 |
| From University of California Press - Yikes! |
I've commented on Duggan before here, focusing mainly on an online summary-excerpt of Mean Girl, as well as here, showcasing how Duggan (contemptuously and dishonestly) responds to challenging inquiries about her work: she is a poison tree from which one cannot expect honest fruits. Having now had the opportunity to see the entirety of Mean Girl, I can point to a number of facts about this book that objectively demolish her intellectual and scholarly credibility.
Duggan quite perfectly epitomizes a subspecies of creature I dub the Rand-basher. I've never encountered an honorable Rand-basher, and no one ever, ever, ever, ever, ever will, for one simple reason: Rand-bashing is an inherently dishonorable activity given the degree of value in Rand's work. I'll name a few telltale characteristics of the Rand-basher, but the fundamental underlying one explaining all the rest is: intellectual dishonesty.
Here are discreditable tactics Rand-bashers invariably engage in:
- Intellectual laziness, or forming opinions without having done one's homework
- Evasion of available evidence running contrary to their opinion; lack of any curiosity to discover such contrary evidence or opinion
- Strawman argumentation style; rejection of the principle of interpretive charity
- Refusal to have a meeting of minds with proponents of an opposing viewpoint, not just on matters of what views they actually hold, but why; neglecting to acknowledge or address the aspects of the opponents' worldview that the opponents consider most fundamental
- Exclusive focus on the weaker proponents of opposing viewpoints when stronger proponents are readily discoverable
- Selective and one-sided acknowledgment or recognition of data points, especially when plenty of other data points providing an alternative or opposing perspective are available
- Replacing substantive argument with any number of informal fallacies or slimy tactics including ad hominem, goalpost-shifting, appeal to or abuse of authority, insults, reckless smears, sneering/snideness, overall nasty tone, obvious bad faith
I begin the list above with reference to laziness, because to any actual expert in Rand's thought, laziness is the strikingly obvious if not defining feature of Duggan's so-called scholarship. There is a now-sizable body of philosophically serious Rand-scholarship, going back decades, which I catalog in rather extensive detail here. Duggan cites from or references pretty much none of what's listed there. That's a serious red flag right there.
You might think that a putative scholar of Rand's thought, whose thesis is set out in a title like Mean Girl, would want to take some care to counter the community of scholars who don't share that opinion. The fact that she makes pretty much no effort whatsoever to engage these scholars is a red flag that this putative scholarship shouldn't be taken seriously.
And it's not like Duggan doesn't consult and cite numerous sources in the endnotes and bibliography. In fact - given that her main focus is on Rand's literary and cultural influence - she does include in the bibliography the three volumes edited by Mayhew (a member of the Ayn Rand Society's steering committee, and acknowledged among the community of Rand experts as an expert) on Rand's three major novels. But not only does she not quote, reference, or cite any of these volumes or its several contributions in the main text or the endnotes, while quoting and citing all kinds of negative comments on these novels, there is no evidence whatsoever that she is seriously familiar with what is in these volumes. (Just for instance, the Gotthelf and Salmieri contributions to the volume of essays on Atlas Shrugged, focused in particular on the Galt speech that is the philosophical centerpiece of the novel, are indispensable contributions for anyone not already familiar with their thematic content. Indeed, there is really no indication whatsoever in Mean Girl that Duggan has any familiarity with the underlying philosophical structure of Objectivism. In that regard, she is not an intellectually serious commentator. Her "summary" of the Galt speech is all of one brief paragraph and conveys none of the philosophical fundamentals in any serious or insightful way beyond anything else she had already said in Mean Girl.)
The only notable additions to the bibliography of secondary sources besides the three edited by Mayhew, are the two volumes Sciabarra is involved in, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical and Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. Now, any expert on this stuff knows how thoroughly (well, exhaustively) researched Russian Radical is - its reference sources include all the Peikoff courses up through the Advanced Seminars on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (I'll get to Peikoff more in a moment, since doing so is downright unavoidable in this context) and lots of other taped material besides - and any expert in this arena is also aware that Sciabarra delves deep into those philosophical fundamentals, particularly Rand's philosophical method (something something "dialectic as the art of context-keeping"; for some details in this blog see here and here) within which all her specific positions/theses, formulations, and applications are inextricably embedded. But Duggan's only mention of this book is as a source for early biographical Rand information (which would be in the first section of Russian Radical). Her only mention of Feminist Interpretations is almost merely in passing and with superficial reference to only a couple of the pieces.
Speaking of mere-in-passing mentions, Peikoff comes up in only two places. The first is one brief paragraph as it relates to all the people Rand supposedly "alienated" thereby leaving "only" Peikoff around to inherit her estate. (Amazingly enough, Duggan manages not to sink to the usual Rand-bashing low of mentioning that Rand accepted Social Security benefits in old age; usually the Rand-bashers do so in a gleeful "gotcha" manner as supposed proof of hypocrisy without bothering to mention or learn about her 1960s essay on government grants and scholarships. Given the general pattern of dishonesty on Duggan's part, perhaps this was a lapse on her part so to speak, or perhaps I missed it.) The other is an inclusion in a "Key Figures" section before the bibliography along with about 10 other people, with about 2 or 3 sentences provided for each.
Now, any serious scholar and expert on Rand knows about the importance of Leonard Peikoff to knowing what's what in Objectivism, including especially that stuff about method (context-keeping, integration, hierarchy, etc.). To mention it for the umpteenth time, she give her very-high-bar-to-clear authorization and endorsement of the 1976 Philosophy of Objectivism course, the most complete and definitive statement of her philosophy in her lifetime. It's not like this and other courses (e.g, Understanding Objectivism) haven't been available, for free, on the Ayn Rand Institute website for some years now, or that Understanding hasn't been available in book form since 2012. The book based on this course (which, not insignificantly, Peikoff considers the definitive statement of Objectivism) is Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991) (a.k.a. OPAR). This isn't among the works listed in the bibliography.
One might think that critics of Rand, interested in getting it right, would be curious to see what a course or book titled Understanding Objectivism by Rand's most qualified student and endorsed teacher/interpreter, is all about. But I have never once encountered the slightest curiosity from Rand-bashers in this regard when I've told them about it and that pretty much all serious long-time students of Objectivism attest to its importance. Such a pattern of behavior falls under any number of the bullet points above.
Listed in the bibliography, meanwhile, is Slavoj Zizek's borderline-to-downright silly article in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. It's the only evidence that Duggan is so much aware that this journal exists. (There are some not-so-silly articles that have appeared over the years in that journal, including this one.) Now, if Duggan were a serious, honest, not-lazy scholar, she would have done her homework by inquiring into what besides Zizek appears in that journal. There are, after all, plenty of pieces in there analyzing Rand from a literary and cultural perspective.
Duggan goes to great lengths in Mean Girl to portray Rand as having a contempt or disregard for "inferior" people, selectively and one-sidedly marshaling "evidence" to that effect (most if not all of it is slippery and snide insinuation based on assuming-the-worst readings of the original texts - this falls under the Strawman bullet-point above). Given the mainly literary context in which Duggan is operating, she draws connections here between Rand and Nietzsche. Now, a couple things Duggan says in connection with Nietzsche: First, he's among the 10 or so included in the "Key Figures" section; the first sentence under his name is, "The work of German philosopher Nietzsche has exerted a profound influence on Western intellectual history," and then mentions that Rand initially admired his critique of religion and Christian morality and his concept of the "Superman," before later rejecting him. But guess who's not included in the "Key Figures" section: Aristotle. Now, Duggan does mention at least a couple times in the main text that Rand was really big on Aristotle. Perhaps the omission of Aristotle from the "Key Figures" section is just another piece of evidence of laziness and/or sloppiness on her part.
But there's also an awfully dubious claim Duggan makes in an endnote (ch.2, note 26) in connection to Nietzsche: "Rand was not a close reader of Nietzsche, but more of a fan, until she eschewed his influence...". Now, in Wiley-Blackwell's Companion to Ayn Rand (Gotthelf and Salmieri, eds., 2016, included in my extensive cataloging of Rand scholarship linked above), Nietzsche scholar/expert Lester Hunt writes a chapter on Rand's relation to Nietzsche. It begins by quoting Rand from author-information material she submitted ca. 1935 to the publisher of We the Living that Also Sprach Zarathustra was her "bible" and that she could never commit suicide as long as it exists. Does that sound like someone who isn't a close reader of Nietzsche? Or: how did she ever happen upon the "noble soul" aphorism from Beyond Good and Evil that she discusses in the 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead (which Duggan obliquely refers to in the same footnote quoted above), without doing some pretty close reading? Not only was Duggan evidently too effing lazy to know about the Companion and its contents, but how can she keep her story straight that a not-close-reader would know about such an aphorism? This is Duggan characteristically playing fast and loose with the facts.
Here's another point of evidence of Duggan's lack of thoroughness and care: she does quote numerous times from Rand's Journals (including a context-omitting discussion of Rand's early comments on the serial killer William Hickman, whom Duggan blatantly-dishonestly asserts in the book's Overview section was an initial basis for Rand's "ruthless 'heroes'"), but there is no mention anywhere in the book of Rand's Letters! There's a shit-ton of material of interest in the Letters. This has direct bearing on the quality of Mean Girl's "scholarship." For instance, in the Overview section there are a couple or so sentences describing the main points of each of the chapters, accompanied by bullet-pointed key concepts or names for each chapter. For chapter 2, covering roughly the 1930s and 1940s of Rand's life/work, one of the bullet points, in addition to ones like 'Marriage to Frank O'Connor,' 'Anthem,' and 'The Fountainhead', is 'Isabel Paterson.' Now, for one thing, the mentions of Paterson in the chapter are pretty much in passing, conveying merely that she was the main mentor-figure to Rand in the '30s and '40s, and that she wrote a book titled The God of the Machine (1943). Now, in the Letters, there are two sizable chapters containing Rand's correspondence with two key figures: Paterson and John Hospers. (Hospers isn't mentioned in Mean Girl. Suffice it to say that this well-respected professional philosopher, expert in aesthetics, and big fan of Atlas Shrugged didn't regard Rand as "mean," whatever criticisms he did have of her.) One of Rand's letters in connection with Paterson was one praising The God of the Machine as the best book in political philosophy in 300 years and a decisive antidote to The Communist Manifesto. Duggan declares somewhere in Mean Girl that Rand's understanding of capitalism and markets is fundamentally deficient, but it's safe to say that Rand's understanding aligns with that of God of the Machine. It's also safe to say that Duggan is too lazy to have known about this, or what's in that book. Also in the Letters is Rand's ca. 1980 letter of reference for Leonard Peikoff as eminently qualified to teach her ideas, although I doubt Duggan cares to know this or its relevance.
In her discussion of Atlas Shrugged, Duggan neglects to mention its theme ("the role of the mind in man's existence." Gallingly, she makes reference to the novel's "civilizational theme" as echoing the one that "shapes Anthem." About Anthem, Duggan manages to at least make reference to "individual initiative" and "innovation," and then says, "The civilizational framework and character descriptions in Anthem are inscribed in a pervasive hierarchy [this is the prose of a pretentious twit, BTW] of mental and physical ability that intertwines with racial, class, and moral differences in all Rand's fiction." So even when she kind-of touches upon the role-of-the-mind theme running throughout Rand's work, she poisons it with a discussion of a supposedly "racial" makeup to Rand's heroes (which she does at numerous points throughout Mean Girl, it's pretty disgusting).
When she bothers to discuss Rand's nonfiction writings, she does the following:
It's evident that she didn't bother to go through Rand's 'Objectivist Newsletter/The Objectivist/Ayn Rand Letter' collections, but rather only the anthologized books.
Now, she shows familiarity with at least the first essay in For the New Intellectual (1961), but also in FTNI are the speeches from her novels introduced by explicit discussions of their themes, which as I've said Duggan neglects to show any deep familiarity with. (Ask Rand-bashers what the theme of Atlas Shrugged is, without cheating, and they'd never properly guess it in a million years. I know this from experience.)
When she discusses The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) anthology, the one essay she discusses is the "Racism" one. Duggan used this as an opportunity to bring up in the usual smeary Rand-basher ways Rand's supposed views on "the erasure on indigenous peoples, restriction on immigration from more 'primitive' parts of the world, and the persistence of sharp racial inequality in the 'private' economic and social spheres [as] part and parcel of her system of rational morality, even as she opposed state-imposed racial (and sex) discrimination." Actually, an honest scholar discussing what is part and parcel of Rand's system of rational morality would at the very least make mention of the general points of the lead essay in The Virtue of Selfishness, "The Objectivist Ethics."
The same vice marks her treatment of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967). Instead of demonstrating real and serious familiarity with the lead essay, "What is Capitalism?", she focuses instead (for a short paragraph) on the essay "The Wreckage of the Consensus," only to mention Rand's positive reference to Reagan's speech nominating Goldwater in '64 "as a promising new direction for electoral politics - a new direction her influence helped to shape." Big whoop. What's really the meat and bones is what's in the lead essay. For one thing, Rand gives her definition of capitalism there. Duggan doesn't mention this definition anywhere, although she provides her own in the Glossary.
If all the laziness and sloppiness weren't in evidence enough, her discussion of The Romantic Manifesto (1969/1971), a work one might reasonably think is crucial to grasping Rand's literary aesthetic, is all of one sentence.
This is growing tiresome. It's all too obvious that Duggan doesn't possess the intellectual/philosophical wherewithal to provide an insightful analysis of Rand's philosophy. She leaves out way too many crucial sources that would shed a positive light on, and foster understanding of, Rand. The length of the book is all of about 100 pages, and many topics are covered all to briefly to provide much if any useful information for serious inquirers. A book accomplishing that task would have to be considerably longer than this, and there are already numerous books on Rand out there that provide way more value than this one does. If there were constraints on publishing length limiting this to 100 or so pages, on that basis alone it is perhaps better that it not be published at all. Or, if one were to assign Rand to a scholar in some academic 'Brief Introductions' series without butchering the subject, I can think of many - even relatively mediocre ones - who are way more qualified than Duggan. No serious expert on Rand's thought can possibly think this book meets even minimum quality standards. The dishonest title, if nothing else, is a dead giveaway that it's nothing more than a hatchet-job rather than a minimally decent attempt at being fair, objective, enlightening, or anything of the sort. Its only use is as a foil case contra serious Rand scholarship and a lesson in how not to be taken seriously (which is the only point in going through the trouble of making this post). I'll link again to another post demonstrating what high-quality Rand scholarship looks like.
In this post I haven't done much to show what Duggan actually does say about Rand in Mean Girl, but I've already discussed the gist of that in the post linked at the beginning of this one, and there's plenty there to show just how shoddy her work is - along with that second link revealing the level of intellectual and moral character behind this work. Along with fundamental dishonesty, her other main character flaw, along with so many other leftists and "progressives," is hubris.
I'm going to close by removing any possible remaining doubts about Duggan's honesty and credibility. The key context of Duggan's hatchet-job is that, like most Rand-bashers, and most of the very worst and nastiest of them, she is a leftist/anti-capitalist. The very same dishonest tactics these creatures use to recklessly attack and smear Rand are used likewise to attack and smear capitalism. If the following isn't the last nail in the coffin as far as Duggan's (and their) credibility goes, I don't know what is.
In the preface, Duggan asserts (as does the typical nasty leftist) that "From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal [i.e., more or less capitalist] politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political climate Ayn Rand celebrated - the reign of brutal capitalism - intensified." Now, aside from the rather ludicrous claim that Rand's philosophy in its actual neo-Aristotelian essentials has even so much as come close to exerting its proper neo-Aristotelian influence on the culture (as in, what actually would take place if everyone absorbed and practiced the principles espoused in Galt's speech and OPAR), the factual claim about expanding global inequality is false and can only be the product of a reckless and willful ignorance of the data.
The only serious question remaining at this point is how someone like Duggan and her ilk (this includes all the ignorant fools - willing if not eager dupes - who positively blurbed this trash) could have ended up with the positions in the academy that they occupy, filling publications and student's heads with garbage. It is precisely because of entities like these that the academy has taken the widely-loathed, ever-leftward and therefore ever-inbred and pro-dishonesty path of recent years. Upon comprehensive exposure of their blatant dishonesty, I recommend sardonic ridicule as the next appropriate course of action. Is it really too much to ask that these creeps clean up their act?
