, despite being rather ill defined. It is neither the world-ending menace that conservatives posit, nor the monolith that…
Identity Politics Does Not Continue the Work of the Civil Rights Movements
It is nearly beyond dispute that the Civil Rights Movement, second-wave liberal feminism, and Gay Pride were liberal projects, both in the broad philosophical sense and in the narrower meaning…
How Post-Modern Conservatism Emerged
“Truth is not Truth” Rudy Guiliani, August 19, 2018 Introduction In an earlier article for Areo, I discussed the state of conservatism today, and argued that we are witnessing the…
Liberal Individualism and the Challenge of Narrative
There is a philosophical self-image at the heart of the western world’s conception of itself. That image is the classically liberal vision of the self—the individual—as the essential unit of…
“Who I am” and the Problem of Offense
I recently asked a class of American students whether a man should be allowed to strut up and down a busy high street, dressed in a Nazi uniform. I knew…
Sympathology: Being Aggrieved on Behalf of Those Who Are Not
Pathologized Sympathy There is a group of people who frequently appear in the headlines, identified by a wide range of terms. Instead of listing all of them here, it’s best…
Skepticism is Necessary in our Post-Truth Age. Postmodernism is Not
We at Areo recently published a passionate defense of postmodernism by Kenneth Houston, Professor of International Relations at Webster. We did so, despite having published several essays strongly critical of…
The Matthew Sears Cower: Getting it Wrong on Free Speech and Social Justice
Last week in the Washington Post Canadian classics professor Matthew A. Sears argued that “‘social justice warriors’ are the true defenders of free speech and open debate.” His argument for…
The Evolutionary Roots of Identity Politics
“We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping…” — James Douglas Morrison It seems these days whether you are an Islamist in Dhaka, an Antifa extremist in Boston, a…
