Great post. Your posts are always a joy to read, but this is one of your best. I was a grad student in the early 90s but in a design program, so the focus was on the intersection of art and science/engineering. Nevertheless literary "deconstruction" seeped in here and there in seminars and cutting-edge scholarly theoretical work. These sorts of Derrida-ish things were thought-provoking at first, but eventually seemed to me to be a sort of "gotcha" parlor game. For example, "interrogate" the extensive writings of the great 19th C social reformer/abolitionist/park designer Frederick Law Olmsted to call out his heretofore unacknowledged "racism". So, of course, we can't really take him seriously anymore, this privileged dead white guy, this "father" of my profession (landscape architecture). I guess he wasn't exactly "cancelled" be the deconstructivists, but he was diminished, discredited, and seriously misunderstood. To me, that was a narrow-minded, cynical, and ignorant take, and we were all the poorer for it. As in, a textbook case of failing to see the forest for the trees.
I enjoyed your various links here, especially to the Technopoptimist guy. Now have subscribed to him. I love how good writers lead me to other good writers.
One of your links was to The Dixie Chicks, and I wanted to add something here. That kerfuffle was about much more than the band being opposed to the Iraq war. No doubt that if all the band did was express anti-war sentiments at their shows, they would've been booed by some of their audience and would've lost some fans. This might be because of politics, or even simply be a case of fans finding it tiresome that people famous for playing music presume to pontificate about politics at a music show (I certainly do, whatever the political stance). In any case a great many Country/alt-Country/Americana music fans kind of expect internationally-famous performers to be lefty/liberal in their politics, so it's no big surprise when a performer "comes out" this way.
What the Dixie Chicks did went way beyond that. The band's front-woman Natalie Maines told an audience in the UK that they were "ashamed" of being from Texas, because that's where President George W. Bush hailed from. That really struck a nerve, not as an anti-war sentiment, but as an anti-American statement. Whether that's a fair interpretation, I don't know. Who can look into another person's heart? But this is what many people "heard": Maines dissing her homeland and sucking up to people who were already inclined to be anti-American.
To me, a southerner (grew up in GA), what Maines said was an example of something irksome that I have seen repeatedly: a southern celebrity currying favor with non-southerners by insulting his/her own people and region. The southerner among non-southerners could be enlightening their audience, but instead appeals to their prejudices and ignorance by flattering their sense of moral superiority. This sort of spokesperson is a sort of self-styled "truth-teller", but I see it as cowardly and demagogic. What do Londoners know of the American south? I've traveled extensively in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and talked with lots of people over there. Their references are Gone With the Wind and The Birth of a Nation; for any contemporary events, their news is filtered by the BBC which is in turn filtered by The New York Times. If you are from the south, as I am, you will never recognize the south in its caricatured depictions by American writers and film-makers who look at it from their provincialist heights. It's not just Kevin Costner's ridiculously bad southern accents; it's pervasive.
Every fall, I take 36 students from my upper-midwest university to the American south for a three-week driving trip, during which we interact quite a bit with people who live and work in cities, towns, and parks. We are there to study designed landscapes and explore ecosystems within other regions and sub-cultures, but one of the primary takeaways for my students is their great surprise that the south is nothing like what they imagined it to be—especially in terms of race relations and in terms of people (of whichever race) not conforming to stereotypes.
Oh, thank you for the clarification about Maines—I didn’t realize that she had trashed her home state. (I still don’t think she should have been canceled, though.)
Your Olmsted example gets at one of the aspects of cancel culture I find particularly frustrating, it’s classism. Olmsted’s public parks were life-changing for working-class people and gave them a free public space where they could enjoy the fresh air, beautiful nature, and a bit of leisure. In my opinion that is much more important than whether he was racist, like the vast majority of people of his time.
This is kind of disheartening: "Of course, heterodox and right-leaning people have been inveighing against cancel culture for years now, but my side of the political aisle has been (sometimes rightly) suspicious of their motives." Seems to me that if one seeks to ferret out Truth, then one needs to investigate all possibilities and not automatically discard any not from one's own "side." Because as noted, the other "side" at least occasionally sees "sometimes rightly." We'd all be better off without any "sides" or tribes in our search for Truth. Something may be happening here . . . but it is not helpful just crying "hooray for our "side."
Yup, I agree. How will we ever learn anything if we close our ears to other points of view? As the sad story of that boy at the Chiefs game reveals, people can be mistaken, and their rush to judgment can have ugly consequences.
Also--for the ultimate irony, the Chiefs fan kid was himself of Native American ancestry. For anyone who hasn't seen the photos, the kid had painted half his face red and the other half black—red and black being the KC Chiefs team colors. Also he was wearing a big Red Cloud-style feathered headdress. So the reporter selected a photo of the kid in profile, showing only the black half of his face and the headdress—and then called him out for being a racist in blackface as well as an anti-Indian cultural appropriator.
Ah Mari, I still have flashbacks of the toxic postmodernism of 1990s U of C English. I definitely sympathize. I had similar moments, but instead of being "cancelled" I was dismissed as "not smart." Almost nobody questioned the nonsense we were being taught, but it wasn't quit as toxic as now because they didn't seem to see at as a moral but as an intellectual failure. It's interesting what you say about intention. The "intention doesn't matter crowd" is a logical growth of postmodernism and its dismissal of intention in literary analysis--well actually the New Critics own that one. . . . There is also, paradoxically, a tendency on the Internet at least, to ascribe intention. So-and-so is not really concerned with what they're arguing, they really intend to advance a racist, homophobic, misogynist argument. As one of the (mostly closeted) conservatives who's been complaining at least to friends and family about cancel culture for years, really since the 1990s when they tried to cancel Camille Paglia, I can tell you my intention has always been to shore up a classically liberal, Matthew Arnoldesque discourse aimed at "seeing things as they are" in a disinterested way and letting the chips fall where they may. That having been said, I was pretty sure such disinterested discussion would end up with the chips falling in a relatively socially conservative corner because conservatism seemed to me as more aligned with reality than what sometimes seemed to be the fantasy thinking of progressives or the postmodern flights of fantasy, many of which were co-opted by far leftists with Marxist agendas. So, there I go ascribing intention, I guess. I think it's best to take people at there word and even given them the benefit of the doubt with regard to intention, even when they oppose you. I think what we've seen in recent times is that the intentions of some of the people pushing the theories we learned was to dismantle the culture, including civil debate. Many of them pretty much said that. But you really didn't need to question intention to see the obvious implications of Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler et al.
I am so sorry that people in our program dismissed you like that, Tom. I always thought you were brilliant, but since we were briefly roommates, I had the chance to get to know you better than those people who underestimated you.
You make such an interesting point about the paradoxical attitude toward intention. Yes, when people get offended about a perfectly unobjectionable action, intent doesn't matter, but when a person on the other side of the aisle makes a point, there must be some nefarious intent behind it. I agree that it is best to employ the principle of charity in all our discussions.
Hi Mari--First, I'm so sad that I didn't know you back when you were being cancelled in grad school. I wasn't even at Chicago then, but I hope I would have stood up with my friend. I'm very sorry that happened to you!
My own experience with having a Twitter mob come after me was equally hard. I reposted a tweet about Florence Nightingale's contributions to public health and how they were relevant to containing Covid (this was during the pandemic). People tweeted that she was racist and I was racist by association. It was obvious to me that the people "dragging" me (a horrible term) were enjoying themselves. My son advised me that the only way to "win" in this scenario--as you say, there is no winning on the internet--was to stop responding to the comments. That was hard to do, but he was right. I may sound like I'm whining, but I've worked so hard to represent nursing well that it hurt to be attacked in that way by nurses who twisted my words around and encouraged other people to attack me. I did end up exploring Nightingale's legacy more (see my Substack), but in spite of the tone of the twitter mob, not because of it.
Finally, about laughter. As you may remember, Matt has suggested that I hire myself out to comedy clubs due to my loud laught. Laughter really is the best medicine (says the nurse!).
I am so sorry that that happened to you, Theresa. Your cancelation reminds me of Michael David Martin's comment, above, about Olmsted. Both Nightingale and Olmsted were products of their time and were indeed racist, but they also were leaders whose innovations vastly improved--or in Nightingale's case saved--the lives of ordinary working people. That really seems to be the most important takeaway from their lives! I'm glad that you were able to stop responding to those comments. It really is depressing how much pleasure some people seem to take in online outrage.
And yes, your laugh is terrific! I have always loved how you laugh not just loudly, but also so readily. There is something wonderfully warm and friendly about people like you, who are ready to burst out with a hearty laugh at pretty much anything!
Great post. Your posts are always a joy to read, but this is one of your best. I was a grad student in the early 90s but in a design program, so the focus was on the intersection of art and science/engineering. Nevertheless literary "deconstruction" seeped in here and there in seminars and cutting-edge scholarly theoretical work. These sorts of Derrida-ish things were thought-provoking at first, but eventually seemed to me to be a sort of "gotcha" parlor game. For example, "interrogate" the extensive writings of the great 19th C social reformer/abolitionist/park designer Frederick Law Olmsted to call out his heretofore unacknowledged "racism". So, of course, we can't really take him seriously anymore, this privileged dead white guy, this "father" of my profession (landscape architecture). I guess he wasn't exactly "cancelled" be the deconstructivists, but he was diminished, discredited, and seriously misunderstood. To me, that was a narrow-minded, cynical, and ignorant take, and we were all the poorer for it. As in, a textbook case of failing to see the forest for the trees.
I enjoyed your various links here, especially to the Technopoptimist guy. Now have subscribed to him. I love how good writers lead me to other good writers.
One of your links was to The Dixie Chicks, and I wanted to add something here. That kerfuffle was about much more than the band being opposed to the Iraq war. No doubt that if all the band did was express anti-war sentiments at their shows, they would've been booed by some of their audience and would've lost some fans. This might be because of politics, or even simply be a case of fans finding it tiresome that people famous for playing music presume to pontificate about politics at a music show (I certainly do, whatever the political stance). In any case a great many Country/alt-Country/Americana music fans kind of expect internationally-famous performers to be lefty/liberal in their politics, so it's no big surprise when a performer "comes out" this way.
What the Dixie Chicks did went way beyond that. The band's front-woman Natalie Maines told an audience in the UK that they were "ashamed" of being from Texas, because that's where President George W. Bush hailed from. That really struck a nerve, not as an anti-war sentiment, but as an anti-American statement. Whether that's a fair interpretation, I don't know. Who can look into another person's heart? But this is what many people "heard": Maines dissing her homeland and sucking up to people who were already inclined to be anti-American.
To me, a southerner (grew up in GA), what Maines said was an example of something irksome that I have seen repeatedly: a southern celebrity currying favor with non-southerners by insulting his/her own people and region. The southerner among non-southerners could be enlightening their audience, but instead appeals to their prejudices and ignorance by flattering their sense of moral superiority. This sort of spokesperson is a sort of self-styled "truth-teller", but I see it as cowardly and demagogic. What do Londoners know of the American south? I've traveled extensively in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and talked with lots of people over there. Their references are Gone With the Wind and The Birth of a Nation; for any contemporary events, their news is filtered by the BBC which is in turn filtered by The New York Times. If you are from the south, as I am, you will never recognize the south in its caricatured depictions by American writers and film-makers who look at it from their provincialist heights. It's not just Kevin Costner's ridiculously bad southern accents; it's pervasive.
Every fall, I take 36 students from my upper-midwest university to the American south for a three-week driving trip, during which we interact quite a bit with people who live and work in cities, towns, and parks. We are there to study designed landscapes and explore ecosystems within other regions and sub-cultures, but one of the primary takeaways for my students is their great surprise that the south is nothing like what they imagined it to be—especially in terms of race relations and in terms of people (of whichever race) not conforming to stereotypes.
I always get a kick out of that.
Oh, thank you for the clarification about Maines—I didn’t realize that she had trashed her home state. (I still don’t think she should have been canceled, though.)
Your Olmsted example gets at one of the aspects of cancel culture I find particularly frustrating, it’s classism. Olmsted’s public parks were life-changing for working-class people and gave them a free public space where they could enjoy the fresh air, beautiful nature, and a bit of leisure. In my opinion that is much more important than whether he was racist, like the vast majority of people of his time.
Thank you, too, for the kind words!
This is kind of disheartening: "Of course, heterodox and right-leaning people have been inveighing against cancel culture for years now, but my side of the political aisle has been (sometimes rightly) suspicious of their motives." Seems to me that if one seeks to ferret out Truth, then one needs to investigate all possibilities and not automatically discard any not from one's own "side." Because as noted, the other "side" at least occasionally sees "sometimes rightly." We'd all be better off without any "sides" or tribes in our search for Truth. Something may be happening here . . . but it is not helpful just crying "hooray for our "side."
Also, now I have that song stuck in my head! 😊
Yup, I agree. How will we ever learn anything if we close our ears to other points of view? As the sad story of that boy at the Chiefs game reveals, people can be mistaken, and their rush to judgment can have ugly consequences.
Also--for the ultimate irony, the Chiefs fan kid was himself of Native American ancestry. For anyone who hasn't seen the photos, the kid had painted half his face red and the other half black—red and black being the KC Chiefs team colors. Also he was wearing a big Red Cloud-style feathered headdress. So the reporter selected a photo of the kid in profile, showing only the black half of his face and the headdress—and then called him out for being a racist in blackface as well as an anti-Indian cultural appropriator.
it doesn't get more stupidly dishonest than that.
Ah Mari, I still have flashbacks of the toxic postmodernism of 1990s U of C English. I definitely sympathize. I had similar moments, but instead of being "cancelled" I was dismissed as "not smart." Almost nobody questioned the nonsense we were being taught, but it wasn't quit as toxic as now because they didn't seem to see at as a moral but as an intellectual failure. It's interesting what you say about intention. The "intention doesn't matter crowd" is a logical growth of postmodernism and its dismissal of intention in literary analysis--well actually the New Critics own that one. . . . There is also, paradoxically, a tendency on the Internet at least, to ascribe intention. So-and-so is not really concerned with what they're arguing, they really intend to advance a racist, homophobic, misogynist argument. As one of the (mostly closeted) conservatives who's been complaining at least to friends and family about cancel culture for years, really since the 1990s when they tried to cancel Camille Paglia, I can tell you my intention has always been to shore up a classically liberal, Matthew Arnoldesque discourse aimed at "seeing things as they are" in a disinterested way and letting the chips fall where they may. That having been said, I was pretty sure such disinterested discussion would end up with the chips falling in a relatively socially conservative corner because conservatism seemed to me as more aligned with reality than what sometimes seemed to be the fantasy thinking of progressives or the postmodern flights of fantasy, many of which were co-opted by far leftists with Marxist agendas. So, there I go ascribing intention, I guess. I think it's best to take people at there word and even given them the benefit of the doubt with regard to intention, even when they oppose you. I think what we've seen in recent times is that the intentions of some of the people pushing the theories we learned was to dismantle the culture, including civil debate. Many of them pretty much said that. But you really didn't need to question intention to see the obvious implications of Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler et al.
I am so sorry that people in our program dismissed you like that, Tom. I always thought you were brilliant, but since we were briefly roommates, I had the chance to get to know you better than those people who underestimated you.
You make such an interesting point about the paradoxical attitude toward intention. Yes, when people get offended about a perfectly unobjectionable action, intent doesn't matter, but when a person on the other side of the aisle makes a point, there must be some nefarious intent behind it. I agree that it is best to employ the principle of charity in all our discussions.
Hi Mari--First, I'm so sad that I didn't know you back when you were being cancelled in grad school. I wasn't even at Chicago then, but I hope I would have stood up with my friend. I'm very sorry that happened to you!
My own experience with having a Twitter mob come after me was equally hard. I reposted a tweet about Florence Nightingale's contributions to public health and how they were relevant to containing Covid (this was during the pandemic). People tweeted that she was racist and I was racist by association. It was obvious to me that the people "dragging" me (a horrible term) were enjoying themselves. My son advised me that the only way to "win" in this scenario--as you say, there is no winning on the internet--was to stop responding to the comments. That was hard to do, but he was right. I may sound like I'm whining, but I've worked so hard to represent nursing well that it hurt to be attacked in that way by nurses who twisted my words around and encouraged other people to attack me. I did end up exploring Nightingale's legacy more (see my Substack), but in spite of the tone of the twitter mob, not because of it.
Finally, about laughter. As you may remember, Matt has suggested that I hire myself out to comedy clubs due to my loud laught. Laughter really is the best medicine (says the nurse!).
I am so sorry that that happened to you, Theresa. Your cancelation reminds me of Michael David Martin's comment, above, about Olmsted. Both Nightingale and Olmsted were products of their time and were indeed racist, but they also were leaders whose innovations vastly improved--or in Nightingale's case saved--the lives of ordinary working people. That really seems to be the most important takeaway from their lives! I'm glad that you were able to stop responding to those comments. It really is depressing how much pleasure some people seem to take in online outrage.
And yes, your laugh is terrific! I have always loved how you laugh not just loudly, but also so readily. There is something wonderfully warm and friendly about people like you, who are ready to burst out with a hearty laugh at pretty much anything!
Awww. Thanks for the support Mari and your comment on my laugh! That makes me happy!!!!