{"id":155417,"date":"2024-06-10T04:30:40","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T12:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=155417"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:19:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T18:19:47","slug":"problematic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=155417","title":{"rendered":"Problematic"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Problematic” is a favorite word among academics but they feel insulted and retreat into silence when you ask them to describe their hero system<\/a> that renders so much of reality “problematic.” According to the Merriam_Webster dictionary<\/a>, the third meaning of “problematic” is “having or showing attitudes (such as racial prejudice) or ideas (such as falsehoods) that are offensive, disturbing, or harmful.”<\/p>\n

The Google NGram viewer shows that books didn’t use “problematic” much until the 1960s. <\/p>\n

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Similarly, the Google NGram viewer shows that books didn’t use “racist” much until the 1960s. <\/p>\n

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Racism is a made up moral category that had no currency until the 1960s. Somehow all the great moral thinkers throughout history prior to the 20th Century had no concern about this great evil. <\/p>\n

If academics had the strength of their convictions and weren’t afraid of owning up to having a subjective partisan hero system just like everyone else, they’d just say “bad.” But talking about good and bad sounds Christian, so academics pretend to have transcended partisan hero systems, which is impossible. <\/p>\n

When academics won’t admit distress because their subjective hero system has been violated, what do they do? As human beings, they must lash out at an offense, but they won’t fight back in a way that is true, raw and vulnerable (a la how American conservatives do when somebody desecrates their nation’s flag), so instead they subjugate their impulses to reference good and evil, and instead employ the careful language of the courtier cocooned in his buffered identity. <\/p>\n

In his great 2014 book Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism<\/a>, Aaron W. Hughes wrote: <\/p>\n

\n* Rosenzweig\u2019s goal is extremely problematic because it is based on a series of essentialisms that emerge from a particularist rhetoric…<\/p>\n

* …the juxtaposition of \u201cJudaism\u201d and \u201cphilosophy\u201d is highly problematic, used as it is to serve potentially ideological or political ends.<\/p>\n

* …Rosenzweig\u2019s woefully inaccurate understanding and representation of Islam is based on his need to have a foil for his equally problematic and racially charged reading of Judaism.<\/p>\n

* Rosenzweig’s essentialist characterization of Judaism and the Jewish people inscribes both with a set of highly problematic traits grounded in racial and nationalistic
\npolitics.<\/p>\n

* …Maimonides and Rosenzweig\u2014now seen as symbols for medieval and modern Jewish philosophy, respectively\u2014 succeed in creating authoritarian Judaisms based on a self-constructed rhetoric of authenticity and what amounts to a rather problematic reification of Jewish peoplehood.<\/p>\n

* I suggest that such responses are not \u201cauthentic\u201d precisely because authenticity is such a problematic term, one that is always just out of reach and is always constructed. Yet, problematically, Jewish philosophy\u2014throughout its long and winding history\u2014has been and continues to be invested in manufacturing such an authentically Jewish response.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Professor Hughes sees the problems cited above, why doesn’t he just state the exact nature of the problem instead of resorting to euphemism? I emailed him about his love of the word “problematic”, but I didn’t get a response. <\/p>\n

From Reddit<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Why is the word “problematic” so commonly used by those on the political left?<\/p>\n

It’s a strange word that I don’t really understand. It’s it’s always felt like a bit of a weasel word to me. I feel like there is always a more assertive and clear way to rephrase the statement.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent about half my life in rural America and the other half in NYC and have many friends and family in both places. But I’ve never heard someone from the right describe something as “problematic”. I feel like it’s a word that has only come into use in the past decade or so and I’ve always cringed when I hear it used.<\/p>\n

When I hear someone call a persons behavior “problematic”, it feels passive aggressive and vague. It’s like something a risk averse middle manager in a giant corporation would say.<\/p>\n

* Because it’s more nuanced than good or bad. Let’s say someone says something mildly insensitive to you about a race, gender, or ability. You don’t want to ignore the comment. You could say “that’s bigoted” but that has a way of turning it onto a confrontation and makes the other person feels stupid and therefore disengage. Explaining that it’s problematic though let’s them know you don’t like why they said without judging them as a person and opens up for more dialog or clarification.<\/p>\n

* The whole point of that word that it focuses on a behavior without framing the entire thing\/person as a problem. It’s particularly applicable when describing things for which sensibilities have changed. For example, I was talking to a friend about Looney Toones cartoons from the 60s the other day. I was raised on those and I think they’re funny. But there is some insensitive shit in those old cartoons that was cool then, but not cool now. You could say, “those old cartoons are racist”, or you could say, “elements of them are problematic.”<\/p>\n

* It’s used by people who understand that these humans and their behavior are complex and people and things aren’t one thing. It facilitates the conversation to have it in a way that is more nuanced.<\/p>\n

* “Problematic” is rooted in social criticism and that project is popular with the academic left.<\/p>\n

Language is a social construct and it partly signals our influences and social cues. By using language popular with a group, you signal an affinity and in-group association.<\/p>\n

Its a gentler word and more indirect way of saying something is a problem, or bad, or wrong.<\/p>\n

Gentler and indirect language can be a signal for either empathy or low self-confidence.<\/p>\n

Women tend to have more empathy and less self-confidence on average compared to men.<\/p>\n

Women also tend, on average, to be politically more left leaning than men.<\/p>\n

Political affiliations have cultural and social group associations.<\/p>\n

Putting it all together, “problematic” was popularized as a choice word for left wing social criticism because it appeals to sensibilities of critics and their audiences, and signals cultural group membership.<\/p>\n

* It literally means that the subject of the sentence causes problems. And those problems may be complicated. I think its a great word to describe complex issues. Problems often have many facets to them.<\/p>\n

* The notion of something being \u2018problematic\u2019 in discourse probably goes back to post-structuralism (\u201cpost-modernist\u201dphilosophers such as Foucault, Spivak, Said, etc.).<\/p>\n

In the wake of such analysts\u2014who showed how our structures of power influence what we consider to be knowledge (or truth)\u2014we grew more conscious of how our language reinforces arbitrary, contingent (and usually unjust) power dynamics in society.<\/p>\n

So, a movement derided as \u2018political correctness\u2019 seeks to undo or reorient the power dynamics by changing the language used in discourse. Problematic labels such as \u2018The handicapped\u2019 or \u2018disabled\u2019 become \u2018people with disabilities\u2019 or \u2018the differently abled\u2019 because defining a group of people by the abstract label society ascribes to it reinforces the implicit \u2018othering\u2019 (and \u2018degrading\u2019) of such labels.<\/p>\n

If a person, like Kevin Spacey or \u2018Cara Dune\u2019 or Roman Polanski, are described as \u2018problematic,\u2019 it is because supporting those people would also reinforce implicitly a condoning (or elevating) of what they \u2018stand for\u2019 in the discourse. Platforming a problematic person does the same, according to this analysis.<\/p>\n

However, as the author Yascha Mounck argued in his recent book those same post-structuralists were ambivalent about such strategies politically, since controlling the discourse is just what Power does, so PC prescriptions are exercises in using \u2018knowledge as power,\u2019 and this might lead to the backlash against the \u2018authoritarian\u2019 prescription of norms and behavior, seen in \u2018cancel culture,\u2019 \u2018deplatforming\u2019 endeavors, and self-censoring and protest culture on college campuses.<\/p>\n

* Four syllables. May be tricky to spell. Good and Bad are so much easier.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Haley Swenson writes for Slate Mar. 24, 2016<\/a>: <\/p>\n

…the word problematic functions not as an opening into these deeper questions, but as a buzzy shortcut. It can allow the speaker to leave out the most critical arguments the audience needs to hear.<\/p>\n

Various riffs on \u201cthat\u2019s problematic\u201d abound in edited, formal publications. A couple months ago, NPR deemed the colonial imagery in Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cWildest Dreams\u201d music video \u201cbeyond problematic.\u201d Slate has used the word at least a half-dozen times, and more than once in a headline. At the satirical Tumblr \u201cEverything Is a Problem,\u201d the author promises to \u201cdispense problematics\u201d on any subject or text readers send her way, offering a few lines of righteous indignation before rating different texts on a \u201cproblem\u201d scale from one to five. A post about the puritanical, infighting tendencies of the left had the title \u201cEntire Human Race Problematic\u2014Left Can\u2019t Work With Them.\u201d Glancing through #problematic on Twitter suggests these satirists aren\u2019t so far off. Sample tweets include \u201cforgot how #problematic Ace Ventura is\u201d and \u201cBeing #WOKE when 99.9% of the planet is a #PROBLEMATIC mess is exhausting. Honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though some seem to take issue with the word\u2019s implied political correctness or hypercritical attitude (see also: \u201c-splaining\u201d and the gender-neutral, singular \u201cthey\u201d), the real weakness of problematic is that it is misleading and vague. Problematic\u2014\u201cconstituting or presenting a problem or difficulty; difficult to resolve; doubtful, uncertain, questionable\u201d\u2014doesn\u2019t actually capture the speaker\u2019s complaint, which is about harm, not difficulty or uncertainty. The speaker is trying to suggest that something in the text constitutes a moral wrong. But problematic undercuts that critique by reframing the issue as a riddle to be unraveled.<\/p>\n

The Oxford English Dictionary points to a problematic, as \u201cA thing that constitutes a problem or an area of difficulty, esp. in a particular field of study.\u201d This kind of problematizing is at the heart of academic inquiry\u2014a collective recognition of the best theories and concepts the field currently offers, and then through research or argument or both, working within and around that best-established knowledge to account for things the field currently cannot. But when people don\u2019t come to a discussion with the same understanding of the best theories of the field, or in the case of pop culture, a shared sense of what makes something offensive and what makes it morally and politically sound, calling something problematic seems to miss the point of argument. Instead of convincing someone a particular idea is a bad one, the arguments that follow \u201cthat\u2019s problematic\u201d tend to merely point out that the text contains an idea thought to be bad.<\/p>\n

In the classroom, some of my most passionate students lean on the phrase when they take issue with a course reading or something insensitive a classmate said. The initially amorphous critique becomes a great place for me to open up discussion, to push the student to articulate his or her problem with something for a diverse crowd of thinkers. \u201cWhat exactly did you think was wrong with what was said?\u201d I might ask.<\/p>\n

But in written work and in the social-media world of quick tweets and posts, \u201cthat\u2019s problematic,\u201d is far more unilateral, and far more of a rhetorical device than a dialogue starter. The phrase creates distance between the critic and the argument, placing the problem\u2014racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.\u2014in the text itself, rather than accounting for the subjective reasons the critic can see the harm the text is doing. Calling a text problematic erases the ways in which it interacts with readers\u2019 own politics and experiences to produce its \u201cproblem.\u201d We don\u2019t get the full picture of harm done when a person of color watches a show about white people appropriating black culture, for instance. Social and cultural critique are only strengthened when the audience understands how the critic came to see something they missed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Teresa M. Bejan wrote for The Atlantic Oct. 2, 2021<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Academics like me love to describe things as \u201cproblematic.\u201d But what do we mean? We\u2019re not saying that the thing in question is unsolvable or even difficult. We\u2019re saying\u2014or implying\u2014that it is objectionable in some way, that it rests uneasily with our prior moral or political commitments.<\/p>\n

For instance, when I described applying Ancient Greek free-speech ideals to social media as \u201cproblematic\u201d in a recent article, I wasn\u2019t saying that Socrates\u2019s audience was impossible to please. I was saying that these practices were premised on exclusion in a way that modern egalitarians won\u2019t like. Or when my Oxford colleague Amia Srinivasan describes stand-up comedy in Los Angeles as \u201cproblematic,\u201d she\u2019s not saying that she struggled to understand the jokes. She\u2019s saying that they relied on sexism in a way that she\u2014and everyone\u2014should find morally bad.<\/p>\n

In principle, every usage of the term problematic should be followed by an explanation. Is the situation or person in question unjust, immoral, or unfair? Racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted? Wrongheaded, perhaps, or just plain wrong? All too often, the explanation never comes.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rony Guldmann writes in his work in progress Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\nThis is why the ethos of disengaged self-control and self-reflexivity would have been inconceivable for pre-moderns. The latter were not \u201cbuffered,\u201d and this is why they could not have \u201cstepped back\u201d from their total teleological immersion into naturalistic lucidity. The anthropocentricity of pre-moderns was in the first instance a function, not of limited knowledge, but of their particular form of agency\u2014the nature of the boundary, or lack thereof, between self and world. The crucial difference between moderns and pre-moderns is not that the former, unlike the latter, believe that their mental states originate in a physiological substratum interacting with the rest of the physical world (producing either \u201cdelight\u201d or \u201cannoyance\u201d as Hobbes says), but that the former, unlike the latter, have a form of consciousness and identity within which this proposition is intelligible in the first place. A pre-modern couldn\u2019t seriously contemplate the thought that \u201cit just feels this way,\u201d not because he was ignorant of his feelings\u2019 causal springs, but because he was porous rather than buffered, because his basic, pre-theoretical experience of the world did not permit any clear-cut distinctions between the inner and the outer, between how things feel and how they are. This is a difference, not of beliefs, but of the pre-deliberative disposition to \u201cdistance\u201d from one\u2019s pre-reflective, pre-theorized layer of experience…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Problematic” is a favorite word among academics but they feel insulted and retreat into silence when you ask them to describe their hero system that renders so much of reality “problematic.” According to the Merriam_Webster dictionary, the third meaning of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t