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The Hebrew University of Jerusalem decided to make itself into an even
bigger laughingstock than it already has been thanks to its legions of Far
Leftist and Anti-Zionist professors. This past week it decided
to grant an honorary PhD to Jacques Derrida, the godfather of the pseudo-philosophy
of “Deconstructionism.”
Deconstructionism is a shallow form of Non-Thinking that has gained popularity
among some of the more simpleminded disciplines of the academic world.
Essentially the same as “post-modernism” (how is that for a true nonsense
word, something no woodchuck could chuck?), Deconstructionism argues that
there do not exist any such things as facts, truth, logic, rationality, nor
science. Nothing in the world exists beyond subjective “narratives,”
each as legitimate as the next. Language is the ultimate form
of tyranny and source of control of us oppressed folks by those evil elites.
There are no false narratives, just different subjectivities. And the
only thing we can be truly certain about in this meaningless world is that
the United States and Israel must be destroyed.
Deconstructionism was defined nicely
by Robert Locke: “It is also known as poststructuralism, but don’t ask
what structuralism was, as it was no better. It is based on the proposition
that the apparently real world is in fact a vast social construct and that
the way to knowledge lies in taking apart in one’s mind this thing society
has built. Taken to its logical conclusion, it supposes that there
is at the end of the day no actual reality, just a series of appearances stitched
together by social constructs into what we all agree to call reality.
But not agree voluntarily, for society has (this is the leftist bit) an oppressive
structure, so we are pressured to agree to that version of reality which pleases
the people in charge.” Left-wing pseudo-intellectuals love substituting
polysyllable-invention for thinking and analysis.
Among the “founders” of the “School” of Deconstructionism was Yale professor
Paul de Man, a close friend of Jacques Derrida's, who had published pro-Nazi
collaborationist and anti-Semitic articles in two Belgian newspapers in the
early Forties. The other Deconstructionists have always tried
to deconstruct the Nazism of de Man so that it would not look too bad.
Deconstructionism has long been linked with Marxism, a rather strange combination
- given the insistence by deconstructionists that they should never claim
to “know” anything. Marxists claim to know everything, based
on ridiculous “theories” by Marx disproved 150 years ago, making the Marxist-Deconstructionist
axis rather queer. It also sometimes calls itself post-colonialism,
apparently because some of its Frenchie inventors came from Algeria, although
I have never understood how it can be certain that anything or anyone was
ever colonized or colonizer.
For deconstructionists, proof and disproof are unimportant. They
accept as axiomatic the claim that social power structures control everything
in the world, I guess including all “narratives,” and that literature and
art are nothing more than reflections of or protests against such power and
oppression. Never mind that the Decon conmen have no way of measuring
nor assessing power, control, class, nor privilege; they are SURE that these
things are out there and control the world like the Council on Foreign Relations
in a Barry Chamish conspiracy “theory.”
Robert Locke has said that Deconstructionism is the opiate of an obsolete
intellectual class. It is little more than sophistry and absolute moral
relativism. Deconstructionists insist that even words themselves
have no meaning. Hence we all live in a meaningless universal
in which we are all no better than noisy mutts, making silly barking sounds,
which of course is already obvious to any of you out there who have listened
in to comparative literature courses from lefty profs. As one critic
pointed out, all of Deconstructionism is founded on the paradox of using
language to claim that language cannot make unambiguous claims (John Searle,
"The World Turned Upside Down," The New York Review, October 27, 1983).
Deconstructionists oppose being “judgmental” about anything except the absolute
evil of capitalism and America, which is why it is popular these days mainly
among American tenured leftists (the French berets have by and large moved
on to other amusements). They believe in an absolute justice,
although cannot tell you what and where it is, nor how to achieve it.
They think it is something we all simply need to sit back and await, like
a Messiah on a deconstructed donkey, although we can hurry it along by joining
the Far Left. Deconstructionism attracts a certain sort of adolescent
mind (regardless of the age of the accompanying body) because of its cynicism
and dismissal of rational thought and science. In Locke’s wonderful words,
“It raises to the level of a philosophical system the intuition that everything
grownups do is a fraud. It is the metaphysics of Holden Caulfield. It enables
the practitioner to tell himself that he is among the privileged group of
insiders who know that the Wizard of Oz is behind the curtain.”
Among the forms of knowledge dismissed by them, especially in the case of
the Deconstructionist “philosopher” Michel Foucault, is medicine, because
medical science is merely an elite knowledge system that confers power on
doctors. I have long believed that one of the funniest things in life
must be a Deconstructionist professor of comparative literature in need of
an emergency root canal, being treated by a deconstructionist dentist.
(“Your pain is not real, it is subjective, let me narrate about it to you,
there is no pain in reality, Novocain will interfere with your narrative,….”)
Jacques Derrida is one of the fathers of this “school” of Deconstructionism.
(Do not confuse it with Reconstructionism, which differs from Deconstructionism
mainly in the fact that it is spelled with an ‘R’.) He
is best known for his attack on “logocentrism;” that is, on the cruel oppression
by rational thinking. What a poster boy for the Hebrew University!
He even dismisses Stalin as a logocentrist, which explains the Gulags and
Red Terror that ruined what otherwise would be the great blessings of Marxism.
We should all seek salvation through resistance to logic.
As Deconstructionism has become regarded more and more as a laughingstock
even among French leftwing intellectuals, it has gained popularity in some
of the darker corners of American and Israeli campuses. Israeli leftists
and media columnists (pretty much the same people) like to toss around the
Newspeak of Deconstructionism, and long ago decided that the whole war is
because those insensitive Jews refuse to accept the Palestinian “Other.”
Palestinians blowing up dozens of young “Others” on buses do not seem to
bother them much.
The weaker the level of intellectual analysis and formal standards of scientific
evidence and proof, the more popular Deconstructionism is. This is
why professors of comparative literature have trouble controlling their sexual
excitement stimulated by it, professors of education adore it, sociologists
sometimes applaud it, and members of all real scientific fields tend to place
Deconstructionism in the same category as the Ra-El cultists.
To Derrida’s credit, he never bought in to the Stalinism so popular among
most French “intellectuals.” And Derrida is only one of the better-known
clowns in the three-ring Deconstructionist Big Top. Michel Foucault
is perhaps even better known than Derrida. He was a great celebrator
of psychedelic drug use, sado-masochistic anonymous gay sex, cruelty and
violence as expressions of liberation and deepness. He , however,
could not be honored this week by the Hebrew University - because he died
from AIDS in 1984. There have been allegations that after discovering
that he had picked up AIDS, he intentionally continued “cruising” the San
Francisco gay scene to infect as many gay men as possible with the virus.
In the autumn of 1983, after Foucault's health had collapsed and less than
a year before his death, he continued to frequent gay bathhouses and bars.
He is best remembered for his motto: “Sex is worth dying for.” According
to Mark Lilla (The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics), Foucault laughed
at the idea of 'safe sex' and apparently said, 'To die for the love of boys:
what could be more beautiful?'
Derrida is only the latest example of Israeli universities honoring fatuous
trendy leftist know-nothing Eurotwit pseudo-thinkers. A few years
back Tel Aviv University gave a similar honorary doctorate to German “philosopher”
Jurgen Habermas. Habermas’ theory is watered down Peres-ism, where
there are no actual conflicts of interests on earth, where all conflicts
in the world are the result of poor communications, and where all conflict
may be resolved through “communicative actions” (psychobabble for talking
it out). I would like to see Herr Habermas get himself out of
a mugging situation in gang turf in some of my old Philadelphian stomping
grounds using communicative action. But Habermas had at least
been a vocal critic of German skinheads and neonazis, creating some sort
of figleaf for Tel Aviv University honoring him. Derrida has no such
track record. He has not even renounced de Man.
While technically born Jewish, Derrida has a long record of endorsing the
Left’s sets of liberation solutions to the “problem” of Israel’s existence.
Far-Left Haaretz defines him as a Zaddik, which pretty much tells you everything
you need to know about his position on Israel.
Hebrew University was once the leading academic institution in Israel.
It has long since been surpassed in most fields by Tel Aviv University, the
Weitzmann Institute, and other institutions. Its campus is increasingly
dominated by Tenured Radicals and leftist extremists among the faculty.
So - on second thought, and I mean this in the most anti-logocentric sense
of the word - perhaps the honoring of Derrida by the Hebrew University makes
a great deal of sense after all, or at least it is a telling “narrative”….
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa.
Email Steven Plaut
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