[lbo-talk] political correctness

[bhandari at berkeley.edu]

For what it's worth, I think that with his characteristic precision and
succintness Richard Levins has got political correctness exactly right.
The great challengers of political correctness are hardly courageous in
the Galilean sense by confirming outloud the underlying premises of a
retrograde society (Philip Kitcher has an interesting discussion of this
in Reason, Science and Democracy; political correctness has at its best
attempted to extend to the right of and to create the conditions for free
inquiry to those deemed naturally inferior and thereby in fact impaired ).

And we won't deal with the elephant in the room or listserve.

If by politically correct however we mean sanctimonious taboo ridden
speech--rather than challenges to the abuse-- what could be more
politically correct than opposition to stell cem research, abortion and
gay marriage (which of course can't be a better idea than marriage in
itself is). The sanctity of life and (patriarchal) family.  Don't read
French but perhaps  Dominique Lecourt's Humain, Posthumain needs to be
translated. This book seems to present an altogether different kind of
challenge to political correctness. There are some important obstacles to
free biological inquiry and experimenation. And perhaps we'll need a
politically incorrect ethos to challenge that. To me this is a much more
interesting question than the sins of the left.

Rakesh