‘Left-wing authors are cancelling their own books. It’s f---ing wild’

Adam Szetela interview: The author going to war on cancel culture (Aka "‘Left-wing authors are cancelling their own books. It’s f---ing wild’)

"A few years ago, deep into his graduate studies in literature at Cornell University, New York, Adam Szetela noticed a slew of stories about books being attacked and cancelled for their dangerous content. As a self-described political progressive, Szetela was struck by how this new censoriousness was coming from the Left.

“I’m 35, so I came up in the post-9/11 era, when I associated censorship with the Right,” says Szetela over Zoom. “Growing up, it was the religious Right who were the ones trying to control what you listened to and read. But seeing these stories, it became very apparent that certain sectors of the Left have a very similar tendency.”

There was one book scandal that made Szetela realise there was something unusual going on. “I remember vividly this young adult novel called Blood Heir. It was a fantasy novel set in a world where people don’t see race but there’s still slavery. People went after the author [Amélie Wen Zhao] and said it was anti-black to have slavery that wasn’t African-American slavery, and it was erasing that. That’s a preposterous accusation, in my opinion.

“And Penguin cancelled the book, sent it to sensitivity readers and eventually reissued it. All this s--- at the time was new to me. I was like, ‘What the f--- is a sensitivity reader?’”

There was a twist. One of the people who had initially criticised Blood Heir was Kosoko Jackson, who was about to publish his own novel, A Place for Wolves. “Just a few months later he cancelled his own book after it was accused of Islamophobia or some s---. I was like, ‘This is f---ing wild’, especially because it’s all [about] progressives going after other progressives.”

In his new book, That Book is Dangerous, Szetela calls this the “circular firing squad”. What had started as some notes on his iPhone developed into a research project, and the result is an exposé of publishing that demonstrates how efforts to diversify the industry have resulted in new forms of censorship.

Published by the MIT Press, the book is part sober sociological study containing dozens of interviews with editors, agents, and authors – almost all of whom speak anonymously – and part feisty polemic. It’s Szetela’s enthusiasm for the latter that will doubtless attract controversy: perhaps even the kind of online pile-on that he documents in his research.

“I’m like, ‘If this is what I’m privy to in public, then certainly there is stuff going on behind closed doors that I am not aware of’. At that point I started reaching out to people in publishing to investigate what is going on behind closed doors.”

What he found from his interviewees was a pattern. An advance copy might be critiqued for the way it represented identities, resulting in an online brawl – what Szetela terms “rage spectacles” – with hundreds, even thousands posting negative reviews of a book which they had not necessarily read. What was most troubling, in all this, was the move from valid criticism to demands for books to be banned.

Many of Szetela’s examples of books that have come under attack are from the world of YA (young adult) fiction: Laurie Forest’s The Black Witch was subject of a campaign of one-star reviewing on Goodreads because it included prejudiced characters; Laura Moriarty’s American Heart, was accused of Islamophobia, and Kirkus retracted a starred review after a backlash; some readers burnt advance copies of Keira Drake’s The Continent because it featured a “white saviour” narrative; Dav Pilkey’s The Adventures of Ook and Gluk was pulled by Scholastic because of its representation of Asian characters

“Once you start saying a book needs to be pulled from Amazon like it’s a f---ing weapon or something,” says Szetela, “that just seems insane to me. I hear people talk about how, with YA novels especially, kids’ brains are not fully formed, but it’s like, dude, these kids have iPhones, they’re on PornHub and s---. And you’re worried about a f---ing fantasy novel that, on page 86, has something come out of some fictional character’s mouth that is mildly sexist?”

Szetela’s book argues that this censoriousness is, curiously, the consequence of initially good intentions. “This all starts with a good faith effort. Can we make publishing more diverse? And can we make stories more diverse? If you’re a young reader, it’s good to see positive representations of people who are like you, right? So when those books can be hard to find, that’s a problem. And a related problem is there’s a history over hundreds of years of publishing of white authors representing black and gay people in really stereotypical, offensive ways.”

Yet, Szetela claims, what began as an effort to address these issues resulted in some authors being pressured to write about their identity. “It has created ironic consequences for people who maybe don’t want to write about racism even though they’re a black person. I spoke to this gay author – and this is representative of many conversations I’ve had – and he’s telling me he was working with this editor who told him he needed to “gay up” his work. He’s like, ‘Dude, I just want to write about f---ing zombies; I’m not trying to write about being gay.’”...

In the acknowledgements to his book, he thanks... "my brother, Travis, who gave me my first bloody nose, for never permitting me to self-identify as a victim"...

One development Szetela writes about at length is the #OwnVoices movement, which he believes has “permeated every corner of literary culture”. The idea behind #OwnVoices is that the most “authentic” novels are written by people who share an identity with their protagonist.

“Sensitivity readers emerge from this. If I’m a white dude writing novels, I can’t have all my characters be white, right? Because that’s gonna get accusations of racism. So I need to have diverse characters in my book. But #OwnVoices says I’m not gonna know how to write a black character or a gay character. So sensitivity readers share a ‘marginalised’ identity with a fictional character and help ensure they are ‘authentic’.

“It’s important to note that you don’t go to school to become a sensitivity reader. I’ve talked to people in publishing and when I ask, ‘Where did you get a sensitivity reader from?’ They literally just go to X and type in ‘sensitivity reader’. It sounds wild when I say it out loud.”

But while the industry navigates some of these issues with cynicism, readers surely do crave a sense of authenticity in what they read? The reaction to the Salt Path scandal is evidence of that. “I’m not familiar with that [The Salt Path].” But, he says, take James Frey, “the guy that wrote A Million Little Pieces. It turns out that the three months he spent in jail was, like, three hours for DUI, and anyone with a thinking brain should be critical of that.

“But I think there’s a huge difference between objective falsehoods and more esoteric definitions of authenticity that get intertwined with weirdly creepy ideas about race … There’s a big difference between [the Frey scandal] and a black sensitivity reader who purports to understand what would be in an authentic or inauthentic meal that a black person is eating. It’s that sort of race reductionism that concerns me.”

Given what Szetela writes about, does he not fear his own online backlash? “There are people from the get-go who are gonna be like, ‘Who’s this white, cisgender guy to be writing about race?’ Obviously, these people who engage in these cancel culture effigy ceremonies are not going to like it.

“As for me, personally, I decided very early on, if I want to be a writer, I’m gonna f---ing write about whatever the f--- I want to write about. If I wanna keep my mouth shut and kiss a--, there are other professions. And like, yeah, people are gonna dislike it. And, you know, if I wanted to be a professor, I know for a fact there’s certain departments that would never hire me.”...

“I think [Kendi] is absolutely emblematic of the problems I look at, and he’s a great example of how you profit from this moment. I stand by what I said in the book, which is, ‘George Floyd’s death was the best thing to happen to Ibram Kendi’s career.’ I understand how that could be screenshotted, and the same people who are like, ‘Who’s this white guy writing about this?’, could be upset about that. Frankly those are probably people who aren’t going to be sympathetic to any of the arguments in the book.”...

“A few months ago, a romance book [Sparrow and Vine by Sophie Lark] was cancelled pre-publication, accused of racism. It was also accused of including a fictional character who is too sympathetic to Elon Musk.""

 

Links - 11th June 2025 (1 - General Wokeness [including Gatekeeping Literature, Boers])

Why Do People Tell Me I’m Not Allowed to Write? - "I had professors who encouraged me to not care at all about what anyone would think, not an audience, not family, not friends, to not worry about who I might offend or insult, to just write. I took it to heart, and more than that I respected the artistic and intellectual integrity of the impulse. We all did, and the work coming out of these sessions was really strong. Nothing was off the table... We were method writers, we wrote what we knew, and what we knew was how we felt, and we knew that feeling was universal. Our backgrounds mattered with regard to the characters we wrote and the stories we told in as much as they were personal to us, and infused the stories we were writing with that much more of our own guts. But while these backgrounds were a door that each of us could walk through, and kaleidoscope visualize our pasts, they were not restrictive. They did not prohibit any of us from walking through a different door in our imagination. We could travel anywhere. This glorious 20th century attitude of freedom of expression and individual drive did not make it with me to grad school... when a white playwright’s work was produced, casting directors were assuming that they should cast white actors. We were all aghast... The white writers in the room started adorning the character list pages of our scripts with words to the effect of: Unless otherwise specified, actors can be of any race or ethnicity.  That was the thing for a while, but then the more we started to think about it, and to hear back from the community at large, and by “we” I mean basically the entire student body and faculty of all of the grad school drama departments in American universities, which was also “the community,” it turned out that our simple phrase on a character page was insufficient, and even a little bit racist.  By saying the characters could be of any racial or ethnic background, we were saying that they weren’t specific to any of them, and if they weren’t specific to any of them, in the era of critical race and gender theory, then we were basically erasing their identities. Not cool, thought we. After that, we made absolutely sure to designate characters with specific racial or ethnic labels in order to force casting directors to cast across racial lines. The idea then became that we needed to give specific thought and consideration to a character’s race and ethnic background before we wrote them—that these identifiers were in fact so essential to every human being that they needed to be set before we created the character so that we didn’t risk writing up someone of a specific identity wrong... Slews of blog posts abounded on my social media feeds decrying white people who wrote badly about characters who were not white as a direct result of their privileged whiteness. It was morally reprehensible, was the idea, it constituted erasure, and white people had been shitty to people of color for long enough.  After my experience in childhood of being told not to write because what I was writing was immoral, I was getting the same message as an adult. There were things I should not write about because it was immoral.  In the community, this morphed from the idea that white people were incapable of accurately writing black and other racial and ethnic minorities so don’t even try, into a situation where a writer who was steeped in any kind of perceived privilege should not write a character who is perceived by the metric of the hierarchy of oppression to be less privileged than them. Meaning that a cis-white-het female writer would find it extraordinarily difficult to create a character who was a trans black queer female, because she just didn’t have the bandwidth to bridge the gap between the two identities. Writing what you know became don’t write about identities that don’t match your own unless you seek insight and take direction from someone who identifies as that identity. A whole new profession sprung up overnight: sensitivity readers. I saw a post from a person who does this as a side hustle. She had read a writer’s play and had some critiques from the perspective of critical race and gender theory. She is a talented writer, and I was interested in her view, but what really struck me was her note that race is more than just skin deep. I thought about this, and something about it didn’t ring true. If race is something that is meaningful in deeper ways than skin tone, okay, but what are those things, how are they defined, how are they quantified? How is a writer supposed to include all the features of a character that define them as belonging to a particular racial group without creating a character that is just a conglomeration of biased stereotypes about their race?  So that’s how we got to where we are now. The American indie and academic theater has come to the conclusion that it is racist for a white writer to only write plays about white people and racist for a white writer to write plays with racial and/or ethnically diverse characters."

Jessie Tu and the Fashionably Regressive Approach to Reading - "Any person who produces art or literature, or who offers up anything at all for public consumption, must have a thick skin. Harsh reviews are as much a part of the writing life as days in front of a blank screen. But Jessie Tu’s recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Irish novelist Sally Rooney strikes a nastier tone than most scathing book reviews manage. It is symptomatic of an increasingly prevalent trend in literature, according to which the identity of the writer is more important than the words on the page. If your reaction is to scoff and retort that this is exactly what happened when white men dominated publishing, well okay. But that injustice is simply being re-rehearsed in reverse—this time, the wolf preens in progressive sheep’s clothing, masquerading as virtuous while advocating a heavily regressive approach to reading... Repeatedly and repetitively, she chastises Rooney and her milky-skinned characters and their milky lives (she’s even irritated by the amount of tea they drink). The word “white” appears 14 times in Tu's 950-word article (15, if we include the obligatory reference to “whiteness”), and in almost every instance it’s dripping with scorn. Sally Rooney is indeed white, and to date, has written about a country in which the population is approximately 93 percent white. But so what? If Rooney is to be discouraged from writing about white people in rural and urban Ireland, then she is almost certainly being discouraged from writing about anything at all. Does anyone doubt that a thoroughgoing identitarian like Tu would hesitate to raise a pitchfork were Sally Rooney to write a novel about four Taiwanese friends strolling around Taipei? Tu gripes that Rooney might not be well regarded were she not white, and concludes by stating that anyone who believes she is being too hard on Rooney is probably white too. Unaware of her arrogant presumption as she hammers bitterly at her keyboard, she awards herself the job of speaking on behalf of all people of colour, who she appears to assume couldn’t possibly formulate an opinion at odds with her own. The world of literature has expanded its horizons in recent decades, and the quality of writing from voices that may not have been published in decades past is something for which we should be grateful. Zadie Smith, Marlon James, and Colson Whitehead are among countless voices I would likely not have had the opportunity to enjoy in the 1970s or ‘80s. But with this welcome change has come a sort of piggybacking identity politico, armed with the axioms of critical theory and bucketloads of self-righteous indignation, who determines the value of work based on the immutable characteristics of its author.  Shouldn’t the writing be what counts? And if not, do we leave it to zealots like Tu to determine the hierarchy of literary value? Tu places Rooney squarely beneath herself, because although Rooney scores a handful of intersectional points for being female, she loses so many more on account of her dreadful whiteness. Is Tu’s work more essential because she is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants in Australia? If Rooney were writing about being the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants in Australia, then perhaps. But she isn’t, she’s writing about what she knows. Does Tu’s training as a classical violinist count against her in some way as it indicates privilege, or does she judge her work to be more worthy than that of Sally Rooney on the basis of skin colour alone? The answer of course is that none of this should matter—not violin training, not gender, not race. Just the words. Tu once absurdly declared that she would “probably never read another novel by a straight white male”—that pale, stale monolith of colonialism and misogyny. Tu’s stance is shared by one of Ireland’s best-selling novelists, Marian Keyes. Novels by men, she announced, aren’t worth reading because “their lives are so limited … such a small and narrow experience.” British journalist Suzanne Moore was delighted to hear this. The problem with this kind of thinking is that precision is not encouraged. It is stupefying to consider the extent to which a mind must be captured by ideology to actually believe these ideas. Keyes may read Tu’s latest novel, and feel positively virtuous for having done so, but Tu is unlikely to read hers, since both women choose their reading material for reasons that have nothing to do with literary merit. Ostensibly progressive ideals are cancelling one another out, and soon fanatics will have nothing left to read but writers of their own gender and skin colour. Promoting a recent novel, Keyes recommended a reading list that she hoped would help to “burn down the patriarchy.” Notwithstanding her conviction that it is male minds that are too limited, small, and narrow, her own 12 recommended authors were all white Western women. And what does all this identity-obsessing do for authors? Not much. Zadie Smith has described it as a “pain in the arse.” In the Irish Times, Sally Rooney’s contemporary, Naoise Dolan, tried to make sense of identity and the pervasive interest in her personal life and sexual orientation. She pointed out that Sara Collins “has argued that as a black writer, she is wary of any externally imposed pressure to stick to certain subjects just because of her identity.” These writers—and all writers—are more than their immutable characteristics. The stories they tell are what matters, and the search for truth... Whether the ideologues like it or not, some of the greatest works of literature in the world’s canon have been written by supposedly dreadful people of seemingly huge privilege and opportunity"
Ironically, we keep being told that literature builds empathy, but modern literature is the exact opposite

In Battle With Trump, Harvard Leaders See Bad Outcomes Ahead - The New York Times - "behind the scenes, several senior officials at Harvard and on its top governing board believe that the university is confronting a crisis that could last until President Trump is out of power, according to three people involved in the discussions. Even if Harvard’s legal case is successful, these officials say, the school will still face enormous troubles that may force the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university to rethink its identity and scale... Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, said in an interview that it was difficult to judge any potential settlement before its terms became public. But, he said, “It would be a tragedy if Harvard resolved this in a way that gave support and encouragement to the idea of extralegal extortion.”"
If you have to follow the rules, that's extralegal extortion, because accepting federal funding only means you need to follow the rules and the law when it pushes the left wing agenda

Trump Administration Escalates Harvard Feud With New Justice Dept. Investigation - The New York Times - "The Trump administration is investigating whether Harvard’s admissions policies comply with a Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action, opening a new front in its widening effort to bring the institution to heel.  In a letter on Monday, the Justice Department notified Harvard about an investigation into whether its admissions process had been used to defraud the government... Editors’ Picks Help! A Cruise Line Charged Us $800 for a Day Trip We Didn’t Take. How to Make Leftovers Feel Like a Feast A Mayoral Campaign Captures a Cool Crowd  Harvard has basked in acclaim from White House critics for fighting back so far. After Mr. Trump threatened the school’s federal funding, Harvard sued the administration, and legal experts said the university has a strong case.  But behind closed doors, several senior officials at Harvard and on its top governing board have acknowledged they are in an untenable crisis. Even if Harvard quickly wins in court, they have determined, the school will still face wide-ranging funding problems and continuing investigations by the administration.  Some university officials even fear that the range of civil investigations could turn into full-blown criminal inquiries."
Ignoring the Supreme Court is only bad if it hurts the left wing agenda

EXCLUSIVE: Minneapolis ‘nonbinary’ leftist educator arrested on child sex crime charges after citizen sting - "A radical nonbinary leftist educator has been arrested on child sex crime charges in Minneapolis. Preston Palmer, 35, an anti-police activist, was booked into Hennepin County Jail on Wednesday without bail. He has been charged with pornographic work involving minors, according to records.  Palmer, a third-grade substitute teacher at Sullivan STEAM school in Minneapolis, was busted during an undercover child sex sting conducted by citizen "child predator hunter" Alex Rosen. Palmer arrived at Brackett Park with the intention to meet a 13-year-old boy for sex, along with his father, according to Rosen, who claimed Palmer came with a flash drive that included more than 4,000 child pornographic images.  Palmer arranged the encounter with the person he believed was a minor boy, corresponding with him via text messages... the leftist educator allegedly claimed that he was sexually attracted to kids ages 5 and up, and admitted to grooming underage boys because it sexually excites him... Palmer has a history of radical leftist social media posts seeking the abolishment of law enforcement. In 2020, Palmer pressured Minneapolis Public Schools to cut ties with Minneapolis Police in order to "protect" children, claiming the MPD was a "white supremacist terrorist organization." He has a similar ideology to Antifa, according to his social media. Palmer has also expressed severe hatred of journalist Andy Ngo, senior editor of The Post Millennial."

Steve McGuire on X - "Lauren Noble, the director of the Buckley Institute at Yale, was falsely accused of using a racial slur. The police refused to check the security cameras, she was charged, and dragged through the courts for a year.  As she writes: “The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing.”  “Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.”  “They made the malicious assumption that those who defend free speech do so to say offensive things.”  Eventually the charges were dropped: “When the state finally obtained the video footage I had asked the police to view before arresting me — footage that had been accessible all along — it showed me, on multiple dates, calmly parking, getting out of my car and walking away.”  Insane."

DogeDesigner on X - "Millions in South Africa could benefit from Starlink, but it’s not allowed just because Elon Musk isn’t black. They may not allow Starlink to operate, but they can’t stop people of their country from seeking the truth. 𝕏 is the #1 News App on the AppStore in South Africa! 🥇"
Kekius Maximus on X - "There are 140 laws on the books in South Africa that are explicitly racist against anyone who is not black. This is a terrible disgrace to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela. End racism in South Africa now!"

Thousands of chickens euthanized in South Africa after they were left starving and eating each other - "Animal welfare officers faced the grisly task of euthanizing more than 350,000 chickens by hand after they were left starving and cannibalizing each other when a South African state-owned poultry company ran out of money to feed them"
Lulu Solomon on X - "Daybreak farms is owned 100% by the PIC which is owned by the South African govt & reports to the finance minister (although operates independently). They recently have been unable to pay workers or feed the animals forcing the chickens into cannibalism"
Damn colonisation and apartheid! The solution is more Black Economic Empowerment

Wanjiru Njoya on X - "The Bantus steal farms from the Boers then neglect the farm animals.  SPCA found carcasses of more than 50 pigs and other animals on this farm. Plus scores of other dead animals, including chickens, geese and sheep. Around 162 animals were euthanized due to their poor condition."

Thread by @WanjiruNjoya on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Bantus who are persecuting the Boers are not even indigenous to South Africa. They're from the Congo.  They migrated eastwards and southwards, genociding smaller tribes as they swept their way to the south. Finally they encountered Boers, and attempted to wipe them out too. The only reason the Boers survived is because they fought to survive. And now the Bantus are trying once more to wipe them out, encouraged by their friends in the liberal media.  If the Bantus want Boers to go "back" to Europe, they should do the same and go "back" to the Congo."
Since all black people are the same, the fact that the Boers have been living there longer than the Zulus is irrelevant since black people were there first

Pieter Kriel on X - "Every white South African is racist. We were built by apartheid, by design. You don’t “grow out” of that. You unlearn it, painfully. Having Black friends doesn’t fix it. #southafricapolitics #politicalcommentary #politicalanalysis"
Bennett's Phylactery on X - "If you're waiting for things to get bad enough for people to come to their senses, consider that this kid wakes up every morning in South Africa"

Eric Kaufmann on X - "There is no woke right even if the MAGA or online right resembles the woke left on some dimensions.  Why?  Woke refers to a very specific phenomenon: the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual groups. This informs a moralistic worldview that judges people's core character.  A reverse wokeism would require making whites, men and straight people sacred.  Words which inadvertently insult these totems would be grounds for cancellation. Straight white men would be viewed as more spiritual and moral than others. Nonwhite LGBT women would be viewed as the fallen.  People who praised Indian cuisine or Chinese philosophy might be accused of a backhanded slight against whites, and get piled on.  Any disparity, such as boys doing worse than girls in school, would be evidence of systemic discrimination.  These would be part of a moral crusade, and those who blaspheme the sacred would be seen as morally deficient, with a stained soul. Disgusting like a sex offender. People you want to debank, unfriend and cast out of all of society.  In-group policing within a tribe is not the same as enforcing a moral order which seeks to take over the entire society.  Judging someone to be a bad Republican is not the same as saying they are a bad person you wouldn't date, hire or live next door to. They may be cast out of the right-wing tribe but not of society. The first is tribal, the second moralistic. The woke left is moralistic, the MAGA or online right is not.  Fans of a weak football (soccer) team like Bolton Wanderers who say the Premier League is rigged against them are tribal, identitarian and express grievance politics. They have a power-centred ‘oppressor-oppressed’ worldview. They are emotional and may feel virtue due to not being dominant. They may castigate those who do not share a victim narrative. That doesn't make them woke football fans.  The idea of face validity in science refers to the fact that terms have a meaning in the real world that scholars agree on and can thus recognize, measure and test when they see it. Woke has a clear meaning which is inevitably associated with the cultural left.  Woke refers to the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual groups.  In theory, whites and men (less likely) could become historically marginalized after awhile. The left might then feel sorry enough for them to make them sacred. For example, Muslims in India were once the elite but are now subaltern enough to count as oppressed. Jews once got sympathy but are now seen as part of the oppressor class. Things could change.  But then that would likely put the right on the side of the nonwhite female oppressor class so there would still be no woke right.  By definition there can be no woke right."

Bill Maher: Democrats Went from 'Men Can Have Babies' to 'We Like the Terrorists' - "Maher pointed out that the Democrats have gone from promoting progressive causes to pushing extremist, radical, hateful ideals popular on college campuses of late. And he said catering to these extreme ideals popular with some young people is an outrage... He also criticized Vermont’s socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for allowing the Palestinian flag to be flown during their recent speaking tour... All of this, Maher said, will eventually come home to roost and Democrats will pay a heavy price for leaning into this extremism."

New Poll Shows Just How Unpatriotic Young Democrats Have Become - "A recent Harvard poll revealed a stark divide in national pride among young Americans, with only 24% of young Democrats expressing pride in being American compared to a striking 76% of young Republicans who share that sentiment...   Among Democrat respondents, 54% said they are embarrassed to be Americans while 21% said they are neither. For Republicans, it was 8% and 16% respectively...   When asked about values central to American identity, 35% of respondents across party lines selected “individual rights and freedoms” as the most important. However, sharp partisan differences emerged beyond this shared priority. Young Democrats identified “diversity and inclusion” — 28% — and “democracy and civic participation” — 22% — as central to American identity, whereas young Republicans focused on “economic opportunity and upward mobility” — 27% — and “Christian values” — 21%. The poll also revealed concerning trends in community engagement, with only 17% of the young Americans polled reporting a sense of strong connection to a community. Less than half said they felt any sense of community."

New Rule: Retake the Flag! | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube - "You're embarrassed to be an American?  Well, guess what? The feeling's mutual.  Because you have no perspective.  Is America perfect?  No, of course not. No country is.  Although, don't get Tucker Carlson  started on Russia... the US is leagues ahead of the rest of the world  on most of the progressive issues  that are important to young people.  America has 14 million women-owned businesses.  Seventeen percent of Black women are starting businesses,  which is faster than White women or White men.  Gay Americans are free to marry,  and 49 percent of them own property.  Yes, in America, gays buy buildings.  In other places, they get thrown off them. You know all those old movies you think are cringe?  Well, they're cringe because America changed,  because we modernized,  way more than most societies have.  Our current Congress is the most racially  and ethnically diverse ever.  They're like a beautiful, useless rainbow... And we proudly live in a land where every TV commercial  features a mixed race couple,  including the ones where it makes no sense... Mom's Black, dad's White, and the kid's Asian... But here is the dilemma for Democrats.  Their young people, their key constituency,  not only don't like their own civilization,  they like the wrong one.  They actually think Hamas is a liberation movement.  They chant for the Houthis.  They're chanting, "We will honor our martyrs at Yale."  They're looking for love in all the wrong countries. Someone needs to tell the kids that America is not the society  where women basically have no rights,  where there's zero freedom of religion,  and where dissent is punishable by death...  at Coachella this year,  when an Irish rap group projected onto screens,  "Fuck Israel, Free Palestine,"  got big applause.  "Globalize the Intifada" is the catchphrase  that's really catching on these days,  as if worldwide suicide bombing  and cosplaying Islamic revolutionaries  is the answer to our problems.  At an AOC-Bernie Sanders rally in Idaho last month,  someone threw a Palestinian flag over an American flag,  and the crowd erupted in approval.  What should have happened after that  is one of the adults on stage  should have told their young loyal followers,  "This is not a symbol of freedom."  "This is." *American flag*"
We are still told that left wingers don't hate their countries. Of course, the cope will be that that's because they love their country so much, they want to hold it accountable. But selectively holding someone to impossibly high standards, slamming him for not meeting them and then celebrating someone much worse is also known as double standards, or discrimination

National Identity Awareness on X - "🚨 BREAKING UPDATE: ⚫️ who brutally beat a White kid at the local playground bloody walks away with a brand new bike.  Not a charge. Not a suspension. Not even a slap on the wrist.  Just a shiny reward, like violence earns prizes now so long as the victim's White.  This isn’t justice. It’s inversion. And every time it happens, the message gets louder: attack the right skin color, and you’ll be celebrated.  If the roles were reversed, if two White kids had beaten a ⚫️ bloody they’d be in juvenile detention before nightfall. No excuses with national media outrage.  Yet when the victim is White, justice turns its back. And worst of all? Many White Americans cheer it on. They've been trained like dogs to hate themselves, to celebrate their own degradation. That’s not virtue. That’s mental illness.  This isn't just hypocrisy. It's a sickness infecting our society, and it needs to be called out, dragged into the light, and ruthlessly shamed until it withers!"
Sean Fitzgerald (Actual Justice Warrior) on X - "Wait, black kids & teens attack a white boy. While he's walking his dog, they throw rocks, sucker punch him, attack him while he's on the ground, and split his head open. Then white guy gives the black attacker a free bike to fight racism? This is top-tier white guilt"

Lachlan Phillips exo/acc 👾 on X - "I briefly lived with two girls who were high profile (genuine) refugees from Saudi Arabia. They were sheltered by a friend of mine.  They left Islam, and had a bounty on their heads. At the time I wasn't to tell anyone they were there or use their real names because they committed apostasy (left Islam) and it was believed that people were actively trying to find them *in Australia* to exact Sharia law upon them. (Apostasy carries the death penalty in Saudi Arabia)  They were tracked on an app called Absher that prevents women from independently travelling without a man, as per Islamic law, so they had to literally escape under subterfuge.  If you go deep enough into compassionate leftism, inevitably you come out the other side into classical liberalism, fighting fiercely for women's rights and for western values against what's essentially the largest scale industrial subjugation of women in human history.  The left's tacit countenance of Islamism is one of the great moral failings of our time.  Sharia has no place in the West, and yes, this is the moral, correct and compassionate position."

Meme - Chanel Pfahl 🇨🇦 @ChanLPfa: "“White allies” are not welcome to join this “safe and confidential” “affinity space” taking place at the Ontario Modern Language Teachers’ Association conference this Fri/Sat in Toronto.  If you “identify as White,” you can “continue [your] journey as an ally in another space.”  This is what racism looks like."
An "ally" is someone who is still despised for existing because of immutable characteristics

Why free speech in Cambridge could be under threat - "Speakers and academics whose comments have actively contributed to making certain students feel unsafe or unwelcome have often been defended on the grounds of free speech, including ‘race-realist’ philosophy fellow Nathan Cofnas or ‘gender critical’ speaker Helen Joyce, who spoke at Caius last year, attracting significant backlash.  Similar concerns have been raised in relation to the University’s new free speech code, which was adopted following last year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Caius Master Professor Pippa Rogerson previously told Varsity that she was “terribly worried” about the code’s encouragement of controversial or challenging speech and how this may conflict with duties to prevent discrimination under equalities legislation. Several academics have blamed the law for the University’s inability to properly sanction Cofnas."
If there is one thing that will destroy a university, it is controversial or challenging speech
Of course, calling for the death of Jews is free speech and must be protected

Why I Am Not a PhD (in Literature)

We are still told that college is not about brainwashing, but students being exposed to new perspectives and realising that woke is right:

Why I Am Not a PhD
English departments teach theory, not literature.

I used to get into quarrels with my high school math teacher. Every morning, he would stroll into class with a stack of notebooks, a pack of chalk, and a jab at our school’s English department. As a future English major, I felt it was my duty to speak up.

The irony was that I had never particularly liked any of our English teachers. They did their part, but they always taught literature through overarching themes: “the failures of capitalism in The Great Gatsby” or “the proto-feminism of The Canterbury Tales.” I didn’t particularly care about such themes, and by the end of high school, I had grown increasingly skeptical of the way my teachers approached literature. Instead, I turned my sights on America’s liberal-arts university system, where I hoped to find a more open-minded environment. I dreamed of becoming an English professor.

When I got to Columbia University—one of the world’s leading institutions for English literary scholarship—my fascination with the literary world initially grew. In my freshman year, I sat around my dorm reciting poems to my peers and conjugating Latin verbs in preparation to read Virgil and Ovid. For a fleeting moment, I was enamored—I didn’t have to take a single math class, and my peers had heard of Dante.

So the C that I received on my first English paper was a blow. I sat in my professor’s office dumbfounded by his evaluation of my argument that, during times of loss, women in the Iliad found the most solace in their male counterparts. I had spent several days on the paper and wanted him to explain what was wrong with my argument. He glared at me.

“It is incorrect to argue that a patriarchal structure can benefit society’s women.”

Perplexed, I poured my ire into my next paper, where I argued something about subverting gender roles in The Oresteia. In contrast to my first paper, I threw this one together in about two hours. It received an A.

I knew from that moment that something was wrong at Columbia, too. At the very least I found myself wondering if I was just an outlier in the literary world. Coming from an immigrant background—with parents from the USSR who had suffered under socialism—it bothered me that Karl Marx seemed to feature on my English syllabi more frequently than Shakespeare or Milton. I was deeply convinced that literature was not a vehicle for social activism; rather, it was a unique window into human nature, tackling questions far more fundamental than political divisions. Yet not a single student or professor in my department seemed to welcome my perspective.

Two years later, I fancied myself a Shakespeare scholar and enrolled in a Shakespeare survey course. The professor was a recent hire with little teaching experience, but when she stood before the lecture hall, there was not a single cell phone or slumping senior in sight. She radiated platitudes and themes, spouted all the buzzwords—heteronormativity and racial politics—and put a leftist spin on every play. It all fed my appetite for absurdity until one day I found a messy scrawl at the top of my midterm exam: Don’t forget to mention queer desire in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I wanted to know how we had ended up here and why.

Disheartened yet ambitious, I thought it would be fascinating to write my undergraduate thesis on Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy.” I was prepared to have my best year yet, immersed in a project I thought would not be tainted by the ideological bent I’d identified in the teachings of my professors.

Several weeks later, the department emailed me to call out my misogyny. My thesis would have challenged the feminist scholarship that enshrines Plath’s work, so of course I could not write it—and, by this time, I was too disheartened to come up with a proper response. Barred from the undergraduate thesis program, I enrolled in a masters program at Columbia in preparation for my upcoming PhD application cycle, but the environment remained the same: literature was open to interpretation, but only if the interpretation said something clever about oppression, societal injustice, or gender theory. I had figured out the themes I needed to use to succeed in literary study, but I was no longer studying literature.

Shortly after, I decided not to pursue a PhD.

It turned out that there were others who were similarly put off by this restrictive approach to literature. A fellow classmate, for instance, notoriously pushed back in The Columbia Spectator on a group of students’ call to dampen the Western focus of a core class called “The Masterpieces of Western Literature.” That earned a letter in response, also in The Spectator, claiming that the core curriculum “is indoctrination into white supremacy.” Instances like this demonstrate the power of a small yet vocal group of ideologues in the literary academy who seek to eradicate all viewpoints other than their own. 

It turned out that my high school math teacher was onto something. There is something wrong with people who study English—and I have since figured out that this is because they somehow never realize that they’re not actually studying literature. While I do not advocate for the complete erasure of literary theory from the academy, I believe that university English departments have drifted too far to one side and often invoke voices that have no place in literary study.

The purpose of literature is not to comment on the political dimension of a given social structure or to use language as a means of fighting for justice. Literature is a different activity. Its purpose is to offer universal observations about human nature. 

As academics across American college campuses continue to remove true literary scholarship from their programs, maybe it’s time for the rest of us to pick up a great work of literature and renew our allegiance to the humanistic tradition.

In the meantime, I’m proud to say I’m not a PhD.

 

  

"My Precious": Tolkien's Fetishized Ring

This is one of the most impressive pieces of bullshit I've ever read. She quotes BOTH Freud AND Marx, so you know it's going to be especially nonsensical:

"One of the most dramatic scenes in the first Lord of the Rings film, The Fellowship of the Ring, is the Council at Rivendell at which elf and dwarf nearly come to blows, while in a golden glow worthy of a Glassner jewelry advertisement, the Ring shines serenely on, untouched and untouchable. The focus shifts so that the combatants fade to soft-focus, and the ring in close-up fills the whole screen. We are all drawn to the Ring: readers, filmmakers, and a number of contributors to this volume. Although the Ring is a feature borrowed from ancient Germanic and Nordic myth, I shall argue that we are all in thrall to the Ring because of its contemporary relevance to the way we perceive, lust after, and use the "rings" or commodities of our own society. For me Tolkien's text is not an escapist fantasy but a challenging work that "reads" us as fetishists and offers us an alternative model for our relations with the world of things by means of sacrifice and gift.

Stockings, Rings, and Erotic Control

To explain what I mean by fetishism let us return to that cinematic frame of the chastely glowing ring. Like any close-up shot the effect is to separate the object from its context, so that it seems to exist alone. In that sense, every photographic or filmic close-up operates fetishistically in the sense emploved by the psychologist Sigmund Freud. For the fetishist the stocking, the glove, the fur or the individual body part becomes the focus of sexual desire in so far as it is fixed and separated off from any relation with the whole person or body. In his 1927 essay, "Fetishism," Freud attributes this desire for fixity to a refusal to fully accept that one's mother is not all-powerful-or, in Freudian terms, does not have the phallus. In pursuing and possessing an object that stands for his mother, the fetishist is able to own and control this maternal sexual power he both fears and loves. For a deep terror of the female genitals underlies such behavior and the fetish provides a safe substitute for the risky self-giving of the sexual act.

It is interesting that the One Ring of Power, which I want to suggest is viewed fetishistically, is twice gained as a result of literal separation from the owner's body, once by Isildur hacking off Sauron's finger, and again by Gollum biting off Frodo's finger. Separation marks the Ring from its creation, since it is forged by Sauron in secret, and is deliberately hidden from the makers of the other nineteen Rings of Power. Even these beneficent Rings, however, have something fetishistic about them because they were made in order to prevent the loss and decay of beautiful things. In aiming to create preventatives against loss, the elves share the fetishist's desire to fix the object of sexual arousal, so that it is untouched by age, decay, or mortality. We are told explicitly in Tolkien's myth collection, The Silmarillion, that the Noldor elves won't give up living in Middle-earth and yet they want also to have the bliss of those across the Sea in the Blessed Realm (S, p. 287).

There is, of course, an element of fetishism in much sexual behavior, but usually the stocking merely articulates a boundary of difference and is a means to arousal because it creates a distinction between flesh and clothing that draws attention to the naked leg above the stocking-top. For the lover, the stocking recapitulates the pursuit and uncovering of the desired body; for the fetishist, possession of the stocking is an end in itself. In the same manner we see the Ring's owners becoming transfixed by the Ring, rather than using it as a means to their desires. Chillingly, each owner, from the great Isildur to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, comes to find it "Precious," and impossible to give up. They become as Smaug the dragon, hoarding treasure for its own sake and meeting threat of its removal with violence. Once Gollum becomes the Ring's possessor he finds himself drawn to underground places, and it is deep in the Misty Mountains that he loses it to Bilbo.

Critics have often noticed the lack of sexual activity in The Lord of the Rings. This, I believe, can be explained through the corrosive power of the Ring, which takes the focus away from the romantic quest and subsumes to itself the power of the erotic. Only with the destruction of the Ring can the characters truly love, marry and have children. And those who have borne the Ring for any length of time do not marry at all. While not wishing to send readers off on a genital-spotting expedition through Middle-earth, it is noticeable that Tolkien offers a most convincing Freudian vagina dentata (teethed vagina) in the ancient and disgustingly gustatory spider Shelob. She represents an ancient maternal power that swallows up masculine identity and autonomy. According to Freud, her castrating hold is pre- cisely what the sexual fetishist fears, and seeks to control by his possession of the fetishized object. She must be faced up to and outwitted before the Ring can be restored to the true maternal source of the fiery "Cracks of Doom." Appropriately, it is the equally ancient and yet empowering woman, Galadriel, who earlier renounced the temptation to be the all-powerful female principle, a "She-who-must-be-obeyed," who provides the light by which Shelob may be overcome. If men in the novel must give up fetishism, women must stand down from their frozen idealization, as Arwen does when she renounces immortality to marry Aragorn.

Paradoxically, although the fetish is intended as a means of erotic control-and a means of warding off the castrating female-its importance as the only possible means to erotic pleasure and the self-identity of the fetishist renders him in its thrall as if it were a god, in the manner of the totemic religious practice from which Freud took his original concept. This process is most graphically exemplified in the transmutation of the river-hobbit Sméagol into the craven Gollum. Possession of the Ring by murder of his friend leads to his self-division and alienation, so that he now speaks of himself in the third person, in babytalk- "Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious!"- while the Ring is now personified and looked to as a source of aid and protection. Like early Native American totemists, Gollum has figuratively placed his soul inside the fetish for safe-keeping. Without the Ring, therefore, he is literally torn in two, and, as he replies to Faramir, "no name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty" (TT, p. 335).

In his enthrallment Gollum gives the reader insight into the secret of the mighty Sauron himself. When he forged the Ring, Sauron actually placed some of his power inside, to his great cost when it was lost. Now having lost his physical body he lives a wraithlike existence, akin to that of his slaves, the Nazgûl, with his power transferred to the Ring. Indeed, he is now present mainly as an agent of unceasing surveillance, as a giant and lidless eye, which Frodo glimpses in Galadriel's mirror: "the Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing" (FR, p. 409). Like Gollum, Sauron is empty and there is no purpose in his will for power apart from the desire for the Ring itself. Rather, Sauron is completely nihilistic and seeks to reduce Middle-earth to ashes, to render everything as null as himself.

Rings and Things

It is central to Tolkien's conception that it is not just the depraved who fetishize the Ring but anyone who has to do with it, and even those who, like Boromir, merely see it occasionally. One can infer from this that Middle-earth is already a fallen world, enmeshed in evil. That this evil makes its effect through fetishism, however, marks the onset of a relatively recent form of alienation, particular to a modern capitalist economy. Fifty years before Freud's essay on fetishism the term was employed as a central concept in German philosopher Karl Marx's great critique of industrial capitalist economy. His groundbreaking book Capital describes the disconnected and phantasmal nature of our relations with the things we produce. As Marx observes, once a piece of wood is made into a table, it is still just a table, but once in the market "as soon as it steps forth as a commodity it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas." Any television advertisement showing a nubile woman caressing a car's bodywork provides evidence of our tendency to treat commodities as if they had a life of their own.

Marx went on to argue that in the modern market economy we lose relations between makers and consumers, and are estranged even from the objects of our own labor. Relationships between things are substituted for those between people, and these commodities acquire an idolatrous character as fetishes: they are totally of our own creation but we fail to recognize this. In our own lives this can take the form of a lifestyle constructed by means of designer labels, and of the near impossibility of finding out information about the producers of our clothes and our food.

I am not trying to suggest that The Lord of the Rings is a Marxist text and that Tolkien hoped for the Peoples' Republic of the Shire, but certainly by means of the Ring the novel provides a thoroughgoing critique of our dragonish tendencies to hoard- ing, idolatry, and alienation, the radicalism of which is revealed when put alongside these psychological and economic analyses. Moreover, Tolkien was a devout Catholic and the papal encycli- cals on social teaching in the twentieth century were as critical of capitalism as they were of state socialism. And while secular writers may offer insight into Tolkien's critique, it can be claimed that for an adequate response to the problem of fetishism a religious dimension is important.

For Tolkien, all created things are good, as he states in the myth of creation that opens his Silmarillion. And it is evident from Tolkien's various Indexes to the third volume of The Lord of the Rings that the world of objects is important to him, for he gives an entire section to the category, "Things" (RK, pp. 488-490). Looking down the list of items one finds an unusual combination of those one would expect, such as rings, weapons, flowers, and books, and the unexpected, such as a postal system, battles, meetings, dates, and languages. The reason for the inclusion of such immaterial concepts lies in Tolkien's adoption of a much more ancient usage of the word, "thing." The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its earliest example of the usual modern meaning of "thing" as inanimate object, a reference from 1689.3 Prior to that, a thing meant a matter, an event, even, in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and German, a Parliament, as Heidegger emphasizes in his essay on the Thing, "a gathering, and specifically a gathering to deliberate on a matter under discussion, a contested matter." It is from a matter brought forward for important deliberation, an event or experience, that our modern understanding of "thing" evolves as something separate from ourselves, and an object of our perception. In origin, however, there is something inherently com- munal in a thing as a matter between people in a meeting-place. "Thinging gathers," as Heidegger puts it. Today, when we are not in thrall to fetishized objects, we go to the opposite extreme and treat things as inert and of no account. Indeed, the object of desire in the December shop-window quickly loses all aura on the January sale rack.

Tolkien's theology so validates making and creativity that the most important objects in his fictional world are good. The relatively rare bad objects are inevitably dominatory or destructive in character, as, for instance, the Grond, the nasty battering ram named from Morgoth's mace, with an iron wolf-shaped head. Furthermore, there are not very many things in The Lord of the Rings, and the "Things" appendix is much shorter than that for people/creatures or places. After leaving the relatively thing-filled Shire, there are few objects, and most of these are "things" in the Middle English sense of the equipment one takes on a journey. The items taken by the Fellowship are few: food, cooking utensils, water bottles, pipes and pipe-weed, gray elven cloaks, and weapons. The world has been pared down to the few things necessary for sustenance and protection. Thus, the paucity of items renders them doubly precious, as, for example, the rope Sam suddenly remembers he brought from the Lórien boat:

"Rope!" cried Sam, talking wildly to himself in his excitement and relief. "Well, if I don't deserve to be hung on the end of one as a warning to numbskulls! You're nowt but a ninnyhammer, Sam Gamgee: that's what the Gaffer said to me often enough, it being a word of his. Rope!"

"Stop chattering!" cried Frodo, now recovered enough to feel both amused and annoyed. "Never mind your Gaffer! Are you try- ing to tell yourself you've got some rope in your pocket? If so, out with it!"

"Yes, Mr. Frodo, in my pack and all. Carried it hundreds of miles, and I'd clean forgotten it!" (TT, p. 237)

There is a distinctly comic tone to this scene with Sam dancing with delight over the rope while Frodo clings to a cliff-face, and the homely language contrasting with the extremity of the situation. This in no way detracts from the magical quality of the rope, indicated by its silken texture and silvery sheen. As it dangles down it evokes other salvific ropes, such as the line let down by the Biblical Rahab for Joshua's spies that then became the sign to spare her when Jericho was attacked.

With or without literary parallels, the rope has a fullness of presence in this scene. It is prompt when needed, beautiful and useful. Sam accords the rope full appreciation: "It looks a bit thin, but it's tough; and soft as milk to the hand. Packs close too, and as light as light. Wonderful folk to be sure" (TT, p. 238)! Sam refers here to the elvish makers of his rope and he begins to undo the fetishism of things by restoring the relation of object to maker, and the fixed object to potency and use.

Gift-giving and Ring-bearing

It is also important for the full presence of Sam's rope that it was given to him as a gift by the elves of Lórien. Indeed, practically every good object in the whole novel turns out to be a gift, beginning in the very first chapter with Bilbo's birthday party at which, according to hobbit custom, he gives rather than receives birthday presents. Gandalf too provides a gift in the form of fireworks, which in their spectacular self-destruction are a very pure form of gift-giving. Many of the company's weapons are gifts, the very food they eat comes from Rivendell, or Gollum's rabbit hunting (in the closest he gets to human community), or from the lembas of the Lórien elves. Galadriel and Celeborn are primarily gift-givers, whether by sight of the seeing-pool of prophecy or in the magic objects they give Sam and Frodo-the box of super-potent fertilizer and seed and the phial of light.

In granting gifts, Galadriel and Celeborn imitate the actions of the kings in the Norse and Anglo-Saxon sources from which Tolkien derived his Rings of Power. In one such source, the poem Beowulf, on which Tolkien was an important authority, the king, Hrothgar, is called a "ring giver" and he showers Beowulf with presents after Beowulf has killed the monster Grendel. Rings are gifts that bind the wearer to the giver in these ancient tales. And if one receives gold objects as gifts from the true owner, no harm ensues to the wearer.

A prominent example in Norse mythology is the ring, Draupnir, made by the dwarves Brokk and Eitri for the god Odin, which produced eight new rings every ninth night. It was this ring that the desolated Odin placed on the pyre of his son, Baldur, after the latter's death from the mistletoe dart, and which the son returned to his father as a keepsake via Hermod, who visited him in Hel.8 This enriching ring, marked by gift and sacrifice, is not usually mentioned as an influence on The Lord of the Rings, even though it is the only ring in the early sources that is voluntarily renounced. More frequently discussed by Tolkien critics is the dragon Fafnir's ring that was taken by his slayer, Sigurd, which led to his downfall and that of the whole house of the Volsungs.

What these Northern stories of rings show is that a ring stolen curses its possessor, whereas a ring given cements relationships, even beyond the grave. Both positive and negative connotations can be found in Beowulf, in which the hero first receives rings from Hrothgar, later becomes a ring-giver himself, and only dies when he seeks gold rings for his people from a dragon's lair. Similarly, the elven rings in Tolkien are beneficent, concentrating the powers and unity of their bearers, Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf, all of whom were given the rings by others, which frees them from the trace of fetishism involved in the original forging, as does their willingness to sacrifice the power of their rings for the common good.

Letting Things Go

In order to benefit from these gifts, the protagonists of The Lord of the Rings have first to give up their possessions, their homes and families. The Quest of the Fellowship charts an attempt to deal with the fetishism of the object, and to restore relations with people and with things. The only way this may be secured is through acts of self-sacrifice, and by the destruction of the fetishized Ring. Unlike most quests, in which a beloved object is gained, the Fellowship is inaugurated to return the Ring to its place of origin, and thereby to reverse the fetishizing process that cuts it off from context, origin and materiality. The whole process is presented in comic mode in the opening of the novel when Bilbo, who had not been candid in his account of how he acquired the Ring from Gollum, sets about a potlatch scale sacrifice of everything and every object in his life. He throws a lavish party and gives away what remains of his dragon gold to make up for his Sigurd-like possession of it; he gives away his home and its contents, his hobbit existence itself, and goes off like some Indian holy man. Frodo then follows the same path and makes the sacrifice of giving up his happy life in the Shire to bear the Ring. Like the Ring he becomes separate, and is unable to return and be accepted by his own community. He is also badly wounded by the Morgul-knife of the Black Rider. So Frodo does not merely sacrifice the Ring but himself, as he indicates to Sam as they leave for the Grey Havens, "When things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them" (RK, p. 338). Note that it is not just people that are in danger but "things," the whole phenomenal cosmos, and it is all that that he must give up.

Frodo, who gave his life, is then himself given passage to the Undying Lands by Arwen to show that giving up is the means of restoration. And in order to show that an unfetishized life is possible, we are earlier given the example of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, who are notably also the exemplars of romantic fulfilment in the story. They were left out of the films, and are often something of an embarrassment to critics as being extraneous to the epic form of the novel. In my view Tom and Goldberry's difference is deliberate and is important to the novel's purposes in offering a challenge to the fetishism rife in Middle-earth. For Tom Bombadil is the unfallen "master of wood, water and hill" precisely because he does not own them. Rather he receives everything as a gift and is himself a gift-giver, who is first seen bringing water-lilies to Goldberry. That a gift-economy is being opposed to fetishism is made quite plain by Tom's behavior with the Ring. To Frodo's disapproval he treats it with scant respect, throws it up in the air, and can see through its invisibility magic. He treats it, in fact, like a very pretty ring and nothing more.

Bombadil nicely illustrates the distinction Tolkien draws between magic and enchantment in his essay "On Fairy-stories": magic "is power in this world, domination of things or wills," whereas enchantment "does not seek delusion, nor bewitch- ment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves." There is something cheerfully fictive and enchanted about Bombadil (signaled to us by his talking in verse), and this tells us that we too can transform our world into one of enchantment in which we see things as they really are: rings as pretty pieces of shining metal, and men and women as utterly real and yet utterly mysterious. In contrast to Tom's singing that rescues the hobbits from entrapment, the honeyed tones of Saruman are merely tricks of dominatory magic that fixate their audience so that they do not see what is really going on.

The novel ends, very simply, with Sam's return home from the Grey Havens. His hobbit home is a scene of simple objects appropriately arranged that deliberately recreates the yellow light, fire and waiting woman of Bombadil's house. The great and onerous quest ends with the restoration of the objectified world, which is now freed from fetishism for use:

And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm back," he said. (RK, p. 340)

The objects of fire, food, light, and shelter unite here to signify human warmth and community. By making Sam function as a chair for his little daughter in a family trinity, the text affirms the familial relation of objects to persons. Chairs are only chairs; they have no magical qualities, but they allow human connection-"Thinging gathers." The fetishized Ring is now replaced by the family circle. There is a triumphant emphasis on the word "and" in these two final sentences. Its repetition sets up a rhythm of connections between the different things in the scene that asserts their unity in combining to bless human life.

Now that objects are returned to full participation they can signify themselves. Galadriel's phial caught the light of the star Eärendil, and its magic came from participation in the source of light that Eärendil redeemed by rescuing it from fetishization by warring groups and returning it to its origin. Thanks to all that has gone before to redeem the object in The Lord of the Rings, any light can now have that same quality, when it serves human need and is valued for its utility and its beauty. Hobbits in the story seem to have been invented precisely in order to appreciate this ordinary domestic world of objects, just as the proper end of the ents is to love trees. In one sense, the whole complex nest of invented languages and creatures, histories and mythologies exists in order that, like Sam, we can see the ordinary world in an unfetishized manner. This is the "recovery" of vision that Tolkien himself states is the purpose of the fantasy or fairy-tale. And that he means the recovery of a right relation to objects as intrinsic to this recovery is seen in the following passage:

And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be "free with" Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.

Tolkien calls this love "wonder," as a faculty of vision that accords full presence to that which one sees and is challenged by in its otherness. We learn to see things as if for the first time. This wonder is very far indeed from fetish worship because it celebrates the connections that fetishism denies. Treebeard's word for "hill" exemplifies this relationality:

"A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë. Excuse me: that is part of my name for it; I do not know what the word is in the outside languages: you know, the thing we are on, where I stand and look out on fine mornings, and think about the Sun, and the grass beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world." (TT, p. 66)

In his sign for "hill" Treebeard reconnects the object with the world of phenomena, and of thoughts, and with himself. In ent language an object is signified by the range of its connections by which it achieves its true identity, not by separation, as in hill being defined by those things it is not: "hill" not "rill." Individuality thus comes from the multitude and variety of inter- connections. Again, "Thinging gathers."

The Lord of the Rings, then, is an ethical text that teaches us to give up dominatory and fixed perceptions in order to receive the world back as gift. The novel itself offers an inexhaustible plenitude of things, but they are not self-referential. For the elves, their songs and their gifts originate outside Middle-earth itself in a Blessed Realm just glimpsed by the reader before Frodo disappears forever. This realm is the source of the "light and high beauty" (RK, p. 211) that Sam perceives in the sky above the dreadful plain of Gorgoroth. The wonder and abundance of all the things that constitute Middle-earth have a divine origin, so that, as we leave the novel, we are somewhat melancholy. For we are unable to remain fetishistically fixated by the details of the story, but left rather with a craving for something more: a hunger for breaking our own unnatural attachment to things, a hunger for transcendence itself."

--- "My Precious": Tolkien's Fetishized Ring / Alison Milbank in The Lord of the rings and philosophy : one book to rule them all

Comments from r/counciloftherings:

"Some “Tolkien experts” certainly have some odd takes. Alison Milbank referring to Shelob as a “teethed vagina” gotta be at the top though 😅
Worse than David Day? What do you think? 🤔"

"Freud was a hack who brought 95% of his theories back to sex and sexuality, usually involving the parents of the kids.
A great deal of his ideas have been widely discredited by the psychological community.
So no, Shelob was definitely not some metaphor for teethed vagina."

"Freud has inspired generations to prove him wrong"

"Isn’t incest like the number one most searched genre of porn? As much as I’d love to discredit him, I fear he was right and actually ahead of his time… "

"No. It has some forced popularity since it's comparatively easy to shoot and a fine excuse to for different age combinations between actors. Here are the 2023 statistics:
https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2023-year-in-review"
[Ed: In the US, step mom was #11 in the list and that's not even real incest. There were no other incest terms in the top 14 and it was not in the top 5 categories either nor was it one of the top 5 categories more viewed compared to the world. the Philippines. In France even step mom didn't appear, much less other incest related terms (odd, given France's history with incest). Mexico, the UK, Japan, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Poland, Australia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Sweden didn't have incest as popular by any measure either. Egypt had step mom at #11/#14 in keywords]

"Someone can make whatever interpretation they want, but so much of literary analysis is really just grasping for straws or applying a framework for the sake of it. Sure you can apply almost any kind framework for interpetation but that doesn't make that particular analysis valuable or relevant except to a niche academic group"

"The author is desperate to convey their intelligence."

You just described 90% of literary analysis"

"I have no words... Not just that Shelob description but this entire paragraph makes zero sense."

" Isildur was married as well (though before wearing the ring). Tom also had Goldberry. Her getting basic lore stuff wrong makes her lose any credibility"

"Her use of “for any length of time” is an academic weasel phrase designed to invalidate any counter examples. Only Sauron, Gollum, Bilbo, and Frodo count, because they’re the ones that fit her theory. Everyone else can be discarded because they’re inconvenient to her."

"And Bilbo was a noted bachelor before the Ring... Gollum was an exile (who probably lacked opportunity), and Sauron was a bachelor for thousands of years prior to the Ring. So really only Frodo fits cleanly."

"This is the most absurd and offensive thing I’ll read today. And I say this w confidence in today’s political climate. Lol."

"lol at the emphasis on “Crack of Doom”"

"Why
did it take me so many years to run into this joke"

"Man people will just publish anything these days huh"

"I’m just curious why they asked her to write a chapter. She gets basic lore facts wrong."

"Short answer is that publishing companies are often lazy and academic writers are sometimes desperate to get their name out there (sometimes for vanity but sometimes to save their position or career).
The publishing world (especially in academia adjacent topics) is sort of a weird one. It's mostly who you know until you've established yourself. Sometimes bigger titles are willing to roll the dice on someone if they have solid enough connections. I'm assuming that's what has happened here. I'm in the world of "The Philosophy of Art & Literature" which is sort of a weird half way point between the two disciplines. I was once asked to write a book review for a journal over Bettany Hughes' "The Hemlock Cup" (I believe that's the title. It's been years ago).
I'm all for book reviews, but this is a historian/Archeologist writing about Historical facts uncovered in archeological digs. I had to respectfully decline this ask. They wanted a "Philosopher" to write about this book from a "Philosophical point of view" (whatever that means) because it touched on the life of the Historical Socrates, but it was way out of my realm of study. They asked me because 3 of my other philosopher friends (with whom I'd produced other works) had declined for the same reason. Some folks will simply take whatever writing gigs they can get, give it a go, and fall flat on their face."

""Lack of sexual activity"? Tom Bombadil wanders the forest singing songs about he can't wait to get home and bang Goldberry."

"Right? Plus Gimli the simp/hair fetishist"

"WTF was this author smoking?"

"Not everyone should be an academic. Like this one for example."

"In the list of worst takes on Tolkien I need to mention the Belgian nun Mellie Uyldert. She explains all the symbolism and archtypes from Tolkiens work without any knowledge of the writer.
More info https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Symboliek_van_Tolkien%27s_In_de_ban_van_de_ring
For anyone wo understands Dutch, grab your copy here; https://www.veelboeken.nl/alle-boeken/niet-gecategoriseerd/symboliek-van-tolkiens-in-de-ban-van-de-ring-9789020248340/"

"You know, it's actually cool to just enjoy LOTR and keep your batshit insane takes to yourself"

"The representation of Shelob as a vagina dentata is a nonsense.
First and foremost, Tolkien’s entire oeuvre is deeply rooted in his serious philological studies, mythological leanings, and, above all, in his devout Catholicism, through which overt sexual symbolism is hardly ever his primary concern.
In contrast, Shelob is more straightforwardly presented as a monstrous creature in the tradition of mythic beasts, dragons, and trolls, designed to evoke fear and peril within a high-fantasy context, rather than conveying psychoanalytic themes.
This makes it easier for us as readers to understand Shelob’s dangerous role as a stumbling block for the heroes, mainly Frodo and Sam, to fit into the larger narrative framework of “The Lord of the Rings” as an epic journey full of diverse challenges. Her menace represents just another of the monstrous challenges; among others are the Balrog or the Nazgûl, which stand for emblems of heroism and perseverance, not some act of gendered symbolism.
More significantly, it is the very broad mythological context within which Tolkien elaborates his world and the creatures: among them, monstrous spiders are a symbol of danger and chaos but never directly representing female sexuality.
So, reading Shelob exclusively through the perspective of vagina dentata completely fails to acknowledge the wider mythopoetic and narrative significance that her character holds within the tightly woven universe created by Tolkien."

"Sometimes a giant evil spider is just a giant evil spider."

"This is a shippers desperate attempt to justify applying horny thoughts to a text wholly absent of erotica."

"I'm currently selling tickets to a genitalia-spotting expedition through Middle-Earth."

"Legolas: ARAGORN, WHY AINT WE FUCKIN!!?
Aragorn, Gotta, deliver the ring dude.
Legolas: AH, right...we fuck later?
Aragorn: HELL YEAH, I love you bro!"

End of the N-word. Toronto school board bans reading it or saying it

End of the N-word. Toronto school board bans reading it or saying it

"Toronto’s Catholic school board has banned from its classrooms all books by non-Black authors that contain the racist slur known as the N-word.

The new protocol also bans the word from being spoken aloud except by Black students in the amicable sense...

The policy has forced the removal of familiar literary classics from high school curricula, such as Of Mice and Men. Other books that would be caught in the ban include Lord of the Flies, a common high school classic, and Gone with the Wind, less so.

It has also led to conflict between some English teachers and administrators, some of whom object to the blanket ban as a blunt tool that ignores both the historical context of the books affected and the anti-racist intentions and attitudes of some of the white authors who have used the slur in their fiction, including Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird, and John Steinbeck in Of Mice and Men.

The way Catherine (not her real name) tells it, she took some time away from her job teaching senior high school literature and when she returned to the classroom, the ground rules were changing.

Catherine said her first reaction to seeing the N-word memo last spring was to snicker. She imagined it had been developed without consulting English teachers like her. How could it have been?

Never mind Joseph Conrad, whose darkly psychological novella Heart of Darkness has been criticized as a controversial educational text that perpetuates racist colonial views that Africa is one of the “blank spaces” on the map, in addition to its frequent use of the N-word. Never mind To Kill a Mockingbird, with its white saviour tropes. Catherine thought, how could a school board ban a Steinbeck?...

To Catherine, it seemed like yet another policy that would end up in the background, a well-intentioned mission statement without much grip on actual classroom life, a suggestion rather than a rule, a piece of formal guidance on the way the word can sometimes be received, but practically “in the clouds.”

She was wrong.

“I thought this would be a policy that existed somewhere in the outer space of the board”...

She had read To Kill a Mockingbird in her own high school education. As a teacher, she felt the presence of the slur in the text was a “superficial” reason to dismiss it entirely, but she did not teach this particular book to her students.

She feels more strongly about Of Mice and Men, which she has taught frequently, and which is both a common standard in high school curricula across North America, and also among the most challenged of such books because of its use of vulgar language.

“It’s a call for empathy. So the fact the N-word is there is inconsequential,” Catherine said.

Its presence reflects the context of the 1930s, when the book was written, Catherine said, which she has always explained in detail to students. It fictionalizes the virtue of acceptance, she said.

“As English teachers, we teach context,” she said. She never says or reads the N-word out loud, and extensively “pre-teaches,” using discussion about racism and history as a lens through which to understand characters on the written page. She emphasizes the critical reading skills of separating an author’s identity from their written work, and of scrutinizing the power, meaning and historical context of words.

She cautions students to skip over the word when they read aloud, or write about it, and in her experience, they are able to do this. “They understand that that word holds a different weight,” Catherine said.

So, she thought she could continue as usual. But as she made teaching plans this school year, the administration made it clear this rule was to be obeyed to the letter, on pain of professional censure.

As the policy states, the N-word in literature “is only permissible when written by a Black author.”

She said her principal made it clear that anyone who teaches a book that falls afoul of this rule will be disciplined.

A spokesperson for the Toronto Catholic District School Board would not be drawn on the question of whether this was a “ban” or whether that is in any way regrettable for a school board.

“Teachers are encouraged to be discerning and thoughtful about selecting books with a student-centric lens. We recognize that books written by non-Black authors with the use of the N word bring harm to our community and, as such, it is suggested that educators use their professional judgment and consider a more appropriate book to use,” said Shazia Vlahos, executive chief communications officer, government relations and strategy for the board.

But it is not a suggestion. It is a strict rule to be followed to the letter. That is what Catherine said she discovered in planning to teach one of the newly banned books, as she has for many years, on a reading list that also includes fiction about the Canadian Indigenous experience of residential schools, the African American experience of Jim Crow, and long-established high school classics such as The Great Gatsby, which depicts violence against women, and The Catcher In The Rye, which depicts prostitution.

Asked whether the N-word protocol affects the presence of these books in school libraries, in addition to the classroom, and whether any books had been removed from schools under this policy, Vlahos said: “Libraries are in the constant process of updating the books in their collection.”

Asked whether the same principles in the N-word protocol apply to other slurs, targeting other groups, Vlahos said: “All derogatory slurs are inappropriate in the school system.”

For Catherine, it was “ludicrous.” A book ban, what she describes as censorship, called into question her entire job. “I’m trying to measure what it’s worth.

“Every day I’m tempted to just open it and teach it, just to be contrarian,” Catherine said...

Carl James, professor of education and Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at York University, said that to describe the Toronto Catholic District School Board’s N-word protocol as a book ban is unnecessarily provocative.

He said he appreciates the effort of the school board in “attempting to respond to the issues and situations that students in that board face.”

He said he hoped that simply removing the word from classroom content would not be the end of it, but rather just one part of a more complete education about racism.

“Is it banning or is it calling into question the words that we use and also having us think critically about what something conveys to the community?” he said.

Some Black people see the use of the word, even in the most benign way possible such as in a well-moderated classroom discussion, as “re-inscribing” it in the culture, almost preserving it, he said.

“We live in a society, in a context where you have to establish balances, you have to establish ways in which ideas are taken up,” he said. “So, you’re going to construct the rules in relation to what you know is the culture in which we exist.”

If everyone understood how racism operates in the culture, and if this perspective was instilled in students from kindergarten onward, then maybe such a firm approach would be unnecessary, because children would understand the modern and historical context of racist language, he said.

“But that’s not the case,” James said...

It can be excruciating, especially in classrooms where Black students are in the minority, and everyone else looks for their reaction at this word. The Black student feels singled out, and “wants to go under the desk,” James said, tormented by the feeling that everyone looks to him as if he has some kind of answer.

James said he’s always intrigued when he talks to Black students and hears them say how the only time they are taught about Black experience is in relation to slavery. So, yes, James said, the teacher might be good at explaining, and they might be politically aware, but will the child know and understand and appreciate? Or will English class feel like humiliation, re-inscribing the ugly language of racism on the modern high school student?

“We can’t take that chance,” James said.

There are indeed signs of insensitivity toward the N-word in Canadian schools on the part of both teachers and administrators. Many school boards have reacted in similar ways to incidents that demonstrate the problems with this word are not only historical, but part of modern life as well.

Among the most notable was the recent case of Julie Ann Riesberry, a principal in the Halton Catholic District School Board, who pleaded guilty to misconduct and accepted a 10-month licence suspension at the Ontario College of Teachers for a pattern of “racist and disrespectful comments,” including reading the N-word out loud to a Black male teacher, and instructing a teacher to say the word in full to explain to a class why the word was not permitted at the school.

In Manitoba in 2021, a white teacher similarly said the word out loud in a discussion about why it should not be used, prompting upset among students. Another Manitoba teacher prompted investigation by using the word, and being caught on video saying: “I mean, am I gonna die? I said it out loud.”

In British Columbia last year, a teacher read aloud from Underground to Canada, the 1977 classroom classic by white American author Barbara Smucker, and spoke the N-word in full to a Grade 6 class during Black History Month.

The school board in Windsor, Ont., tried a zero-tolerance policy, with a letter to parents that students “are not allowed to say, write or read out any version of the N-word (including with the ‘a’ ending) and are not allowed to ask for a ‘pass’ from Black students to use the N-word.” This was criticized for overreach and inconsistent application.

The Toronto school board’s solution bans the use of the word entirely in school, but also offers an exception for its use by Black students in the amicable sense...

Board spokesperson Vlahos said data collection on disciplinary responses to use of the N-word has begun this year, but could not provide any numbers. Vlahos also said “we are committed to identify and remove barriers to student success and to embed and strengthen culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy and curriculum in student learning. We acknowledge the prevalence of anti-Black racism in our school communities and recognize our collective responsibility to address and dismantle all forms of racism.”

James L. Turk sees this new protocol as misguided for the way it applies to books that include the word. A longtime expert in academic freedom, including as former head of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, he is now a visiting scholar at Toronto Metropolitan University and director of its Centre For Free Expression...

“I assume that when the board wrote this, they didn’t consider the possibility of a reactionary Black author that uses it as an expletive in a way that is totally unacceptable.

“On the other hand, I think it’s a mistake to say we can’t assign Huckleberry Finn to students,” he said.

“When you’re assessing what to do with a book, you want to look at the author, what he was, and you also want to look at what the book is doing,” Turk said.

Under the Toronto Catholic District School Board’s protocol, Twain’s anti-racist intentions do not justify his fictional use of the word. (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains more than 200 instances of the N-word.)...

“I think adults systematically demean and infantilize teenagers, assuming they’re unsophisticated and need to be protected in a variety of ways,” Turk said. It comes from the political right, with a focus on sex, and from the left, with a focus on race.

“Behind that is a notion that when someone wants to read a book, that you know why they want to read it,” Turk said. “The assumption behind the demand for book bans is that if you read a book that includes the N-word, it’s going to make you a racist. That’s not how the world works. I believe that systemic racism is deeply embedded in our society. So, Black students are having to deal with racism all the time. It’s not as if reading Huck Finn is going to bring racism into their life when it otherwise wouldn’t be there … If you think you’re sanitizing the language to help people deal with racism, then you’re fooling yourself.

“Fundamentally, what’s wrong with this policy is it totally decontextualizes language,” Turk said. He called it an “anti-educational policy.”...

If students learn about the harms of racism early in their education, they can appreciate them more fully as they move higher into more delicate contexts. They already hear the N-word in music and in movies from a young age, so it should be discussed as early as possible, but he does not think Canadian education is currently doing this.

Most high school students in Newfoundland where Giwa works are white, and for many their first encounters with the word are in music, without any discussion or guidance by teachers...

Giwa also sees the exception for amicable use by Black students as misguided. He thinks that permitting some students to use the word while prohibiting others “may actually reinforce a double standard or preferential treatment. This doesn’t create a sense of community.”

“What’s being presupposed with this policy is that Black students and Black people are all the same, a homogeneity,” he said. He sees potential conflict between the goals of a safe environment and condoned use of the word, because there are Black students with differing levels of comfort with the word, even in it most benign usages.

“This idea of amicable friendly use, that can quickly become sour,” Giwa said. He compares it to sexual consent, in that something acceptable can sometimes flip on a dime to unacceptable, and a blunt rule cannot capture that important subtlety.

“There’s a lot of policing that would need to happen to meet this threshold of amicable that this protocol is talking about,” Giwa said...

“We have to be creating critical thinkers, and we have to create the conditions for that critical thinking to emerge.
If we eliminate books because they are controversial, we are failing in that,” Giwa said."

Naturally, left wingers (not just the one in the article) were saying there was no problem. Banning books is good if liberals support it (and then it's not considered a book ban, since it has "noble" intentions - even this goes beyond a book ban, into a speech ban). One interesting cope was that this was not woke because a Catholic school board did it (as if they're not immune to wokeness). Of course the usual cope that because a "right wing" paper reported it, it must be false, was used

There used to be a word for having different standards for people of different races. I wonder what that was...

The "myth" of the slippery slope strikes again. Now even not saying the word is not allowedIronically, by exempting black people and black authors from the ban, black students are going to be put even more on the spot, given their privileged status (good luck "decolonising" the curriculum given all this)If saying that exposing teenagers to graphic sexual content is inappropriate is infantalising them, do we need laws protecting them sexually?