Brown outlined the basic program that still dominates culture in the West. We see it at work in postmodern academic theory, which reigns in universities and provides the intellectual underpinnings for multiculturalism. This theory teaches that social norms and cultural ideals are manifestations of primitive impulses and instinctual urges: sexual desires, will to power, self-interest, lust for domination, class oppression, and so forth. Even our selfish goals—to look thin or to dress for success—get analyzed as social constructs, serving, perhaps, to sustain patriarchy, “late capitalism,” or
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