Word: polemicize
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The articles in "Ms." occasionally lapse into polemic. A piece on "Men's Cycles" is more concerned with exploding the myth of male biological stability than with mitigating the effects of human cycles. The thesis that violence is a 'masculine' way of solving conflict is self-righteously assumed by a...
Yet bursts of shaky rhetoric can be excused. "Ms." should in no sense be construed as just a gaggle of paranoid women sounding off. If the writing seems overly forceful in places, it arises from the conviction that shouting works better than subtlety. Women must pass beyond the limitations of...
Schrag is correct, if obvious, in decrying "conformity." He may even be partially correct in blaming conformity on the WASP. But in calling for "diversity and dissent," he fails to supply enough of these qualities to his own polemic. And what would he propose for a WASP-free America? After...
The later chapters are less autobiography than polemic. The tone swings wildly from bitterness to defiance, from humor to cant, from wisdom to frenzy. The gentlest statement about whites is that "all white people need to be taken out of power, but they all clearly are not evil." The only...
Mary McCarthy, grande dame of the old American left, assures us in the afterward that Revel is only a pamphleteer. Recognizing this we can all chuckle indulgently at his excesses and inadequacies. After all, he exploits them in the name of the polemic. But petty Gallic charm cannot substantiate his...