Ideas Matter: Culture Wars, then and now, episode 9: 'Tribes'

Ben Cobley discusses his book, The Tribe, explaining how the
progressive liberal-left and its associated ‘system of diversity’
have come to dominate society. In this lecture, he talks about
the intellectual inspirations behind The Tribe, exploring how
Chantal Mouffe, Karl Popper and Martin Heidegger helped him to
illuminate the fraught world of identity politics today.


LECTURER Ben Cobley, author, The Tribe: the liberal-left and the
system of diversity.


TALKING POINTS ON THIS PODCAST • The emergence of the ‘tribe’ of
the progressive liberal left as an identity group that has
overseen a domination of institutions and public discourse • The
hypocrisy of the politics of diversity which uses the language of
inclusivity and overcoming prejudice but in practice is
exclusionary in itself • By furthering the politicisation and
moralisation of identity, the progressive liberal left has been
able to avoid discourse and even legitimate the removal of
political opponents beyond the frame of public life.


BIBLIOGRAPHY The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of
diversity, Ben Cobley, Societas, 2018 On the Political (Thinking
in Action) by Chantal Mouffe, Routledge, 2005


THE ACADEMY 2019 In the context of today’s instrumental
approaches to knowledge, The Academy summer school is a modest
attempt to demonstrate the value of scholarship, and of the worth
of the university as a place of free enquiry dedicated to the
pursuit of truth.


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