Yascha Mounk – The Identity Trap

0:35 A quick announcement

1:46 What led Yascha to write about identity

6:22 An intellectual history of “identity synthesis”

12:15 What’s so bad about “strategic essentialism”?

19:15 From postmodernism to post-civil rights

28:45 The three key claims of identity synthesis

36:02 What led up to the summer of 2020?

45:51 The hermetically sealed ideology of Kendi and DiAngelo

50:45 Yascha’s defense of universalism

Recorded October 3, 2023

Links and Readings

Yascha’s new book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

Michel Foucault’s book, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

Edward Said’s book, Orientalism

Gayatri Spivak’s essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

Glenn’s debate with Kmele Foster, Shelby Steele, Robert Woodson, and Reihan Salam

Karen and Barbara Fields’s book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

Tommie Shelby’s book, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity

Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault’s 1971 debate on Dutch television

Derrick Bell’s book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

Derrick Bell’s essay, “Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation”

Mahalia Jackson singing “We Shall Overcome”

Roy D’Andrade’s article, “Moral Models in Anthropology”