In Defense of Quillette
It’s not perfect. No site is. But the criticisms are out of proportion to whatever sins the publication is guilty of.
Quillette, the Claire Lehmann-led, template-defying indie publication success story offering, among other things, medium- to long-form social science countertakes, was always going to provoke an intense backlash.
It makes perfect sense that it would. Quillette exists because there is a gap in the commentary market, a gap intentionally maintained by media forces who think very little of the views in question. So the very reason the gap exists explains, but also perfectly predicts, the criticism Quillette attracts. The site occupies an area underserved by existing outlets. But that area is underserved precisely because the major editorial forces in control of curating our philosophical and political options have disqualified the positions Quillette authors take up. (Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for not-so-good reasons.) I am not claiming that, were it not for Quillette, these ideas wouldn’t see the light of day; but I do think they’d be less available, less accessible. If the perspectives they published were already being published, there would be no need for Quillette to exist.
There are legitimate gripes one can have with any opinion site, Quillette included. My colleague, for example, has offered a methodological rather than an ideological challenge to an article they ran — he has engaged their work on its merits.
Other critiques I come across, however, basically stem from an antecedent distaste toward the views the site is willing to publish. Of course, it’s off-putting when publications get asymmetrically scrutinized. All opinion sites, due to the very nature of publishing essays that take positions, are guilty of missteps. Anyone who runs a commentary site can attest to the fact that striking the right tone, adopting the right frame, supplying the right amount of counter-argumentation is hard to do consistently. Yet some disagreeable point…
