you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

was worried about becoming moribund, a movement without an objective.

Or people associated with it were worried about not enjoying the level of power and influence that they'd been accustomed to. When everyone who previously hung on your every word and opinion suddenly starts drifting away and paying attention to someone else, it probably sounds like a good idea to convert and become a fiery advocate yourself to regain what's been slipping away.

And then you get a taste of just what you can do with that new stuff, like getting entire companies to bend a knee to it and enact policies around it; sure, they do it cynically for their own profit, but they do it. Or getting to have massive sway over governmental policy, maybe to an extent greater than what you ever could manage before.

Heady stuff.

[–]JulienMayfair 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In academia, specifically, prestige carries a lot of weight, and in the 1990s, the gender theorists like Butler and others seen to be on the cutting edge of something, even if they were just selling a line of bullshit wrapped up in sophisticated-sounding jargon.

I once attended a lecture by Fred Jameson, probably the highest-paid Marxist theorist at the time. All the professors were there. Afterwards, I heard them joking amongst themselves that they hadn't understood a thing he'd said. It was all about being seen to be at a Fred Jameson lecture.