Austin Morgan
Amorga14@uwyo.edu
I am a member of the radical left; an advocate for social, political, and economic justice and a critical theorist—I have an investment in political correctness. However, I am also a cynic, and in my cynicism, I am wary of political correctness in certain contexts. It was once said that all ideologies should be held suspect. In this radical tradition, then, let me depart from my usual trajectory of placing the left on a pedestal—let us, together, take a reflexive step back to evaluate our newest movement: let’s take political correctness to task.
To establishment Democrats and members of the otherwise moderate left—those who are no doubt cringing in anticipation of another poorly-argued Right-wing condemnation of political correctness—I offer an apology. I will sing a brief hymn for all of you: we’ll call it “PC Culture: A Love Story.” It will start like this: I believe, fundamentally, that the linguistic censorship of slurs which reinscribe the historical oppression of disenfranchised groups is absolutely necessary. We should not, for instance, use the “n-word” if we are not Black. In other words, I support the goal of PC: to encourage a heightened sensitivity to one’s language and actions in respect to others. I am, however, unsure whether PC is effective at the carrying out of this aim, and I vehemently urge other leftists to join me in this skepticism.
Here follows a series of reflexive questions. Political correctness—is it not fashionable in Leftist circles? When we’re with our radical leftist friends—when we, in the old Marxist tradition, drink our coffee, smoke our cigarettes, and BS about postmodernism and ideology—is it not “cool” to be politically correct? Is there not some odd pleasure we get out of correcting others’ language in the presence of our leftist friends?
For example, when we are in the middle of a sentence and about to reference a marginalized group, we very often pause before we get to the word of controversy. I claim that this pause is a hollow one—an empty signifier. We act as if the pause occupies our sentence precisely for us to take a moment to search our lexicon of political correctness for the right word, when, in reality, we already know what we plan to say. I think the actual purpose of this pause is to earn the approval of the other; to get what economists call “warm glow,” we require the other to recognize that we have paid our tribute to multicultural concern and social justice. This is not at all to demean the careful selection of words when addressing contested issues, but rather to suggest that perhaps the Left has a fetish for this kind of semantic self pleasure.
Despite this hypocritical pseudo-concern, political correctness seems cogent, overall. This however, is not my point. My purpose is to encourage the left to radically interrogate not only the ideologies of the right, but to embrace the reflexive tradition and turn its critical gaze inward, toward its own ideologies. So, while I agree with the use of political correctness, I wonder whether we are politically correct for the right reasons; there might be a dangerous self-aggrandizement in our desire to be politically correct.
To better articulate this, I will employ a term which perfectly describes the ideal attitude for leftists who are equally disillusioned with political correctness: the “cynic spasm.” A cynic spasm is a condition wherein a convulsive contraction occurs in one’s facial muscles, producing a sort of grin—a painful smile. We critical thinkers, we faultfinders of the left, we are destined to this cynic spasm, and we must bear it proudly—for until we envision an alternative method to ensure inclusive language, political correctness, though problematic, is the best we’ve got.
