> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://angst.blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A Futile Form of Irony - URL: https://angst.blog/2/ - Published: 2022-09-27T12:43:23.000Z - Updated: 2026-06-24T02:22:00.000Z - Author: Galen There’s an ancient thread of tweets from [@fucktheory](https://twitter.com/fucktheory?ref=angst.blog), peace be upon him. Firsthand record of the thread is gone, and the account suspended, so you’ll have to believe me when I say that it went approximately as follows: > For at least twenty years, upper-middle class, often tenured academics have been teaching young people that politics is a futile form of irony. > I’ve watched Ivy League professors with tenure explain to graduate students with no health insurance that striking for pay is silly. > I’ve heard smug male assholes with PhDs describe registering voters as the “busy work” of political activity. > I’ve watched Derridians and Lacanians who own homes sneer at 19-year-olds who raise their hands to ask what forms of activism are useful. > I’ve watched post-Žižek fuckboy marxists condescendingly tell young socialists that *signification*, not class, is the real locus of struggle. > I’ve watched Tim Dean tell young men that ethical gay liberation means filling as many anonymous assholes with cum as possible. > I’ve watched Lee Edelman tell students, with a shit-eating grin, that hope is surrender and fighting for the future is “heteronormative”. > Kids who were the first in their family to go to college. Kids who spent their whole life fighting for a scholarship. > Kids who worked full-time while they studied for their SATs, rather than having a family tutor come to the Hamptons every summer. > Kids who, like me, grew up looking with awe at the worn, dog-eared copies of the Communist Manifesto on their grandparents’ bookshelves. > Kids who, like me, had the shit kicked out of them for being smart, for being queer, for being brave, for being different. > The smartest kids. The most determined kids. The most enthusiastic kids. > The kids who need a concept of ethical politics the most. > The kids who could, and in so many cases would, have gone back to their communities to teach, to read, to lead, to work. Lately, in spare moments, as I wait for the kettle to boil, I’ve noticed that I keep thinking of ‘[The Professor of Parody](https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody?ref=angst.blog)’. And I keep wondering whether this whole situation—the situation of The World to which I can only, y’know, *gesture broadly—* might be, in some sense, a just brutal reminder of our collective failure to internalise the ‘Professor of Parody’ critique. Maybe the Year of Our Lord, Twenty-Twenty-Two, is the year that we’ll all have to face the facts: Martha Nussbaum was *basically correct* when she wrote her critique of Butlerian discourse fetishism a full twenty-three years ago. And then she was basically correct (and basically ignored) in every intervening year. And now notions of ‘practicality’ and ‘feasibility’ and ‘reality’ are—at least amongst middle- and upper-class genpop—empty signifiers that one is encouraged to sneer at. Only the abstract [vibe](https://twitter.com/SethRudy/status/1564772552131608576?ref=angst.blog) of ‘ironic grift’ remains acceptable. [This comment](https://thezvi.substack.com/p/announcing-balsa-research/comment/9300972) was the tipping point for me. Not even the rationalists seem okay. Sure, yes, they’re holding onto a ‘do real things’ mentality. But it’s tenuous at best. The default reaction is “this won’t work, because material things don’t work; signification is the real locus of struggle”.