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Why Academic Philosophy
is Dead for White Racialists
by
Victor Wolzek
"The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm the bombs...of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..." -- Jacques Derrida
"The privilege granted to unity, to totality, to organic ensembles, to community as a homogenized whole -- this is a danger for responsibility, for ethics, for politics." -- Jacques Derrida
"What Derrida advocates, in a nutshell, is democracy, which is supposed to be a very generous receptacle for every difference imaginable." -- John D.Caputo
Part I: Deconstruction By Any Other Name -- Don't Underestimate the Problem...
Recently, David Horowitz's popular neoconservative online journal Frontpage Magazine featured an article called "Deconstructing Deconstructionism" by Robert Locke. The article brilliantly illustrates many of the problems and pretensions of French philosopher Jacques Derrida's deconstructive technique in a lucid and accessible fashion (the two adjectives are not commonly associated with this arcane interpretative strategy; the noun "fashion," on the other hand, perfectly defines the shallowness of its appeal).
But Locke drastically underestimates the influence of deconstruction in American colleges, particularly philosophy programs. "To their credit," he says, "America's actual philosophy departments in the universities aren't very interested in it and tend not to teach it." Deconstruction, he continues, "is big in English, anthropology, and anything else that studies culture, but not in philosophy itself."
Even if this were true, the situation still would be bad enough. Students attend a variety of classes in a given semester, frequently importing and exporting (we hope) ideas and assumptions from one into another as they develop a "well-rounded," holistic education. Even if deconstructive blather about various tyrannical "-centricisms" of the West (e.g., logocentrism, phonocentrism, phallocentrism, to name a few) were strictly relegated to English courses, it would be absurd to think students would leave such trendy, exciting concepts at the door when they entered philosophy class.
But unfortunately it is not true. And the situation is far worse than Locke suggests or most of us imagine. American philosophy professors are very interested in deconstruction and its various offshoots, such as gender theory, queer theory, post-colonialism, etc. And they are teaching it. The single criterion Locke offers for measuring the degree of interest in the subject -- its general absence "in the online course catalogue of your local college" -- is inherently deceptive. Derrida and deconstruction themselves do not have to be the explicit subject of a course, or even appear on its reading list, for their assumptions to run the show. Students signing up for "Greek Philosophy 101" can expect their professor to engage Plato in a manner far closer to Derrida or similarly deviant, Jew-inspired theorists like Judith Butler or Richard Rorty than Aristotle or today's remaining classicist philosophers.
Deconstruction, as Locke pointed out, is silly and "looks stupid" when fully exposed, and its central texts are preposterously arcane. For these reasons it is rarely made the explicit focus of an undergraduate or even graduate course. The "postmodern" agenda, however, is pervasive and is far too politically useful to be dismissed by leftist ideologues simply because it doesn't make sense. Colleges are filled with such young ideologues. They may teach undergrads the Western "canon" Monday through Friday, but know this: they do so through a Jewish filter, one passed off euphemistically as "progressive" or "enlightened" and of course "postmodern." And on weekends they are busy at conferences clumsily vilifying and "deconstructing" all forms of White Western culture to various political ends, not to mention a highly coveted tenure-track career opportunity.
Intermission: The Philosophy Industry in America - A Bit of Relevant Context...
Academic philosophy in America, for those who do not know, is divided into two camps: Analytic and Continental philosophy. Analytic philosophy aims to clarify language and analyze the concepts expressed in it. The movement has been given a variety of names, including "linguistic analysis," "logical empiricism," "logical positivism," "Cambridge analysis," and "Oxford philosophy." It aims to be a "science" with rigorous rules and criteria for "truth." Continental philosophy, on the other hand, is the more "meta-philosophical" penumbra under which deconstruction falls. It is concerned with how social disciplines and intellectual structures -- including philosophy itself -- evolve and function culturally. Largely it consists of efforts to redescribe the world in ways that reveal previously hidden layers of meaning or aspects of reality (cf. the descriptive vocabularies of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, as well as the figures mentioned below). In this sense, it is generally more "poetic" in its language and more political, sociological, and psychological in its aim, which is why staunch Analytics have often said it is not philosophy at all. Most university philosophy departments are dominated by adherents of one of the two camps.
Though Analytic philosophers may dismiss deconstruction as the latest example of Continental nonsense, it has a stranglehold on Continental philosophy, and has for decades, since the late 60s. The relativity of perspectives and the "tyranny imposed by the West" on the rest of the world (two ideas that are together logically inconsistent but nonetheless politically attractive to the left) are the operating intellectual assumptions in most, if not all, Continental philosophy departments today.
A former graduate student of philosophy myself, I have numerous friends fighting their way through annual APA (American Philosophical Association) conventions trying to get a job-any job-teaching. It is a ferociously competitive market -- currently there are approximately 200 applications for every available position in the U.S. Since I left philosophy and entered the business world, I've gotten weekly reports from old grad school buddies, curriculum vitae-wagging soldiers on the frontlines of the hiring wars in contemporary academia. For years the word has been the same: voguish, ultra-liberal deconstructive "culture critics" -- particularly those with less penis and more pigment -- are getting the jobs, while even-handed traditional scholars are dismissed as "old hat." To be a traditional scholar in today's market not only means you're intellectually boring, but that you're politically repugnant. Scholars not onboard with today's anti-West party line are seen as defenders of a morally indefensible racist, sexist, Anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic and xenophobic regime. Attend any given Continental philosophy conference today, and you'll see the rotten fruits of this ideological bias, as I will now illustrate.
Part II: Bastards, Africans, and Derrideans. Laying My Cards on the Table...
Professor Mirungi, a philosopher and chair of an East coast philosophy department, recently presented a paper called "Bastardisms." It was a provocative critique of The Purest of Bastards, well-known philosopher David Farrell Krell's book on Derrida, deconstruction, and art. Mirungi addressed how Derrida and Krell both champion Derrida as the "purest of bastards"; that is, the one truly liberated writer not fathered by the same "misguided" Western philosophers he deconstructs. However, Mirungi argues that, from his perspective as a native African, Derrida is as Western as Hegel. Despite pretensions to the contrary, Derrida is talking about Westerners to Westerners, and there is not an African in sight. Derrida's work is as Western as the Louvre through which he and Krell guide the reader, and his ventures outside the West are as "touristy" and "colonial" as the African art exhibits found in the Parisian museum. Yet, because Derrida is unrelentingly critical of the West, he and his followers (such as Krell) presume he is open to all forms of difference and has an ear bent toward all voices, no matter how foreign. In short, though it is widely held that Derrida is the first to truly evoke the supposed virtue of "otherness," Mirungi argues Derrida's promise of true openness to otherness is a disappointment.
As for Derrida, I should lay my cards on the table: I think he's a philosophical red herring who has gained a great deal of fame because of his political usefulness. As a graduate student I wasted months wrangling with his work and distilling his balderdash into comprehensible positions. Conclusion? Theoretically, his work boils down to a convoluted Kantianism without a transcendental object; he's a literary Husserl minus the world, left with only the contents of the phenomenological brackets, viz., assumptions and prejudices. When the rubber hits the road, Derrida is a Rabbinical Heidegger establishing the transcendental conditions for the possibility of Zionist Israeli nationalism, instead of German National Socialism (Yes, Heidegger was a German Nazi; and Derrida is a Zionist Jew).
I know Derrida denies this, and I know his many American followers deny it. But everything philosophical Derrida has written -- his landmark Introduction to (fellow Jew) Edmund Husserl's The Origins of Geometry, as well as his own early books, Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference, Margins of Philosophy, and Of Grammatology -- shows that he is precisely the reductive, dead-end red herring he and his American followers are desperate for him not to be.
Villanova University professor of philosophy John D. Caputo is a prime example of an American scholar making a name for himself on Derrida's coattails. Caputo has already written at least five books explicitly about or inspired by Derridean deconstruction. Caputo is the Energizer Bunny of Derrida's American sycophants -- he just keeps writing and writing and writing. In each one of his shamelessly redundant books, Caputo repeatedly makes ad-hominem attacks on various straw-critics who dare to dismiss deconstruction as a facile ontology, the reduction of all reality to language. He conveniently pretends M.C. Dillon's Semiological Reductionism, by far the most lucid and devastating critique of Derrida's methodology, doesn't exist. Yet, he himself never illustrates why deconstruction isn't a relativist reduction -- merely asserts it and quotes Derrida's denials.
But of course Derrida and his lackeys will deny this interpretation! To admit it would be to render his thought intellectually amusing but philosophically untenable (viz., false). Like Sartre before him, Derrida then would become an undergraduate novelty, filed away by serious thinkers as one more philosophical misstep.
Pro-Derrideanism in America is based more on what his work symbolizes or "represents," and the political vocabulary it offers, than its substantive philosophical arguments, which very few understand. Leftist, politicized academics embrace him because he "destabilizes power structures" and "makes room for minorities." Yet ask them for a reasonably coherent exegesis of his Introduction to Husserl's The Origins of Geometry, and how his points relate to the subtle but foundational elements of Husserl's phenomenological theory, and they have no idea. None. I've seen it first hand at conferences. Confronted with specific questions, Derrideans are often dumbstruck and resort to pre-packaged statements like, "Husserl was ontotheological. He unconsciously presumed a God's eye view while professing to describe finite experience. Derrida shows it." But that's rote mantra. It's a bumper-sticker slogan, not exegesis. Caputo is the god of such sloganeering (cf. Demythologizing Heidegger, Against Ethics, More Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Derrida, and, Deconstruction in a Nutshell-the last is an essay and a transcription of a roundtable discussion with Derrida at Villanova University that I attended in 1994).
Interestingly, Derrida has always said that his work was political. For a long time this stymied many readers because his work, until recently (especially his very early work), contained no expressly political commentary. And yet, in my view, his work has always been principally political. He was brutally honest about his political agenda and I commend him for that, though I think his politics is a confused, wrongheaded, and dangerous mess.
As Kevin MacDonald has illustrated in great detail, Derrida follows a long line of theoreticians whose work has been much more effective in shifting and creating a politically liberal anti-Western worldview than it has been in enriching formal philosophy or the social sciences per se. Derrida follows cultural anthropologist Franz Boas, psychoanalytic theorist Sigmund Freud, father of Marxism Karl Marx, economic and social Marxists in general, and the Frankfurt School and Theodor Adorno in particular. Derrida is simply the latest and most bizarrely creative of them.
Each of these figures has built on and broadened a language of "liberalism" that has effectively sedimented in Western culture. That liberal language has made what Richard Rorty claims is the most powerful transformation an idea can make: the transition from private metaphor to public reality; poetic originality to unconsciously mass-accepted truth. Today all Americans, most of whom have never formally read the theorists I've mentioned, think with their concepts, live in a world they've sculpted. In a very literal way, Gentile Americans inhabit a concrete and steel version of these Jewish theorists' poetic, anti-Gentile imaginations. And it's not to our benefit.
Like MacDonald, I'm highly critical of this chain of theorists and the worldview they've honed to a kind of Judeo-fascist perfection. While it is "liberal" in a pedantically political sense, as a White American man I don't find it liberating at all. In fact, I find it not only suffocating but also threatening. McCarthyism was once denounced as an outrage, as an awful exception to the rule of freedom of thought and speech in a free American society. But today an accepted form of politically correct McCarthyism runs the show. (As always, a force directed against Jewish/Communist interests is demonized; the same force in favor of Jewish/Communist interests is lauded.)
I like Derrida's concept of "original repetition" because it has rich metaphorical significance beyond his theoretical use of the term. As this is how almost all American philosophers use, or misuse, Derrida's work, you can consider this misuse an act of patriotism. "Original repetition" is an oxymoron in which what originally appears must have already been. It seems apropos to say I find conversation and intellectual exploration crushed in the grip of academia's "original repetition." Everyone knows in advance what he is allowed to say and what he isn't; what he is allowed to believe and what he's not; what he's allowed to question and what's better left alone. Everyone already has the answer because the scope of questioning has been so drastically narrowed. Everyone "always already" -- another Derrideanism, though Heidegger used it first -- knows the limits of acceptable discourse and, worse, what discourse will quite literally get him in trouble (e.g., cost him tenure or get him tagged an "ist" of some sort).
Part III: Intellectual Terrorism...
"Terrorism" has been the word of the day for a few months now, so I'll use it: the politicized academic climate essentially wrought by the string of theorists named above strikes me as a form of intellectual terrorism. The twin towers of freedom -- of thought and of expression -- have been attacked so rabidly that they've incinerated and collapsed. Originality and honesty are lost; crushed and buried in a vast amalgam of hyper-politicized rubble. An empty void now stretches out to the horizon. For many the tragic absence of these "phallic" pillars may offer fresh new vistas. I, however, do not feel so Summer's Eve fresh. Perhaps I need a hearty douche of New World Order ideology, but what I see is a gaping hole where there used to be intellectual protection. And, supposedly, according to the Patriot Act, this is for "our own good."
A perfect example is the current state of political conservatives and conservatism. Now, I certainly don't consider myself conservative in the general sense (what exactly would I wish to conserve?). In fact, for most of my life I ignored politics. But I always liked the idea of having a choice, of various perspectives being allowed and encouraged. I was comfortable being apolitical because I assumed folks with more interest in and knowledge of the subject were out there in the world arguing about politics. And I do mean ARGUING. When I hear a politician champion himself as a "uniter not a divider," I cringe. When I hear that Democrats and Republicans are united on an issue, I'm immediately suspicious. They have no business being united on a subject! They are supposed to be different, to hold down different parts of the fort. Today, now that my ear is pressed to the door, they sound exactly the same. Republicans complain a little more about taxes. But a very little more. Leaving his Clintonesque allegiance to Israel on the sidelines, consider that "Dubya," supposedly a hardcore Republican with deep roots in oil and big business, champions the Republican cause by proclaiming Americans should give no more than 33% of their pay in taxes. What? That's practically socialism. Since when has that been ok with Republicans? Aren't they supposed to be for the federal government providing military protection and otherwise staying out of the way? How have they become so liberal?
Answer? Jew-sculptured liberalism has won the day. "Conservatism" simply is no longer allowed. A conservative who isn't actually a liberal is an "ist" of some sort, and is smeared out of his seat. Jessie Helms may have been a total crackpot (which is not to say I think he was) -- but that's what made his resignation so sad. Now someone who sounds nothing like Jessie Helms, that is, who sounds exactly like everyone else, will fill his seat. Only in terms of the Jewish agenda can I understand why some think this is a good thing, why they think it is progress. It's "progressive" because it's a hegemonic collective front that opposes the only hegemonic collective front liberals are actually in opposition to, which happens to be the one many think Jessie Helms represents:
X: But I thought "hegemony" itself was bad?
Y: Oh no, we only said that when it wasn't our team running the show.
X: But aren't we doing the same thing to them that we said was wrong when they did it to us?
Y: Yes, but with one key difference.
X: What?
Y: We're right.
My point, specifically, is not that I don't want to pay taxes or anything particular like that (although for reasons beyond the scope of this essay, it's fairly clear that the government is illegitimate, has waged genocidal war on whites, and therefore deserves white retribution, not white tax dollars). My point is that all positions seem to be collapsing into one -- the wrong one! Alternative positions are not only deemed obscure, but more and more are becoming subject to punishment. Intellectually, it's terminally boring. And it appears to me to have evolved out of the influence of Marxists, neo-Marxists, and "I'm not a Marxist" Marxists like Derrida.
This critique of the current philosophical scene and intellectual climate is one you are not likely to hear at a Continental philosophy conference today, despite all of its self-critical posturing. Consider this year's meeting of the Merleau-Ponty Circle, held just after the 9/11 attacks. It was like a meeting of the communist party. As if the Cold War and the horrors of communism weren't known by all, every paper delivered was a polemical tract bashing the West, America, and White-Capitalist-Oppression in overt "evil empire"-speak. In itself, that's fine. Anti-White American communism is a position one has a right to have, however outdated and unworkable history has proven it to be. The problem is that no alternative view was allowed. In fact, when Professor Gary Madison read a paper suggesting French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty would have defended traditional American republicanism and capitalism, and Western culture in general, he was shouted down. I'll say that again, lest you think I'm speaking metaphorically: he was shouted down. Literally. After the audience's embarrassing descent into chaos, was Madison shocked, flustered, appalled? Hardly. "I expected it" was his response. He expected it? What has Continental philosophy come to when dissenting views are shouted down-and are expected to be?
In case it isn't clear how problematic this is, keep in mind, Madison was not delivering a radical, "far-right" speech. He simply refrained from bashing White Western culture as evil incarnate and dared to suggest that Merleau-Ponty would have quite likely-and correctly-preferred Western culture to a worldview the world itself has proven doesn't work. But this transgression, largely due to the line of theorists I've mentioned, and most recently Derrida, is today the purest of transgressions. He was shouted down just the same as if he'd stood up and said Merleau-Ponty was a Nazi and praised him for it! (How that idea -- or any other at a philosophy conference -- can in principle be taboo is exactly the problem). Continental philosophy is currently so politicized and unbalanced that in some ways, in the minds of those in attendance, what Madison argued was morally equivalent to promoting genocide (which is, to the academic left, moral outrage unless it's the genocide of Whites and the "hateful" culture they represent). That is what the West is, after all, right: the world's greatest genocidal regime? Is it really?
Part IV: Judge a Book By Its Cover, Especially Its Back Cover...
On the back of Krell's book there is yet another quote (a highly unoriginal repetition) saying Krell "dispels the myth that Derridean deconstruction is negative." Like a thousand other quotes before it, the jacket scribbler made a comparison to a similar "misreading of Nietzschean nihilism." On the contrary, we are told, as if we hadn't heard it hundreds of times already, "both are affirmations!" Really? yawwwwwwn.
The problem with Derrida or deconstruction is not that it's negative or affirmative. It's that it is simply political. In the sphere of the purely political, the words "negative" or "positive" can mean anything the confederacy of dunces wants them to mean. They can affirm what is negative and negate what is affirmative now, and change the rules and meanings tomorrow to whatever fits their immediate agenda. "What's good for the Jews" is the consistent measure, and it's consistently against White, Gentile culture.
If this critique bespeaks a passion unwelcome in the rational realm of philosophy, it is because I love philosophy, but my views, apparently, are no longer welcome by Continental philosophers. Those who shouted down Professor Madison must mean something different from what I mean when they use the word "philosophy." I still believe philosophy has something to do with truth, and it is liberal, viz., "liberating," insofar as it enables thinkers to speak truth to power. Neither Derrida, nor his intellectual lineage, has done anything to strengthen this kind of liberalism. Rather, they've created a lexicon now used quite effectively to forward a highly hegemonic agenda, and to silence all dissident voices. Philosophers wanted? White men interested in preserving Western culture need not apply.
In Mirungi's paper he discusses the experience of being an African in the presence of Christian missionaries, that being escorted through the Louvre by Derrida and Krell is reminiscent of that experience. It may sound strange, but I related to that tremendously. Indeed, in the presence of the Derridas and the Krells and the Caputos I feel like I imagine a native African might feel in the presence of missionary Christians. If I have not yet been converted, if I do not chant the accepted mantra, than I represent something "primitive," "savage," and "barbaric." I have not yet "seen the light" and therefore know not what I speak and ought not to be allowed to speak. Not until I can speak in Christian -- or in the present case anti-White "progressive" -- verses.
Derrida seems to promise emancipation from such tyranny, but in failing to deliver, in underscoring and rewriting the tyranny, Mirungi is correct: he disappoints. It's time to see beyond the postmodern "good for the Jews" horizon and think radically, individually, and in a way that defies ZOA (Zionist Occupied Academia)-approved "appropriate speech." The Third World gets all the press, but it's White men who are marginalized in America today. The ivory towers are turning to dung.
VICTOR WOLZEK
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