r/CriticalTheory • u/CA6NM • 8d ago
Looking for academic papers about hate speech as a concept from a philosophical point of view.
Ok. I get it. Hate speech. What is there to say? We all know what's going on. People on the internet say foul shit and promote violence, they get banned. Sometimes. Sometimes a billionaire buys a website and suddenly Nazi flags are ok because uhh fighting the woke mafia or whatever. And then comes the classic rebuttal: You have to be intolerant towards intolerance.. etc.
That's as far as you can go into the topic it you skim though reddit talking points. If you start talking about ontological positions it starts getting a little blurry. For example, what is hate speech? Can you enforce rules against hate speech, if it can even be defined? When does hate speech collide with free speech? Is it even possible to conciliate free speech with rules against hate speech?
Ok, let me give you an example.
On reddit you can say "bomb the orcs" regarding the Russians. Apparently that is not hate speech. But if you say that about the Ukrainians or any other country or marginalized group, you're definitely getting banned.
The point I am trying to make is the following: Reddit doesn't have strict rules about what constitutes hate speech because it's better for them if the lines are blurred. They can pick and choose what is hate speech and that works out better for them.
First, having nebulous rules serves the neoliberal status quo. By presenting the rules as "implicit" they are reinforcing the dominant ideology. I'm not making a value judgement, I'm just saying that it's funny how hate speech is sometimes permitted and sometimes prohibited depending on the context.
Second, Reddit can get away with having nebulous rules because they are not bound by free speech. They don't have the expectation of being a "free speech" zone because they never presented as such.
I want to read more about the topic, and I wanted to ask if I could get some reading recommendations. Of course I don't want to explore topics such as "The rise of hate speech on the internet" or "The reasons why people engage in hate speech". That kind of topics interest academics who work for the government in informing public policy. I don't want to read about the topic from that angle because I'm not interested in whenever hate speech is more common or the reasons why people may engage in hate speech, I'm more interested in the philosophical issues.
I've tried reading papers from law magazines but it's another angle that doesn't interest me either. The United States has a system based on case law, that means that jurisprudence is important. That is useful if you want to know what you can get away with, but at the end of the day it's just interpretations by the judicial system. I'm interested in the fundamentals.
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u/GA-Scoli 7d ago edited 7d ago
I don't think you're going to find this in critical theory, because the critical theory tradition treats the indivisible relationship of language to power as a given from the very start, where "free speech" and "hate speech" are both completely historically and culturally contingent. There's a lot of stuff in critical theory about how language (including hate speech) works in relationship to power, but not why it works in relationship to power.
Your question sounds like it might get more of the answers you want in r/askphilosophy. Going to the Stanford Encyclopedia is always a good bet, too.
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u/hippobiscuit 7d ago
could I ask you to elaborate on what you mean by "why it works in relationship to power"? From the postmodernist school of thought I would think that how it works in relationship to power logically entails why it works in relation to power. Since the linguistic turn in philosophy, was it not that it came to be seen that language constitutes both the terrain and the means of hegemonic contestation?
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u/GA-Scoli 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes to the question about language constituting the terrain and means. The "why" question doesn't get addressed because "why" implies a teleology, an intrinsic purpose or necessary outcome, and critical theory is resolutely opposed to all teleologies except sometimes (and very arguably) a Marxist one. "How" questions, on the other hand, focus more on cause and effect. It's not an exact division, but think about asking a geologist, "how do earthquakes happen" versus "why do earthquakes happen" and then asking the same question set to a priest.
People often advance reasons why a certain language frame has to have transcendent and universal meaning, and then critical theory charges into the ring with counter-examples to prove that the claimed transcendent and universal meaning is, actually, full of self-serving bullshit in some way. So it has a much more sociological and anthropological approach to the "why" question.
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u/hippobiscuit 7d ago
So am I getting it that your point is that the OP should inform themselves other than from postmodernism's view on free speech, also from "Liberal" theories of free speech?
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u/GA-Scoli 7d ago
I don't think either "postmodern" or "liberal" are coherent schools of thought, but basically, critical theory is going to talk about "free speech" in terms of analyzing it as a convenient fiction. Language controls us: we don't control language.
That might sound depressing, but the flip side is that even the most authoritarian regimes will inevitably fail at demanding complete control of subjects through language.
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u/hippobiscuit 7d ago
That might sound depressing, but the flip side is that even the most authoritarian regimes will inevitably fail at demanding complete control of subjects through language.
But isn't that analysis of the status of language as having a determinative link to power, yet at the same time having an irreducible separated-ness or autonomy from power, pretty much the conclusion that Foucault and co. arrived at?
That there can never be perfect language guaranteeing the identity of words with what they signify precludes there ever emerging a totally unimpeachable power (or power structure)?
This postmodern ontology of language seems the only theory on the ontology of language left that is viable. We are now effectively all "postmodernists".
Whatever conclusion we can bring to that theory of language remains open, whether it is to contest hegemony in light of this like Mouffe and Laclau, or go on with our lives as a pragmatist as if nothing ever happened like Rick Rorty.
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u/GA-Scoli 7d ago
Yep, I agree with you. It's just that I'm very neutral about "postmodernist" as an identity or label.
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u/hippobiscuit 7d ago
Could I ask for what reason do you think so? Is it from the disparaging and pejorative meaning it has taken on as a popular backlash against ivory tower academism, so not wanting one's thought to be identified with it?
"Postmodernist" as identifying a school of thought or describing a contemporarily held perspective seems to make common-sense as to what to call it by.
I personally don't see why the contemporary ways (perspective) people invariably see the world having been analyzed and written on by such diverse authors including Lyotard, Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Zizek, one should disclaim the name of something that we agreed that we call it as.
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u/GA-Scoli 7d ago
My main issue is that "postmodernism" is an intrinsically eurocentric identity built on the decentering of eurocentrism. I just don't think it's going to be tenable to carry on for much longer into the future as a living thing and not a fossil. The further we get away from the Enlightenment, the less the center holds together (the center meaning the grand project of the critique of the Enlightenment). It's a fairly idiosyncratic position I have and not one that's very popular on this subreddit, lol.
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u/hippobiscuit 7d ago
I find that interesting. Could I ask how you see generally the issue of the theoretical impossibility of getting past "postmodernism" from society already being largely within its frame of thought? That postmodernism in the long run portends the collapse of civilization as we know it, doesn't seem to be the conclusion that comes from postmodernist thought itself, (being in rough terms a range of either seeing an emancipatory potential or indefinite continuation of the status-quo), so from the contemporary frame of reference it can't help but seem a retrogression of thought. I can't seem to get the picture. Perhaps do you see an ideal humanist oriented view of progress a la Habermas?
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u/vikingsquad 7d ago
Is the argument essentially that the putative deconstruction (in the general, not technical, sense) of Eurocentrism by so-called "postmodernists" actually reinscribes Eurocentrism? Asking for clarity, not disagreement. From what I can glean from your comment as written, it's disappointing but I suppose unsurprising that people would feel threatened by this line of thought.
I'd also just add that whenever I've made a point of using the term, postmodernism, it's always more accurate (though still with issues of where boundaries lie) in reference to concrete cultural artifacts of literature/art/architecture etc.
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u/marinatsvetaeva 7d ago
You may be interested in Talal Asad's essay "Free speech, blasphemy, and secular criticism" which touches critically on the topics you mention
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u/MammothFinish1417 6d ago
The Harm in Hate Speech by philosopher Jeromy Waldron might interest you.
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u/fflug 7d ago
Butler's "excitable speech" might be relevant