In the past few years, cultural critics, political commentators, and social scientists have increasingly converged in claiming that a certain constellation of recently emergent phenomena—especially in the Western or Anglophone world, especially at universities and colleges, and especially on the political left—constitutes a novel, significant, and perplexing development in contemporary culture and politics. I argue that this phenomenon, which I term “Social Justice Leftism” (SJL), is essentially political and, after surveying various critical accounts of the phenomenon and finding them all wanting (Chapter 1), I offer my own account. The core of my account is the thesis that SJL and its characteristic features are best explained in terms of the political philosophy or ideology that I call “Deconstructive Postmodernist Leftism” (DPL), and that all of the features of SJL found puzzling by critics turn out to be straightforwardly predictable in this light.

In Chapter 2, I explain Derridean deconstruction for the uninitiated, since it is perhaps the most uncompromising and exemplary form of deconstructive postmodernism. In doing so, I intervene in an ongoing debate about the relation between deconstruction and normative theory. My goal here was to explicate the “D” in “DPL” and to give readers an “insider’s” understanding of deconstruction and its logic, so as to provide a basis for understanding DPL. Chapter 3 is something of an interlude, in which I provide a more detailed sketch of the logic of DPL in light of Chapter 2’s explication of deconstruction. Specifically, I talk about the “P” and “L” in “DPL”, I examine the status of leftist theory in academia today—including the meaning of “critical theory” and related terms—and I explain why I chose a “case study” approach for Chapter 4.

In Chapter 4, I conduct a case study of Laclau & Mouffe’s (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Intended as a postmodernist intervention in the (Marxist) foundations of leftist theory, this work exemplifies in remarkably honest fashion the nature and limits of DPL. I build on this in Chapter 5 to explain what I mean by CCEIP (“coalitional, common-enemy identity politics”) and why any DPL politics, such as SJL, must be a form of CCEIP. I also explain why DPL CCEIP entails what I call the “Core Practical Paradox of identity politics”—which in turn is explanatory for the SJL phenomena covered in the next chapter. In Chapter 6, I explore various aspects of SJL in light of it being a form of DPL CCEIP, resolving any remaining puzzles. In particular, I examine in detail SJL’s necessary features (grouped under “identitarian politicization”) and its contingent features (grouped under “silencing”) as following from DPL.

Finally, in Chapter 7, I provide some personal context for this project and its origins, and I explore the question of the relation between DPL/SJL and political violence. I do this primarily by way of a mini case study of Giorgio Agamben’s 1970 essay “On the Limits of Violence”, which is an exemplarily DPL treatment of the topic of political violence. I then conclude with a comparison between political liberalism and contemporary political leftism and a clarification of the choice confronting liberals and leftists in this historical moment.