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Catherine Liu

Mirroring and Pseudo-Empathy

Mirroring and Pseudo-Empathy

AI chatbots create the fantasy of the always available, understanding Other. Such pseudotherapy inhibits subjective growth by undermining our abilities to tolerate frustration and promotes regressive, infantile ways of relating to others.

Ending the Spectacle of Infantilism

Ending the Spectacle of Infantilism

The youth mental health crisis speaks to the abnegation of responsibility among adults—liberals and leftists foremost. Unmediated expressions of distress in spectacle-oriented activities must be rejected for a mature, radical politics.

Working Mother

Working Mother

The radical pamphleteer Susannah Wright does not fit neatly into the contemporary feminist imaginary. She is a woman these feminists would like to forget: a woman who understood her class allegiances and fought for the universalism of an objective, shared reality.

Professional Populists in the Culture Wars

Professional Populists in the Culture Wars

The cultural studies revolution rejected universalism and embraced popular culture. This has been a disaster for the humanities and social sciences, but enormously successful in obfuscating growing social inequality and inflating the importance of culture wars.

Are You My Customer?

Are You My Customer?

Recent service industry hero tales like The Menu, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Bear are not crafted for the people whose work they romanticize, but for their bosses, managers and customers. What message are these stories meant to deliver?

Tár Money Grindset

Tár Money Grindset

The culture industry makes fun of classical music even while defending it.

Meritocracy Agonistes

Meritocracy Agonistes

On elite anxieties and the instrumentalization of education.