The Chronicle of Higher Education: Colloquy

Jacques Derrida, the thinker whose concept of "deconstruction" influenced at least two generations of scholarship in the humanities, died this month at the age of 74. In a fecund career that touched on a range of disciplines, including literary theory, philosophy, religious studies, architecture, and law, Derrida often angered scholars as much as he enlightened them with his Delphic utterances and his prolific (if sometimes prolix) writings. What will his legacy be? For what, if anything, will he remain best known? Is his vision likely to be honored more in the United States than in Europe, and in some fields but not others? Does his concept of deconstruction in some ways preclude having a legacy? Read more...

Dirge for Jacques Derrida
by N.J. Levitt
---

Derrida, oh Derrida, say have you met Derrida?
Derrida the Deconstructionist.
His works, all told, form quite a pile,
But in a style completely vile.

Derrida, oh Derrida, that encyclo-pedi-yah!
Derrida the world’s greatest fake!
The feminist scholar still on the make,
The cultural theorist whose job is at stake,
And the English professor who’s barely awake,
They can learn a lot from Derrida!

He’ll deconstruct, per your order, for a buck and a quarter,
Whatever football game is on,
Or a building of Gehry, or superstring theory,
Or the memoirs of Jenna Jameson.

Derrida oh Derrida, say have you met Derrida?
Derrida the Deconstructionist.
When his brain cells start a-wheezin’,
Out the door goes western reason.

Derrida, oh Derrida, that encyclo-pedi-yah!
Derrida the world’s greatest fake!
You can deconstruct Plato inside and out,
Or Wittgenstein’s Ladder, or Cartesian Doubt.
You don’t have to know what you’re talking about!
You can learn a lot from Derrida.

Come along and learn what you want about differance,
(You needn’t have the price of a ticket on Air France).
Here’s linguistics (well sort of) a la Sassure,
Here’s Althusser’s wife being placed sur rature.

Here is Martin Heidegger, a-heilin’ his “Heil!”
And there’s Paul de Mann, see him smilin’ his smile,
Watching the MLA fall for his ruses.
And here’s Jacques’s tedious list of excuses.

Derrida, oh Derrida, that encyclo-pedi-yah,
Derrida the world’s greatest fake!
He once swept the Yalies clear off their feet;
The quips from his lips made their hearts skip a beat!
But now the old boy’s really feelin’ the heat!
For they’ve gone and buried Derrida!

Levitt, oh Levitt,
You are SO not with it.
Your students are bored
Teaching abhorred,
Hey, bro, take your lyrics and shove it.

Can it ever be said
You inspired a thought in our heads
Throwing formulae up on the board?
I think I'll take Jacques
Having read him a lot
'Cause you snored me straight out of Pre-calc.

But you think you're so witty.
Each class, a Norm- ditty.
And we wondered, "For this you get paid?"

"If you can't solve it by now
Don't come asking me how,
'Cause I don't really teach, now," you'd piddle.

"Just think of each problem like a neat little riddle,
And when I give you the answer you'll know
More about me than you did of the riddle.

"So I can't teach worth a damn,
But, oh man, can I slam
About that which I don't understand!"

Derrida's legacy will be the same as that left by the late Scholastics in the Middle Ages: People will look back on all the precious, empty, self-important verbiage and wonder what kind of bald-faced decadence took over American universities in the late 20th century. Derrida's influence was a cult of personality, and like all such cults, when the personality dies, so will it. "Deconstruction" will be an amusing aberration that people will chuckle about centuries from now, just as people look down their noses at effete Scholatics arguing over angels and pins, and saying absolutely nothing of import.

"Derrida's legacy will be the same as that left by the late Scholastics in the Middle Ages: People will look back on all the precious, empty, self-important verbiage and wonder what kind of bald-faced decadence took over American universities in the late 20th century. Derrida's influence was a cult of personality, and like all such cults, when the personality dies, so will it. "Deconstruction" will be an amusing aberration that people will chuckle about centuries from now, just as people look down their noses at effete Scholatics arguing over angels and pins, and saying absolutely nothing of import."

I agree, except, please replace "Derrida" with Allen Tate/Allen Bloom/ Warren/ Ransom/ELIOT/Hirsch" and "Deconstruction" with "New Criticism."

I don't half-mind being dirged, on general principal, but the anonymous pixie who did me the honor impeaches his/her bona fides. He/she claims to have been a student of mine in "pre-calc". Rutgers has inflicted me on many a dismayed student, to be sure, but never in "pre-calc". Not once. Plenty of calc, to be sure, lots of diff. eq., and even an occasional dip into "math for poets." But pre-calc? Nothing doing! So my fellow purveyor of doggerel is either mistaken about the identity of his/her pre-calc tormentor, or deserved his/her torment for failing to realize that he/she was enrolled in honest-to-goodness calc, limits and all. rather than wimpy pre-calc. Perhaps this petty mystery might be cleared up if the resentful Mr./Ms. X would own up to his/her true moniker and spell out further details of his/her suffering at my hands. If my deficiencies as an instructor drove some deluded soul into the tentacles of deconstruction, I have much to rue.

The reality is that the Yanks never understood Derrida because they never read any of his books, least of all took the trouble to read some of his articles or interviews.
Deconstruction in America was an aberration - a transformation of Derrida's thought for the purposes of an ahistorical and apolitical academy obsessed with awarding tenure to people based on quantity and not quality.

Derrida's legacy - rather like he discusses in relation to the legacy of Marx in Specters of Marx (have you read it? No, but I'm sure you have a view on it anyway. Jeez no wonder you have a President like Bush) will be be determined by the corpus' own biodegradability (another essay by Derrida that you guys have never even read). I think in fact that Derrida will increasingly emerge from the American (literary) misreading of his work and be centred more in a fairer understanding of his contribution to close readings of the seminal European philosophers. I guess that's a bit much for the average McDonald's academic to understand. Derrida taught us the ethics of close reading - not about the irresponsibility of writing about someone you have never taken the trouble to read. Au revoir Jacques: the ethico-political resonance of deconstrutionism will remain.

... hey, didn't I have you for ethico-political Pre-Calc?

Deconstruction without construction leads to a dead end. But life resists dead ends. And ultimately Derrida unsurprisingly ends on a note of some (metaphysical) note of transcendence. Derrida's deconstruction, unlike the original deconstruction (Nietzsche's) functions only or essentially as a diagnostic critical tool, more like a eunuch's.

I have divided feelings about Derrida. I'm not supposed to confess any interest in him or people in physics will socially ostrcize me, and say nasty things about me behind my back.

I love material reality and I love describing it in the language of physics. I just love it but I also think reading Derrida can be enlightening.

It's sad to me that people in the math and science community are so uptight that they get into these spiteful conflicts with people who are exercising their Constitutional right to think differently from others.

But I see people in math and science who don't really accept this right. A physics professor at a teaching conference bragged to me that he took points off of a physics exam because the student got a cosmology problem numerically and conceptually correct but confessed that he did not personally believe in the Big Bang because he was a Christian.

This professor could not understand why I was so appalled. Not because of any beliefs of mine about cosmology. Because of my beliefs about the right of any one human to punish any other human solely for their belief system.

It's the same with astrology. Once a physics TA was bragging about his teaching and he confessed to having devoted an entire class to debunking astrology. This of course resulted in furious debates among the students and took up not one but eventually three class sessions, and ended up making the students even more defensive over astrology and the right to believe in it than they had been before he tried to dissuade them.

And I support the right to believe in astrology. Science is supposed to be about enlightenment, not control. It is possible to honor the right to believe in astrology while arguing that has no predictive power over the measurable world.

Scientists and mathematicians -- we cannot control human culture. We are a part of human culture. If we try to control other people, or put them down because they choose not to accept what we say, they might stop liking us and they won't want to give us their tax money any more.

Okay?

Remember -- we are all dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Lit-crit survivor wrote:

"Derrida's legacy will be the same as that left by the late Scholastics in the Middle Ages: People will look back on all the precious, empty, self-important verbiage and wonder what kind of bald-faced decadence took over American universities in the late 20th century. Derrida's influence was a cult of personality, and like all such cults, when the personality dies, so will it. "Deconstruction" will be an amusing aberration that people will chuckle about centuries from now, just as people look down their noses at effete Scholatics arguing over angels and pins, and saying absolutely nothing of import."

This shock-infused thread shows nothing but intellectual immaturity, the equivalent of a 6 year-old screaming, "You're NOT smart! You're NOT! And nobody likes you anyway!" Derrida's legacy is somthing that a "literary criticism survivor" will never understand because he/she has not yet mastered the idea of philosophical and intellectual respect for thought, questions, and the written word. There are such big chips on the shoulders of those with such small minds.

So typical of Norm to deflect criticism to the character of the "deluded pixie" who, as did I and so MANY others, hated his teaching. Pre-calc or not, you sucked, Norm. And I finished calc, differential equations and linear algebra with a relish that had as much to do with my avoidance your poor teaching as that there were so many other talented instructors in the department. I suppose it is in your truest character to make light of a man's death and to gyre and gimble in the wabe of his work, confident there'll be no rebuke from him. But look at you--running breathlessly, prosaically, righteously indignant, to your own defense (for no one else will) when your "contribution" to the field is called to bear. But I, and doubtless others whom you've not impressed, will prepare my witty little ditty, too, to publish on the day of your obituary. Maybe I'll send a copy to your family and sign it "Deluded Pixies (cf., 'Previous Discussions' in Chronicle colluquy)." Think they'd mind?

You, sir, are nothing short of a blithering idiot--a moron, in a word.

It's one thing for a scientist or mathematician to criticize Derrida. The basis of the criticism may be the premise that deconstruction, *as as method rather than theory about language* does not result in new empirical knowledge or that it does not say anything about Truth with a capital T. So what good is this for the methods of science?

Philosophers can be real control freaks as well - particularly when it comes to both defining philosophy and expressing clear and precise ideas. Those in the philosophy field who complain about Derrida and/or his influence come from two camps.
1) Those who have not read him because his style, like that of so many others, is not in the formulation of thesis, premiss, premiss, therefore conclusion. This already presupposes a narrow definition of philosophy as something that somehow cannot touch upon history, social theory, political theory, and other human activities - the very themes of philosophers since the time of Plato.

2) Those who read him, understand him, appreciate what he is doing but want to leave the questions of relativism and idealism open, or who are critical of Derrida's manner of reading texts at the expense of *most plausible interpretations* that involve both the author's intent and knowledge of the historical context. Derrida seems to represent the extreme of alterity, and presents a strong criticism of philosophy's tendency to synthesize alterity into a concept which does not preserve the creative freedom of difference. As a representative of this tendency to preserve the Other, and as expressed by the difficult prose of his 'followers', his influence can be very irritating to philosophers who are also scholars respecting the methods of both science and history - in their proper roles. Those who have understood his works, and who are keenly aware of the history of philosophy and of theories of language are in the best position to offer intelligent appraisal of his legacy.

I predict that his death will cause more people to actually read his works - this may perhaps launch more intelligent criticism by philosophers who are seeking to go beyond it.

Concerning astrology:
"And I support the right to believe in astrology. Science is supposed to be about enlightenment, not control. It is possible to honor the right to believe in astrology while arguing that has no predictive power over the measurable world."

The criticisms of astrology made by practicing scientists are typically ineffective because they are barking up the wrong tree. Very few people who believe in or practice astrology actually think that the physical sun revolves around the earth or that the planets and stars physically and causally effect sublunar activity. Precession of the equinox means nothing since Ptolemy actually argued for a tropical zodiac based on seasons not stars - and it stuck.

The appropriate domain to handle the issue of astrology is philosophy not science.

I hope your comment about dependence on kindness of strangers is tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately you might be correct about mob rule. It's called the marketplace. Dependency of thinkers on the masses gets worse as a culture increasingly does not value education and critical thought. Well-read Derrida or the 'influence' is not to blame for decadence and an instant-gratification culture.

Apart from the sheer invective floating around, what interests me about Levitt's post is his apparent glee in denigrating not just Derrida, but a number of other European intellectuals who have made significant contributions to thought. Using a Weberian concept, I can't help but wonder about an unwitting "elective affinity" between Levitt's swipes and the Bush-led disdain for European dissent to the imperial nature of current U.S. policy. (It could be argued that Levitt's doggerel is a mirror image of the xenophobic impulse to rename "French Fries" as "Liberty Fries.") The tone of Levitt's post seems to fit in perfectly with the marketing and spin of Murdoch's FoxNews propaganda bureau. ("Outfoxed" features segments where Kerry is derisively characterized as potentially the first "French" President of the U.S.). So, I see both Levitt and FoxNews as reflecting the Murdoch agenda and sensibility.

As for Jacques Derrida: He left us a productive legacy. He shows us how to question, and to examine foundational texts careful. He had a passion for thinking, living and for friendship. As he says in the 2002 documentary, his quest was to query what was taken-for-granted as an essence, as a nature, and re-examine it as a product of human activity. So, like so many of those that have been inspiring (such as the late Edward Said), he demonstrated for us the activity of thinking as a practice of freedom. There is no greater gift.

Pixie #1 pretty obviously was not my student. Pixie #2 is more circumspect, but his/her insistence on anonymity at the least degrades his/her credibility.

The argumentum ad hominem is fair enough, I concede, given that my jingle certainly takes no prisoners. But, to the only discernable point in Pixie 2's diatribe relevant to the matter at hand: the fact that Derrida's corpse had hardly cooled down before I wrote my own little polemic. Why be so gleefully nasty to some guy whose chief offense was to have been a professorial blowhard (of which failing I could certainly be accused)?

It's really pretty simple. In my view, which is clearly common, if not universal, Derrida was especially worthy of scorn not for propounding silly theories, but for his particular conduct when the Nazi affiliations and overall nastiness of his mentor, Heidegger, and his chief American apostle, de Man, came to light. His defenses of both were steeped in the most cynical sophistry. It was clear that they were driven by his own vanity, his oracular pretensions, and his fanatic refusal to admit to any lapses in his own infallibility. His contempt for simple accuracy prompted him to resort to tactics inconsistent with scholarly values and common decency. The central exhibit is his notorious attempt to stifle Prof. Wolin's views on the Heidegger affair by threatening lawsuits and by blackmailing Wolin's potential publishers. This was the reductio ad absurdum of his supposedly liberatory philosophical stance. Yet his clacque continues, so far as I am aware, to insist that their guru is exempted from the ethical decencies that govern the rest of us. That's why I think that the guy was fair game on this occasion. I'm old-fashioned enough not to like Nazis very much and not to be very charitable to people who concoct half-assed excuses for them.

How much Pixies 1 and 2 are in Derrida's thrall is unclear to me, but, to give them credit, at least their spleen is expressed in vitriol untainted by deconstructionist flatulence.

MY UPDATED MESSAGE
Deconstruction without construction leads to a dead end. But life resists such philosophical dead ends. Ultimately and ironically Derrida ends on a note of some (metaphysical) transcendence, the kind that Derrida often derides. Derrida's deconstruction (or serial "nihilism"), unlike Nietzsche's genealogical reconstruction (or serial revitalization), functions only or essentially as a diagnostic tool, more like a eunuch's. I have enjoyed Derrida's critical or conceptual or etymological gymnastics (but to what philosophical ends?).

Although it is not essential for an intellectual leader to have followers, it is helpful. Frye was too well read to have followers; hence the expression "small Frye" to describe his imitators. Derrida was too clever; his imitators were mechanical, pale reflections of the original. While the age of 'theory' began with a bang it ended up being dull as dishwater because where the masters dazzled with surprises and intellectual legerdemain, the imitators were utterly, totally, and endlessly predictable, seeking unending confirmation of the same basic claims.

One should weigh heavily the fact that philosophers never took Derrida as seriously as literary folk did and that psychology (which is, increasingly, a life science) gave very short shrift to Lacan. As for 'history without facts' Foucault, his work has been dissected and demolished by serious historians. 'Theory' was not so much an intellectual current as a religion, a religion with true believers prepared to rule out of hand anything believed or said by the infidels. Unfortunately the true believers decimated the humanities as they relished their liturgies, never, for a moment, being willing to entertain the possibility that what they were doing was not of great interest to a significant number of people. It would be useful to do a study of how many students suffered through 'theory' in order to be able to major in a field where one could read great works of literature. With enrollments often down by approximately 2/3 in key humanities departments, one wonders how many of the 1/3 were true believers and how many were simply willing to tolerate the obsessions and musings of their professors. Of course, some were comfortable with those obsessions and musings because they always knew what to say in their papers and on their exams. If they violated orthodoxy, however, they risked a great deal.

We shouldn't hold Derrida responsible for this. His work, though dense, is always interesting, even if it is ultimately trivialized by the fact that context generally brings clarity to potentially slippery words and passages.

It always bemuses me to observe the extent to which The Chronicle's online colloquy attracts similar levels of sniping and generally cranky posting to the web fora and usenet groups devoted to the favorite obsessions of 14-year-old boys, the primary difference being the higher level of grammatical and mechanical correctness in the writing on the Chronicle site. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that the first few posts on the legacy of Derrida were characterized by attacks on his work rather than serious efforts to engage his thinking, but I am disappointed.

I will, however, at least give Levitt a few cleverness points for dredging up the vaudeville classic "Lydia the tattooed lady."

I would just like to offer up my opinion about "deconstructionism".

The term itself is a gerat example of Orwellian "doublespeak".

Im fact, the collective small-mindedness of the majority of the vocal European community at least is disconcerting.

The resistance aganinst anything that smacks of Post-modernism is unjustified to day the least. Philosophers such as Jacques Derrida remind us that if we analyze everything that nothing fits into neat little categories. Every issuse must be taken in its context.

Modernism and constructivism is not the prevailing philosophical model at work in the world today.

Oh, sure, it would make us very comfortable if it was because we could know all the answers before we knew the questions. All of our lifes would be consistant an fit squarly into neat little categories. Unfortunately, nobody's life is that way and pretending tat it is does not make it so.

So, if Jacques Derrida and his ideas make people nervous, GOOD! You are thinking again instead of living in a haze of Modernism and Constructivism in a comfortable world where all the square pegs fit because there are no round holes.

Deconstructivism isn't. Jacques Derrida's Philosophy requires us to take each situation in its context and ANALYZE not CATAGORIZE.

That is why I AM VOTING FOR GEORGE W. BUSH...

To all of my colleagues in Europe and the population centers of America, HAVE A NICE DAY!

It's curious that Dion should fulminate about my supposed political sins just as I was thinking about posting another (and last) note about those pixies posing as my "students." So here goes. I have a strong suspicion, now hardened into near-certainty, that those ostensible students are in fact henchmen of a certain right-wing blogger (right wing, as in G.W. Bush, "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth," Ann Coulter, and similar filth) with whom I had a run-in recently. That fracas had nothing to do with Derrida and his cult. As evidence, note that the style, tone, and substance of those "student" postings bear no resemblance to what one invariably hears from defenders of Derrida, deconstruction, or postmodern thought in general. Indeed, they evince no familiarity with these matters from either a friendly or hostile point of view. That's because this stuff is mere backscatter from an altogether different flame-war, which drew down the wrath of the idiot right upon my head!! Readers might want to be aware of this in case another of those pixies pokes its misshapen head out of the dungheap.

Beyond that, I'll note, contra Dion, that the popularity of Derrida and, by extension, many postmodern hotshots had the unfortunate effect of diverting scads of intellectuals with instinctive progressive sympathies into idle hermeticism that had no leverage whatever in the world of actual politics.

Finally, since the matter of "control freaks" has come up in a couple of postings, let me note that Derrida was obviously the ultimate control freak. But he gets a free pass. How strange!

I've had more than my say, so I'll now withdraw. Scout's honor!

NL

"I will, however, at least give Levitt a few cleverness points for dredging up the vaudeville classic "Lydia the tattooed lady."

Levitt,
You think you're a sly fox, don't you? Taking the first step toward deconstructing your little poem and doing so under an assumed anonymous poster! Yes, yes, now we see how clever you are. But you might have given readers another day or two to render the source of your rhyme scheme instead of hurrying to pat yourself on the back under a psuedonym! Egad, sir.

Dr. Levitt,

It is typical of the unelightened to a method of philosophy with a whole set of pre-defined ideas.

The personality of Jacques Derrida is not the issue. Furthermore, attascking the man instead of his philosophy does nothing to critique his views.

The strength of Post-Modernism comes from the ability of a Post-Modernist to use any school of Philosophy in an analytic manner to examine the philosophical problem at hand as a surgeon operates carefully and painstakingly to help and not to destroy the patient.

IT allows the appropriate philosophical tool to be used to dissect the philosophical problem to examine its nature.

Its strength is that it does not require one to operate on the fine clockwork of a school of philosophy with the broad-ax of Modernism-constructivism.

I mean, after all, Liberals are supposed to be pro-choice, right?

"This shock-infused thread shows nothing but intellectual immaturity, the equivalent of a 6 year-old screaming, "You're NOT smart! You're NOT! And nobody likes you anyway!" Derrida's legacy is somthing that a "literary criticism survivor" will never understand because he/she has not yet mastered the idea of philosophical and intellectual respect for thought, questions, and the written word. There are such big chips on the shoulders of those with such small minds."

Yes, indeed. Nothing like shrill projection, eh? LOL!

One of the irrelevant threads in this discussion has to do with Norman Levitt's teaching. Out of curiosity I checked his ratings on ratemyprofessors.com, which of course is a thoroughly objective and methodologically sound means of evaluating teaching skill. For what it's worth, he has 19 student ratings and he earned a blue sad face. Also, not one "hot" vote in the bunch. As a matter of disclosure, I should confess I have not been one of his students.

On Levitt: Reading Levitt's harangues carefully, it's easy to make the following points:

1. Levitt does not know Weber, nor does Levitt grasp the Weberian idea of an "elective affinity." It does not mean two overaching worldviews are "identical." The very idea of an "elective affinity" is somewhat like a representation of partially intersecting circles in a Venn diagram. To say, as Weber did, that Capitalism and the Protestant ethos have an "elective affinity" means that each has tendencies that reinforce the other, and the acknowledgement that differences in worldviews remain.

So to say that Levitt's approach has an elective affinity with contemporary U.S.-based Imperial postures does not mean they are identical. (This addresses his differences with the ideologue Coulter). What is identical is a certain world view that castigates critical European thinkers and thought. It is best summed up by another reference to "OutFoxed," where an ex-producer summed up the Murdockian/Bushsque ethos: "I'm right. You're wrong. No matter what." Both Levitt and Coulter share this unfortunate (O'Reillyian) tendency. They just disagree on the specifics. The posture is the same, that of the "true believer" that Eric Hoffer described forty years ago.

Secondly, Frederick Bowie's recent reflection of the late Edward Said's contribution could have well been written about Derrida as well. Bowie says that

"the sense of (mis)representation as a narrative which is never set in stone, however dense and solid it may appear to have become, is central to Said's legacy. Yet his work has in its turn been the victim of repeated, often willful misunderstanding."

In the end, both Derrida and Said were concerned about the ethics of both thought and action. And, we honor them for their sustained commitment to this ongoing project. It's a safe bet, in my opinion, that no one will say this about Levitt's legacy or oeuvre, in any post-mortem assessment.

Every trope is sacred
Every trope is good
Each can be deconstructed
In your neighborhood

Nothing is material
Life is but a text
Our lives are but symbols
Under modernity's hex

P-M is a laxitive
(while German theory is like food)
You wouldn't eat P-M everyday
But sometimes it's good

Whatever the difficulty of Derrida's texts, he leaves us with the charge to question, to inquire, and to interrogate the dogmatic. His work has been and invitation to challenge an unreflexive, and unhealthy adherence to any one epistemology, or methodology. In a significant way, Derrida, like Foucault, was an intellectual heir to Nietzsche, and to the Nietzschean skepticism about any claims to absolute zones of knowledge. In bringing back notions of close and careful reading, we are invited to explore basic questions about identity, technology, communication, perception and culture. Like Nietzsche, Derrida was skeptical of those who would declare themselves uncontestable 'high priests" of knowledge and method. (This was what Nietzsche meant, in "Will to Power," when he said, ruefully, that the 19th Century marked the triumph of the scientific method over science). Like Nietzsche, Derrida gave us the means to think about non-totalizing forms of thought, to ponder the paradoxical, and to creatively resist those who would stamp out the freedom to think, in the name of any reigning epistemological and political orthodoxy. In an increasingly polarized world, it's an insight into the human condition worth remembering.

As a young graduate student studying history in the 1990s, I wanted to be on the cutting edge of theory, so I read Derrida and particularly Foucault. I also read a lot of postructuralist history. It took me a while (several years; I am a little slow), but I soon learned that poststructuralism did little or nothing to expand or even articulate our understanding of history.

I read several histories where historians took some event and examined it as a "text." Since our knowledge of the event came from a text (a primary source), it could be treated as such, or so the rationale went.

However, I finally said "so what?" So you can deconstruct a historical event like a text. The goal of history is to CONSTRUCT a portrait of the past, not take it apart. Moreover, the act of deconstruction basically says that the text is "fiction." What a total crock. While every primary source must be used critically, it is virtually always based upon some subjective reality. Comparing the Declaration of Independence to a Superman comic book and saying both are fiction is like saying that a frog and a stalk of celery are both plants because they are green.

Historians always believed that sources must be used critically and that they contained hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) biases. Postmodernists did not tell us anything we did not already know about the limits of historical sources. And they told us a lot that was just flat out wrong about them.

Finally, just because you CAN deconstruct historical events in the same manner as a text does not mean that you have to or even that you should. It is like using a Gucci suit to mop up an oil spill in the garage. Yes, the $500 wool suit will suck up the oil, but so will the five cent rag you have under the sink.

A compilation of the comments on RateMyProfessor re Norm Levitt:

a jerk

Dear Professor Levitt (njlevitt@hotmail.com): I am writing to compliment you on the eloquence of your recent response to my friend Mike Bayham, who writes a column for GOPUSA.com. Mike wrote a recent editorial on John Kerry that irritated you so badly

Has the attitude that everyone is stupid but him. Goes out of his way to not be helpful.

I had a little problem with his dog, but Dr. Mike Adams (Google) helped clear things up.

be careful around his lab retriever - the dog likes to get a little "too" friendly if you know what i mean.

Biased is a good word for him. May know calc, but not much else. How do people like this get tenure?

ummm....if it wasnt for the fact that he doesnt communicate to his TA's then i dont think that i would have a problem. i passed the class with a solid grade cuz he did speak english

He doesnt teach anything he sit there looking like a disgruntled santa, deriving the most rediculous garbage, if it wasn't for the fact that I had a great TA I never would have learned anything!

There are a two excellent defenses of Derrida's work and its importance. The first is at http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2004/10/derrida.html
at "The Reading Experience."

The second is a personal and professional remembrance and tribute on "The American Prospect" by Noy Thrupkaew at "The American Prospect." She links Derrida's work to a basic democratic impulse. It's at http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8787

Both links were found at an excellent humanities blog, "wood s lot" http://www.ncf.ca/~ek867/wood_s_lot.html

Gee,

Well, it appears that Norm Levitt and I are hanging on crosses next to each other. The last time that Mathematicians and Physicists were slain wholesale was by the Fascist Nazis. We are both in EXCELLENT company.

As far as post-modernism and de-constructionalism go, these philosophies are not new; they just have a new name. I suspect that this philosophical school will trouble historians for years to come, what with "redacted" documents being eventually released in their non-censored form. Historians are, for the most part, Pragmatists.

Remember, post-modernism has always been with us. People, the human species, has always used what it collectively believed from experience and reason to govern its behavior. This happened. If it is good or bad depends on the context in which it is taken. Plato saw it as a cave in his time and in that context it may well have been a cave.

However, the post-modernist and deconstructionist philosophy is one that uses philosophy as tools to allow us to dissect our world and to make sense of it. Otherwise, we are stuck in the mind-set that all philosophy has to be consistent and run as a constant thread through the tapestry of human life.

As we look for examples in everyday life we see things in history and so-called "conspiracy theorists" that are actually post-modernist deconstructionists. In history certain ideas will never die. For example, the JFK assassination and resulting Warren Commission report will never be accepted without controversy.

The "downing of flight 800" and the government investigation is being scrutinized in the light of the post 9-11-2001 world and things besides the fuel tank exploding for no reason make a lot of sense now. Also, there is a big reason to cover it up or perhaps to ignore it if it was indeed terrorism.

No, I claim that post-modernism, as a philosophy, is how the world operates. It has always been how the world operates. I refuse to be a Pragmatist in this area because the evidence is all around.

All you have to do is look.

If you do not understand America in the philosophical view of a Modernist from the standpoint of constructionism, then you really need to look more closely. If you wonder why humanity behaves as it does and rejects Modernism by its actions, then don't just write humanity off as barbarians and retreat into your ivory tower.

America is a post-modernist country in a Modernistic world. In America, we do what we do because it works for Americans. We do not do what we do because it is what Modernism and Constructivism demand.

Probably what is troubling you the most as you Modernists gird your loins in Constructivism and scream "crucify him" is that in a Modern world Post-Modernism not only happens, but it has ALWAYS been happening.

You can't change it.

Nailing Norman Leavitt to a cross will not help matters any.

Besides that, attacking him does nothing to take away from the philosophy that he expounds.

I am surprised with the political spin that people are trying to put on this. I know of both conservatives and leftists who adore Derrida and others of both sides who don't.

I must confess that I have not read much of Derrida's work, but if what I 've read in Alan Sokal's "Fashionable Nonsense" is true then I am not sure I want to. I 've met so many so-called intellectuals who missused scientific terms to make rather banal ideas sound profound (though I am not saying that Derrida is necessarily one of them) that I know to be suspicious of everyone who engages in such practices.

My concern is that academicians' research and teaching are funded by taxpayer and tuition money. Having thus funded Derrida's work we have the right, as a society, to ask: Has Derrida's work been a good investment? Have his ideas helped us understand our world better? Have they shown us a way to improve people's lives? I leave the answer to experts. My feeling from the little I know about his work, however, is that Norm Levitt contributes more to society by teaching a semester of calculus, even after accounting for the incompetence of the average American student, than Derrida did in his whole life. And Norm, this is coming from a right-winger.

"My concern is that academicians' research and teaching are funded by taxpayer and tuition money. Having thus funded Derrida's work we have the right, as a society, to ask: Has Derrida's work been a good investment? Have his ideas helped us understand our world better? Have they shown us a way to improve people's lives? I leave the answer to experts. My feeling from the little I know about his work, however, is that Norm Levitt contributes more to society by teaching a semester of calculus, even after accounting for the incompetence of the average American student, than Derrida did in his whole life. And Norm, this is coming from a right-winger."

Indeed, so much better that our young folks march off to kill and to die for lies, profit magins/motives, and personal aggrievements of a president who, by his own proud admission, never cracked a book when he was in college. That way, I guess, he avoided these nasty disputes about the USEFULNESS of cultural or literary theory and criticism and those natty questions of history. What do we need that crap for when we've got frat brothers, a.m. radio jocks, and Chrisitan conservatives to fill us in on how we need to think? We should all just take math and business courses--but only the ones that don't make us have to solve word problems. I just hate those word problems. I just don't get any of them. They're too hard. Just give me the equations and let me plug-and-chug. And then give me a passing grade because, after all, I paid for it with my tuition.

Derrida? Who? Who's that? Is he going to put food on my table? A check in my account? A job offer in the mail? Then why read him? I only want what most tangibly and tacitly affects my immediate surroundings. FIction? No thanks. Poetry? You've got to be kidding. Lit crit and theory? Huh?
No no no. I mean, I might not know why it is that I might get blown to bits over in Iraq, or why it is that I'm stripping prisoners naked in Abu Graib and snapping digital pics of them and me smiling away, but, hey, babe, I look GOOD and TOUGH in uniform. And if somebody asks why, I'll just flash 'em my spread eagle tattoo and then kick their wussy a--! I don't need to read. I don't need to think about what others have written. I don't need to consider the future. Norm Leavitt taught me calculus! I'm prepared for ANYTHING!

I believe in Alan Sokal! He didn't get Derrida and peed his pants over it and then implored the rest of us to forsake any thinking that draws our attention to the unwitting assumptions that we carry with us into any rhetorical situation. I DON'T NEED THAT AND NEITHER DO THE REST OF US! This is why we elected George W.Bush and will continue to elect presidents just like him. He tells me what I need to know to feel good about everything. "Don't worry, be happy" (thanks, Poppy!). Wink and a nod, seeya in Bible "study." Get that oil, close them books, send them poor colored kids off to shoot and get shot up. WMDs. Know whatta mean? Wink and a nod.

Derrida. What's he ever done for anyone? Him and Edward Said. Hell, they weren't even Americans. Not like Eliot and Henry James who stuck it out here through thick and thin, which is why theirs were the works I left unread on MY dorm room desk--well, because, you know, I had more important classes like calculus to concentrate on, and chemistry and Bidness 101.

Don't ask me to think beyond the borders of my own comfort zone. I'll destroy you and everyone who looks like you if you do. It's my God-given right as a taxpayer.

Seriously over the top, even for a Derrida fanatic.

From Alexandrakis:

"My feeling from the little I know about his work, however, is that Norm Levitt contributes more to society by teaching a semester of calculus, even after accounting for the incompetence of the average American student, than Derrida did in his whole life."

Now THAT'S "Seriously over the top," even/especially for someone who knows little about Derrida, even for a chump like Leavitt! I mean, yikes.

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QUOTE.....
"...Derrida? Who? Who's that? Is he going to put food on my table? A check in my account? A job offer in the mail? Then why read him? I only want what most tangibly and tacitly affects my immediate surroundings. FIction? No thanks. Poetry? You've got to be kidding. Lit crit and theory? Huh?
No no no. I mean, I might not know why it is that I might get blown to bits over in Iraq, or why it is that I'm stripping prisoners naked in Abu Graib and snapping digital pics of them and me smiling away, but, hey, babe, I look GOOD and TOUGH in uniform."

UNQUOTE....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am all for free speech, but Collquy really needs to only allow posters who have been verified to post. This anonymous post is obviously by somebody who does not belong here.

Besides that, I doubt if he has ever been involved in a...

1. Strip search.
2. VOLUNTEER armed forces enlistment.
3. A college class that he actually passed by scholarly study.

People with disrespect for education belong somewhere else with their ridiculous posts, not here. It is sad, but to weed out this trape all anonymous posting should be stopped here on the COLLOQUY message board.

This is also a good example of why drinking should not be allowed in Greek organizations.

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QUOTE
"Don't ask me to think beyond the borders of my own comfort zone. I'll destroy you and everyone who looks like you if you do. It's my God-given right as a taxpayer."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The only thing that you have ever "DESTROYED" is your credibility.

You, my friend, are one keg short of a RUSH...

In fact, MY credibility is at risk for giving the likes of YOU the time of day...

John,

You just got trolled. Yerkl sounds suspiciously like another one of Bloom's incarnations - you know, the guy who argues by spitefully parodying his straw-man adversaries. The poor fellow has some serious personality disorder problems.

And I'd generally disagree with the proposition that anonymous posts shouldn't be allowed, given the brutally political nature of academia. Without anonymity, all you'd hear would be the smug, non-controversial, politically correct opinions of the academic establishment. You'd like to think that we'd have the courage of our convictions to attach a name to our posts; we'd like to think that we'll have a paycheck next week. And I would think the Colloquy mods could just refuse to post messages they found beyond the pale; evidently they feel that Yerkl-Bloom adds something to this debate.

"Without anonymity, all you'd hear would be the smug, non-controversial, politically correct opinions of the academic establishment. You'd like to think that we'd have the courage of our convictions to attach a name to our posts; we'd like to think that we'll have a paycheck next week. And I would think the Colloquy mods could just refuse to post messages they found beyond the pale; evidently they feel that Yerkl-Bloom adds something to this debate."

Spoken with true cowardly straw man sensibility....

quote
"...we'd like to think that we'll have a paycheck next week."

Well, maybe you need to get some skills that will work outside of academe. Or, perhaps, grow a spine.

;>)

"In fact, MY credibility is at risk for giving the likes of YOU the time of day..."

Ah, gee whiz, Johnny. Hate to make you have to think a little more deeply about why it is you want to vote for Bush again. I mean, you're right. He does keep the world so...so...concrete. Yes, and anything beyond the pale of what we can see, hear, taste, desire, why we can just toss it on the trash heap of "postmodernism" and blame the NEW dead white guys like Derrida and Foucault. Going to war under false pretenses? Redefining an insatiable desire for power, oil, money as "patriotism" and "fighting the global war on terror"? Yeah, what could a reading of Derrida possibly have to do with clarifying a destructive warrant that disguises--or better yet, re-signs--itself as imperialist nostalgia?

Right, Derrida used big words. He was harder to comprehend than a semester of calculus, ans we certainly don't want that from our Philosophy/Literature classes! Derrida forced us to think outside inculcated traditions and bred a suspicion of the very grounds upon which we assume the most basic form of communication. He questioned fixed notions of "stability." Why? Well, Johnny, so that we wouldn't fall into lock step with the grinning platitudes of a global menace like your man GWB, who reads only one response to every action, one meaning to every word and who, like his daddy before him, sees absolutley nothing wrong with a policy that exhorts that the ends justify the means--in fact sees it as his GOD-GIVEN/CORPORATE DRIVEN duty to read the world thusly. Why, all the folks in Bible Study'll vouch for it. You've heard it--"Gawd works in mistery-ous ways, boy. Best b'lieve it."

Don't mess with my simplicity, my willful ignorance. Don't ask me to take off my blinders. In fact, don't you dare even call attention to the possibility that I'm wearing them! I will make it my mission to ruin you if you do. I will cast you into the hinterlands of French cowardice!

Hi JERKEL!

So pleasant to correspond with you again.

You know, despite your Mordernism, despite your Progressivism, and despite your inability to accept reality, I see reason to give you the time of day.

Now isn't that refreshing?

Don't you feel "SPECIAL"?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You say Quote...

"Yes, and anything beyond the pale of what we can see, hear, taste, desire, why we can just toss it on the trash heap of "postmodernism" and blame the NEW dead white guys like Derrida and Foucault."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I do not know about you, but I remember heading out of my home on 9-11-2001 and SEEING with my own eyes one of the images that is forever seared into the minds of those who have a stake in America. Those images are of large buildings being attacked by a force in the world that lived among us.

Now, how is that for your "trash heap"?

Maybe if you think of the ones who died in those buildings, you can see why I don't believe that it is going to be possible to "eventually" regard Terrorism as a "nuisance."

You see, my friend, YOU are a "nuisance".

Terrorism, however, is a BIG problem.

Is that simple enough to send a clear signal through your troubled synaptic gutters? If not, then read on.

Pehaps what is troubling you the most is the fact that after 9-11-2001 AMERICA as a nation jumped all the way back to December 7, 1941. We reverted into the mindset that got us through WWII. I mean, after all, it was not FRANCE that pulled us through those times, was it? You philosophical tour must have stopped off at Viet Nam for a nice stay with your boy Kerry who cannot seem to get over it and who cannot seem to "move on".

Of course, you will not understand what happened to the "blame America first" attitude and your so-called social research that is in fact "Persuasive Research" and is therefore neither valid nor reliable.

What is a non-entity is the Progressivism and Modernism that everybody in America seemingly was building their lives around up until the events of 9-11-2001. It is not that America has changed, it is that you can see America clearly now. America has always been a country of philosophical Post-Modernists. It was just that nobody realized it until they saw it first hand and that stark realization has a lot of people upset.

The schools of philosophy of Modernism, Absolutism, Pragmatism and the like are not solitary philosophies that are "right" or "wrong". They do not govern how we should live our lives. There is no such thing as an all-encompassing world philosophy. Neither is there an Easter Bunny or a Santa Claus. You might as well be hunting for the "Holy Grail".

Instead, these schools of philosphy are only tools that we use to live from day to day. Post Modernism allows for the contextual analysis of philosophical problems. People with common sense have a tendancy to operate under the philosophical school of Post-Modernism.

You see, all schools of philosophy are social constructs except post-modernism. They are only "TOOLS" to handle Philosophical problems that can be used by Post-Modernists as they are needed. If you base your life totally on ANY of these schools of philosophy and you try to make all human behavior fit into those confines your whole world is going to end up in a smoldering heap that will rival the pile of rubble that was once the World Trade Center.

Post modernism ties the world together in a patchwork quilt of incredible complexity. Attempting to fit your life and the world under the blanket of a single philosophical school other than Post Modernism is like wearing a bikini to a snowball fight. You are likely to be pretty uncomfortable and your philosophy cannot cover you when the stuff starts flying. If America were to do this in today's world, she could not last long. By the way, are you feeling cold yet?

Now, if you want to do something, my friend, have at it!

As far as I am concerned, your plans of action, your threats AND your philosophical perspectives are more empty than John Kerry's "PLANS" for America. Like YOUR ideas, his plans amount to ideas that won't work, if there are any substance to his ideas at all and IF they do, in fact, actually exist.

Have a nice day! :>) ;

JERKEL

Ooooh, Johnny! Johnny! You've done it to me, now. Your narrow-minded laser-like vision! Your declarative thumbnail sketches of those useless higher and complex orders of thinking that have been traitorously used to--dare I say it--deconstruct our erstwhile simplistic and God-given right to claim the higher ground whenever, and to use that higher ground as a warrant for laying waste and exploitation on other countries, other godless civilizations.....

Ohhh, Johnny, you're just so...so....MANLY! And when you talk about TOOLS of thought. Ayyy! I just want to scream in ecstacy. You see right through me Johnny. You do! Oh, Johnny, if I only had YOUR tewl of thought, your straight-ahead, get-the-hell-outta-my-way rhetoric. Cuz, y' know, Johnny, I saw the towers burn, too. I lost two two very dear friends in that aftermath. But I couldn't think like you did/do, Johnny. I couldn't go straight to "Let's get 'em, boys. Lead us on GWB" (which he sure enough proceeded to do, alright!). Oh, Johnny, you're so right on! Lies count for nothing! And you're so right about that other sniveling Frenchy wannabe veteran! I mean, what does HIS experience amount to? He had the gall to QUESTION what he was doing while he was firing away. That crummy deconstructionist! Using a TOOL of thought instead of just blindly running into the fire with no exit strategy. Has he no PASSION?! And, I confess, GWB is doing the right thing, at least by your account. Forcing those VOLUNTEER RESERVISTS to keep on keepin' on over there. Well, Johnny, you're right again. I mean, GWB must know sump'n 'bout the gumption of those reservists, having been one himself who was just dying to get into the action--which was why he had his daddy pull strings to get him into the reserves, right Johnny? So that he could get straight to the action? Boy, you're a pistol, Johnny. Dead on! GWB knows somethin' 'bout them reserves that WE don't, cuz he keeps sendin' 'em back. Not like Wussy Frenchy wannabe.

"Post modernism ties the world together in a patchwork quilt of incredible complexity. Attempting to fit your life and the world under the blanket of a single philosophical school other than Post Modernism is like wearing a bikini to a snowball fight. You are likely to be pretty uncomfortable and your philosophy cannot cover you when the stuff starts flying. If America were to do this in today's world, she could not last long. By the way, are you feeling cold yet?"

Oooooh, Johnny, put your big hairy, manly empiricist arms around me. Shelter me from complexities, Johnny. I...I...I canna see nae more! Ach, ach, ach! You've driven the stake of realism, of phenomenology, of stoicism, through my wretched heart! Ah, the TEWLS, the TEWLS! Yes, as you screamed, "nine'leven" made it all so very real. Where I saw a "trash heap" of historical lies and the ramifications of "global" greed all for ourselves, while the blood of innocents ran red beneath it all, YOU, Johnny, saw the world for the simple binaries that have always comprised it. There is evil, and we sure as hell din't have NUTHIN' to do with bringing it about--it's all those who HATE freedom and opportunity, and there are SO many of them, right, Johnny, SO many who want to take away what we so richly deserve mauger the cost worldwide. Why, they must have been BORN to hate our freedom and opportunity. Oh, Johnny, I am as a lamb to your lion's wealth of knowledge. Slaughter me, Johnny. Wreck me so I can be reborn. Don't be rebuffed by my silly, pansy-ass threats to destroy you for trying to make me see differently. Your is the vision, Johnny. So direct, so unwilling to see what's not in front of you.

"There is no such thing as an all-encompassing world philosophy."

Ohhhh, Johnny, how did you KNOW? HOW? You just cut through the subltleties and make me feel so foolish for having gone to college at all. I...I never could have IMAGINED such a thing. Now, though, you've enlightened me. Let's take up arms, Johnny. Let's me and you re-enlist and follow GWB from one scavenger hunt to the next, knockin' off the natives wherever we can. He's gonna win. I know that now. I know. And I'm no longer sad about it. Long as your simple-minded rhetoric rings in my ears, Johnny. Cuz I want what everyone else wants, Johnny--the crumbs that GWB tells me are rightfully mine, while him 'n his wallow in the crude riches of everyone else's labor.

Dearest Jerkel,

John Kerry lost.

I told you so.

It sure looks like the majority of Americans have rejected your ideas. Are you thinking about going to Canada or France to escape these American neanderthal barbarians?

I love your passion and your thoughts, however, if you DO decide to leave us, can we help you pack?

Just curious.

~J~

Yes, yes. That HUGE, OVERWHELMING majority of votes--a mandate indeed! Let the slaughtering continue. Let the oil flow. Flex your muscles, Johnny. God's on your side! Seeya in Paree!

Jerkel's demeanor is the reason Kerry lost. Jerkel's conviction that anyone who does not agree with him must be stupid for not doing so takes arrogance to a whole new level. I love art, and poetry, etc. etc. etc. and my argument was not that we should not fund the arts or humanities, but that we have the right (not as taxpayers but as members of society) to question whether society's resources were used best when used to finance someone's work through subsidies. Especially when there are students, patients, and elderly who could have been the beneficiaries of those same resources. Of course academicians like to think that their work has a legitimacy of its own. But I wonder if Jerkel would turn down a paycheck that comes from the "ignorant populus" cause he doesn't really care about putting food on his table or a roof above his head. The question is, do we have the right to demand that others pay so that we can continue doing what we like and then call them names, or do we feel we have an oblication as recipients of grants and subsidies to give something back through our work to society for its generocity. This is an old question that many intellectuals have tackled, but which remains open. And Jerkel's quick dismissal shows his lack of either intellect or honesty.

"Jerkel's demeanor is the reason Kerry lost."

Look, Ma! I finally made the big time!

"Jerkel's demeanor is the reason Kerry lost. Jerkel's conviction that anyone who does not agree with him must be stupid for not doing so takes arrogance to a whole new level."

Arrogant? For thinking you stupid? Never. After reading your riduculous posts, why it just makes sense to think you as such.

And don't call ME an "academic," you ignoramus. People with 'tudes like mine are the reason people with 'tudes like yours can't make asinine statements w/o thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if anyone will think what I just said is asinine...? But I must be right because...well, gee, a lot of other people, in fact, possibly even a MAJORITY of Americans might agree; therefore, according to Johnny G's reasoning, I MUST be right."

Perhaps I have arrived to the party too late, but please indulge me a few quick points.

(1) As a philosopher once enamoured by Derrida and all things postmodern, and subsequently reformed into more of a pragmatist, I still see serious value in much of what Derrida and his kin espoused. Examining the metaphysics of presence, the history of male-dominated language, the slipperiness of meaning, and much else, has given us working in political philosophy much to think about concerning democracy, legitimacy, dialogue and discourse, and the like.

(2) As a student of a student of a student of Heidegger's, I do not feel the least need to defend the Nazism and such. Heidegger was a prick, but so too were scores of thinkers in the past (and a boat-load in the present), but this does not denigrate their ideas per se.

(3) I remember being sorely abused by others in my graduate department for my taste for thinkers like Derrida, and if not for the mentorship of a wonderful advisor, I would have come to see him as an idiot like so many others. My views have been tempered over the last several years, and I do not read him much these days, but I will remember fondly my adventures with him and will miss the ol' Frenchie. He expanded philosophy a great deal, asked interesting questions, probed topics that needed probing, and I believe in time will be thought of as strange and a bit bizzare but absolutely essential to the development of philosophy.

The Kind is Dead...Long Live the King!

Deconstructing the legacy of an intellectual giant