CYNICAL THEORIES HOW UNIVERSITIES MADE EVERYTHING ABOUT RACE, GENDER AND IDENTITY – AND WHY THIS HARMS EVERYBODY

HELEN PLUCKROSE AND JAMES LINDSAY Swift, 352pp, £20

American academics Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay became briefly notorious when they pranked a number of scholarly journals by submitting deliberately ridiculous pieces replete with academic jargon – many of which were accepted for publication, including one which reproduced sections of Mein Kampf with some feminist social justice theory sprinkled in. Their new book was summed up by Jonathan Church in Quillette as ‘a history of ideas which, in challenging unifying narratives and universal values, have come to threaten free speech, honest debate, and the valuing of reason itself’.

In the New English Review, Daniel Sharp praised ‘a lucid analysis of Social Justice, its roots, its evolution, and its effects’ while in the online magazine Lit. Frances Weetman applauded their analysis of what lies behind the deliberately vague and obfuscating language of ‘woke’ politics. ‘ Cynical Theories is not for the faint-hearted. It tackles complex philosophical ideas that perhaps should never have found popular support outside of a university classroom. But it is a necessary and timely addition to modern critiques of Social Justice ideas; and, most importantly, it is the first mainstream book to argue against these ideas from a left-wing standpoint.’

The books’ pages of the mainstream UK papers ducked the debate – except in the Times where Douglas Murray waded in: ‘Frauds and fools have consistently pushed out their peers. Meaningful research has been stigmatised in favour of “social justice activism”. In Cynical Theories Pluckrose and Lindsay go to the root of this poison tree, exposing its origins and its consequences.’