Who says MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Socialist Scientism (SHASS) lacks inventiveness?

SHASS is blessed with an endowed chair in French Studies, currently occupied by Sorbonne-trained scholar Bruno Perreau. He is carrying forward the legacy of French philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Camus, and Sartre, who helped spread Postmodernism, Queer Theory, Critical Theory, and Nihilism around the world like a monkeypox plague.

Professor Perrea invented a new theory called intrasectionality, the latest entry in the Word-Salad Hall of Fame. It joins its sister theory intersectionality, which gave us gems like Queers for Palestine.

Last week he conducted a “Spheres of Injustice” seminar hosted by MIT’s Women & Gender Studies program, where he expounded on his new invention.

Intrasectionality moves beyond identity-based analysis to focus on structural substitutability and legal transferability. Perreau argues that “legal provisions that protect gender can be used to protect race; those that protect disability can protect age, sexual orientation, or class, and so on.” This represents what he calls a “solidarist vision of identity“ that moves away from the more fragmentary approach of intersectionality.

Perrea is trying his best to reduce destructive competition among favored identity groups fighting over the spoils of the DEI system, while resisting the reactionary blitzkrieg currently bombing it to smithereens.

Like all classic French generals, the good professor finds himself fighting the last war. We wish him luck defending his intrasectional Maginot Line. And, once again, we wonder why a jamoke like this is polluting minds at the world’s leading STEM university.

Story suggested by the GCWS Feminist Newsletter