[by François Rastier]

Criticizing in advance the conference "After deconstruction: reconstructing science and culture" which will be held on January 7-8 at the Sorbonne, Simon Blin wrote in Libération (Ideas and Debates, Friday December 17, 2021, text consulted on the site the same day), an article entitled “Deconstruction”, the new target of conservatives.

He sets out to discredit the speakers by accusing them of being far-right, a political accusation that has become routine and is intended to mask the fact that they have taken a position against the cancel culture and the claim of intersectional activists to impose their biases on research. By a well-known inversion, just as the supporters of deconstruction present secularism as a kind of religious fanaticism, they present the defense of academic and research freedoms as oppressive activism.

I. Nathalie Heinich, who has just published What activism does to research et Dare to be universal, is naturally one of Simon Blin's first targets. In a right of reply that Libération refused to publish, she writes:

"You are targeting "a group of academics opposed to research on racial or gender discrimination which (...) will bring together a good handful of conservative authors, notably Zemmour's replacement on CNews, Mathieu Bock-Côté, the writer Pascal Bruckner and the sociologist Nathalie Heinich."

 "I would like to point out that, no more than the other members of the "Observatory of Decolonialism and Identity Ideologies" (to which I have the honor of belonging), I am not opposed to research on discrimination: I am opposed to the recent drift to which it has been subject, with its proliferation in the form of militant enlistment, lowering of the level of intellectual requirement and repetition of commonplaces. On this point, I refer you to my "Tract" What activism does to research, published this year by Gallimard.

  "You are aware - and I would have liked you to make this clear to your readers - that I claim to belong to this great historical current of the left that is republican and secular universalism, which can only be described as "conservative" on condition of ignoring the history of the left. On this point, I refer you to my collection of articles recently published by Le bord de l'eau, Dare universalism. Against communitarianism, which criticizes the victim-based identity and totalitarian temptations in which the radical left indulges.

  "Finally, I would also like to bring to the attention of readers of Libération – who recently did me the honour of writing a column there – that associating my name with Zemmour, via his “replacement on CNews”, is a well-known method of stigmatization by contamination, which clearly aims to make me appear as an extreme-right intellectual – which nothing in my remarks and in the positions that I defend can support.

It is piquant to see Libération to now insinuate that one of his former columnists is a far-right intellectual. Regardless of his constant positions in favor of the Republican left, the rhetoric of discredit is mechanically applied in a campaign that is spreading.

The language elements are so well disseminated that Nathalie Heinich and the author of these lines find themselves thus qualified, with others, in a press release from the Sud-Éducation union: "Le Figaro published, on December 22, a column signed by 40 "personalities" among which are found the ban and the rear ban of French neo-conservatism, united under the leadership of a far-right office, the Observatory of Decolonialism. Some signatories do not hide their sympathies for fascist political currents, others have been associating for a long time with violent and radicalized organizations, and still others are accustomed to outrageous political proposals (including the reestablishment of the death penalty). The fight they are waging is a fight to the death against academic freedoms, against the existence of spaces that allow the expression of constructive scientific controversies " Here we find the retro pathos, as hollow as it is alarmist: fight to the death, death penalty, pharmacy, backbench, etc.

The same language is gaining ground with prestigious publishers, and Frédérique Matonti, How did we become reactionaries? (Fayard, 2021), attacks the “self-proclaimed Observatory of Decolonialism” participating in a “large-scale reactionary mobilization”.

Here again is the same Nathalie Heinich, described as “a leading identity entrepreneur” “member of the very identity-based Observatory of Decolonialism” (Régis Meyran, Identity obsessions, Textuel, 2022). Under the heading of the "identity panic" that she is supposedly spreading, here on the same page is Farida Belghoul, formerly close to Soral, and, on the next page, Cassandre Fristot (anti-vax activist under investigation for anti-Semitism).

The defamatory attempt is all the more clumsy because Nathalie Heinich's work on identities is authoritative, but Régis Meyran is clearly not aware of it. In What Identity Is Not (Gallimard, 2018), she writes for example: "we must refrain from reducing the question of identity to a political camp, or to the sole dimension of national identity, or even to an essentialist and one-dimensional conception."

II. Secondly, Simon Blin undertakes to defend deconstruction as a school of thought, or at least as a regime of discourse. Why this concern?

It is first of all academic. Indeed, the conference that he denounces before its holding must be concluded by a speech by Thierry Coulhon, who is taking over the management of HCERES, the main research evaluation body in France. It is therefore a question of dissuading the authorities from providing the slightest support to this conference.

It is then ideological. The Collège international de philosophie, co-founded in 1983 by Derrida, was for a long time a privileged place for the dissemination of his thought. Now the Collège de Philosophie (heir to the Collège philosophique founded in 1946 and chaired by Pierre-Henri Tavoillot) is today organizing the conference After deconstruction.

Derrida himself says that deconstruction is indefinable and uses neither terms nor concepts, which makes it very convenient to use his wooden language, which is both imperative and deregulated. His ideology has spread internationally in cultural circles for two generations. It has imposed itself through a hypercritical discourse, rejecting not only rationality, which is considered oppressive, but also any desire for objectification.

After half a century of good pleasure, it seems, without further ado, that it has exhausted its "historical mission". Above all, it has legitimized and permitted intersectional discourse, in its various dialects, whether it be the postcolonial discourse (Derrida asserted in 1995 "the essential coloniality of culture" and Gayatri Spivak first became known as his translator) or the postfeminist discourse (Derrida denounced "phallogocentrism" in 1972 and inspired Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Avital Ronell, Catherine Malabou, etc.).

Simon Blin begins his plea for "deconstructionism" thus: "Far from being diabolical, this notion coined by the philosopher Jacques Derrida..."; but Derrida never uses this term and why invoke the devil in connection with it? Deconstruction, as Derrida admitted, is a euphemistic translation of the German destruction, which sums up the project of his mentor, the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. The destruction was to extend from philosophy to the whole of culture - judged bourgeois and Jewified (see if necessary Heidegger, Anti-Semitic Messiah.

Blin adds: "It is that through deconstruction, Derrida carries out a critique of Western 'phallo-logo-centric' metaphysics. To put it quickly, of a representation, through language, of social relations based on the domination of man over woman." However, Derrida never uses the expression: "phallo-logo-centric".

Le logocentrism is a term that we owe to the Nazi essayist Ludwig Klages: he "deconstructed" the logos as Judeo-Christian rationality. Derrida borrowed it as early as 1966, carefully avoiding mentioning its source.

In Margins of Philosophy (1972), he added a suggestive prefix to create the “ phallogocentrism " This sonorous term gives the Lacanians an appreciated wink, and introduces a strategic confusion between male sexuality (phallo), rational thinking (Logos) and identity politics (this centrism that we find in Eurocentrism, etc.). All the more valuable because it masks its principles, this mode of terminological composition is now the rule in intersectional discourse, from necropolitics at Mbembe's at the necro-sexo-politics at Preciado.

Why, however, the term phallogocentrism would it contribute to "the representation (...) of social relations based on the domination of man over woman."? Derrida applies it to animals (in The animal that I am, 2006), and not to women. Blin is making a regrettably discourteous confusion here.

On the other hand, Butler, from gender problem (1990), through Luce Irigaray, borrows from Derrida phallogocentrism to apply it to oppressive male rationality.

These are further indications that deconstructionists are not capable of reading their founding texts - any more than anyone else, for that matter.

In his last published text, Jean-Luc Nancy, a historical figure of deconstruction, recently concluded: "What Heidegger means by "task of thought" - at least what we can indicate - is this: are we going to stand up to the untenable? Or are we going to continue to be satisfied with our poor philosophical autonomy? Or, why not, end it all, having provided proof (that no one asked for) of a superb, majestic and abundant inanity?" Let us leave him the responsibility for his laudatory judgments (superb, majestic) but let us retain the admission of a “thriving inanity”, that of an inexhaustible emptiness.

Reconstruction will be an all the more complex task since all disciplines are affected by deconstructive claims to "transversality" and they must reaffirm their founding ambitions (see the collective La Reconstruction: https://lareconstruction.fr/). It is all the more necessary and the Sorbonne conference is already arousing international interest.

Attachments

1/ How not to define a non-concept

In order not to define the difference, his flagship concept which he opposes to difference, Derrida preludes thus: "[…] what I will provisionally call the word or the concept of differance and which is, as we will see, literally neither a word nor a concept" (Margins of Philosophy, Paris 1972, p. 1-29, here 3). This to the letter is imbued with a delicate humor. He continues:

"How am I going to go about talking about the a of difference? It goes without saying that this cannot be exposed. We can only ever expose what at a certain moment can present itself as here, manifest, that which can show itself, present itself as present, a being-present in its truth of a present or presence of the present. Now if the differance is (I also put the " is » under erasure) which makes possible the presentation of the being-present, it never presents itself as such. It never gives itself in the present. To no one. Reserving herself and not exposing herself, she exceeds at this precise point and in a regulated manner the order of truth, without however hiding itself, like something, like a mysterious being, in theoccult of a non-knowledge or in a hole whose borders would be determinable (for example in a topology of the castration). In any exhibition it would be exposed to disappearance as disappearance. It would risk to appear: to disappear » (ibid., P. 6).

In this calculated luxury of oratorical precautions, let us remember a few points.

• The word castration is a nod to the Lacanians and evokes some dramatic sexual mystery.
• The old esoteric theme of the identity of opposites is thus reformulated: appear equal Vanish..
• The invocation of theoccult (sic) is reinforced by a magical typographic operation taken from Heidegger: the is under erasure means: I pretend to reject ontology, Being has been forgotten, and I cannot speak of it openly. Any exposure destroys: therefore the occult must remain so.

Thus, traditional themes of obscurantism are reformulated by an accumulation of incisions and preteritions which veil their content.

b) Why the word of construction ?

extracts Letter to a Japanese friend by Jacques Derrida (1985):

"When I chose this word, or when it imposed itself on me, I believe it was in From grammatology, I did not think that he would be recognized as playing such a central role in the discourse that interested me at the time. Among other things, I wanted to translate and adapt to my purpose Heidegger's words ofdestruction oude Abbot.Both meant in this context an operation involving the structure (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the architecture traditional of the founding concepts of ontology or Western metaphysics. But, in French, the term "destruction" implied too visibly an annihilation." (my emphasis). 

(...)

"However, the negative appearance was, and remains, all the more difficult to erase because it can be read in the grammar of the word (de-), although it can also suggest a genealogical derivation rather than a demolition. This is why this word, at least on its own, has never seemed satisfactory to me (but what word is?) and must always be surrounded by a discourse." 

(...)

"She doesn't come back to a topic (individual or collective) who would have the initiative and apply it to an object, a text, a theme, etc. Deconstruction takes place, it is an event which does not await the deliberation, the conscience or the organization of the subject, nor even of modernity. It deconstructs itself. Le it is not here an impersonal thing that one would oppose to some egological subjectivity. C'is under deconstruction (Littré said "to deconstruct oneself... to lose one's construction"). And the "se" of "to deconstruct oneself", which is not the reflexivity of a self or a consciousness, carries the whole enigma." 

(...)

"What is deconstruction not? But everything!

What is deconstruction? But nothing!

I don't think, for all these reasons, that it is a good word. He is certainly not handsome. He has certainly rendered some services, in a very specific situation."

Thus sealing his anti-Enlightenment statement, Derrida paraphrases Sieyès' famous words on the Third Estate by inverting them. Now, however, the "well-determined situation" has passed, as he himself acknowledged, and this nonsense seems to have had its day.

3. Is the king of thought naked?

Neglecting that one does not escape ambiguity without risks, Derrida simplifies his style somewhat in his last works. He summarizes thus The animal that I am (posthumous, 2006):

"I have difficulty repressing a movement of modesty. Difficulty silencing in myself a protest against indecency. Against the impropriety that there can be in finding oneself naked, sex exposed, naked in front of a cat that looks at you without moving, just to see. Impropriety of such an animal naked in front of the other animal, from then on, one would say a kind of animalsession: the original experience, one and incomparable of this impropriety that there would be in appearing naked in truth, before the insistent gaze of the animal..."

Sown with neologisms like animalsession ou animot, this unforgettable experience spans 232 pages, as here:

"In any case, if I am after he, the animal therefore comes before me, earlier than me […]. The animal is there before me, there near me, there in front of me — who is after him. And therefore also, since he is there before me, here he is behind me. He surrounds me. And from this being-there-in-front-of-me, he can let himself be looked at, no doubt, but also […] he can, himself, look at me. He has his point of view on me. The point of view of the absolute other, and nothing will ever have given me so much to think about this absolute otherness of the neighbor or the next person as in the moments when I see myself seen naked under the gaze of a cat.

In a fairly devotional tone, the preface writer, Marie-Louise Mallet, concludes thus: "Far from being satisfied with a work that was nevertheless immense, his thoughts always rushed towards an uncertain future, and first of all by this concern to "render justice" to the text, to the theme, to the question, to the motif, to that which cannot be thematized, to the coming of the event... The most rigorous, the most uncompromising "deconstruction" has always been driven by this concern for justice as much as for accuracy."

But what if the king is naked?