March 11, 2003

WAR OF IDEAS: FRENCH POSTMODERNISM VS. AMERICA

      Colin Powell, our skilled and sophisticated practitioner of diplomacy has, by all reports, been deeply shocked and angered by French duplicity at the UN. The sophisticated Powell somehow believed that words have shared consensual meaning and that treaties and resolutions, based on agreed meanings are achievable goals. But what if words possess no fixed meaning? What if the people you are bargaining with view words as merely expressions of subjective power relations, having no reference to objective facts, since none exist? Having signed on to resolution 1441 the French, ever since, have behaved as if the demand for Iraqi disarmament was not what it seemed, that words like "immediate" and "disarm" do not mean what Powell assumed. None of this should be surprising in light of the grip on France's educated elites of such thinkers as Lacan, Foucault, Lyotard and the grand master of obfuscation, Jacques Derrida. While the Soviet Union collapsed and Marxism has been generally discredited, Marxist modes of thought survive in the form of fashionable French philosophies, including Deconstructionism and Post-Modernism. Old fashioned Marxist hatred of capitalism combines with a misunderstood Heisenbergian principle of indeterminacy to produce Post-Modernism.
      Subject of movies and adoring New York Times profiles is Jacques Derrida, founding father of Deconstructionism.The basic thrust of his theoretical position is that words do not refer to any reality; that they have no fixed and true meaning, that there is no reality separable from our subjectivity. That all things seemingly solid and fixed can be 'deconstructed', a variation on the Marxist position that under capitalism "all that is solid melts into air". Curiously enough, these Pomos make an exception for their own assertions as if their words did express a fixed and true meaning. And the fixed and true meaning is often a simple minded anti-capitalism, reminiscent of boiler plate Marxist-Leninist cant. Derrida's influence extends far beyond France; his most enthusiastic followers can be found in American university faculties. This is very understandable, because his crude anti-capitalism appeals to many of the anti-establishment Woodstock generation survivors, now comfortably ensconced in tenured university positions. The true flavor of Derrida's thinking can be found in the highly informative interview translated into English here: Its title, Nobody Is Innocent encapsulates his point of view concerning the attacks of 9-11. These attack, he avers, were a manifestation of the horrors of capitalism, and while he offers perfunctory condolences for the victims, they are not truly murdered human beings, but elements in a "text" he creates in which the capitalist West is as much to blame as bin Laden. This is Post-modernism in action. He deconstructs the "simplistic" notion that bin Laden was an evil Islamist fanatic bent on killing infidels. Instead, the murdered thousands were doomed by capitalism. Bin Laden is deconstructed in a particularly rich instance of Pomo 'recontextualization'; in Derrida's formulation, "I believe that at the moment all human beings of the west are directly or indirectly victims of what happened - and at the same time not innocent. I am far from siding with those who commited those barbaric attacks. I only ask myself if someone like Osama bin Laden, if it was him - because that is a name, a metonymy - doesn't stand on the same side like what he is fighting. He is a major capitalist, he is part of a network of money and power."

The Derrida Interview follows:

Nobody is innocent.

What are your thoughts on the terror attacks on September 11?

Derrida: The attacks confront us anew and in the most cruel way with the problems of globalization, but also with our outdated concept of war. What kind of war is this, that is not declared to any nation state, any identifiable adversary? A 'war' that is accompanied by massive movements of capital - we know by now that immediately before the attacks there were big speculative gains at the stock exchange. All that forces us to think newly about globalization, capitalism and war.

How did you get to know about these attacks? What does this catastrophe mean to you?

Derrida: Like everybody I was totally shocked. Also, I feel very connected with New York, I have been there often and enjoyed it. I feel deep compassion for the victims. But one may not be blinded by compassion for the responsibilities.

Who is responsible in your eyes?

Derrida: Of course in the first place the terrorists themselves and their backers. But also a particular, long standing American and European policy toward this part of the world.

What's the responsibility, the task of the philosopher now?

Derrida: It's the general responsibility of the political citizen. But his task is also to review the concepts I was talking about. He may not cease his critical questioning, although his feelings may place him on the side of the victims, the innocent targets.

I believe that at the moment all human beings of the west are directly or indirectly victims of what happened - and at the same time not innocent. I am far from siding with those who commited those barbaric attacks. I only ask myself if someone like Osama bin Laden, if it was him - because that is a name, a metonymy - doesn't stand on the same side like what he is fighting. He is a major capitalist, he is part of a network of money and power.

How can he or this network be fought? With military strikes?

Derrida: It is possible that such strikes are necessary, that there must be answers from the military and the police. But such an answer will not suffice, if not modifications in politics will deprive terrorism of it's base. Else one can be sure that everything will start anew very soon. What one must withdraw from the attackers is the field of public opinion. And to do that, American and European politics must be changed with respect to the Arabian or islamic states.

What is the connection with the "politics of dreams" that you are mentioning in your acceptance speech? Doesn't the whole western world dream the dream of security these days?

Derrida: Mind you, "politics of dreams" doesn't mean politics of dreamers or for dreamers. The dream I am talking about is the dream of thinking, not the actual phantasm of security, patriotism or revenge. This nightmare must be broken, it must be constrasted by a policy of waking up. We must wake up from this dream.

In our momentary situation, can we surrender security?

Derrida: By no means. It would be irresponsible to say that we surrender security. I believe in the necessity of a police, in the necessity of an army. I believe in the necessity of the usage of violence for the sake of justice. I don't say: Put your weapons aside. But that alone will not suffice, neither for security nor for justice. A war like the one that is prepared at this time can not be the sole answer. It would be a dream to simply say: Invent something else now.

What could that be?

Derrida: That can't be put into one word. This doesn't concern military and police alone, but every citizen, in America as well as in Europe, and I can't lecture anybody on what they should do.

Are the 'politics of friendship', that you were mentioning in your latest books, still possible? And if so, how?

Derrida: The friendship that I mean is just as impossible as the dream that I mentioned in my acceptance speech. An impossibility that is not the opposite, the negative of the possible. One has to do the impossible, one has to think it and do it. If only the possible happened, nothing at all would happen. If I only did what I can do I'd do nothing at all.

But didn't the events of September 11 origin in exactly that unpredictability, impossiblility?

Derrida: No, that was an eruption of hatred that, in spite of it's frightening dimensions, was not unpredictable. It surprised the whole world, but this eruption was not totally unpredictable. The resistance in the Arabian world had been growing for a long time.

And the network of terror was being knit tighter by military and financial means. Two or three days before there were speculations at the stock exchange. This was not totally unpredictable. It was a program, a concatenation of elements, that were already possible.

Interview: Ulrich Raulff