An Epistemic Thunderstorm: What We Learned and Failed to Learn from Jordan Peterson’S Rise to Fame1
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Cr24-Mishra.Pdf
The Cairo Review Interview The Modernity Trap Indian writer Pankaj Mishra probes imperialism’s legacy, liberalism’s failure, and the spreading global disorder lately the rise of the political right has turned some of the coolest heads into the gloomiest of prophets. Indian novelist and essayist Pankaj Mishra takes the long view. his new book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present, traces violent discontent with our modern world from the European Romantics to the Islamic State’s rule of terror. Mishra argues that the persistent fail- ure of modern society to deliver on its promises—freedom, wealth, and equality—has again and again encouraged hateful and militant politics, from messianic revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia to the cultural nationalism of Germany’s nazi era. As Mishra sees it, technology and the pursuit of wealth have shattered traditional societies across the globe, setting adrift mil- lions of people who are “uprooted from tradition but far from modernity.” For Mishra’s withering critiques of imperialism, the Economist called him the “heir to Edward Said.” Mishra’s book From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia declared Asia’s political awakening the twentieth century’s central event, and rebuked the notion that the West offers a benign one-size-fits-all model for modernity. Raised in Jhansi, in Uttar Pradesh, Mishra, 47, started as a travel writer documenting the quiet changes in India’s small towns wrought by economic and technological growth. his first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India, was a hilarious portrait of India’s upwardly mobile classes in the era of globalization. -
How Jordan Peterson Became an Intellectual Guru
I think I have discovered something that no one else has any idea about, and I’m not sure I can do it justice. Its scope is so broad that I can see only parts of it clearly at one time, and it is exceedingly difficult to set down comprehensibly in writing. – Jordan Peterson (1999, 473) April 19, Toronto’s Sony Centre was sold out. The occasion? Not a big sports match, not a rock concert, but the ‘debate of the century.’ A crowd of over 3000 people gathered voluntarily to hear two intellectuals talk for 2.5 hours. One of them was Slavoj Žižek; the other, Jordan Peterson, is the topic of this post. Jordan B. Peterson, Canadian professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has been called the most important public intellectual of our time (Cowen 2018; Brooks 2018). His book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) is a bestseller in Canada, the US, and UK. After he expressed worries about the future of his academic career because of his controversial critique of Bill C-16 that would make the use of gender-neutral pronouns mandatory, soon the donations he received through crowd funding platform Patreon exceeded his salary. Peterson voices polarizing standpoints, for instance on cultural practices such as (gay) marriage, religion or political correctness. He has 1.9 million subscribers and 92.5 million views on his YouTube channel (Socialblade 2019) and over 300.000 Twitter followers. He has his own subreddit about him and another one, Maps of Memeing, is exclusively devoted to Peterson memes. -
Maps of Meaning: the Architecture of Belief
MAPS OF MEANING: THE ARCHITECTURE OF BELIEF ROUTLEDGE (1999) Jordan B. Peterson, Ph.D. PDF Version with Figures May 2002 2 PREFACE: DESCENSUS AD INFEROS ___________________________________________________________ 7 CHAPTER 1: MAPS OF EXPERIENCE: OBJECT AND MEANING ___________________________________ 15 CHAPTER 2: MAPS OF MEANING: THREE LEVELS OF ANALSIS__________________________________ 28 2.1. Normal and Revolutionary Life: Two Prosaic Stories__________________________________________ 29 2.1.1. Normal Life _________________________________________________________________________ 31 2.1.2. Revolutionary Life ____________________________________________________________________ 35 2.2. Neuropsychological Function: The Nature of the Mind ________________________________________ 37 2.2.1. The Valence of Things_________________________________________________________________ 38 2.2.2. Unexplored Territory: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology__________________________________ 44 2.2.3. Exploration: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology _________________________________________ 49 2.2.4. Explored Territory: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology ____________________________________ 59 2.3. Mythological Representation: The Constituent Elements of Experience __________________________ 80 2.3.1. Introduction _________________________________________________________________________ 81 2.3.2. The Enuma elish: A Comprehensive Exemplar of Narrative Categorization _______________________ 93 2.3.3. The Dragon of Primordial Chaos________________________________________________________ -
Jordan Peterson and the (F)Law of ‘Scientific Inquiry’: a Critical Evaluation of Peterson’S Use of Science and Philosophy in His Conquest Against Social Justice
POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 41 (June 2019) Jordan Peterson and the (F)law of ‘Scientific Inquiry’: A Critical Evaluation of Peterson’s Use of Science and Philosophy in His Conquest Against Social Justice David Guignion https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.1 David Guignion is a Doctoral Student in Media Studies at The University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada. His Master’s thesis explored the intersection of Jean Baudrillard’s work with posthumanism. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract This article explores Jordan Peterson’s political project in response to Canada’s legislation of Bill C-16, a bill seeking to add gender expression to the list of grounds for discrimination under the criminal code. Peterson opposes Bill C-16 because it presents, for him, an ideological mode of speech and thought regulation. For Peterson, this bill is the result of the decline of scientific validity and the rise of a postmodernism motivated by the desire to undermine Western civilization. Therefore, this article argues that Peterson’s challenge to postmodern thought as an anti-scientific doctrine is perplexing given the general lack of consensus between his views and those of the greater scientific community. The article presents different theoretical frameworks attesting to the reality of gender non-conforming identities as well as to the consequences of denying these identities, and argues that rather than challenging oppressive systems of governance, Peterson’s project actually mirrors them. Keywords Friedrich Nietzsche; Gender; Hannah Arendt; Jean Baudrillard; Jordan Peterson; Judith Butler; Totalitarianism; Trans-identities 7 POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 41 (June 2019) Introduction If all enigmas are resolved, the stars go out. -
Exploring Social Responsibility and Ways of Attracting Greater Readership: an Eclectic Approach to Pankaj Mishra's Selected Wo
2012 International Conference on Language, Medias and Culture IPEDR vol.33 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press, Singapore Exploring Social Responsibility and Ways of Attracting Greater Readership: An Eclectic Approach to Pankaj Mishra’s Selected Works + Mohsen Masoomi 1 1 Department of English, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran Abstract. This study reads the selected works of the Indian writer, Pankaj Mishra, in the light of an eclectic approach which aims to explore his social responsibility through his works and also to make a survey on his implementation of certain tools for expanding his readers. The central argument the present study seeks to demonstrate is that, by rendering factual evocations of people through real figures and their social voice, Pankaj Mishra tries to reply an inner call of social responsibility toward Indian community. It is through mediums of mass media, literary institutions, English language and translation that Mishra attains a marked level of readership globally. Two major works of Mishra considered for this research are the mixture of memoir, history, and philosophy, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, and the travel book Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond. Keywords: Pankaj Mishra, eclectic approach, social responsibility, attracting greater readership 1. Introduction After India’s Independence in 1947 and fundamental changes occurring in the country's structural foundations, a new capacity was created for a different trend of literary creation. Indian writers inclined towards a different type of literature that could best depict their new status as partly detached from their colonial past. -
Jordan Peterson and the (F)Law of 'Scientific Inquiry'
POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 41 (June 2019) Jordan Peterson and the (F)law of ‘Scientific Inquiry’: A Critical Evaluation of Peterson’s Use of Science and Philosophy in His Conquest Against Social Justice David Guignion https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.41.1 David Guignion is a Doctoral Student in Media Studies at The University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada. His Master’s thesis explored the intersection of Jean Baudrillard’s work with posthumanism. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract This article explores Jordan Peterson’s political project in response to Canada’s legislation of Bill C-16, a bill seeking to add gender expression to the list of grounds for discrimination under the criminal code. Peterson opposes Bill C-16 because it presents, for him, an ideological mode of speech and thought regulation. For Peterson, this bill is the result of the decline of scientific validity and the rise of a postmodernism motivated by the desire to undermine Western civilization. Therefore, this article argues that Peterson’s challenge to postmodern thought as an anti-scientific doctrine is perplexing given the general lack of consensus between his views and those of the greater scientific community. The article presents different theoretical frameworks attesting to the reality of gender non-conforming identities as well as to the consequences of denying these identities, and argues that rather than challenging oppressive systems of governance, Peterson’s project actually mirrors them. Keywords Friedrich Nietzsche; Gender; Hannah Arendt; Jean Baudrillard; Jordan Peterson; Judith Butler; Totalitarianism; Trans-identities 7 POLITIKON: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science Vol 41 (June 2019) Introduction If all enigmas are resolved, the stars go out. -
A Postmodern Neo-Marxist's Guide to Free Speech: on Jordan Peterson and the ‘Alt-Right’
A Postmodern Neo-Marxist's Guide to Free Speech: On Jordan Peterson and the ‘Alt-Right’ Introduction In recent years, Jordan Peterson, an obscure Canadian academic psychologist, and publisher of self-help books, has been elevated to the level of a poster boy for the insurgent transnational far-right movement styling itself the ‘alt-right’. His refusal to recognise students’ non-binary and transgender identities, his patriarchal and misogynist clichés about women and men, his insistence upon the significance of ‘Western civilisation’ and attacks on Muslims, even his bizarre practice – in the face of rising veganism – of eating only meat, have all struck a chord with the various ‘incels’ and Islamophobes that constitute the movement. As a key ‘culture warrior’, much of Peterson’s influence is exercised through social media. He has 1.4 million Twitter followers at time of writing (far more than most of the world’s most eminent living academics). It is on Twitter that Peterson claims and defends his right to ‘free speech’ – a unifying concern of the new far-right, from the AfD in Germany and Generation Identity in Italy, to the EDL and the Brexit Party in the UK, and the ‘Proud Boys’ in the USA. It was also on Twitter that Peterson called Indian novelist and critic Pankaj Mishra a ‘racist son of a bitch’, in response to a critique of his book 12 Rules for Life. ‘And you call me a fascist?’ Peterson went on, in a fit of frothing ‘white fragility’:1 ‘You sanctimonious prick. If you were in my room at the moment, I'd slap you happily’. -
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Wong, P. T. P. (2019). Assessing Jordan B. Peterson’s Contribution to the Psychology of Wellbeing: A Book Review of 12 Rules for Life. International Journal of Wellbeing, 9(1), 83-102. doi:10.5502/ijw.v9i1.829 BOOK REVIEW Assessing Jordan B. Peterson’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing: A book review of 12 Rules for Life Paul T. P. Wong Abstract: This article first critically examines the Jordan B. Peterson phenomenon and the popular appeal of his book, 12 Rules for Life. It then evaluates this book’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing in four areas: (a) the psychology of religious values, (b) the importance of personal responsibility, (c) accepting suffering as the foundation for wellbeing, and (d) the process of finding one’s meaning based on personal sacrifice and negotiating a balance between chaos and order. Finally, it examines empirical support for his ideas, as well as his contribution to the emerging domain of existential positive psychology. Finally, implications for the future of positive psychology research and interventions are discussed. 1. Introduction Jordan Peterson is an enigma. At present, he is the best-known public psychologist (Murphy, 2018), but also the least understood, because of the opacity of his views (Johnson, 2018). “It can be tough to parse the Peterson phenomenon. For one thing, it seems as if there are multiple Petersons, each appealing to, or in some cases alienating, separate audiences” (Bartlett, 2018). Peterson enjoys the status of a rock star in psychology, giving interviews at almost all the major talk shows, speaking to sold-out theatres in major cities around the Western world, and selling more than two million copies of his 12 Rules for Life in less than a year. -
The Performance of Intersectionality on the 21St Century Stand-Up
The Performance of Intersectionality on the 21st Century Stand-Up Comedy Stage © 2018 Rachel Eliza Blackburn M.F.A., Virginia Commonwealth University, 2013 B.A., Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts, 2005 Submitted to the graduate degree program in Theatre and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Chair: Dr. Nicole Hodges Persley Dr. Katie Batza Dr. Henry Bial Dr. Sherrie Tucker Dr. Peter Zazzali Date Defended: August 23, 2018 ii The dissertation committee for Rachel E. Blackburn certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Performance of Intersectionality on the 21st Century Stand-Up Comedy Stage Chair: Dr. Nicole Hodges Persley Date Approved: Aug. 23, 2018 iii Abstract In 2014, Black feminist scholar bell hooks called for humor to be utilized as political weaponry in the current, post-1990s wave of intersectional activism at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her call continues to challenge current stand-up comics to acknowledge intersectionality, particularly the perspectives of women of color, and to encourage comics to actively intervene in unsettling the notion that our U.S. culture is “post-gendered” or “post-racial.” This dissertation examines ways in which comics are heeding bell hooks’s call to action, focusing on the work of stand-up artists who forge a bridge between comedy and political activism by performing intersectional perspectives that expand their work beyond the entertainment value of the stage. Though performers of color and white female performers have always been working to subvert the normalcy of white male-dominated, comic space simply by taking the stage, this dissertation focuses on comics who continue to embody and challenge the current wave of intersectional activism by pushing the socially constructed boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, class, and able-bodiedness. -
Mediatized Populisms: Inter-Asian Lineages
International Journal of Communication 11(2017), 4073–4092 1932–8036/20170005 Mediatized Populisms: Inter-Asian Lineages Introduction PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY New York University, USA SRIRUPA ROY University of Göttingen, Germany1 This essay offers an explanation for the rise of contemporary “mediatized populisms.” Disaggregating the idea of a singular media logic of populist politics, we examine the institutional and political-economic dynamics of mediatization and the variegated structures of mediated political fields in which contemporary populist political formations are embedded. Moving away from broad “global populism” approaches as well as case studies from Europe and the Americas that have thus far dominated discussions of populism, we make the case for empirically grounded comparative studies of populism from the particular standpoint of regional contexts across Asia that offer theoretical insights often missed in prevailing “technology-first” and election-focused approaches. We then outline three distinctive features of media-politics relations (and their transformations) that have enabled the contemporary rise of mediatized populism across the Inter-Asian region. Keywords: populism, mediatization, Inter-Asian, comparative politics, political economy Paula Chakravartty: [email protected] Srirupa Roy: [email protected] Date submitted: 2017–08–31 1 Research for this essay is funded by the Social Science Research Council of New York’s Transregional Virtual Research Institute on Media Activism and the New Political. Most of the essays in this Special Section were presented at a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) InterAsia workshop on Mediatized Populism Across InterAsia, which was held in Seoul in April 2016. We are grateful to Seteney Shami and Holly Danzeisen of the SSRC, and to all our participants and especially our workshop co-organizer, Zeynep Gambetti, for their deep and constructive engagements and insights. -
Religion and Morality in the Thought of Nietzsche, Zen Buddhism and Jordan Peterson
BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: RELIGION AND MORALITY IN THE THOUGHT OF NIETZSCHE, ZEN BUDDHISM AND JORDAN PETERSON Christopher Ryan Maboloc Ateneo de Davao University, Philippines ABSTRACT This paper investigates the proximate relation between religion and morality through the shared features of the philosophy of F. Nietzsche, Zen Buddhism, and the psychologist Jordan Peterson. Peterson associates the concept of multiple hierarchies in the evolution of life and society to the behavior of lobsters, also drawing from religion, psychology, and Nietzsche’s thought. While finding a common theme between Eastern and Western philosophy appears difficult if we follow Peterson’s concept of an ethos, this study will reveal that transcendence as self-overcoming is a dominant idea that can be found in all three perspectives. Keywords: Nietzsche, Zen, Peterson, Self-overcoming, Ethos Prajñā Vihāra Vol. 19 No 2, July - December 2018, 71-92 © 2000 by Assumption University Press 72 Prajñā Vihāra Introduction What does it mean to be human? How can man rise above himself? What is the relation between evolution and truth? Are morals built upon a longer historical process? What is truth? In what truth is religion rooted? These important questions often draw our attention into the structure of an ethos that determines for us the meaning of human life. In pursuing the connection between the Eastern and Western views of the self, this paper will put into contrast the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, Zen Buddhism, and the psychologist Jordan Peterson. The focus of this investigation is the latter, who offers an insight by making an association between the human ethos and biology. -
The Ramayana by R.K. Narayan
Table of Contents About the Author Title Page Copyright Page Introduction Dedication Chapter 1 - RAMA’S INITIATION Chapter 2 - THE WEDDING Chapter 3 - TWO PROMISES REVIVED Chapter 4 - ENCOUNTERS IN EXILE Chapter 5 - THE GRAND TORMENTOR Chapter 6 - VALI Chapter 7 - WHEN THE RAINS CEASE Chapter 8 - MEMENTO FROM RAMA Chapter 9 - RAVANA IN COUNCIL Chapter 10 - ACROSS THE OCEAN Chapter 11 - THE SIEGE OF LANKA Chapter 12 - RAMA AND RAVANA IN BATTLE Chapter 13 - INTERLUDE Chapter 14 - THE CORONATION Epilogue Glossary THE RAMAYANA R. K. NARAYAN was born on October 10, 1906, in Madras, South India, and educated there and at Maharaja’s College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts (1937), are both set in the fictional territory of Malgudi, of which John Updike wrote, “Few writers since Dickens can match the effect of colorful teeming that Narayan’s fictional city of Malgudi conveys; its population is as sharply chiseled as a temple frieze, and as endless, with always, one feels, more characters round the corner.” Narayan wrote many more novels set in Malgudi, including The English Teacher (1945), The Financial Expert (1952), and The Guide (1958), which won him the Sahitya Akademi (India’s National Academy of Letters) Award, his country’s highest honor. His collections of short fiction include A Horse and Two Goats, Malgudi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree. Graham Greene, Narayan’s friend and literary champion, said, “He has offered me a second home. Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian.” Narayan’s fiction earned him comparisons to the work of writers including Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, O.