The problem with ‘critical theory’

In the introduction to my new book, Sexual Citizenship and Social Change, the series editor describes me as ‘a key intellectual architect this century in pushing the psychology of sexuality to engage more closely with critical social theory’. In that book and this essay, I argue, however, that the time has come to draw a line under critical social theory.

Critical social theory describes that broad multidisciplinary attempt, from critical race theory to gender identity theory, to critique and challenge the identity-based power structures supposedly shaping social reality. Though centred in universities, it’s an approach that has fuelled assorted broader ‘social justice’ movements, from Black Lives Matter to trans activism, and leant intellectual ballast to what is commonly referred to as ‘wokeness’.

I believe there is an urgent need to suspend the insatiable demand for this style of critique that stems from critical social theories. My primary focus is on critical theory applied to sex and sexualities, but the argument applies to all the critical theories being presently deployed, from those that focus on race to those looking at gender.

So, while I believe critical theories of various kinds have been of value in unearthing and undermining some stubborn and unhelpful societal assumptions and prejudices, it is clear now that they have lost sight of important limits: it is time for us to be critical of critical theory itself.

Now, I am no conservative when it comes to sex and sexuality. This will not be an essay arguing that we should roll back contemporary sexual freedoms to some halcyon past. Indeed, I am probably best described as a classic ‘bleeding heart’ liberal gay man, who believes that as long as the sex is among consenting adults then ‘live and let live’. I am also someone who has fought hard for minority rights and against prejudice of all kinds, and continue to do so. But, when it comes to several developments in contemporary sexual life, much of which is driven by critical theory of one kind or another, something is going badly awry.

When I see people arguing that paedophilia and bestiality should be recognised as sexualities in an equivalent manner to being gay or lesbian, I know there is something deeply wrong. When I hear people – including Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland – defending the practice of putting fully intact male rapists in women’s prisons, simply because they claim to be women, then I know we have a problem. And when I watch members of groups like Queers for Palestine cheer on anti-Semitic, misogynistic and homophobic terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, apparently in the service of their avowed anti-colonial, anti-Zionist and anti-capitalist mission, then I know any real critical thinking has left the building.

Critical theory is, of course, not just one thing. It is an ever-expanding body of thought, focusing on everything from ‘whiteness’ to ‘transphobia’, that is multiple and diverse. We should really be talking about critical theories, in the plural. They are designed to undermine or even destroy all that they target, that is the point. They are modes of analysis that enable the critic to engage in a process of social critique that unpicks the very fabric of their target. At their best, they are useful ways of thinking differently about the distribution of power within societies, of taking a more questioning stance in which, often problematic, taken-for-granted assumptions are illuminated and challenged. At their worst, though, critical theories provide an academic apparatus that undermines or destroys all before it.

Indeed, in the hands of a never-ending stream of humanities and social-science graduates trying to locate their just cause, critical theories and their associated activism become little more than an insatiable and all-too-often pernicious game of ‘whack-a-mole’. The moment that those versed in critical theory decide we need to change a certain social attitude or aspect of society, then they seek out signs of sin everywhere. Any values that might be held as true and right are thrown to the wolves in the service of the latest theoretical desire. Critical theory may just be a body of knowledge and a theoretical stance, but it can and has become all-consuming and deployed in a variety of deeply destructive ways.

Most immediately concerning, I think, is when critical theories are used for spectacular effect, and extended so far as to lose sight of important limits. The most egregious example is the attempt to extend hard-fought-for rights and responsibilities around sexual orientation to that most abject sexual creature: the child sexual abuser or now so-called ‘minor attracted person (MAP)’. Those historical arguments about gay equality being a ‘slippery slope’ are being unhelpfully realised, as supposedly critical thinkers seek to extend the rights and responsibilities of citizenship to those engaged in violence and abuse.

Sadly, this kind of spectacular critique is increasingly central to much contemporary academic scholarship and associated activism. The drive for innovation in academia, for the next radical intellectual empirical or theoretical intervention, inevitably and inexorably leads to boundary crossing, with remarkably little thought or care about the possible impact of these antics. The blurring of academia and activism, at the heart of much critical theory, further compounds the problem. What once may have been the idle, if still offensive, musings of an ‘ivory tower’ academic now increasingly feed directly into present-day campaigns for radical social change.

And, of course, social media adds rocket fuel to the destructive either / or politics that so often accompanies the active deployment of critical theories in academia and the public sphere more broadly. Moderate voices are increasingly drowned out while online disinhibition ratchets up the emotional tension. The tragedy here is that common political cause is being lost in increasingly toxic encounters. The need for generosity and forgiveness has never been more apparent yet more absent.

We must add cancel culture into the mix when seeking to understand how critical theory can become so dangerously out of control. Of most relevance here is the role of cancel culture in the linguistic policing of our social world. Language has become a key battleground in critical theory, which is hardly a surprise given so much of it assumes that language shapes social reality, and is grounded in modes of linguistic deconstruction. Psychologist Nick Haslam has described the problem of ‘concept creep’, in which we see the semantic inflation of harm-related concepts so that they become all encompassing. This is a particular problem with many critical concepts today, where all and any opposition to currently fashionable opinion is framed as harmful. The most obvious example of this comes with the call to ‘decolonise’, grounded as it is in postcolonial theory. Demands to adopt a postcolonial position and engage in a project of decolonisation can, for instance, mean anything, including: the practical overthrow of colonial oppression by indigenous peoples; better representation of people of colour in the media or the curriculum; or the application of postcolonial theory to all and every aspect of contemporary life. This latter form of identity politics leads to the reification and revival of racial categories in inverted form – a rehabilitation of the biological racism we thought we had consigned to the past.

One of the most pernicious aspects of concept creep is that it shuts down argument and debate. When concepts shift and change, with no clear definition, they have a silencing effect. The lack of clarity of a concept such as decolonisation is itself part of its power, but that unfettered power is potentially dangerous. Who would argue with people overthrowing a colonial oppressor? That kind of decolonisation is something relatively few would resist or argue against, as long as it was (mostly) peaceful. But many calls to decolonise now also involve the muscular reassertion of the language of biological racism. Anyone attempting to express concerns about the revival of racial thought on the part of ‘decolonisers’ is met with incredulity. Among those on the supposedly progressive left, it is inconceivable that someone should wish to deny the wider project in question. Such silencing – especially when connected with a particularly powerful moral accusation that the opponent is driven by a harmful prejudice – prevents dialogue and debate about these critical concepts.

But why is this happening? How is it that supposedly critical thinkers are apparently becoming more and more ideological and less and less open to dialogue and dissent? Well, one obvious problem is the lack of space for critical thinking about critical theories themselves in the public sphere. Today’s cancel culture serves to shut down oppositional voices, no matter how reasonable. As French philosopher Pierre-André Tagieuff argues in his masterly 2001 book, The Force of Prejudice, critical theory monopolises critique. When there is a monopoly of what is permitted as critique then there is no room for any other form of critical thinking. The monopoly of critique leads to the most extraordinary positions being adopted and defended by people who might otherwise think of themselves as ‘the good guys’ or even worse ‘on the right side of history’ – those, that is, who ostensibly wish to see a world devoid of prejudice and inequality but somehow find themselves espousing deeply authoritarian worldviews.

We might also level some blame against the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. This too has leached out into the wider social world to become an increasingly pervasive cultural problem. The affective turn emerged some 20 years ago in a wide variety of disciplines. It represented an attempt to recognise the power of emotions – very broadly conceived as affect – as forces that shape individual and collective experiences and disable the capacity to act or engage with others. In many ways, the turn to emotions in academia reflected the broader turn against rationality, prefigured in much feminist critical theory.

Like many critical turns in academia, this one had some merit. But like too many others, these theories invariably infiltrate the wider social world, often in quite problematic ways. The contemporary appeal to ‘be kind’ is a perfect example of the prominence of the affective turn in contemporary life. This ostensibly benign appeal increasingly acts to shut down disagreement, no matter how rational or reasonably argued, through an appeal to vulnerability and the risk of harm.

So, how can we resist the worst excesses of critical theory? Well, first, we need to recognise the need for tradition and not just critique, and how they serve to temper each other. ‘Progressive’ politics all too readily fails to acknowledge the need for, and value of, tradition. Those inspired by critical theories tend to seek out and promote only those ideas and causes perceived to be new or ‘progressive’ – anything, that is, that appears to move us beyond the status quo towards some glorious utopia. Sadly, this often results in a rather casual abandonment of what went before, often with no scrutiny or care about the possible consequences of such political change. After all, one person’s genderfluid utopia will be another’s women’s rights-effacing dystopia.

It is inevitable that with every ‘progressive’ advance there will be an attendant loss. Sometimes the loss that accompanies genuine progress may be necessary, but that loss still needs to be taken seriously. Many will feel they are losing an important aspect of their tradition. And there may well be value in that tradition that we wish away at our peril.

We also need to work tirelessly to reassert universal values. As several contemporary authors have argued (see Paul Embery’s superb book, Despised), the notion of shared values is threatened by versions of contemporary identity politics that lead to ever further division. The endless atomisation of, and almost ‘fundamentalist’ obsession with, identity, fuelled in part by ‘neoliberal’ socioeconomic forces, risks robbing us of universal values like solidarity. This is not to deny the historical value of certain identity categories, engendering political action and pushing society towards greater equality. But there is a balance to be struck here. As it stands, we appear to be sinking into a dangerous and ultimately self-defeating atomisation of identity categories. And this atomisation leads to an ever more divisive politics.

The conditions that facilitate spectacular critique, such as advocating for the rights of paedophiles or embracing Hamas as anti-colonial ‘resistance’, also need proper interrogation. It’s not enough to blame misguided or naïve individuals for such positions, even if people do need to be held individually accountable for their actions. Rather, we need to look at how academic scholarship has lost its way, how it has become fatally detached from tradition and how it incentivises academics to think and act in ever more destructive ways in the name of ‘progress’. The problem is particularly acute in disciplines where academic practice is increasingly indistinguishable from activism.

Change must start in those institutions that are proximally most responsible for this mess, the universities. But it must then be spread far and wide until all those institutions infected by this increasingly destructive disease are thoroughly disinfected. We need to turn our critical faculties upon all the organisations and institutions that encourage this detached form of critical thinking and associated activism. More so than ever, we need to subject critical scholarship to critique itself. And we need to re-establish the necessary relationship between social critique and tradition, between progress and conservation, change and continuity.

We must still be critical of taken-for-granted assumptions, especially when they lead to injustice. But it is time to draw a line, to re-embrace the necessity of often moral boundaries and the value of our traditions. Sadly, at present, much Western culture seems to have lost sight of the value of tradition and history and succumbed to the seductive allure of critique.

So now is not the time to be silent or kind. Now is the time for us all to be much more critical about critical theories than ever before.

Darren Langdridge is a professor of psychology and an existential psychotherapist. His latest book is Sexual Citizenship and Social Change, published by Oxford University Press.