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Notes -
The perennial failure mode of outgroup criticism is that outgroup homogeneity biases paint internal variation in views as a source of self-contradiction (or, ironically, motte/bailey). This is made easier with handwavey terms like 'critical theory' -- whose theory? The Freud-obsessed and Nazi-fleeing Frankfurt school? Habermas, who railed against postmodernity saying “Whoever transposes the radical critique of reason into the domain of rhetoric in order to blunt the paradox of self-referentiality, also dulls the sword of the critique of reason itself”? Or does critical theory here denote Foucault or Derrida or D&G that were fully on the deconstruction train? Bourdieu (a notably politically active sociologist) commonly gets looped in a kind of 'critical sociologist' but regards the school as out of touch at best:
Or oneiric adolescents at worst. Or is critical theory that of people like bell hooks or Kimberle Crenshaw, who both obviously make no bones about their work having emancipatory intent while embracing the postmodern label? Is their embrace of deconstruction taken to the conclusion of abandoning empiric truth altogether, or is theorising the construction of certain social views more important to those who regard those views as morally suspect?
While it is fun to see Chomsky flounder before Foucault (who apocryphally was paid in weed for this engagement), this should hardly be taken as evidence for a reflexive "blind spot" in whatever critical theory denotes. Quite the opposite, the is no end to this particular, acrimonious ouroboros.
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