Discourse is at the heart of social justice: the idea human beings are not free actors in the world, but are instead constrained by language, in the form of discourses that have been established over time. And we do not create our identities freely: who we our is our experiences of different discourses - discourses like race, gender, nationality, and so forth.

Discourses are power relations. They conflict with one another - feminism versus patriarchy, for instance. They, not we, are the dominant actors in the world. We are the landscape on which they struggle, and the territory that they conquer. We are possessed by discourses. Discourses, as it were, are the demons of social justice.

In such a world of conflict, power comes from controlling what people say. Censorship is not a convenient tactic of social justice, it is central to the social justice world view.

This is the final episode of season one of this podcast. The theme of the season has been social justice. Nearly every episode implicitly critiques an aspect of social justice. But the pandemic has revealed that social justice is not the cause of the situation we're in. It shows that something more fundamental is at work - something that is manifesting in both social justice and the authoritarian response to Covid.

I will be pausing now. When I return with new episodes, for season two, I will be looking beyond social justice. I expect I will be looking at technology, technocracy and the narrative of progress.

 This episode excerpts Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, 3rd edition, by John Hartley.