Geoffrey Hughes: Political Correctness

A History of Semantics and Culture

Wiley-Blackwell, 2009     Amazon.co.uk

From the Back Cover:

Political Correctness is now an everyday phrase and part of the modern mindset. Everyone thinks they know what it means, but its own meaning constantly shifts. Its surprising origins have led to it becoming integrated into contemporary culture in ways that are both idealistic and ridiculous. Originally grounded in respect for difference and sensitivity to suffering, it has often become a distraction and even a silencer of genuine issues, provoking satire and parody. In this carefully researched, thought-provoking book, Geoffrey Hughes examines the trajectory of political correctness and its impact on public life.

Exploring the origins, progress, content, and style of PC, Hughes’ journey leads us through authors as diverse as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Swift; Philip Larkin, David Mamet, and J.M. Coetzee; from nursery rhymes to Spike Lee films. Focusing on the historical, semantic, and cultural aspects of political correctness, this outstanding and unique work will intrigue anyone interested in this ongoing debate.

Reviews:

“Prof. Hughes′ Political Correctness deals with both its history and its use at present. And he deals with both aspects in a masterly fashion. Consequently, this book is highly recommendable because of what it says as well as, what is probably more important, because of the multitude of suggestions and questions it inspires.”  Australian Journal of Linguistics

“Some books are written to be read, and other books are reference works. Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture is unusual in that it is both jam-packed with detailed information and yet makes for a good read. Everyone should read this bookand also keep it on the shelf as an excellent reference work. This informative and well writtenbook covers more than just the notion of political correctness (PC) in the narrowsense. It encompasses far more than the problem of increased, PC kinds of concerns, as discussed in Part I, Political Correctness and Its Origins.”  PsycCritiques

“Hughes ultimately comes down against artificiality, suggesting that political correctness is a form of social engineering that arises from good intentions coupled with Puritanism. A useful book for anyone interested in language and culture.”  Choice

“Hughes′ book provides a wide-ranging examination of a phenomenon that has had an immense influence on our culture, for both good and ill. Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture is an entertaining, thought-provoking foray into an interesting and important area.  Hughes focuses mainly on the effect of P.C. in contemporary Britain, America and South Africa, but he looks at earlier historical periods (such as the Reformation) too. This is the best book written on the subject, and that by some distance.  It is an essential study, rigorous and critical and absolutely indispensable.”  Compulsive Reader

“Focusing on the historical, semantic, and cultural aspects of political correctness, this brilliant and unique work will intrigue anyone interested in this ongoing debate.”  Lavoisier

“One must maintain a sense of humour when entering this arena, where voices of the global cultural elite sometimes present themselves as brave and daring for taking potshots at the sidelined or powerless. An emeritus ′historian of the English language′, Hughes knows a lot about dictionaries of every stripe, whether orthodox or slang. He can provide the history of innumerable words, enabling readers to follow semantic changes, neologisms and other evolutions in the ′word field.′”  Times Higher Education

“Geoffrey Hughes has brought together with great panache the very many manifestations of political correctness, both absurd and vicious, and shown how they express a single collective mind-set. His book establishes beyond doubt that there is such a phenomenon, that it has become dominant in our culture, and that it represents a growing tendency to censor public debate and to prevent people from questioning orthodoxies which we all know to be false.”  Roger Scruton, American Enterprise Institute

“What a joy this book is! Hughes’ study traces, with unflagging zest, the modern history of PC. Sumptuous in data, in judgment precise, this is the latest and fullest of Hughes’ series on the social history of language.”  Walter Nash, Professor Emeritus, University of Nottingham

About the Author:

Geoffrey Hughes graduated from Oxford, was an Honorary Research Associate at Harvard, and is Emeritus Professor of the History of the English Language at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the author of An Encyclopedia of Swearing (2006), A History of English Words (Wiley–Blackwell, 2000), Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English (1998), and Words in Time (1988). He is currently Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town.

JOB’s Comment:

I have defended my occasional use of the term political correctness in this post, where I refer to Hughes’s book.

Michael Oakeshott: Experience and Its Modes

Cambridge University Press, 1986 (1933)     Amazon.com

Book Description:

This classic work is here published for the first time in paperback in recognition of its enduring importance. Its theme is Modality: human experience recognized as a variety of independent, self-consistent worlds of discourse, each the invention of human intelligence, but each also to be understood as abstract and an arrest in human experience. The theme is pursued in a consideration of the practical, the historical and the scientific modes of understanding.
Review:
“Mr Oakeshott’s thesis…is so original, so important and so profound that criticism must be silent until his meaning has been long pondered…the chapter on history is the most penetrating analysis of historical thought that has ever been written…the whole book shows Mr Oakeshott to possess philosophical gifts of a very high order, coupled with an admirable command of language; his writing is as clear as his thought is profound, and all students of philosophy should be grateful to him for his brilliant contribution to philosophical literature.”  R. G. Collingwood, The Cambridge Review
JOB’s Comment:
A central work in twentieth-century idealism. I will comment briefly on it, and show how I think Oakeshott’s positions must be modified in view of other idealist positions I defend (not least with regard to the “independence” of the modes of experience), in my series of posts entiteld ‘Idealism and the Renewal of Humanistic Philosophy’. Oakeshott was also a – probably the – leading twentieth-century British conservative philosopher, and I should say something on occasion about the relation between his idealism and his conservatism too. However, I find this early work to be his most important, and have problems with some of his own later revisions of his philosophical positions.

Själ och själv

Det är framför allt i de reflexivt-pronominella formerna som ordet “själv” rikligen förekommer i antikens filosofiska diskussioner om människans verkliga identitet, själen o.s.v. Men ett substantiviskt bruk av ordet “själv” återfinns redan i Platonapokryfen Alkibiades I (το αὐτό), såväl som i Aristoteles’ kända uttryck om vännen som ett “andra själv” (ἄλλος αὐτός, alter ipse). [Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ’Selbst’.]

I gnosticismen, nyplatonismen och överhuvud i “die hellenistische Ethik der Innerlichkeit” identifieras självet som själen (ἡ ψυχή αὐτός [ἐστί]). [Ibid.] Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie menar att frågan måste lämnas öppen “ob und in welchen Termini auch schon in der Antike über das reflektiert wurde, was dann später im Begriff “Selbst” konvergiert: die personale Identität und Individualität, die Einheit des Bewusstseins, die Subjektivität.” [Ibid.] Men i den mån detta kan knytas till det vaga antika själsbegreppet skulle det alltså föreligga ett antikt självbegrepp.

Även Augustinus använde begreppet själv om den själsidentitet han fann i sitt inre och i minnets djup, men som han ännu inte kunde beskriva med ordet person. Hos Augustinus bestod som vi sett ett människans sanna själv inför Gud. Men bl.a. den evangeliskt betonade paradoxen, hur den som förlorar sitt själv skall finna det, utvecklades i den kristna traditionen också till förståelsen av självet i en icke-egentlig mening, den uppblåsta, falska mänskliga jagiskheten, varvid tonvikten som vi sett kom att läggas på självförnekelse och -övervinnelse.

Det moderna substantiviska bruket av ordet “själv” sägs härstamma från Cambridgeplatonisten Ralph Cudworth. I sin polemik mot Hobbes insisterar han på att kunskapens enhet och form endast kan förklaras genom själens aktivitet, och att själen utgör en separat substans. “A Thinker” är “a Monade” eller “a Single Substance” av annat slag än den utsträckta naturen: “Life and Mind; or the Self Active Cogitative Nature, an Inside Being…an Internal Energy, Within the Substance or Essence of the Thinker himself, or in the Inside of him”, som “Acteth from it self, and Upon it self” och som förklarar varför människan är “One thing”, “One Personality, one I My Self in it all”, “an Unextended and Indivisible Unity, wherein all Lines Meet, and Concentre, not as a Mathematical Point”, “one Self-Active, Living, Power, Substantial or Inside-Being, that Containeth, Holdeth and Connecteth all together.” [Cit. i Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ibid.]

Med dessa utläggningar etablerar Cudworth enligt Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie ramarna för den efterföljande tidens diskussion om självet:

“Der Gedanke der Substantialität und Unteilbarkeit des Selbst wird als Argument in Überlegungen zur Rechtfertigung der Unzerstörbarkeit (Unsterblichkeit) der Seele eingesetzt; die Gleichsetzung von ‘Selbst’ und ‘personality’ führt zur Zuordning der Thematik zum Problemkomplex ‘personal identity’: die Überzeugung, dass die Seele ihrer selbst bewusst ist, begründet den Zusammanhang von Selbst und (Selbst-) Bewusstsein.” [Ibid.]

Tage Lindbom: Otidsenliga betraktelser

Norstedts, 1968

Baksida:

LindbomI sin 1962 utgivna bok Sancho Panzas väderkvarnar analyserade fil. dr Tage Lindbom nutidsmänniskans situation. Mot idéhistorisk bakgrund underkastade han där det moderna samhällslivet en närgången granskning utifrån helt andra utgångspunkter än de som är gängse i folkhemmet och angrep särskilt de politiska jämlikhetssträvanden som endast leder till nivellering. Många brännande samhällsfrågor kom emellertid där att blott beröras antydningsvis. Under de år som gått sedan dess har författaren i tidskriftsartiklar och radioföredrag tagit upp vissa ämnesområden till närmare granskning, och det är dessa som han här samlat i bokform.

Den fortgående centraliseringen och därmed hotet mot det medborgerliga lekmannastyret sätts under belysning liksom hotet mot den personliga mognadsprocessen. Skolreform och likriktning, jämlikhetsraseri och frihetsförlust är några andra av de ämnen som Tage Lindbom behandlar. Den röda tråd som går genom uppsatserna är författarens visshet om att frihet och trygghet i människornas liv icke står att vinna genom att förneka eller förinta varje fast ordning, varje bjudande norm.

Paul Klebnikov: Godfather of the Kremlin

The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism

Mariner Books, 2001 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000, with the subtitle ‘Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia’)       Amazon.com

Book Description:

From nuclear superpower to impoverished nation, post-communist Russia has become one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. Paul Klebnikov pieces together the previous decade in Russian history, showing that a major piece of “the decline of Russia’ puzzle lies in the meteoric business career of Boris Berezovsky. Transforming himself from a research scientist to Russia’s most successful dealmaker, Berezovsky managed to seize control of Russia’s largest auto manufacturer, largest TV network, national airline, and one of the world’s biggest oil companies. When Moscow’s gangster families battled one another in the Great Mob War of 1993-1994, Berezovsky was in the thick of it. He was badly burned by a car bomb and his driver was decapitated. A year later, Berezovsky emerged as the prime suspect in the assassination of the director of the TV network he acquired. Although plagued by scandal, he enjoyed President Yeltsin’s support, serving as the personal financial “advisor” to both Yeltsin and his family. In 1996, Berezovsky organized the financing of Yeltsin’s re-election campaign-a campaign marred by fraud, embezzlement, and attempted murder. Berezovsky became the President’s most trusted political advisor-playing a key role in forming governments and dismissing prime ministers. Based on hundreds of taped interviews with top businessmen and government officials, secret police reports, contractual documents, and surveillance tapes, Godfather of the Kremlin is both a gripping story and a unique historical document.
Amazon.com Review:
“Paul Klebnikov tells the incredible story of Boris Berezovsky, a one-time Russian car dealer who assembled a huge – and illicit – fortune after the collapse of Communism. ‘This individual had risen out of nowhere to become the richest businessman in Russia and one of the most powerful individuals in the country,’ writes Klebnikov, a respected reporter for Forbes. ‘This is a story of corruption so profound that many readers might have trouble believing it.’ Yet Godfather of the Kremlin is a careful work of journalism in which Klebnikov documents the business dealings of a man who once bragged to the Financial Times that he and six other men controlled half of the Russian economy and rigged Boris Yeltsin’s reelection in 1996. Berezovsky survived both an assassination attempt and a murder investigation, and paved the way to power for Vladimir Putin. He and the other crony capitalists of post-Soviet Russia like to rationalize their deeds, writes Klebnikov: ‘Whenever I asked Russia’s business magnates about the orgy of crime produced by the market reforms, they invariably excused it by pointing to the robber barons of American capitalism. Russia’s bandit capitalism was no different from American capitalism in the late nineteenth century, they argued.’ Yet nothing could be further from the truth: Carnegie, Rockefeller, and their peers transformed the United States into an economic superpower. Berezovsky, on the other hand, has ‘produced no benefit to Russia’s consumers, industries, or treasury.’ It’s not that he didn’t have an opportunity. To pick one example among many, he took over Aeroflot when it had a monopoly position in a booming market. But the company barely grew, and instead experienced myriad problems. Berezovsky controlled many businesses, but he was a lousy business manager; his only authentic success – as an auto dealer – depended on collusion. His real skill is shady dealmaking, especially with corrupt government officials. That’s the way to success in modern Russia, as this well-told but troubling book reveals.”  John J. Miller
Reviews:
“Well informed…A richly detailed account of the emergence of a new Russian oligarchy.”  The New York Times
“Graphically exposes the tragic corruption and cynicism of Russia’s political and economic leadership in the past decade.”  St Louis Post-Dispatch
“Fascinating, well-written narratives of how a corrupt, oligarchic capitalist system has evolved since Yeltsin and his team first launched economic reforms in 1992.”  Business Week
“[An] indispensable as well as riveting account of the rise of this cunning, rapacious, and ruthless figure.”  The Washington Monthly
About the Author:
Paul Klebnikov holds a Ph.D. in Russian History from the London School of Economics. He is a senior editor at Forbes and has reported on Russia since 1989. A fluent Russian speaker, he has won four press awards for his writing on Russian business.
JOB’s Addenda:
Berezovsky of course fell out with Putin. The author was murdered in 2004.