“The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer

“The Intersectional Politics of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer first appeared in 2018 in the European Journal of Politics and Gender, Volume 1, Issue 3 (pp. 405–420). In this incisive contribution to feminist political theory and critical discourse studies, O’Dwyer critiques the emerging literature on post-truth politics—especially the conceptual framing of “bullshit”—for failing to account for how structures of race and gender shape both the production and reception of political falsehoods. Drawing on the Brexit campaign as a case study, O’Dwyer argues that bullshit is not simply a detached rhetorical strategy but is profoundly intersectional: it is racialized, gendered, and classed, benefiting some privileged actors (like Boris Johnson and George Osborne) while punishing others (e.g., Diane Abbott). The article blends Frankfurt’s theory of bullshit with feminist theories of performativity (Butler, 1997; Fraser, 1989) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins & Bilge, 2016), demonstrating how bullshit succeeds in part because it aligns with preexisting norms of authority, whiteness, masculinity, and elite status. O’Dwyer’s work is significant in literary and political theory because it reframes “bullshit” not merely as epistemic insouciance but as a political performance that reinforces dominant hierarchies. The article stands as a foundational text for any research agenda that seeks to understand post-truth politics through the lenses of feminist and critical race theory.

Summary of “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer

🔍 Understanding Bullshit in Post-Truth Politics

Definition: Bullshit is “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, which is indifferent to facts” (Hopkin & Rosamond, 2017, p. 2; Frankfurt, 2005).
Context: Emerges from the decline of traditional party politics and the rise of individualised, performative rhetoric in Western democracies (Hopkin & Rosamond, 2017).

Problem: Existing bullshit literature ignores how gender, race, and class shape who can “bullshit” successfully and with impunity.

⚖️ Intersectionality as Analytical Framework

Key Claim: Analysing bullshit without race and gender considerations weakens explanatory power (O’Dwyer, 2018).
Intersectional Lens: Moves beyond binaries (e.g., male/female) to include class, race, nationality, etc. (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins & Bilge, 2016).

Example: White, elite male politicians are often perceived as more credible and face fewer consequences for falsehoods than women or racialized individuals (Piston et al., 2018).

👩‍🎓 Feminist Approach to Bullshit

Bullshit ≠ Lies: Liars acknowledge truth; bullshitters are indifferent to it (Frankfurt, 2005).
Gendered Performance: Politicians perform gender that shapes how their statements are received (Butler, 1997; Kahn, 1992).

Authority Bias: Masculinity and whiteness amplify perceived legitimacy of speech acts (Huddy & Terkildsen, 1993).

“Bullshit is simply a new form of privileged rhetoric and communication” (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 407).

🎭 Bullshitters in the Brexit Campaign

Case Study Focus: Boris Johnson (Leave) and George Osborne (Remain).

Privilege Enables Bullshit: Both are white, elite, Oxbridge-educated men insulated by race, gender, and class (Younge, 2018).
Counterpoint: Diane Abbott (Black woman MP) faced harsh consequences for minor errors—highlighting double standards in bullshit tolerance (Cole, 2017).

“Only some people are equipped with the prestige and authority to bullshit without consequence” (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 416).

🧠 Bullshit Content: Racialised and Gendered Tropes

NHS Bus Claim: £350m/week for NHS was false but effective due to racialised tropes of “foreigners exploiting the system” (Rickard, 2016).
White Victimhood: The Leave campaign constructed white working-class grievance to obscure neoliberal causes of inequality (Emejulu, 2016).
Austerity & Gender: Osborne’s “machonomics” (Watson, 2017) relied on assumptions that women would absorb state retrenchment burdens.

“The claim…is deeply connected to this trope of migrants…taking advantage of the NHS” (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 414).

📉 Consequences of Bullshit Politics

Racist Backlash: Post-Brexit racism surged (Burnett, 2017; Gayle, 2018).
Gendered Fallout: Brexit exacerbated gender inequality—particularly for women of colour (Guerrina & Masselot, 2018).
Silencing: Marginalised groups excluded from discourse both during and after the campaign.

“Bullshit continues to structure the debate…to the exclusion of these consequences” (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 416).

🔚 Conclusion: Power, Privilege, and Post-Truth

Core Argument: Bullshit is a political weapon enabled by privilege. Its success depends on who speaks, how they speak, and how society hears them.
Call to Action: Any study of post-truth must centre intersectionality to grasp the deep structural inequalities embedded in bullshit rhetoric.

“The research agenda…must explore how some people have easier access to the rhetorical tool of bullshit” (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 417).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer

🔑 Term / Symbol	📘 Explanation (as used in the article)	📎 In-Text References
💬 Bullshit	Describes political speech that is indifferent to truth and deployed strategically. Used in campaigns like Brexit to evoke emotion rather than fact, often grounded in racial and nationalist tropes.	(Frankfurt, 2005; O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 405)
⚖️ Intersectionality	Framework for analyzing how overlapping systems like race, gender, and class influence experiences. Used to show who can “bullshit” without consequences.	(Crenshaw, 1991; O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 407–408)
👥 Performativity	The repeated enactment of social norms like gender and race. O’Dwyer uses it to explain how political authority is performed through elite white masculinity.	(Butler, 1997; O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 410)
🧠 Epistemic Authority	Refers to who is believed or considered credible. The article shows how this is unequally distributed, favoring elite white men.	(O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 416–417)
📉 Machonomics	Austerity rhetoric shaped by hyper-masculine, rational economic discourse. Women’s unpaid labour is rendered invisible in this frame.	(Watson, 2017; O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 415)
🎭 Political Performance	Politics as a staged act of identity. O’Dwyer examines how figures like Boris Johnson perform whiteness and nationalism to legitimise their bullshit.	(O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 411–413)
🗣️ Authorised Speech	Describes which voices are socially allowed to speak and be believed. Privileged actors can get away with bullshit; marginalized ones cannot.	(Fraser, 1989; O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 416)
📺 Post-Truth Politics	A discourse where feelings matter more than facts. O’Dwyer critiques this idea for failing to consider how structural power shapes bullshit’s success.	(O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 406)
🧱 Structural Privilege	Refers to systemic advantages enjoyed by certain groups (e.g., white, wealthy, male). Explains why some actors can repeatedly lie without losing legitimacy.	(O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 409)

Contribution of “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer to Literary Theory/Theories

🎭 To Performance Theory

O’Dwyer draws on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to argue that political bullshit is not just rhetorical but performed in gendered and racialized ways (Butler, 1997).
Political figures like Boris Johnson succeed in bullshitting not because of content, but due to their performances of elite masculinity and whiteness, which are socially read as authoritative (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 410).

Contribution: Extends Butlerian performativity to the realm of political discourse, illustrating how performative privilege enables rhetorical impunity.

🧠 To Epistemic Literary Theory / Critical Race Epistemology

Challenges traditional conceptions of truth and authority by emphasizing that epistemic credibility is racialized and gendered.
Black women like Diane Abbott are not only scrutinized more harshly, but also denied the epistemic authority granted to white male counterparts (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 416–417).

Contribution: Brings intersectional epistemology into post-truth discourse, showing how literary and rhetorical authority are unevenly distributed based on identity.

⚖️ To Intersectional Feminist Literary Theory

Applies intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) to expose how literary constructs like “bullshit” are not neutral but deeply structured by gender, race, and class (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 407–408).
The article critiques how most “post-truth” literature fails to interrogate who is allowed to lie, perform, or mislead with impunity.

Contribution: Reorients post-truth studies toward feminist literary critique by demanding analysis of who controls the narrative.

🗣️ To Discourse and Ideology Critique (Foucaultian Framework)

Engages with authorized speech (Fraser, 1989) to explore who is allowed to speak and be believed.
Suggests that “bullshit” is an ideological tool — a discursive practice sustained by structures of dominance, rather than merely rhetorical flourish (O’Dwyer, 2018, p. 416).

Contribution: Aligns with Foucault’s idea that discourse is a mechanism of power, not just communication, making this article relevant to ideological literary theory.

📉 To Political Rhetoric and Literary Form

Demonstrates that bullshit functions as a genre—one marked by emotional appeal, performativity, and detachment from factual coherence.
Emphasizes its formal and stylistic tropes, especially repetition, exaggeration, and vague metaphors (e.g., “take back control”).

Contribution: Proposes that bullshit constitutes a literary form that should be analyzed through stylistic and political lenses.

📺 To Postmodern/Post-Truth Literary Theory

Questions the premise of post-truth theory that all truths are contested, by grounding the success of bullshit in material inequalities rather than epistemic relativism.
Argues that not everyone’s lies are equally accepted — challenging the flat relativism found in some postmodern thought (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 406–407).

Contribution: Offers a materialist corrective to post-truth literary theory by injecting intersectional critique into the analysis of truth and rhetoric.

🧱 To Structuralist/Post-Structuralist Theory

Builds on the idea that meaning and power are structurally coded by showing that bullshit succeeds because it resonates with existing social narratives of whiteness, masculinity, and British nationalism (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 413–414).
Highlights how these structural codes operate beneath language to enable political speech acts.

Contribution: Provides a post-structuralist analysis of meaning-making in political bullshit that incorporates race and gender structures.

Examples of Critiques Through “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer

📘 Work & Author	🧠 Critique Through The Intersectional Politics of Bullshit
🧨 Biography of X — Catherine Lacey (Novel, 2023)	A fictional biography that manipulates memory and truth. The narrator reconstructs a queer icon’s life with confident authority. O’Dwyer’s theory reveals this as privileged bullshit: a truth-agnostic performance legitimized by whiteness and cultural capital (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 409–416).
🩸 Yellowface — R.F. Kuang (Novel, 2023)	This biting satire explores racial theft and white authorship. The white protagonist’s lies are embraced by the industry, exposing how bullshit is institutionally enabled when it aligns with whiteness and market expectations—core to O’Dwyer’s framework (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 406–407).
❄️ The Art of Breaking Ice — Rachael Mead (Short Story, 2023)	A story of female explorers erased from Antarctic history. National myths operate as institutional bullshit: they obscure gendered exclusion through performative neutrality. O’Dwyer’s critique reveals how state and literary narratives conspire to silence (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 413–414).
🌇 The Morningside — Téa Obreht (Novel, 2024)	In a speculative future New York plagued by climate collapse, housing, power, and truth are controlled by elite systems. Obreht’s layered world-building uses bureaucratic jargon and elite rhetoric—ideal examples of state bullshit, as theorized by O’Dwyer. Those in power manipulate narratives without consequence, while the displaced struggle to be believed (O’Dwyer, 2018, pp. 412–414).

Criticism Against “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer

❓ 1. Conceptual Overreach

O’Dwyer’s application of “bullshit” to encompass race, class, and gender risks diluting the analytical clarity of Frankfurt’s original epistemic definition.
Critics may argue that her intersectional expansion transforms a linguistic-philosophical concept into a political metaphor, losing specificity in favor of critique.

⚠️ 2. Lack of Empirical Grounding

The article offers a compelling theoretical framework but lacks systematic empirical data or interviews to demonstrate how bullshit is differently received based on race/gender.
Critics from political science may call this a “theory-heavy” essay with insufficient real-world validation beyond a few high-profile examples (e.g., Boris Johnson, Diane Abbott).

📏 3. Ambiguity in Measuring ‘Bullshit’

While Frankfurt (2005) provides a functional definition of bullshit, O’Dwyer extends the term to include institutional discourse and campaign narratives without clear criteria.

This may invite methodological vagueness: how do we distinguish bullshit from ideology, spin, or rhetorical style?

🧩 4. Intersectionality as Overdetermined

Some critics may argue that O’Dwyer treats intersectionality as a totalizing lens, risking the erasure of agency or individual variance.
There’s minimal attention to counterexamples—e.g., women or racialized individuals who successfully use bullshit or resist its structures.

🧠 5. Under-theorized Role of the Audience

While the article emphasizes who can speak bullshit, it pays less attention to how audiences interpret or resist it.
Reception theory scholars might critique the absence of reader-listener agency, reducing political communication to elite speech acts alone.

🧱 6. Structural Determinism

O’Dwyer strongly links rhetorical success to structural privilege, which, while grounded in truth, might be critiqued as overly deterministic.

This may limit the explanatory range when analyzing nuanced or subversive uses of rhetoric by marginalized speakers.

📚 7. Limited Literary Engagement

Despite borrowing from literary theory (e.g., Butler, Fraser), the article does not engage with narrative or literary fiction in depth.
Critics from literary studies might view it as a missed opportunity to apply its framework to literature, performance, or media discourse.

Representative Quotations from “The Intersectional Politics Of Bullshit” by Muireann O’Dwyer with Explanation

📝 Quotation	💡 Explanation
1. “Bullshit is simply a new form of privileged rhetoric and communication.” (p. 407)	O’Dwyer asserts that bullshit functions not as careless speech but as a structured privilege that benefits elite actors—particularly white, wealthy men.
2. “Only some people are equipped with the prestige and authority to bullshit without consequence.” (p. 416)	This highlights how epistemic privilege shapes who can mislead and still be taken seriously—reinforcing structural inequality.
3. “Post-truth politics is racialised, gendered, and classed.” (p. 407)	The article challenges the neutrality of the “post-truth” label, arguing that social location determines whose lies are tolerated or exposed.
4. “Diane Abbott is not afforded the opportunity to perform her authority as her white, male colleagues are.” (p. 417)	A clear example of intersectional analysis in action: Abbott’s mistakes are penalized more harshly than those of her elite male peers.
5. “The figure of the migrant was deployed to make sense of austerity, to personify the failings of the state.” (p. 414)	Illustrates how bullshit narratives racialize blame, especially during the Brexit campaign.
6. “Truth claims are policed, and differentially so.” (p. 407)	Emphasizes that not all speakers are treated equally when they assert facts—truth itself is governed by power structures.
7. “Bullshit continues to structure the debate… to the exclusion of these consequences.” (p. 416)	Notes how bullshit shapes public discourse in a way that ignores or erases the material impacts on marginalized groups.
8. “Performativity is not just a theatrical metaphor, but a material reality with political implications.” (p. 410)	O’Dwyer links Butlerian performativity with political communication, showing how identity affects rhetorical success.
9. “Political bullshit works because it reproduces dominant norms.” (p. 408)	The success of bullshit depends on its alignment with hegemonic discourses—such as nationalism, whiteness, or masculinity.
10. “Bullshit is the performance of sincerity without the obligation to truth.” (paraphrased from p. 405–406)	A foundational statement linking Frankfurt’s theory to intersectional critique: bullshit appears authentic but is indifferent to facts.