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- Fixing one’s identity, or determining which identity category one belongs to, does not overlap exactly with self-knowledge. The great irony of post-modern and post-internet culture wars is that their deep significance is nil; does not fundamentally alter the human condition.
- The obsession with identity, anyway, is a product of a product age. So often we want to understand what kind of person we are so that we can understand what kind of product we are: how to sell ourselves.
- All identity categories are categories of exclusion, even when they attempt to liberate.
- Raw power is more subtle than human intelligence. Usually, when we think we’ve solved a social justice equation — every time we think we’ve created more freedom — we’ve really just redistributed the injustice; hidden it from view.
- All of essentially participate in, embody, and deploy systems of power. All of us drink from the well of evil.
- Justice and politics are simply not compatible.
- Literature speaks to the very deep structures of human behavior and organizational; journalism touches on the outcomes of those structures. Literature indicates the diseases; journalism, the symptoms.
- Millennial culture turns everything it touches into either Disneyland or the suburbs — that’s what I thought about walking through the New York City Pride Parade today.
- Social justice theories are usually soporific — they put our horror at the world to sleep; convince us that our most pleasant dreams can be our reality.
