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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