The rise and fall and rise (and fall?) of writer Wesley Yang, plus an unrelated discussion about the rising influence of humanities PhD on the broader discourse.
Thought this was a really great conversation, as someone who once spent an unpleasant amount of time thinking about Norman Podhoretz for a thesis I enjoyed and found the comparison to Yang particularly interesting, especially the parallel of eventually getting very invested in anti-lgbtq stuff. It's funny, I read his book not terribly long ago and thought that for the most part there was very little that indicated he'd ever collapse so completely into 2+2=4 type thinking.
Loved this. Can't read anything by Yang anymore bc everything he tweets is so anti-trans, but remember loving his early work. Also really like what you say about the para-academic. I was trying to explain to someone recently the concept of the intelligentsia, as distinct from academia (am writing a book about the Great Books and was explaining that the Great Books have a much more active life in the intelligentsia than in academia), and it didn't necessarily make sense to them--I realized that the two worlds are really getting closer and closer. You don't necessarily have a lot of Richard Wrights or James Baldwins or Ernest Hemingways who don't have a strong relationship to the academy . I still think the academia / intelligentsia distinction is meaningful, bc the lack of institutional commitments that the intelligentsia has is meaningful by itself, but it's perhaps less meaningful than it's been.
Looking forward to hearing this! But I have to ask: If you’re going to devote so much time thinking about Wesley Yang, why not, as you did with Corey Robin, just ask him? (Understanding, of course, that taking into account his filibusters it would run about 3 hours.)
Coincidentally, I found your page due to a Yang tweet, haha. I don't always check his tweets but they are entertaining from time to time. I enjoyed the convo, but I don't think you two gave enough consideration to the origins of "successor ideology" in critical theory/postmodernism. It's probably Marxism too - probably a mix of several intellectual trends - but the "woke" use terms that draw directly from critical theory textbooks, from gender and race being social constructs to a rejection of individual rights. They also tend to be unsophisticated relativists, just as early critics of critical theory said (like Noam Chomsky). It's hard not to trace at least one major root of their thinking to those traditions.
One more thought is that you guys spend quite a bit of time ripping on Wesley for being too simplistic about his "reality" point, 2+2=4 etc. I agree with you that what external reality is beyond our minds (if anything) is a difficult, deep question. But if I'm charitable to Yang, it may be that he's employing a technique similar to what Buddhists call "upaya" or skillful means. That is, it may be that he thinks the 2+2=5 folks are unsophisticated relativists (which they tend to be), so the only way to counter that is unsophisticated realism.
As someone with an English degree (not a PhD though) that has written for Tablet, The Free Press, and UnHerd, I really was hoping for more discussion on the phenomenon you describe in this podcast. Especially the fact that people like me are far in the minority when it comes to the humanities, which is overwhelmingly Left. I’ve heard people call us “dissidents”, which is an apt word.
Thought this was a really great conversation, as someone who once spent an unpleasant amount of time thinking about Norman Podhoretz for a thesis I enjoyed and found the comparison to Yang particularly interesting, especially the parallel of eventually getting very invested in anti-lgbtq stuff. It's funny, I read his book not terribly long ago and thought that for the most part there was very little that indicated he'd ever collapse so completely into 2+2=4 type thinking.
Loved this. Can't read anything by Yang anymore bc everything he tweets is so anti-trans, but remember loving his early work. Also really like what you say about the para-academic. I was trying to explain to someone recently the concept of the intelligentsia, as distinct from academia (am writing a book about the Great Books and was explaining that the Great Books have a much more active life in the intelligentsia than in academia), and it didn't necessarily make sense to them--I realized that the two worlds are really getting closer and closer. You don't necessarily have a lot of Richard Wrights or James Baldwins or Ernest Hemingways who don't have a strong relationship to the academy . I still think the academia / intelligentsia distinction is meaningful, bc the lack of institutional commitments that the intelligentsia has is meaningful by itself, but it's perhaps less meaningful than it's been.
Looking forward to hearing this! But I have to ask: If you’re going to devote so much time thinking about Wesley Yang, why not, as you did with Corey Robin, just ask him? (Understanding, of course, that taking into account his filibusters it would run about 3 hours.)
Speaking of Robin, the two of you touched lightly on the topic of academics writing for the public, and I liked this piece of his on the topic: https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-intellectuals-create-a-public/
Coincidentally, I found your page due to a Yang tweet, haha. I don't always check his tweets but they are entertaining from time to time. I enjoyed the convo, but I don't think you two gave enough consideration to the origins of "successor ideology" in critical theory/postmodernism. It's probably Marxism too - probably a mix of several intellectual trends - but the "woke" use terms that draw directly from critical theory textbooks, from gender and race being social constructs to a rejection of individual rights. They also tend to be unsophisticated relativists, just as early critics of critical theory said (like Noam Chomsky). It's hard not to trace at least one major root of their thinking to those traditions.
One more thought is that you guys spend quite a bit of time ripping on Wesley for being too simplistic about his "reality" point, 2+2=4 etc. I agree with you that what external reality is beyond our minds (if anything) is a difficult, deep question. But if I'm charitable to Yang, it may be that he's employing a technique similar to what Buddhists call "upaya" or skillful means. That is, it may be that he thinks the 2+2=5 folks are unsophisticated relativists (which they tend to be), so the only way to counter that is unsophisticated realism.
As someone with an English degree (not a PhD though) that has written for Tablet, The Free Press, and UnHerd, I really was hoping for more discussion on the phenomenon you describe in this podcast. Especially the fact that people like me are far in the minority when it comes to the humanities, which is overwhelmingly Left. I’ve heard people call us “dissidents”, which is an apt word.