Introduction

This book is a critical study of a style of thought that claims to expose people as hypocrites and ideas as illusions. It is a study of theorists in their role as unmaskers of falsehood, adjudicators of reality who distinguish between what is authentic and what is fabricated, true and false, good and bad. Unlike the scientific attitude that mandates disinterested enquiry, unmasking comes heavily freighted with moral earnestness and political ambition.

Unmasking matters because it is a powerful current of social theory whose dynamics have eluded close scrutiny. Unmasking is so “natural” that its specific techniques are hard to spot. This book identifies those techniques. Unmasking matters also because it is a fierce, unforgiving and self-righteous force in the wider society and popular culture. What began centuries’ ago as an enterprise of intellectuals, is today a democratic blood sport, relentless and aggressive in its pursuit of another person’s humiliation.