Political correctness, and the relentless decline of critical reason
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3515
Commento di Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime, a cura di Piero Zanini, traduzione di Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.
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Giacomo Loperfido
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Political correctness, and the relentless decline of critical reason
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Book forum: Jonathan Friedman – Politicamente corretto
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2018-12-31
2018-12-31
241-245
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Giacomo Loperfido
2018/12/31
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Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
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Political correctness, and the relentless decline of critical reason
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                                      2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245




                                                                       BOOK FORUM

Political correctness, and the relentless decline of
critical reason
Giacomo LOPERFIDO
Universitat de Barcelona


Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come
regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini,
Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.



   I met Jonathan Friedman in the early 2000s, when I had decided to make
my research training evolve from archaeology to anthropology. The wish I
then expressed to Friedman was to study radical right wing social move-
ments: a phenomenon that was – to my mind – poorly understood, and – at
that time – largely ignored by the social sciences.
   The early 2000s (perhaps not coincidentally the era in which many of the
debates that spurred the writing of this book took place) was a time of social
optimism in the West, and celebratory narratives of globalisation were pre-
dicting a bright future of freedom of movement and thought, racial diversity,
and cultural hybridity. In this context, not many social scientists were happy
to supervise research on right wing movements, cultural racism, and politic-
al violence of the neo-fascist kind. Friedman was then the one scholar (and
such he remained for long) I could find, who was willing to engage in long
discussions around this topic, and the one academic who accepted to super-
vise my MA, and eventually PhD research on this theme. I say all this in or-
der to situate my relationship with the author, as well as the theme of right-
wing ideologies (somehow involved in the topic of this book), which is in
both cases certainly partial and biased.


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Giacomo Loperfido
Political correctness, and the relentless decline of critical reason
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3515
242                                                             GIACOMO LOPERFIDO


   At the same time, if I were to pick one thing among the very many that I
have learnt from Jonathan Friedman, it would be the crucial value of critique
for the evolution of knowledge, and how science is always about the possibil-
ity of being wrong. This book itself, I would say, appears to me as a bold – if
polemical – act of strenuous intellectual opposition to (I am tempted to
write revolt against) the ever expanding breach of this principle. In my re-
view, I will try to stick to this idea myself, and possibly use it against Fried-
man, by trying to bring to light what I am critical about, before I move to
what I find important and productive.
   The book represents an extensive effort to deal with the establishment of
political correctness (PC) as a regime of sociality, and an attempt to under-
stand it from the analysis of the general conditions of its emergence. The es-
say has an explicitly structuralist approach and – within this frame – it com-
bines Marxian political economy with Global Systems theory, and a proces-
sual understanding of social reality, we could say, à la Victor Turner.
   An important social fact Friedman puts into relation with the emergence
of PC, is the establishment of multiculturalism as a political ideology in-
creasingly hegemonizing governmental policies, established discourses, and
the organisation of the everyday interactions in social life.
   In this frame, Friedman sees PC situations emerge as a defence mechan-
ism, protecting the ideological formations of multiculturalism from critical
attacks, dissent, or even scepticism.
   Such defence operates via repression of any critique, where those who are
critical of – or simply do not comply with – the multicultural grand narrat-
ive, are silenced by means of moral accusation. The imputation itself is ana-
lysed in terms of the creation of associative chains leading to the re-defini-
tion of the accused through morally essentialized categories such as racism,
fascism, nazism, and the like.
   The very necessity of writing this book – Friedman tells us – originates
from within the author’s personal life. The theoretical/analytical work
around PC was triggered by a series of attacks to Kajsa Ekholm Friedman -–
the author’s wife, herself an anthropologist – from different segments of
Swedish academia and the press, after Ekholm Friedman gave a talk where
some problematic aspects of policies where exposed (pp. 76-78) to an audi-
ence that the press initially categorised as “right wing” (pp. 78-83).
   The organisation of the book – as it appears to me – is divided in three
parts. In the introduction and the first chapter Friedman positions himself as
a writer, and introduces the reader to the problematic of political correct-
ness, while situating his work in relation to the existing literature. In the


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POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, AND THE RELENTLESS DECLINE OF CRITICAL REASON                  243


second part (chapters two, three, and four) he describes the series of events
and attacks, that eventually led to his and Ekholm Friedman’s work on PC.
The third part (chapters five, six and conclusion) is devoted to the analysis of
the PC phenomenon and its structural conditions of emergence.
   I find two issues problematic: one is more research/ethnography related,
the second concerns instead some aspects of Friedman’s analysis. I will start
with the first and move then to the second.
   I have been wondering if we can talk of this book as an ethnographically
based anthropological work, and I have decided that it is. I do believe with
Pierre Bourdieu (2003: 281) that «idiosyncratic personal experiences meth-
odically subjected to sociological control, constitute irreplaceable analytic
resources, and that mobilising one’s social past through self-socio-analysis
can and does produce epistemic as well as existential benefits», and this is
certainly what Friedman does with his “participant observation” of the
events, or even, following Bourdieu, his “participant objectivation”. How-
ever, especially for a book that aims at being healthily polemical, there is a
certain lack of clarity in the way ethnography and research are presented.
Some of the texts Friedman refers to (from Ekholm Friedman’s talk to – say
– Sweden’s “integration act”, to media and academic reactions, etc) are
simply evoked or summarised by the author, and poorly referenced (media
quotes miss date and/or page, what was the radio/tv broadcast, etc). I think
Friedman’s polemical zest would gain critical momentum from actually
presenting some more of these texts, while a more accurate referencing
would provide us with further information about the context in which they
have been used. Ethnographically, actors and characters should also be more
precisely situated. «A group of (mainly female) anthropologists raises in in-
dignation…» (p. 54); «A conversation with a Norwegian psychologists con-
firms…» (p. 284)1. Who are these people and where are they speaking from?
How did Friedman get to interact with them, how did they get involved in
the polemics? Friedman’s argument would become more solid if they were
presented with their own history and a description of the social relations
they are immersed in. This would have situated them within the larger se-
quence of events and given the reader a more substantiated backup of the
general theoretical argument.
   With regard to Friedman’s analysis, the Swedish situation comes about as
the product of a decline (or rather collapse) of egalitarian individualism – in
Dumontian terms –, and its fragmentation into a polarised geography of cul-
tural identities, in competition with one another. Swedish individualism,

1. Translation by the Author.

                                        2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2018: 241-245
244                                                            GIACOMO LOPERFIDO


moreover, has peculiar local specificities, as powerful collectivistic ideolo-
gies (which have taken shape during post-war economic expansion), and a
strongly centralised state, seem to have somehow weakened the process of
individualisation in the first place. Within this context, declining individual-
ism seems thus to turn established ideologies of social control from below
into mutual surveillance and social paranoia. So, the emergence of multicul-
tural ideology and PC regimes are presented as the tools of “new” elites try-
ing to establish themselves in power. The struggle for power creates a situ-
ation of fragmentation, social uncertainty and insecurity in which multicul-
tural ideologies and the PC regimes are used as mechanisms of social control
imposed from above.
    The newness of this elite and its competition for power have implications
that are not thoroughly explored. Which are the old ones? What is the his-
torical dynamic of conflict and replacement among old and new elites? What
is their composition? Are we talking of private or public elites? Is it econom-
ic, political elite, or media power, or both? How are the old and new elites
defined by their reciprocal positionalities? In other words, what are the logics
of the struggle for power within which multicultural ideologies and PC re-
gimes are mobilized? A more thorough class analysis of the Swedish state in
its historical transformation, as well as a deeper exploration of the upper
echelons of the global society that seem to have hijacked it would be pro-
ductive, here. Without that, the lack of clarity concerning the elites leaves
the reader wondering about the structural role that is given to PC: does it de-
fend some identities against others, or does it defend this newly established
order as such?
    Despite these aspects generating some confusion, however, the book does
a brilliant job of exposing a phenomenon that is increasingly paralysing
western societies, by disabling criticism both in the dynamics of knowledge
production and in political arenas. With his refusal to abide by the general
doxa protected and consolidated by PC dynamics, Friedman seems to open
up a space of knowledge that wasn’t accessible before: the global systemic
anthropological explanation of the PC phenomenon is powerful, thorough,
and original. Especially the comparison with the social logics of sorcery ac-
cusations in other parts of the world (appearing in the long, conclusive sec-
tions), makes structural invariants visible in differing contexts. This allows
the reader to scale up from the specificity of the cases presented by Fried-
man, to the larger logics of reproduction of social systems that – under the
current crisis – are undergoing powerful transformational pressures.
Throughout his long career as one of the world’s foremost anthropologists,
Friedman has always had the impudent courage of polemics and critique,

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never in and for itself, but always in the intent to open up the box of intel-
lectual debate, expose contradictions, and demystify grand narratives that
had become hegemonic. Also, and importantly, he always has been more
than willing to take criticism of himself and his own work.
    It appears somehow ironic that some of the polemics that have emerged
around this book have resulted in certain accusations of the author as “fas-
cist2”. Daring to define myself a scholar of fascism, I would say that the most
foundational functioning principle of this ideology is the repression of con-
flict and critique by means of externalization. Fascism as an ideology func-
tions by creating a rigidly enclosed in-group and out-group, and repressing
conflict and critique internal to the in-group via expulsion of the latter to-
wards the out-group (Lefort 1986; Loperfido 2018; Sternhell 1984). What
Jonathan Friedman does is precisely the contrary; his lucid work is so im-
portant because it brings the repressed critique back in, while rapidly vertic-
alizing arenas of power suffocate critical discussions via the imposition of a
PC logic.
    While writing this review, I was tempted to suggest that some lack of clar-
ity I imputed to the author might be coming from the emotionality involved
in having to face moral attacks reaching into the intimacy of his personal
life. Yet I decided not to venture into this territory. The private is private and
it is only Friedman’s job to respond to critique about his work. He will do
that, and will most likely conclude that regardless who’s right or wrong, a
full, open possibility to discuss anything is what remains crucial for the pro-
gress of both, knowledge and society.

REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre, 2003, Participant objectivation, Journal of the Royal Anthropologi-
      cal Institute, 9: 281-294.
Lefort, Claude, 1986, The political forms of modern society, Cambridge, MA, MIT
      Press.
Loperfido, Giacomo, 2018, “Neither left nor right”: Crisis, wane of politics, and the
      struggles for sovereignty”, in Worldwide mobilisations, Don Kalb, Mao Mollo-
      na, eds, New York & Oxford, Berghahn: 118-14.
Sternhell, Zeev, 1989, Naissance de l’idéologie fasciste, Paris, Fayard.




2. Elisabetta Rosaspina, La ricerca è sempre «scorretta», La lettura/Corriere della Sera, 28
January 2018.

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