On Critically Conscious Research Reviews

I'd like to start out by saying that this book is a huge disappointment from the last one. So far the first forty-nine pages have been a windy literature review. In the words of a David Foster Wallace essay I read recently, “Hix's analysis of the players he does cover suffers from the scholarly anality that's so common to published dissertations, an obsession with the jots and tittle of making excruciatingly clear what he's saying and where he's going […] make the reader wish Hix's editor had helped him delete gestures that seem directed at thesis committees rather than paying customers” (141-142).

Of course, I have the same complaint with several of the books we've read in other classes, so no big deal. It's just, the more of this type of work I read, the more familiar I am with the oft-repeated sources, which makes the next literature review more repetition and thus more boring to read, ad nauseum.

The introductory chapter is overly emotional and broad, starting with the angle that Bad Things happen and they're so Unspeakably Bad we need to have Critical Theory to eff the ineffable. I found a few things from this first chapter to be of note. Specifically, on page three, “others aim to resurrect class as a central theme....” Has class not been a central theme since Marx? What am I missing here? Also, the critiques against Kant et al. for their (temporarily normative) opinions / leanings in regards to sexism and racism. Are there scholars who discount their thinking because of this? Does that invalidate any scholarly work older than 100 years, or just the stuff by people lucky enough to not put their views on the subjects into print? Would someone in a hundred years look at this work and consider it to be sexist / racist because even though it starts with a Crit Theory that's all-encompassing it continues only analyzing white men and then Americans of African descent primarily?

Loved the idea of Roots vs. Routes, highlight of book so far. Their take on Gramsci was much more understandable than Villanueva's, and this introduced me to Fanon for the first time. Their Freire explanation was not great. I was surprised to see Derrida and Foucault referred to as sociologists. Is that common? Wikipedia refers to both as philosophers. I found the connection between liberation theology and Marxism to be insightful.

Finally, the third chapter raised some good but inflated points. Colorblindness as a continuation of hegemony issued the most resonance in me. We've danced around that issue before, but I hadn't seen it put that succinctly. The short debate about American Indian studies, the nomenclature and the approach reminded me of Alexie's professor-student conflicts within Indian Killer. Finally, on page forty, the authors state that they recognize Feminism isn't a monolithic institution, but instead composed of many fragments. I'd be curious to know what large branch of critical theory (of any discipline) they consider to be monolithic in contrast – I doubt one exists.