1) There’s an under-appreciated point in this essay about one of those things the left and right fight over but actually agree on and are both wrong about: that reason & science belong to something called ‘the West.’ ... https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1297583562925830144

2) On the right such claims are explicitly (and a historically) made; on the (culture wars and academic) left they’re usually implicit, eg in attacks on reason & ‘scientific’ ‘ways of knowing’ as imperialist, racist, etc. (which is a different thing than the fact that...

3) ...imperialism, racism, etc. can be cloaked in these). Yet there are people who would skip over reason and science in Africa, Asia, Middle East, and go straight for ‘reason & science are imperialist ways of knowing,’ and I think that’s a mistake. ...

4) Not least because it wrongly and unnecessarily cedes ground to the right (particularly to white nationalists and white supremacists) by reinforcing the idea that reason, science, ‘liberalism,’ etc. are ‘Western.’ Which, no.

5) I’m not sure Spivak would approve, but I’m increasingly compelled by the idea that much culture warring on the left is down to disagreements over strategic essentialism. And my view increasingly is that many of our strategic essentialisms actually aren’t very strategic. /end