How Dare They
Let’s take a look at a letter from Judith Butler to the New York Times on that UC Irvine site to apotheosise Derrida. The letter is quite short, but full of matter. Dense with significance. Significance oozes out of every word.
Jonathan Kandell’s vitriolic and disparaging obituary of Jacques Derrida takes the occasion of this accomplished philosopher’s death to re-wage a culture war that has surely passed its time.
A culture war. That’s significant. That implies that the only reason to say anything critical about Derrida or his reputation and standing, is that one is a cultural warrior, i.e. a right-winger. That doesn’t happen to be true; it’s not even close to true; saying it is merely a rhetorical way of grabbing some kind of moral high ground and of pretending that any criticism of Derrida is necessarily political rather than intellectual. Off to a good start, right in the first sentence.
If Derrida’s contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, the theory of painting, communications, ethics, and politics made him into the most internationally renowned European intellectual during these times, it is because of the precision of his thought, the way his thinking always took a brilliant and unanticipated turn, and because of the constant effort to reflect on moral and political responsibility.
The ‘most internationally renowned European intellectual during these times’? One, no he wasn’t, and two, what does that even mean anyway? What the hell does ‘renowned’ mean? And why on earth are literary ‘theorists’ always so eager to boast about how famous they are? Why are they so obsessed with celebrity and putative ‘superstars’? Why do they try to impress and cow their critics with ridiculous announcements of their notoriety? Okay, and apart from that – precision of thought is not considered to be Derrida’s strong suit, and even if it were – would that have made him ‘renowned’? Does it make everyone who can do it renowned? Butler sounds as if she thinks Derrida was the only precise thinker around (or perhaps merely in Europe). She really ought to read a little more widely. And that goes triple for the last phrase. Why would a constant effort to reflect on moral and political responsibility make anyone renowned? Lots of people do that. They don’t get renowned as a result. Butler seems to be claiming that Derrida and his acolytes (like her, for instance) have some kind of monopoly on precision of thought and reflection on morals and politics. That’s just a little presumptuous, I think.
Why would the NY Times want to join ranks with American reactionary anti-intellectualism precisely at a time when critical thinking is most urgently required?
And there it is again. Same thing. Criticism of or disagreement with Derrida equals anti-intellectualism, despite the many many intellectuals who in fact disagree with and criticise his work. And Derrida equals critical thinking, so criticism and disagreement with him is some sort of harm to critical thinking. It’s the airless, parochial, blind arrogance of that kind of thing that amazes. The way literary ‘theorists’ seriously think they and their heroes were the first to raise questions that people have been raising ever since Socrates. The way they try to monopolize and the way they try to claim credit for everything. And the outrageous way they try to rule criticism and disagreement out of court. The way they try to declare it not just wrong or inaccurate but illegitimate, blasphemous, lèse majesté. But hey, Butler is a ‘superstar,’ so I really have no business criticising her.
How dare you subject the great Judith Butler to your quibbling little logic-chopping, Ophelia! Don’t you know she was the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award?
I’m all abashed.
But I’ve actually read some Butler (which is more than I can say of Derrida). I was…underimpressed. Read a page of Butler and then one of, say, Martha Nussbaum, and contemplate the difference. Clotted language to express tiny ideas, compared to lucid language to express large ones. Judith Butler, pfui!
OFF TOPIC…
The article you posted on prostitution for food in Zimbabwe caught my eye. I lived in Zim for two years, 1996-1998. Prostitution was huge, and along the main transport routes of Africa this is one reason for the huge spread of HIV there.
Things are surely bad in Zimbabwe, especially for those who view their actions as guided by principle. I was privileged to hear trade union officials, a leader of the crusade for equal rights for albinos, the minister for communications and head of the ZBC, and the young ‘intellectual’ university lecturer Jonathon Moyo.
His speaking syle was instructive; even addressing an audience of private-sector people he would end every paragaph with the words ‘Are we together?’ So like what was called ‘The Women’s Studies Nod’!
But as I drove my family south for a holiday we stopped at a petrol station, near the usual row of people selling craftwork, which we bought both as a ‘transfer duty’ and because we loved some of the stuff. As I waited for my wife to come back from the toilet with the wee offspring, a girl who was tiny but may have been as old as ten or eleven tried to sell me stuff; a few pathetic little pots, then some other pathetic stuff, none of which stopped my responses of ‘No thank you’. But having established that I was not interested in her pots or carvings or embroidery, her next words were a soft ‘I’ll do anything’. One more ‘no thank you and was I ever glad to get the hell out before something went totally pear-shaped.
That online article about prostitution is pathetic; it could have been written even at the height of Zimbabwe’s economic boom of the mid 90s, but the situation is now so bad even for educated professionals with the destruction of social and economic infrastructure and the rule of law.
Thanks, Chris. That story about the little girl is heartbreaking.
Oh, hell, Chris. Thanks for that. (Copy it onto the Letters page if you’re so inclined.)
I saw the Zimbabwe stories at Normblog; he’s from there, you know.
Doing some sociology of education papers in the early 1970s I rapidly mastered the jargon to the extent that one of my effusions was published by the lecturer, but when I re-read it several years later I couldn’t understand it; with a lot more experience as a teacher by then, I wondered if its conclusions were true, what would actually count as credible evidence for or against the conclusions, and why it had taken me several pages of dodgy generalisations to say something trite.
My work was a sort of secular mystic theology – lots of big words, a few small facts and not much day-to-day sense.
Three or four paragraphs of Derrida or Butler produce a similar response – is this deep or merely laxative-propelled sesquipedalian bovine excrement?
Frankly, I can’t be bothered. Life’s too short.
OB, you’ll notice she doesn’t actually say that Derrida was the ‘most internationally renowned…’, she simply raises the possibility:
“If Derrida’s contributions…made him into the most internationally renowned European intellectual during these times”
Clever than they look these pomos.
Butler should win an award for most hyperbolic priase of another academic. She states that:
“his [Derrida’s] thinking always took a brilliant and unanticipated turn”.
Always? Every thought – every single thought – he ever had was brilliant and unanticipated? Sheesh, this guy musta been good.
“is this deep or merely laxative-propelled sesquipedalian bovine excrement?”
Very good. Also of course a consignment of geriatric shoe-manufacturers.
“If” – ah, it was just a thought-experiment then!
“an award for most hyperbolic priase of another academic”
And ‘theorists’ think and say (often and emphatically) that spotting rhetorical moves is what they’re really good at, what they’re trained in. Butler is remarkably unsubtle for a putative expert, it seems to me.
“But hey, Butler is a ‘superstar,’ so I really have no business criticising her.”
Did she win American Idols?
Was she runner-up in Swan?
How everything turns out to be relative ;)
snicker
Just the sort of question I’m always asking. For people who pride themselves on their profound insights, ‘theorists’ can be quite stunningly delusional. ‘Superstar’ is their word, not mine. It’s sad, really.