Welcome to Doomscroll. My returning guest is Catherine Liu, a professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class.
I sat down with professor Liu to discuss some of the themes of her recent lecture at MoMA PS1, an art museum in New York City. Liu explores the psychological significance of “trauma” and “care” within the liberal discourse today. These topics will be part of her forthcoming book Traumatized!, to be published by Verso Books early next year.
If you’ve spent time around cultural institutions, universities, Hollywood, the mainstream media, or even the Democratic party, you have undoubtedly noticed a moral panic among elites. Unlike conservative panics of the past, this recent wave has fixated on a doctrine of progressive values. It attempts to use the language of personal therapy to right social and historical wrongs. Unmistakably, this emphasis on individual compassion has been used to obfuscate the unprecedented level of inequality that characterizes the daily life so many Americans.
I was pleasantly surprised to come across a press release from MoMA PS1 earlier this spring;
…critical theorist Catherine Liu discusses shortcomings of the “trauma script,” the idea of publicizing trauma to engender political expression and action. A prominent critic of liberalism, Liu discusses the value of trauma within the cultural realm and the decomodification of mental health.
Liu’s scholarship offers a means to critique the ideological frameworks of cultural industries today, addressing elite capture and the obfuscation of political struggle.
Having participated in cultural institutions for the past decade, I don’t think I can recall another lecture that discussed the CIA overthrowing the democratic election of Salvador Allende in Chile and the mental health disciplines pioneered under the neoliberal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Honestly, it was a great talk and Catherine’s work is invaluable.
Founded in 1971, PS1 is a contemporary art museum in the Queens borough of NYC. In 2000, it affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art. If you’re not familiar with these worlds, people generally visit MoMA to see historic works like Van Gogh’s Starry Night and visit PS1 to see work by artists who are making stuff now, such as Diane Severin Nguyen or Kayode Ojo in the recent survey exhibition “Greater New York”. (This is not a hard rule but you get it).
In recent years, elites have sought to erect an inscrutable facade that hid historic levels of inequalities behind a moral veneer of trauma, care and social justice. For some time, this rhetoric of activism and mental health worked to defuse broad structural critiques of elite capture and to obfuscate political struggle. During this strange period, the 21st century robber barons sounded more progressive than the subjects they tyrannically ruled over.
In 2021, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ private space enterprise, included several paintings by artist Amoako Boafo on its interstellar voyage. Blue Origin released a statement that read;
We’re honored to fly Amoako’s works of art to space and back on board New Shepard. His stunning portraits capture Black joy and the kind of shared future we hope to create for us all in space: vibrant, beautiful, and full of wonder.
In 2025, priorities have shifted. Tech-oligarchs lined up at the inauguration to show deference to Donald Trump. Bezos has reformulated the editorial section of the Washington Post and says;
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.
(Surely, Bezos does not mean the traditional notion of a free market as defined Adam Smith, who as far back as 1776 in his canonical text The Wealth of Nations demonstrated that rents were an economic drain on the productive capacity of liberal societies — because this would be in conflict with the anti-competitive practices currently employed by Amazon?)
Alongside the whiplash of the tech realignment, cultural institutions are shifting as well. Some members of these institutions hold a commitment to socialism. Others have at least recognized that the retreat from liberal values has worked to erode institutional influence and legitimacy. Critical theorists such as Catherine Liu have been essential in revealing these underlying class structures and exposing the ideology and psychology of today’s elites.
The future of our institutions is uncertain. While the robber barons have quickly pledged allegiance to the National Conservative right, the alignment of our intellectual class could shift in a few ways:
Pivoting from the hyper-progressivism of the last few years, cultural elites might once again embrace transgression, taboo-breaking and other social libertarian provocations. Certain artists and writers will feel much more at home in this familiar cultural paradigm of the 90s and early 00’s. We could see a return to the consensus that, as a creative, it is your job to “break the rules” of polite society. I’m not opposed to these forms of art but I don’t mistake them for material redistribution.
The intractable patronage structure of the arts and other elites spheres could mean that they remain committed to gender and race reductivism. These big donor relationships all but necessitate that institutions obscure an analysis of class and material inequality. As Liu argues, the themes of “trauma” and “care” emerged because they are compatible with progressive neoliberalism. These NGO led movements remain well resourced, hold institutional power and will not readily subside.
Optimistically, our institutions could once again become bastions of democratic deliberation and debate. As we discuss in this week’s episode, we are currently so distant from any path to socialism that the near term struggle may simply be to restore the values of high liberalism within our eroding institutions. There are few spaces in society that are truly insulated from the market. In a world dominated by platforms, this is what makes institutional spaces so important — within these structures exists the possibility of radical thought that can not appear anywhere else in society. These discursive spaces could serve as the germination of a new politics that leads to a radical reformation.
Unlike several of our European counterparts, like Italy, Poland, Hungary and others, I do not foresee a turn toward national chauvinism within American high culture. Our institutions are not run by the state.
As is the case with most exercises in future-casting, it is likely that we will see all of these developments to varying degrees. As William Gibson famously said, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”
American institutions could schism into separate tracks of elite production, split between red and blue, that draw upon separate networks of patronage and work to uphold distinct and non-transferable values. As these groups begin to splinter, they will struggle amongst each other for resources, cultural dominance and prestige.
From the socialist left, part of our project right now is to make an unflinching critique of liberal irrationality. If we want to have a strong institutional foothold, something that will be necessary for the struggle to come, we need to clearly argue the case as to why we would better enact the popular will and serve the public’s trust in contrast to our liberal counterparts.
The full episode with Catherine Liu is out today:
Catherine Liu: the Psychology of Liberalism | Doomscroll
Lastly, some good and related news, friend of the pod Jen Pan, author of Selling Social Justice, is the #1 bestseller on Verso Books since our episode published on May 13th. This is almost certainly due to your support. I wanted to share this info to say that we are making some waves with this project and people are taking notice. We plan to continue and to go even harder.
This week’s newsletter is a bit longer than most episode descriptions I send out. As the audience for the show continues to grow larger, I’ve enjoyed using this space to speak directly to the core audience. I think it helps to show the vision and scope of this project.
It’s also necessary to earn your trust (you, the reader). If we hope to move past doctrinal purity, we must once again put faith in the ability of people to make up their own minds. This is a deep commitment to (lower case “d”) democracy. As we have seen in recent years, if progressives foreclose the ability of regular people to decide things for themselves, we cede the ground to an even stronger authoritarianism from the right. I think you deserve the full explanation of what we are trying to do here. If you feel aligned with this mission, I encourage you to pledge your support:
Supporters can also watch this week’s bonus episode with Catherine Liu. Your contribution allows me to keep making this series:
“doctrinal purity” and Liu describing the affect were brilliant takes. Her post Freudian analysis and speaking to anality in relation to “fragile eggs”—one of my favorites interview from the Joe Rogan of the left.
Fantastic interview. Just finished Liu's "Virtue Hoarders" over the long weekend, so the timing could not be more perfect. Looking forward to reading Jen's book next. This is without a doubt my favorite project. I wish I was in a position to support it more.