Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God
Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God

Summary/Abstract: The term “cultural politics” is a useful description of arguments about what words to use. When we say that Frenchmen should stop referring to Germans as “Boches”, or that white people should stop referring to black people as “niggers”, we are practicing cultural politics. We are saying that our socio-political goals—increasing the degree of tolerance that certain groups of people have for one another, in the hope of decreasing the amount of violence and cruelty in the world—will be promoted by abandoning certain linguistic practices. Our opponents, whose socio-political goals may include the permanent subjugation of blacks by whites, or the permanent suspicion of Germany by France, practice cultural politics by insisting on using the very words we think ought to be dropped from the language.

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