Yes, you did. I was just providing what seemed like an obvious example.
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Clever, but it has a parser problem.
I have reasonable 1099 rates. Inquiries Welcome.
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By 1987? I would say that they were… followers.
Following a link to a link that I provided… somehow… discredits my assertion?
So, what you are saying is that it was an established pattern by the time the Frankfurt School was formed?
Not sure I would pay to have you represent me in court.
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Pop quiz ( closed-book - no Internet, on your honour ): Define “justice”.
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Having a hell of a time finding the case of a housewife getting a lobotomy “because she didnt want to be a housewife”. Can you fill me in?
Also, while you are at it, is there a case where a man got lobotomized because he didn’t want to be a ‘breadwinner’ or a ‘soldier’?
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Like, guess what the dictionary says? It’s probably something like “the administration of law” coupled with “just treatment” or “just outcomes.”
Definitions aren’t very useful, why do you want one?
Mainly on women, without needing their consent, on the advice of their husbands. Maybe I draw too strong a conclusion?
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Because I’m interested in what you think.
Thanks for the link. Lemme read… I will get back with you.
Edit P.S. I wont hold your feet to the fire… but dont think that that was not your answer.
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Hello,
I have read your article. I did not see any language to the effect that women were subject to this procedure because they 'didnt want to be housewives".
Perhaps you were referring to another article?
Also, I took the liberty of checking the background of the author. Yea, you guessed it, she’s a Critical Theorist:
“Kristy Staniszewski is completing her first year in the Women’s
History graduate program at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also an
employee of the college. This is an excerpt from her prospective thesis
work on women and mental illness.”
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Nah, that’s part of the charm. Rob wrote it assuming most would enter FirstName and LastNamebut dumping in something different like trollies Opinion or longer like this one gives a lovely condemnation of the target in the hed and first graf, but then slides into invective against all Opinion (or Journalism) in a way that crosses beyond the Poe’s line.
I mean, I love a line like this
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Yeah, my answer was:
I feel like you are trying to be very clever here and you think you have a very clever point to make. Any argument that begins with asking someone to define a word is at best clever, because it has no chance of being useful. Definitions are secondary to meaning. Dictionaries showed up quite a long time after language.
Okay, apparently we’re discussing whether or not there is a specific documented case of the procedure of giving lobotomies to women because their husbands wanted them was abused. In order to suppose such a procedure was abused we need a date and a name. Maybe a lobotomized person to tell their side of the story?
What difference does it make? You picked this example out of a paragraph where I was talking about many different forms of abuses of power that people in power use against people who don’t think they should have so much power. Here, let’s make this simple: I was entirely wrong, no woman was ever wrongfully lobotomized. Now, make your point. If you disagree that people with power use that power to maintain power then just say so, no need to question the examples. Or critical theorists invented that idea and before the 20s no one ever uses power to keep power by oppressing people who oppose them?
You came into this discussion to ask why people always mock people when they bring up critical theory. I answered you: because the people who bring it up always seem to be so ridiculous. You admitted this, and then were treated to an actual rational discussion of critical theory by people who know something about it. So my answer was entirely satisfactory. If someone started a thread on critical theory here they could have a good discussion and be mocked not once. It is entirely in the approach of the people who bring it up and the fact that they often appear to be conspiracy theorists who think a group of people in Frankfurt in the 1920s are somehow still controlling the world with their shadowy tendrils- and a shocking number of them would be happy to replace “people” with “Jews” in that sentence.
That’s all there is to the mockery, a bunch of mockable people. And the more you use cute tactics like arguing a single sentence and requesting definitions the more mockable you appear to be yourself. I took philosophy 101, I’ve been treated to this kind of thing before.
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How are you concluding that Kristy Staniszewski is a follower of Critical Theory?
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Because she dares criticize the dominent cultural paradigm.
duh.
if you can find a source who does not implicitly attack the status quo, perhaps that will help.
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I’d say that being critical means that one needn’t follow anybody. Despite the “mainstream” associations of “Critical Theory” equals “Frankfurt School”. There’s a lot of geographical and disciplinary overlap, so I think people try to narrow it down to favor convenience rather than accuracy. I prefer to think of it as a discipline rather than a club.
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“Women’s History graduate program.”
Anything named “gender and or ethnic group studies and/or history” has the smell of CT to it.
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But doesn’t everything have a gender and/or ethnicity? I don’t know why there would be anything wrong with that. It’s like my ex-spouse used to talk about “how ethnic people are”, and I tried to get more specific. It’s like singling somebody out for talking with an accent - everybody talks with “an accent”, but nearly everybody takes theirs for granted. A really slow person might insist that only others have an accent, while they speak without one. It seems naive to assume that anything can be learned about anybody if we are unaware of how much of the story comes from their time and place, and how much we bring to it by our own ideas trying to make sense of them. Consider any person, and they can be said to represent and be defined by - to some extent - gender and ethnicity.
Also, there were historically other kinds of critical theory apart from the Frankfurt School, even back then. Since critical theory had a huge interdisciplinary overlap, the number of watch words which can raise “red flags” are practically countless. Political science, psychoanalysis, sociology, linguistics, literary criticism, economics, cybernetics, philosophy, information warfare, etc… so much touched upon, so many terms used. If you wanted to be paranoid about it, you could see it everywhere.
I think that exercising some critical methodology is good thinking for dealing with anything. It’s just the art and science of not unthinkingly accepting whatever is presented without testing it. For anybody who has strong feelings about Marx (I don’t) - either for or against, - there are tools to use here. People who hate Marx’s ideas can be said to be critical of them. Even people who found a lot to like from Marx’s work decided to critique it anyway, just on general principle. Many people fall into the trap of choosing a token political position and only critiquing who they imagine are their opponents, without critiquing their own group. In these cases, their critique of the opposition cannot be honest either. My experience has been that those who are most thoroughly critical tend to choose neither “side” of ideological conflicts.
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Gentle reminder of what we were talking about.
You are right, I do have a clever point to make. Let me explain it to you.
You challenged my assertion that CT is inculcated into our culture, particularly in the use of language. I then asked a simple question and then you proceeded to prove me right. Clue: You would have flummoxed me with any answer.
“Justice? Yea, that’s a clothing store for young ladies.”
Instead what you did is was play the
Liberal gambit, you refused to commit yourself to any answer. This is a very Marxist, CT-ish thing to do because in that world there is no objective truth.
Now, where did you learn that?
As to the supposed lobotomization of willful women.
It makes a difference because you entered it into our debate. So, now we know that there is a set of people out there that think that husbands used to lobotomize their wives, supposedly because they refused to do housework.
I just made you back that talk up and you failed. Sorry to deny you the narrative.
By the way, did you find any cases of men undergoing this procedure because they refused to work or serve in the military?
Don’t fret too much over this question, I don’t expect you to answer- it does not fit the Liberal narrative.
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Ah, good questions. I can work with this.
Yes, all people have a gender( careful now, trolley ) and an ethnicity(-ies ). And this is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Nor is there anything wrong with the study of gender and ethnicity.
So, for the sake of argument, lets consider the field of “Womens Studies”. Now, if Womens Studies were solely about the role of women in history and culture… fine, nothing nefarious to see here. BUT, when you peel away the layers of the onion what you will find is that “Womens Studies” isn’t quite so much about women as it is about a critique of patriarchal social structures. Western Culture is traditionally patriarchal- hence “Womens Studies” isn’t totally about studying women as much as it is a praxis to underminde Western culture.
You seem to know what you are talking about. You know what I’m gettin at.
I have heard this type of language before and I understand your point.
@anon50609448, take note. This is an excellent example of how CT persists in our culture.
For people to use language like that denies their own ethnicity, denies themselves their own history and ethnicity.
Also, I’m reminded of the term ‘reverse racism’, a somewhat archaic term at this point, but it was used by Caucasians to describe ethnic bias against them. Now, if you strictly parse that term and the context of its usage what you will discover is that it implies that only Caucasians are racist.
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The classic text for these sorts of arguments is The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter. She quotes various sources-- unfortunately the endnotes are not present in this excerpt.
Psychosurgeons consider that the operation is potentially more effective with women because it is easier for them to assume or resume the role of a housewife."
…
Much psychiatric literature on ECT, he maintains, recommends it for the less- skilled persons whose livelihoods are not dependent on the use of memory and intellect; housewives can be seen as excellent candidates on these terms. The “improvement” seen in their behavior after the treatment may simply reflect their greater tractability, or reflect the male bias in the profession that finds “mental incapacity and helpless depen- dence . . . far more acceptable in women than in men.”
and so on. I’m sure it would be possible to follow the endnotes from a more complete copy and verify her assertions for yourself.
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This is oversimplifying the situation quite a bit. Some examples: During my lifetime, laws and nearly all social rules and roles specify equal worth and validity for women. So this would make the inequality of only historical interest. Except that many people persist in treating men and women differently anyway, because this is such a recent development compared to other long-established traditions. Another factor is that The Americas as part of European cultural heritage denies that these continents were populated for thousands of years with other diverse cultures, with their own traditions of sex and gender. And that your history of Patriarchal West is basically the history of the spread of Christianity, and disregards the tribal dominance of Europe before Rome, or non-Abrahamic religions. It also ties into a larger change of perspective of academic institutions, the controversy of teaching a Eurocentric worldview and history. This is slowly changing. Your remarks about the necessity of teaching about patriarchal culture as part of “Women’s Studies” might seem out of place if you were discussing, for instance, the history of a country - where exploration outside its boundaries, trade and war with other countries are commonly regarded as integral to its history. Because they affected it’s history, development, and are part of why it is what it is today. Teaching a history of the US without mentioning how the US came to be, or about trade or wars would easily prove controversial for providing a stilted, limited perspective on its history.
You missed my point there. This represents a lack of a critical frame of reference. The values and cultural identity are assumed to be universal, they are implicit and never examined. But this results, as you pointed out, in a distorted personal perspective.
Reverse racism need not be confined to Caucasians any more than racism itself, it seems to be only a special instance of racism. This comes down to specific geographies and cultures. Recognizing a group which is perceived as being dominant and explaining reactions to them vary according to time, place, and tradition.
None of this relates directly to the Frankfurt School in any way. Marxism is traditionally an economic study. The main thing critical theorists from this tradition would likely point out is that gender studies and reverse racism cannot be explained by Marx’s theories of factory life and influence in the 19th century. Instead, they extrapolate by making a critique upon current gender and race relations, analogous to how Marxism was a critique of 19th century capitalism. It is not a matter of using Marxism to explain todays complexities. How Marx was validated was that his criticisms of capitalism were commonly regarded to be correct. How Marx was refuted was that those in power subverted his solutions regarding how to fix it - the critique is still valid, only capitalism dug itself in deeper. The Frankfurt School were living in a post-Marxist world. The irony, if you will, is that modern people who are alarmed about Marx are also quite vocal about living in a post-Marxist world.
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Are we all understanding the term “critical” and “criticism” as they are used, here?
Critical does not mean “complaining about, in opposition to.” Its about studying, analyzing.
Hence, a critical analysis of western patriarchy is not a priori about undermining it. It’s about studying it.
True, you must know your enemy in order to defeat it…
Not that I have a problem with that. All -archies (an- included) are problematic.
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