Critical theory is a closed system of analysis

A quite good piece, “White Women Tears”—Critical Theory on Lindsay Shepherd by Uri Harris. Harris drills into the arcana of critical theory to make a decent argument. One of the challenges of Postmodernism in general and critical theory in particular is that they have, cult-like, generated a structure and language of thought which precludes engagement. If you do not agree with their conclusions it is because you do not understand their precepts. Discussion becomes impossible because accepting any of their faulty precepts necessarily means that you have conceded to their world view.

Most of us, repelled by the inhumanity, intolerance, brutality, and incoherence of postmodernism, shy away from investing the time necessary to make sense of views and positions which otherwise make no sense. Harris does that for us in a pretty decent way.

The backstory, covered in the articles, is that a teaching assistant, Lindsay Shepherd, was administratively admonished by three university social justice critics, for showing her class two sides of an argument. The criticism of Shepherd, and implied academic threat, rested on Critical Theory precepts. The recording of their interrogation of Shepherd is shocking with its Kafkaesque framing and Stalinistic methods.

Harris focuses on the inherent self-contradictions underpinning critical theory.

In short, once someone starts by defining the purpose of scientific inquiry as liberating people from oppression, it naturally follows to construe the world as a set of oppressive systems, since that is the focus. It then follows, especially for those whose field of study is people, to personify these systems as the desires of powerful groups of people. Finally, it follows to appeal to social constructionism as a way to minimise or avoid alternative explanations from nonhuman (i.e., natural) causes. These aren’t strictly necessary links, but it’s easy to see why it would turn out this way in practice.

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Not only does Critical Theory seem to overemphasise the importance of oppression and power, but it doesn’t even seem to understand these things very well, since it insists on using simplistic historical narratives.

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It makes sense to consider power dynamics when considering Shepherd’s Laurier meeting, as part of a broader analysis. Yet, it makes very little sense to do so based on a historical narrative of white women and men of colour. A far more useful analysis would consider the fact that Shepherd was outnumbered three to one, or that Rambukkana is her supervisor, or that a person from the office of Gendered Violence Protection and Support was in the meeting. These things explain the power dynamics in the meeting quite well, it seems to me, while race and gender explain almost nothing. The fact that some of Shepherd’s critics want to invoke a historical narrative of ‘white woman plays the victim-card to get man of colour in trouble’ to explain the meeting suggests a deeper ideological commitment.

It is useful to look at systems and in particular, to look at systems of power and influence, but Critical Theory is structurally flawed in such a way that it's divorce from reality makes it incontestable.

There are five problems with critical theory which Harris touches on:

Critical theory assumes that all outcomes are purposeful results of systems of power.

It assumes that all systems of power involve white males victimizing everyone else and that only white males can be oppressors.

It assumes that only white males have agency, everyone else lacks the capacity for agency and are perpetual victims.

It assumes that any evidence to the contrary is false.

Critical theory is a closed system of analysis that has walled itself off from both reality and the ability to evolve and improve.