[lbo-talk] political correctness

bhandari at berkeley.edu bhandari at berkeley.edu
Wed Aug 15 09:45:37 PDT 2007


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



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list