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Radio Free BeszelAuthor: Alphonse
The world is changing. What was stable has become unstuck: mass movements and class conflicts, elite hubris and institutional failure, authoritarianism and a collapse of authority: and everywhere a crisis of meaning. How should one live in this world? In this podcast, I take books I read and ideas I find and try to bring them down to earth, to understand what is happening here and now. I seek lasting principles, not hot takes. Topics include the professional class; critiques of social justice and identity politics; the information society; myth, narrative and meaning. I want to see clearly and speak freely. "Who knows, doesn't talk. Who talks, doesn't know." Tao Te Ching Language: en-ca Genres: Science, Social Sciences Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Discourse, the Demon of Social Justice
Episode 20
Friday, 24 December, 2021
Discourse is at the heart of social justice: the idea human beings are not free actors in the world, but are instead constrained by language, in the form of discourses that have been established over time. And we do not create our identities freely: who we our is our experiences of different discourses - discourses like race, gender, nationality, and so forth.Discourses are power relations. They conflict with one another - feminism versus patriarchy, for instance. They, not we, are the dominant actors in the world. We are the landscape on which they struggle, and the territory that they conquer. We are possessed by discourses. Discourses, as it were, are the demons of social justice.In such a world of conflict, power comes from controlling what people say. Censorship is not a convenient tactic of social justice, it is central to the social justice world view.This is the final episode of season one of this podcast. The theme of the season has been social justice. Nearly every episode implicitly critiques an aspect of social justice. But the pandemic has revealed that social justice is not the cause of the situation we're in. It shows that something more fundamental is at work - something that is manifesting in both social justice and the authoritarian response to Covid.I will be pausing now. When I return with new episodes, for season two, I will be looking beyond social justice. I expect I will be looking at technology, technocracy and the narrative of progress. This episode excerpts Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, 3rd edition, by John Hartley.
