The Late Great Left

Back in the early 1990s, I came back to a college that I'd left, and found -- for a brief forgotten moment -- great solace in the political left.

I had dropped out part of the way through university and fallen on hard times.  During those hard times, I had seen some very ugly things going on in the homosexual world of the Bronx, where I lived.  I saw that people who were poor and desperate would trade their dignity and chastity for rent.  I saw that men with low self-esteem would fill the voids in their lives with addictions like drugs, party boys, pornography, and pretty male prostitutes.

When I had set aside enough cash to return to Yale, I wandered into feminist criticism as part of my plans for a senior essay in political science.  Cathy Cohen, a radical black lesbian, was teaching a seminar on the politics of AIDS.  During that autumn seminar, I was introduced to Foucault, Blanchot, and Arendt.

Feminism had gone pop.  Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, Katie Roiphe, and Camille Paglia were bringing academic jargon to the New York Times bestseller list.  And a new ideology was blossoming, called "queer theory," which was going to dispense with the rigid old binaries of gay/straight, to encompass a larger analysis of the many faces of sexual oppression.  (more...)

The Late Great Left

The Left and the Ruling Class: Enough Is Enough