The Identity Infection, Round 1 (w/ Yascha Mounk)

Uncertain Things

Political theorist, writer, and podcaster Yascha Mounk returns! Last time, we spoke about Yascha’s last book: The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure. This time, Adaam got to air his personal grievances as we dove into the thorny topic of his latest book: The Identity Trap.

Yascha covers a ton: he traces the intellectual history of the postmodern ideas that captured the academy in the 2010s; he explains how these once-fringe ideas subsequently infiltrated the mainstream Left; he puts the tenets of identity-based politics to the philosophical test (analyzing the logical strengths and weaknesses of ideas like standpoint theory and cultural appropriation); and he defends liberalism as the best political framework we have to dismantle the injustices of our current world order (the very thing lefties, with their identitarian tendencies, are supposedly trying to do).

Of course, dear listener, we barely scratched the surface of all that in one hour. Instead, we got deep into Said, Spivak, and Foucault, panopticons and all — and so this conversation with Yascha continues soon, in part two.

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On the agenda:

- Cannibalism & grievances [0:00-6:05]

- Who are you trying to persuade? [6:06-22:28]

- The children of Foucault [22:29-38:11]

- The Said/Spivak Pivot [38:12-47:13]

- Strategic Essentialism [47:14-1:02:14]

- The Woman Question [1:02:15-1:09:50]

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

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