In my understanding, the importance of critical theory is not primarily in its methods of critique but in the focus of its critique.

The critique of critical theory’s objects of criticism are meant to afford us access to our critical own subject. The ultimate aim of the effort is to critique ourselves as interpreters, understanders, actors — and critics.

In other words: Critical theory is meant to be reflexive.

My objection to the recent identitarian turn (documented in Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap) is total loss of that reflexivity that gives critical theory its value and humanity. In identitarian critique the critic self-objectifies their own critical subject as a category (or constellation of categories) that serves as its object of criticism. But the identitarian object of “self critique” is a decoy self. The decoy self redirects attention away from the first person critical subject and focuses it exclusively on third person objects of criticism. This keeps the subject who does the criticism — (again, the critical focus of genuine critical theory) — concealed in the background, unperceived, unconscious — unconstrained by critical self-awareness — and releases it to perform all the abuses of power it prohibits on principle.

We act out a critique of objective self-categories we claim to be (an identity or intersectional identity complex), while sparing the most powerful, self-serving, most incorrigibly biased identity of all, the subject who compulsively performs the identitarian critique, and mistakes it for “objective” history, morality and reality.

Sartre famously called this self-objectifying move bad faith. In bad faith a person adopts a defined social role in place of our more protean, responsible I.

Reflexivity attempts to catch oneself in the act of delusion, distortion, neurosis. We try to notice what we imaginatively superimpose upon phenomena, what we try to ignore, or what we selectively exaggerate, suppress and distort. We actively seek out where we have been shown wrong, where our predictions have failed, where others object to our accounts and characterizations.

And we do this not for them, or, at least, not only for them. We do it because it allows us to develop better sensitivity and understanding of what is given around us — and what transcends our own minds.

This helps us be better more respectful, responsible citizens of the world — but it also enhances our understanding of the human condition — of how we, as humans, are situated within reality.

Our own experience of the world is enriched immeasurably. We can feel the mysterious ground behind mundane life. We can feel a depth of possibility, where before there was flat factuality.

All this being said: I have grown (or shrunk) to despise Progressivist identitarianism so intensely that I’ve become disproportionately, neurotically averse to its core symbols, some of which are core to my own ideals. One of these ideals is “diversity”.

I am re-embracing this word, and reaffirming my commitment to it.

Of course, my commitment to diversity is far more radical than Progressivism’s. In fact, I believe our institutions will only flourish again when Progressivism itself is subjected to its own standards of diversity in the institutions it dominates.

Progressivism, like every other power should be confronted and challenged, most of all by itself — reflexively. Progressives should be critiquing Progressivist-dominated institutions and asking what policies, practices and unacknowledged biases perpetuate, conceal and justify its abuses of power.

This work can and should be done under the banner of diversity.