第一部分：”犬儒理论”对于科学和理性的敌视

5.把科学理解为压迫

This understanding of the oppressive role of science can be largely traced back to Michel Foucault. Foucault studied the production of “power-knowledge”—how knowledge is socially constructed by discourses, in the service of power—and was particularly concerned with “biopower”—how the biological sciences legitimize the knowledge that the powerful use to maintain their dominance. In his four-volume study, The History of Sexuality,14 Foucault argues that, since the late seventeenth century, far from suppressing speech about sex (as neo-Marxist thinkers like Marcuse had argued), there has been an explosion of talk about sex—both the act and the biological concept. As scientists began to study and categorize sexuality, Foucault claims, they simultaneously constructed it and created the sexual identities and categories that accompany these constructions.

“The society that emerged in the nineteenth century—bourgeois, capitalist, or industrial society, call it what you will—did not confront sex with a fundamental refusal of recognition. On the contrary, it put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning it.15”

Foucault’s view was that the discourses produced by this “machinery” gained social legitimacy as “truth” and then permeated all levels of society. This is a process of power but not, as the Marxist philosophers had claimed, one in which religious or secular authorities enforce an ideology on the common people. In Marxist thought, power is like a weight, pressing down on the proletariat. For Foucault, power operated more like a grid, running through all layers of society and determining what people held to be true and, consequently, how they spoke about it. The view from Foucault, thus Theory, is that power is a system we’re all constantly participating in by how we talk about things and what ideas we’re willing to consider legitimate, a system into which we are socialized. The prime culprit for legitimizing knowledge—and thus power—in Foucault’s view was science, which held prestige in society for exactly that purpose. This is what Foucault referred to as “biopower,” claiming that scientific discourse “set itself up as the supreme authority in matters of hygienic necessity,” and “in the name of biological and historical urgency, it justified the racisms of the state” because “[i]t grounded them in ‘truth.’”16 Foucault argues that power runs through the whole system of society, perpetuating itself through powerful discourses. He called this the “omnipresence of power.”

作者认为，把科学视为一种压迫的这种想法很大程度上可以追溯到米切尔·福柯，福柯发明了”权力知识”这种说法，认为权力通过话语建构了知识，使其为自己服务，他尤其关注”生物权力”对知识的建构，认为生物学通过生物知识维持了自身的统治地位。在《性史》一书中，福柯认为，自17世纪晚期以来，人们就对于性展开了非常多的讨论，并与此同时建构了性和性别身份。

福柯的看法是，”机制”建构了话语，话语又借此成为了”真相”，并渗透了社会。这和马克思主义者的看法很不相同，马克思主义者认为，权力是自上而下强加与无产阶级的，福柯则认为，权力类似于一种网格，存在于社会的各个层面，权力建构了合法知识，影响着人们的说话方式，并借此巩固自身地位。科学就是这样一种权力，这种权力使科学知识合法化，并且使种族主义合理化。

6.把科学视为一种特权

Social Justice scholars attempt to justify this with an attitude that sees science and reason as unjustly privileged—regardless of their ability to accurately describe reality and make predictions about it—over the wide variety of identity-based “ways of knowing.” The problem, for them, is that scientific forms of knowledge production aim to be objective and universal, and (at least in most people’s view) frequently succeed at that aim. Because there are evidence-based scientific explanations for some of the social issues that impact identity groups, science often finds itself in direct contravention of the postmodern principles, especially the belief that everything important is socially constructed. In addition, many philosophers, scientists, and other scholars have offered reasoned arguments that identify flaws in Theory and in Social Justice scholarship’s assumptions, methods, and conclusions. This type of criticism does not tend to go down well with the postmodernism at the heart of Social Justice scholarship and activism, so Social Justice–based attacks on science and reason are usually open and direct. This is not only because science and reason have an irritating habit of revealing the flaws in Theoretical approaches; it is also because they are universal and thus violate the postmodern knowledge principle and the postmodern theme of centering group identity, around which Social Justice scholarship is organized.

This violation is dealt with through the postmodern political principle. Because science has such a high prestige as a reliable producer of knowledge—and because postmodernists from Lyotard to Foucault have disparaged it as a discourse of power for the last fifty years—it is commonly regarded with deep suspicion by Social Justice scholars and activists. Often, this is rationalized by pointing to the fact that people have sometimes attempted to use science and reason to prop up injustices—especially if you read the history as cynically as possible.16 Claims like this often refer to much earlier periods of science—citing, for example, nineteenth-century arguments in support of colonialism that would now be dismissed as pseudoscience. At other times, the suspicions result from the fact that science has discovered things that do not conform to social-constructivist ideas, such as that differences between the sexes exist. And sometimes these objections are based on alleged discrimination: “formal and informal barriers to the participation of women and racial minorities in scientific enterprises [that] have had the effect of disproportionately favoring white males’ presence and influence in science.”17 These complaints, however, are often vague, begin with the cultural constructivist assumption that all inequalities must be the result of oppression rather than, say, men and women having different interests on average, and are typically accompanied by appeals to attitudes and problems that have not been much in evidence for decades.

社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)认为，科学和理性拥有着与之不相称的威望和特权，相反，那些基于群体身份的知识体系则受到了不公正待遇。他们之所以会这么认为，一方面是因为科学有着令理论家恼人的习惯：它总是会揭示那些抽象理论的谬误，而且它的结论总是与后现代主义的信条，例如社会建构论直接冲突。另一方面，科学提供的是客观，普世的解释，这又是与后现代主义的知识原则相冲突。因此，毫不奇怪，后现代主义者，以及社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)十分敌视科学。

面对科学与后现代理论的冲突，社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)的做法是以一种十分犬儒主义的态度阅读历史，使科学显得不正义：通常，他们会指出，科学在早期的发展阶段，例如在19世纪，曾经被用来替殖民主义辩护(即便这些说法现在已被视为伪科学)。因此，如果科学与后现代理论相冲突，社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)就会将这科学视为一种歧视，认为它代表了白人男性的霸权。

6以玄学代替科学

Instead of science, Social Justice scholarship advocates for “other ways of knowing,” derived from Theoretical interpretations of deeply felt lived experience. It argues that reason and evidence-based knowledge are unfairly favored over tradition, folklore, interpretation, and emotion because of the power imbalances baked into them. Without the slightest awareness of the racist and sexist implications, Theory views evidence and reason to be the cultural property of white Western men.

Examples of this are common. Dotson famously called the dominance of reason and science a “culture of justification” in 2012 and argued instead for a “culture of praxis,” which would incorporate multiple ways of knowing in order to include more diverse groups of people in philosophy.18 Other scholars have argued that rational and scientific approaches limit Anglo-American epistemologists from accepting broader and multiple ways of knowing.19 Still others recommend emotion, as an unjustly neglected means of arriving at reliable knowledge. Allison Wolf calls this the “reason/emotion divide” and describes it as a construct of the Western philosophical tradition. She advocates foregrounding feelings as a way of knowing.20

This approach is alarming, patronizing, and potentially dangerous. Nevertheless, the underlying concept of experiential knowledge is not entirely without merit. Quite often, it is more important to know how things are experienced than what the facts of the matter are. For example, if a friend’s father has died of a heart attack, we generally want to know how she is feeling and how we can help her through her grief. Factual information about myocardial infarctions is probably of less importance at that time. Nevertheless, there are facts that can be known about heart attacks, and it is important that these facts be accurate. Such knowledge cannot be gleaned simply by the experience of a heart attack or of losing a loved one to a heart attack. Sometimes we need to empathize with the person who has lost her loved one to a heart attack and sometimes we need to consult a cardiologist.

社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)主张以其它知识体系取代科学，例如传统习俗，神话故事和个人情感。他们认为，这些非科学的知识体系之所以没有科学受欢迎，是因为科学代表了西方白人男性的强势权力。

这种说法实际上就是在把科学视为西方白人的独有资产，然而鼓吹这种说法的社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)却丝毫没有意识到这种说法本身就是种族主义和性别主义的体现

作者在这里给了三个例子，第一个例子是Dotson在2012年呼吁要打破科学和理性的统治地位，以便于增加知识多元性和种族多元性，第二个例子是一批学者宣称科学和理性限制了盎格鲁美国人的认识，要把主观情绪当作知识的来源，第三个例子是Allison Wolf认为理性和情绪的区别是一种”建构”，要重视基于情绪的知识。

18.Kristie Dotson, “How Is This Paper Philosophy?” Comparative Philosophy 3, no. 1 (2012).
19.Code, “Epistemic Responsibility.”
20.Allison B. Wolf, “‘Tell Me How That Makes You Feel’: Philosophys Reason/Emotion Divide and Epistemic Pushback in Philosophy Classrooms,” Hypatia 32, no. 4 (2017): 893–910, doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12378.

7.立场认识论(2)

Standpoint theory operates on two assumptions. One is that people occupying the same social positions, that is, identities—race, gender, sex, sexuality, ability status, and so on—will have the same experiences of dominance and oppression and will, assuming they understand their own experiences correctly, interpret them in the same ways. From this follows the assumption that these experiences will provide them with a more authoritative and fuller picture. The other is that one’s relative position within a social power dynamic dictates what one can and cannot know: thus the privileged are blinded by their privilege and the oppressed possess a kind of double sight, in that they understand both the dominant position and the experience of being oppressed by it. As the feminist epistemologist Nancy Tuana puts it:

Standpoint theory was designed to be a method that would render transparent the values and interests, such as androcentrism, heteronormativity, and Eurocentrism, that underlie allegedly neutral methods in science and epistemology, and clarify their impact. Such attention to the subject of knowledge illuminated the various means by which oppressive practices can result in or reinforce epistemic inequalities, exclusions, and marginalizations. In this way, feminist and other liberatory epistemologists aimed to transform the subject of knowledge in the sense of focusing on knowledge obscured by dominant interests and values and thereby to identify and provide tools for undermining the knowledges and practices implicated in oppression.24

Standpoint theory often finds itself criticized for essentialism—for thinking something like “all black people feel like this.”27 This isn’t quite wrong because it rests, in a way, on a concept we’ve encountered before: strategic essentialism, wherein members of an oppressed group can essentialize themselves (or, here, the authenticity of their lived experience in relationship to power) as a means of achieving group political action. Its advocates don’t defend it that way, however. They generally get around this accusation by arguing that the theory does not assume all members of the same group have the same nature but that they experience the same problems in an unjust society, although they can choose which discourses they wish to contribute to. Members of these groups who disagree with standpoint theory—or even deny that they are oppressed—are explained away as having internalized their oppression (false consciousness) or as pandering in order to gain favor or reward from the dominant system (“Uncle Toms” and “native informants”) by amplifying Theoretically dominant discourses.

Standpoint theory is at the root of identity politics and it is the main thing that fundamentally differentiates it from the liberal civil rights movements. For influential black feminist Patricia Hill Collins, the relationship between standpoint theory and identity politics was explicit and represented a crucial element of progress.28 Similarly, but perhaps more profoundly, Kristie Dotson, arguably the most influential black feminist Theorist of knowledge, argues that it is almost impossible for dominant social groups to see outside of their own system of knowledge, which is simply considered knowledge per se by mainstream society. In her 2014 paper “Tracking Epistemic Oppression,” she sets out orders of oppression. The first two are Fricker’s two forms of epistemic injustice. The third and most profound order is “irreducible.” By this, she means it is an epistemic injustice that cannot simply be attributed to an unjust social system but that exists within the system of knowledge itself. Hence, changing it from within is almost—if not entirely—impossible.29 For Dotson, the systems of knowledge—“schemata”—have been specifically set up to work for dominant groups and exclude others, but, because they work for the dominant groups so smoothly, they do not even realize that there are things they don’t know, things that can only be known from within the knowledge systems that they oppress.30

Dotson ultimately asserts that knowledge is inadequate unless it includes the experiential knowledge of minority groups. This knowledge is assumed to be consistently different from that of dominant groups because of the power dynamics between the groups. Furthermore, the knowledge produced by dominant groups—including science and reason—is also merely the product of their cultural traditions and is not superior to the knowledge produced by other cultural traditions. Dotson explicitly proceeds from the two postmodern principles. Her argument, which is central to standpoint theory, denies that science and reason belong to all humans and are the same for all humans and, in effect, assigns them to white Western men.

Dotson goes further than this. The logical implication of her third-order oppression is that if someone from a dominant group does not agree that her knowledge-producing systems are limited by their failure to include experiential knowledge from outside them, that is because she is unable to step outside of her own culture. In other words, legitimate disagreement is not an option.

立场认识论有两个基本前提，第一个前提就是，群体身份相同的人，经历也都相同，对经历的理解也都相同。第二个前提则是，在权力系统中的相对位置决定了此人的认知，也就是说：拥有特权的人群因为特权而被蒙蔽了两眼，相反，被压迫的人群因为被压迫而拥有双倍的洞察力。

立场认识论因此被指责为本质论，以为所有的黑人经历都一样，面对这种指责，立场认识论者会辩称：虽然经历未必一样，但他们面临的压迫是一样的，至于他们希望参加哪些话语，那是他们自己的选择。说是这么说，可是，一当这些群体内部真的有人不同意立场认识论，或者不认为他们受压迫，立场论者就认为他们”将压迫内化了”，产生了”错误觉悟”，或者在同压迫者”串通一气”

立场认识论可以说是身份政治的核心，也是身份政治与民权运动最本质的区别，Patricia Hill Collins，Kristie Dotson这些影响最深远的黑人女权主义者都把立场认识论视为身份政治的”伟大成就”，Dotson更极端，她认为那些占优势地位的身份群体(白人男性)无法看到他们知识体系以外的任何事物。她认为，优势群体(白人男性)的知识体系(包括科学和理性)，仅仅是他们文化的产物，因此相比其它文化的产物没什么优越的地方。她否认科学和理性属于全人类，否认科学和理性的普世性，认为它们只属于西方白人男性。

Dotson甚至更进一步地说道：如果来自优势群体的人(白人)不同意她的认识论，而坚持逻辑和理性，这将是因为他局限于自身所属的文化，无法接受其它文化的知识体系，换句话说，他不被允许拥有合理的反对意见。

8.不可证伪性

The radically relativist answer—that two or more contradictory statements can be simultaneously true—is sometimes attempted, but it does not, after all, make much sense. Instead, what Social Justice scholars seem in practice to do is to select certain favored interpretations of marginalized people’s experience (those consistent with Theory) and anoint these as the “authentic” ones; all others are explained away as an unfortunate internalization of dominant ideologies or cynical self-interest. In this way the logical contradiction between radical relativism and dogmatic absolutism is resolved, but at the price of rendering the Social Justice Theory completely unfalsifiable and indefeasible: no matter what evidence about reality (physical, biological, and social) or philosophical argument may be presented, Theory always can and always does explain it away. In this sense, we are not so far, in fact, from the apocalyptic cults who predicted that the world would end on a specific day, but reaffirmed their beliefs with added fervor when that day passed uneventfully. (The spaceship coming to destroy the earth really did come, but the extraterrestrials changed their minds when they saw the cult members’ devotion.)

社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)把弱势群体的经历捧得很高，然而在实际上，社会正义学者(Social Justice scholars)只把赞同自己理论的经历视为真实的，而把不赞同自身理论的经历视为”压迫的内化”或是”利益的驱使”。

这就使得社会正义理论(Social Justice Theory)成为了一种不可证伪的学学，不论对方提供了多少证据，社会正义理论(Social Justice Theory)都将其解释为压迫的内化和利益的驱使。从这层含义上看，社会正义理论(Social Justice Theory)与那些预言世界将在某日终结的末日邪教几乎没有什么区别。这类邪教无视反面证据，事实上，预言与事实的冲突恰恰加深了末日教徒的信仰，他们会解释道：”世界之所以没有毁灭，正是因为教徒们信仰虔诚。”

9.理工科亦未幸免

Even science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects have been affected. Since 2010, there have been an increasing number of proposals from within engineering, arguing for the use of Social Justice concepts in that profession. One 2015 paper proposes that an engineer should “demonstrate competence in the provision of sociotechnological services that are sensitive to dynamics of difference, power, and privilege among people and cultural groups.”24 In the book Engineering and Social Justice, published by Purdue University Press, we read many variations on the same theme and a worrisome recommendation: “getting beyond views of truth as objective and absolute is the most fundamental change we need in engineering education.”25 Meanwhile, arguments have been made that mathematics is intrinsically sexist and racist because of its focus on objectivity and proof and because of disparate outcomes in mathematics education across racial groups

Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews to reconceptualize what mathematics is and how it is practiced, I argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge towards a way of being in the world that is guided by first principles—mathematx. This shift from thinking of mathematics as a noun to mathematx as a verb holds potential for honouring our connections with each other as human and other-than-human persons, for balancing problem solving with joy, and for maintaining critical bifocality at the local and global level.26

It is unclear how this could improve mathematics, but the political agenda here is obvious—and alarming. Similar curricula are under serious consideration for implementation in public schools at all levels in the Seattle area.2

24.Ben Cohen, “The Rise of Engineering’s Social Justice Warriors,” James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, January 3, 2019, www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/11/the-rise-of-engineerings-social-justice-warriors/.
25.Donna Riley, Engineering and Social Justice (San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2008), 109.
26.Enrique Galindo and Jill Newton, eds. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Indianapolis, IN: Hoosier Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, 2017).
27.Catherine Gewertz, “Seattle Schools Lead Controversial Push to ‘Rehumanize’ Math,” Education Week, October 22, 2019, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/10/11/seattle-schools-lead-controversial-push-to-rehumanize.html.

社会正义理论(Social Justice Theory)的影响不仅局限与人文学科，传统的理工科(STEM)也受其影响。例如在2015年，工程学的一篇论文就写道：一位工程师应当具有社会技术上的资质，要能敏感地发现不同群体中存在的权力与特权差异。由普渡大学(Purdue University)出版的《工程学与社会正义》则建议道：”工程学需要超越客观真理这一陈旧概念”。还有的说法认为数学是种族主义的体现，因为数学注重客观证据，而且不种族族的人数学成绩不一样。

《犬儒理论》摘录

第二部分：权力政治

1.权力万能论

Postmodernism is characterized politically by its intense focus on power as the guiding and structuring force of society, a focus which is codependent on the denial of objective knowledge. Power and knowledge are seen as inextricably entwined—most explicitly in Foucault’s work, which refers to knowledge as “power-knowledge.” Lyotard also describes a “strict interlinkage”31 between the language of science and that of politics and ethics, and Derrida was profoundly interested in the power dynamics embedded in hierarchical binaries of superiority and subordination that he believed exist within language. Similarly, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari saw humans as coded within various systems of power and constraint and free to operate only within capitalism and the flow of money. In this sense, for postmodern Theory, power decides not only what is factually correct but also what is morally good—power implies domination, which is bad, whereas subjugation implies oppression, the disruption of which is good. These attitudes were the prevailing mood at the Sorbonne in Paris through the 1960s, where many of the early Theorists were strongly intellectually influenced.

Because of their focus on power dynamics, these thinkers argued that the powerful have, both intentionally and inadvertently, organized society to benefit them and perpetuate their power. They have done so by legitimating certain ways of talking about things as true, which then spread throughout society, creating societal rules that are viewed as common sense and perpetuated on all levels. Power is thus constantly reinforced through discourses legitimized or mandated within society, including expectations of civility and reasoned discourse, appeals to objective evidence, and even rules of grammar and syntax. As a result, the postmodernist view is difficult to fully appreciate from the outside because it looks very much like a conspiracy theory. In fact, the conspiracies it alludes to are subtle and, in a way, not conspiracies at all, since there are no coordinated actors pulling the strings; instead, we’re all participants. Theory, then, is a conspiracy theory with no conspirators in particular. In postmodern Theory, power is not exercised straightforwardly and visibly from above, as in the Marxist framework, but permeates all levels of society and is enforced by everyone, through routine interactions, expectations, social conditioning, and culturally constructed discourses that express a particular understanding of the world. This controls which hierarchies are preserved—through, say, due process of law or the legitimizing mechanism of scientific publishing—and the systems within which people are positioned or coded. In each of these examples, note that it is the social system and its inherent power dynamics that are seen as the causes of oppression, not necessarily willful individual agents. Thus, a society, social system, or institution can be seen as in some way oppressive without any individual involved with it needing to be shown to hold even a single oppressive view.

The postmodernists do not necessarily see the system of oppression as the result of a consciously coordinated, patriarchal, white supremacist, heteronormative conspiracy. Instead, they regard it as the inevitable result of self-perpetuating systems that privilege some groups over others, which constitute an unconscious, uncoordinated conspiracy inherent to systems involving power. They believe, however, that those systems are patriarchal, white supremacist, and heteronormative, and therefore necessarily grant unfair access to straight, white Western men and work to maintain that status quo by excluding the perspectives of women and of racial and sexual minorities.

Put more simply, one central belief in postmodern political thought is that powerful forces in society essentially order society into categories and hierarchies that are organized to serve their own interests. They effect this by dictating how society and its features can be spoken about and what can be accepted as true. For example, a demand that someone provide evidence and reasoning for their claims will be seen through a postmodernist Theoretical lens as a request to participate within a system of discourses and knowledge production that was built by powerful people who valued these approaches and designed them to exclude alternative means of communicating and producing “knowledge.” In other words, Theory views science as having been organized in a way that serves the interests of the powerful people who established it—white Western men—while setting up barriers against the participation of others. Thus, the cynicism at the heart of Theory is evident.

在后现代主义主义看来，权力像上帝一样，无所不在，无所不能，权力塑造了知识和语言，决定了是非与善恶。有权者凭借权力控制着整个社会，以及维护自己的利益，不仅如此，权力还控制了人们的语言，规训了人们的行为。这种控制和规训无所不包，包括那些最基本的文明礼貌，最基本的生活常识，和最基本的做人道理。比方说，如果人们认为在谈话时要讲文明，有条理，注重证据，这在后现代主义看来就体现了西方白人男性的权力规训(科学和理性的推行者是白人男性)。

这几乎就和阴谋论一样了，事实上，在外人的眼里看来就是如此。只有理解后现代主义者的思维，才能理解这些人为什么会有这种病态的想法：在后现代理论中，权力不是一种明确的自上而下的强制力量，而是一种微妙的，无形的势力，每个人都参与其中，权力影响着人们的说话方式，制造着特定的社会期待，渗透着所有人的日常生活，并且借助科学和法律维持着特定的社会体制。后现代主义认为，个体的行为是不重要的，社会体制和其内在的动态权力才是压迫的根源，换句话说，在一个社会中，即便没有人从事任何压迫的行为，也没有人持有任何压迫的观点，这个社会依然可以被视为充满压迫的社会。这是一种没有阴谋者的阴谋论。

2.视个体为权力的载体

In particular, criticism from any position deemed powerful tends to be dismissed because it is assumed either to be ignorant (or dismissive) of the realities of oppression, by definition, or a cynical attempt to serve the critic’s own interests. The postmodern belief that individuals are vehicles of discourses of power, depending on where they stand in relation to power, makes cultural critique completely hopeless except as a weapon in the hands of those Theorized to be marginalized or oppressed.

后现代理论倾向于否认针何对自身的批评，如果批评来自于弱势的一方，批评者就会被认为是蠢货，因为他”看不清压迫的本质”，如果如果批评来自于强势的一方，批评者就会被认为是坏人，因为他”想维护自己的特权)。这是因为后现代主义认为个体是没有什么能动性的，无非只是权力话语的载体。这使得后现代主义能够无视一切批评。

3.”权力无所不在”

Power is everywhere,” Foucault writes, “not because it embraced everything, but because it comes from everywhere.”17 For Foucault, power is present on all levels of society because certain knowledges have been legitimized and accepted as true. This leads people to learn to speak in these discourses, which further reinforces them. Power works like this, for Foucault, “not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another.”18 This view has gone on to become one of the core beliefs of applied postmodernism and Social Justice activism today: unjust power is everywhere, always, and it manifests in biases that are largely invisible because they have been internalized as “normal.”19 Consequently, speech is to be closely scrutinized to discover which discourses it is perpetuating, under the presumption that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or other latent prejudices must be present in the discourses and thus endemic to the society that produces them. (This is circular reasoning.) These “problematics” need to be identified and exposed, whether they manifest in a president’s address or in the decade-old adolescent tweet history of a relative nobody. The widespread slang term “woke” describes having become aware of and more able to see these problematics.

这是另一个来自福柯的思想，福柯认为，权力存在于社会的方方面面，权力正当化了特定的知识体系，使得人们开始使用特定的话语，这些话语反过来又强化了权力本身。对于福柯而言，这并不是因为掌权者控制了一切，而是因为权力存在于每一时刻，每一交互。这一思想后来被实用后现代主义者和”社会正义”(Social Justice)活动人土继承了下来，他们认为不正义的权力无所不在，无形无状，之所以无形无状，是因为它们被”内化”了。这些人先是预设种族主义，性别主义，恐同主义无所不在，然后又根据这种预设刻意地寻找种族主义，性别主义，恐同主义，然后再宣称这是不正义社会的产物。

《犬儒理论》摘录

第三部分：不许反对，只许同意

Many people (especially academics) remain unaware of the depth of this problem, which presents as ideological closedness, unwillingness to accept any disagreement, and an authoritarian will to enforce a Social Justice conception of society and moral imperative on others.35 Caring about justice in society is not a problem—indeed, it’s necessary to a healthy society. It is also not inherently a problem if bad ideas enter the academy and gain popularity. This is how knowledge advances—by giving space to all kinds of ideas within our centers of learning, where they can be examined, tested, and criticized. (Some of the most well-established ideas of today—like the “Big Bang” theory of cosmology—were considered mad and unethical at one time.) A problem arises, however, when any school of thought refuses to submit its ideas to rigorous scrutiny, rejects that kind of examination on principle, and asserts that any attempts to subject it to thoughtful criticism are immoral, insincere, and proof of its thesis. To get a sense of the severity of this problem, let’s look at three examples from the 2010s.

任何一个社会都会存在坏思想，坏思想其存在本身并不是问题所在，真理就是在各种思想的碰撞中出现的。然而，当某种思想拒绝与外部接触，拒绝人们的审视，拒绝外界的检验，并且把一切对自己的批评都描绘成不道德，不真诚的攻讦时，问题就出现了。许多人对此尚未有清楚的认识，以下的一些例子可以让人们体会到问题严重性：

案例一：Applebaum与《白人共犯》

Example 1: Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy

by Barbara Applebaum- (2010)

In this 2010 book, Social Justice educator Barbara Applebaum uses the postmodern knowledge and political principles to argue that all white people are complicit in racism, because of their automatic participation in the system of power and privilege described by critical race Theory. Though this book is not well-known among the general public, it is a landmark text in critical whiteness and critical education Theory circles, because it represents an advance on the idea that all white people have privilege (a concept that dates to 1989 and the applied postmodern turn) to insist that all white people are therefore actively complicit in racism. She writes,

White students often assume that responsibility begins and ends with the awareness of privilege. By admitting to or confessing privilege, however, white students are actually able to avoid owning up to their complicity in systemic racism.36

This really does say that confessing to white privilege is far from sufficient. White students must accept their ongoing complicity in perpetuating systemic racism simply by being white. It is assumed that they must have learned, internalized, and been perpetuating racism even if they do not know it. If this reminds you of Foucault’s notion of powerful discourses working through everyone in society—you’re right. “Integral to the understanding of how discourse works,” Applebaum informs us, “is the Foucaultian notion of power.”37 “Not only is discourse the prism through which reality is given meaning,” she tells us, “but also power works through discourse to constitute subjects.”38 Again, we get this image of power working as a grid, through the people positioned on it, each performing and speaking according to its directives—rather like (nerd alert!) a Borg hive.

Applebaum是”社会正义教员”(Social Justice educator)，在这本书里，Applebaum主张所有白人都是种族主义的共犯，因为他们自动参与了种族批判理论所描述的权力系统。她认为，白人拥有特权，因此必定在主动参与种族主义。她写道，

“白人学生通常以为意识到自身的特权就够了，他们错了，白人学生通过坦白自身特权回避了更大的问题，那就是：他们参与着系统化的种族歧视。”

这也就是说，光承认自己的特权还远远不够，白人学生还必须认为，因为他们是白人，他们就必然吸收和内化了种族主义，参与着系统化的种族歧视。

Applebaum demands people believe this paradigm—even though she is quick to point out that she is not technically forbidding disagreement. She writes,

One can disagree and remain engaged in the material, for example, by asking questions and searching for clarification and understanding. Denials, however, function as a way to distance oneself from the material and to dismiss without engagement.39

So, one can ask questions about Applebaum’s thesis and try to understand it, but denial of “The Truth” (what we usually think of as disagreement) can only mean one has not engaged with the material enough or in the right way. In other words, Applebaum proceeds upon an assumption that her thesis is true. She is certain that she is in possession of The Truth (According to Social Justice)—and scolds those who disagree: “[T] he mere fact that they can question the existence of systemic oppression is a function of their privilege to choose to ignore discussions of systemic oppression or not.”40 One might be forgiven for thinking that Applebaum is not really open to the possibility that people might disagree with her. Her students certainly appear to think so:

_[S]tudents in courses that make systemic injustice explicit often complain in teacher evaluations that they have not been allowed to disagree in the course. Students often maintain that such courses indoctrinate a particular view about racism that they are not willing to accept.41

Applebaum advocates shutting down such student disagreement. She gives the example of a male student, who questioned the gender wage gap,

Allowing him to express his disagreement and spending time trying to challenge his beliefs often comes at a cost to marginalized students whose experiences are (even if indirectly) dismissed by his claims.42

Critical education Theory holds that it is dangerous to allow students to express such disagreement. This is because of its reliance on the postmodern knowledge principle—social reality and what is accepted as true are constructed by language. Disagreement would allow dominant discourses to be reasserted, voiced, and heard, which Theory sees as not safe. As Applebaum explains, “language constitutes our reality by providing the conceptual framework from which meaning is given.”43 She adds, “Even if one retreats to the position where one only speaks for oneself, one’s speech is still not neutral and still reinforces the continuance of dominant discourses by omission.”44 Given this understanding of the power of language (a postmodern theme) and its impacts on social justice (through the postmodern political principle), it is essential to control what may and may not be said. This imperative permeates Social Justice scholarship.

Having already defined the only legitimate form of “disagreement” as putting in more effort to understand (read: agree) and dismissed actual disagreement as refusal to engage with The Truth, Applebaum continues,

Resistance will not be allowed to derail the class discussions! Of course, those who refuse to engage might mistakenly perceive this as a declaration that they will not be allowed to express their disagreement but that is only precisely because they are resisting engagement.45 (emphasis in original)

Resistance is indeed futile.

Applebaum要求所有学生都接受这些标准，她指出，自己不禁止反对意见，

“你可以在表达反对的同时保持参与，比方说，你可以问一些问题，以求进一步的阐述。但是否认就不行，否认是一种无参与的反对，它使你疏远材料。”

所以，为了理解Applebaum的论点，学生可以提问，但是”否认”就不行，”否认”Applebaum的基本论点，就是在”否认真相”，说明学生参与的还不够。换句话说，Applebaum认为自己已经掌握了真理，否认她就是否认真理，因此她斥责一切反对意见，她写道：”反对意见的存在本身就是特权者否认系统化种族歧视的证明。”显然，她说自己不禁止反对意见，这是假的，她的学生就这么认为，她写道，

“参与课程的学生总是抱怨教员不允许他们有反对意见，认为教员是在灌输某种特定的种族主义观”

Applebaum主张封杀这样的学生，她举了一个质疑性别收入差异的男生的例子，

“要是让他有了发言的权利，属于弱势群体的那部分学生就会受到伤害”

教育批评理论认为，认学生拥有反对意见的做法是危险的，因为教育批评理论依赖于后现代主义的知识论——语言构建了社会现实和人们眼中的真相，允许反对意见，就是在允许强势话语的回归，因此是危险的。考虑到后现代主义对语言的魔力有着这种理解，而社会正义(Social Justice)又深受后现代主义的影响，就不难理解这些人为什么想方设法地控制言论表达了。

Applebaum先是重新定义了”反对意见”(更加努力地去理解，即彻底同意”，然后把真正的反对的意见描述成”拒绝参与真相”，接着，她继续道，

“课堂不允许出现任何抵抗！那些拒绝参与的学生会将其理解为这是在压制他们的表达权利，但这恰恰证明了他们是在拒绝参与。”

案例二：Alison Bailey与《追溯特权》

Example 2: “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes”

by Alison Bailey (2017)

In this essay, Bailey argues that anyone who disagrees with Social Justice scholarship is insincere and simply trying to preserve unjust power structures, in the service of a knowledge-producing system that privileges straight white men and prevents Social Justice. She defines it thus: “Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that dominant groups habitually deploy during conversations that are trying to make social injustices visible.”46 She assumes that criticisms of Social Justice scholarship are simply attempts to deliberately ignore The Truth According to Social Justice. Furthermore, criticism of Social Justice work is immoral and harmful, Bailey tells us:

I focus on these ground-holding responses because they are pervasive, tenacious, and bear a strong resemblance to critical-thinking practices, and because I believe that their uninterrupted circulation does psychological and epistemic harm to members of marginalized groups.47

Since Social Justice scholars like Bailey assume that disagreement with their work must be a result of intellectual and moral failings, no such disagreement can ever be brooked:

Treating privilege-preserving epistemic pushback as a form of critical engagement validates it and allows it to circulate more freely; this, as I’ll argue later, can do epistemic violence to oppressed groups.48

It should therefore be shut down and replaced with Social Justice scholarship. In fact, for Bailey, critical thinking itself is a problem: it needs replacing with “critical pedagogy” (in which the word “critical” means something different). She explains:

The critical-thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment in recognizing when arguments are faulty, assertions lack evidence, truth claims appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied…. Critical pedagogy regards the claims that students make in response to social-justice issues not as propositions to be assessed for their truth value, but as expressions of power that function to re-inscribe and perpetuate social inequalities. Its mission is to teach students ways of identifying and mapping how power shapes our understandings of the world. This is the first step toward resisting and transforming social injustices.49

This is an explicit admission that Bailey’s aim is not to seek truth, but to teach a specific understanding of Social Justice, for the purposes of activism. Although this essay has not been very influential, it is worth looking at because it is a very clear example of how philosophy classes can be used to instruct students in The Truth According to Social Justice. That this paper was published in Hypatia, the leading feminist philosophy journal, gives us an alarming indication of what is considered acceptable in the fields of Social Justice scholarship, how it can influence education, and how confident and clear this current manifestation of reified postmodernism is.50

Bailey refers to disagreements with Social Justice approaches as “shadow texts,” to suggest that written criticisms of Social Justice are neither sincere nor helpful, and should not be regarded as genuine scholarship. The image of shadow texts, she tells us, comes from the idea of an investigator shadowing her mark: “The word ‘shadow’ calls to mind the image of something walking closely alongside another thing without engaging it.”51 The two examples of shadow texts she gives involve a male student pointing out that men can be victims of domestic violence too, and a female student arguing that one can mention a racist slur in order to discuss it, without using it as a slur. Bailey responds,

We are discussing institutional racism. Jennifer, a white philosophy major, shares a story about racist graffiti that uses the “n” word. She says the word, animating it with that two-fingered scare-quote gesture to signal that she is mentioning it. I ask her to consider the history of the word and how it might mean something different coming from white mouths. I ask her not to use it. She gives the class a mini lecture on the use–mention distinction, reminding me that it “is a foundational concept in analytic philosophy” and that it’s “perfectly acceptable to mention, but not to use the word in philosophical discussions.”52 … If Jennifer continues to press philosophical concepts into the service of a broader refusal to understand the dehumanizing history of the n-word, then “I mentioned but didn’t use the word ‘n—–’” is a shadow text.53

Students in Bailey’s philosophy classes are taught to immediately identify counterviews as resistance to Social Justice’s take on The Truth and as a kind of “ignorance.” She thinks that, when people disagree, it’s because something “triggered the resistance.”55 She writes,

I ask our class to consider how identifying shadow texts might help track the production of ignorance…. It’s essential for them to understand that tracking ignorance requires that our attention be focused not on a few problem individuals, but on learning to identify patterns of resistance and tying ignorance-producing habits to a strategic refusal to understand.56

It is hard to miss the militant activist tone here. Like Applebaum, Bailey has a priestlike certainty of her own rightness and the concomitant need to reeducate and shut down anyone who disagrees. This marks a significant change from the earliest postmodernists’ radical skepticism, but it is in keeping with how the postmodern principles and their application have evolved over the last half-century.

在这篇文章中，Bailey认为，任何反对”社会正义学术”(Social Justice scholarship)的人都是不真诚的，他们希望维护不正义的特权，在她看来，批评”社会正义学术”就是在有意无视”真相”(社会正义学者眼中的真相)，而且是不道德的，有害的。Bailey这么说道，

“我之所以关注反对者的回应，是因为它们顽固不化，无所不在，而且与批判性思维十分类似，要是听之任之，就会对弱势群体造成心理伤害”

Bailey这样的学者把一切反对意见都视为智力与道德的失败，因此这些意见都不被允许：

“若是将守旧派(依然坚持逻辑和理性的人)的意见当作合理批评并且认真对待，就会显得守旧派的意见好像是对的，帮助其传播，这么做是在对被压迫群体施加认识论暴力”

因此，就要将这些意见封杀，并代之以社会正义学术。事实上，对Bailey而言，批判性思维本身就是问题：必须以”批判教学”取代批判性思维。(“批判教学”中”批判”的意思已经改变了).她解释道：

“批判性思维主要关注的是知识上的合理性，批判性指的就是能出色地判断哪些观点是错的，哪些论断是无依据的，哪些主张引用了不可靠的信息源，哪些观念经不起推敲……”批判教学”关注的不是主张本身是否符合事实，而是这些主张体现了什么样的权力，这些权力又怎么维护了社会不公。它的目的是教学生发现权力如何塑造了人们对世界的理解。这是反抗和改变社会不公的第一步”

这等于是在明确地承认，Bailey的目的不是追求真相，而是教授一种对社会正义的特殊理解，好为社会活动服务。这篇文章影响虽不大，却明显地展示了哲学课程可以成为灌输意识形态的工具。该文章发布于女权主义哲学的前沿杂志《Hypatia》上，这更让人担忧。令人担忧的不仅是”社会正义教育”的质量，还有”社会正义教育”对教育的影响，以及实用后现代主义自信的展现。

Bailey认为，反对意见本身是什么都不重要，重要的是意见背后的”影子文本”，反对社会正义学术的人都不怀好意，毫无帮助。Bailey给出了”影子文本”两个例子，第一个例子里，一个男学生指出男人也可能遭受家暴，第二个例子里，一个女学生认为，在讨论种族主义脏话(nigger)时，可以提到种族主义脏话，但不把它当脏话用。对此，Bailey认为，很多人不愿去理解”nigger”一词的非人化历史，该女生是则在服务于这些人的不情愿，如果该女生继续这样做的话，”我提到了nigger但没使用它”就是”影子文本”。

在哲学课上，Bailey教学生把所有对社会正义学术的批评都视为”拒绝真相”和”无知”，她认为，如果有人不同意社会正义学术，这是因为某些事物”刺激到了反抗的神经”，她写道，

“我让课上的学生学习如何通过”影子文本”发现无知的根源，他们要知道，要追溯无知的源头，不能只盯着少数个体，而要发现反对意见的规律，并将他们无知与策略性的拒绝理解联系到一起”

和早期后现代主义者的极端怀疑主义不同，Applebaum、Bailey这样的学者对自己信奉的意识形态体现了宗教徒般的狂热信仰。