Every Man a Derrida

A nation on the verge of self-deconstructing

Tim Cavanaugh from the November 2008 issue

Are the great American habits of directness, foursquare honesty, and a hearty handshake being undermined by fancy-pants French critical theory? You betcha! From the Obama-McCain struggle to find the proper meta-analysis of the word celebrity to the deconstruction of the mainstream media's treatment of John Edwards, from the "framing" and "repackaging" of political constructs to the rise of identity politics for white people, the trend is clear: We are all postmodernists now.

Comments

Very, very concerned|10.14.08 @ 7:03AM|#

Someone's gonna think that's a picture of Tim Cavanaugh unless you say otherwise.

Plus...|10.14.08 @ 7:05AM|#

American handshakes have nothing on German ones for cardiac quotient.

this article|10.14.08 @ 7:24AM|#

made me want to barf.

everybody sounds so stupid when they use this so-called "academic jargon" because, hm, duh - it's no longer academic jargon. even when tim c. writes an article about... i don't even know what this article was about - wasn't it just an opportunity to use big words like post-structural and a photo of good-old Jacques?

whenever i have a professor use the word "deconstruct" i drop the class. it's really a sign that the course will not be about facts. we cannot forget that these words and tools are as dated as their creators and i think we're in a newer age.

herodotus|10.14.08 @ 7:31AM|#

Deconstruction isn't critical thinking. It is merely a simulacrum of critical thinking.

Thomas|10.14.08 @ 8:03AM|#

whenever i have a professor use the word "deconstruct" i drop the class.

God, I should have done that...It would have saved me a lot of wasted time and money.

Chuck|10.14.08 @ 8:19AM|#

This is the kind of crap that people, who need to get out and actually do something for someone other than themselves, sit around and ponder over brandy in the middle of the day, while hating everything around them for being so unenlightened and too busy with real lives to take time to ponder such inconsequential bullshit.

|10.14.08 @ 8:44AM|#

That was a whole lot of words used to say pretty much nothing.

Dormouse|10.14.08 @ 9:01AM|#

Oh I dunno, I thought it was interesting.

BakedPenguin|10.14.08 @ 9:29AM|#

...wasn't it just an opportunity to use ...a photo of good-old Jacques?

That's Lacan? I thought it was Nader on a bad hair day.

|10.14.08 @ 9:34AM|#

I like big words, and you, my friend, have used a lot of them. I sure wish I were brainy enough to understand this post-modern-whoozits stuff, but I'll leave to the boys in the colleges with the brandy sifters.

I disagree about deconstructing not being about facts though. Last week my car was wheezin' something fierce and my gas mileage went to shit. I popped up the hood and deconstructed things til it sounded better. I sure learned a whole lot, and figured learning to replace my air filter is lot more factual than your intellectual offal.

and how!

Ze ozzer Jaques|10.14.08 @ 9:42AM|#

Lacan jus' beleef you noh reconahz mah peectoor.

Jacques...|10.14.08 @ 9:44AM|#

...even.

joe's law, he izz a kaw-sroock!

Lefiti|10.14.08 @ 10:31AM|#

I didn't know the LA Times fired Tim Cavanaugh. He's such a shining bright light in a field fading fire flies.

Hogan|10.14.08 @ 10:32AM|#

Lefiti, that was beautiful.

Seward|10.14.08 @ 10:37AM|#

Tim Cavanaugh,

Two reactions:

(1) I think it would be interesting to compare/constrast the popularization of pomo in current times with the popularization of Enlightement thought during the 18th century.

(2) ...to the rise of identity politics for white people... I don't think there is anything new to this (consider the white identity politics that garnered the KKK so much support in the 1920s for example), though it may be coming out of the woodwork a bit more these days.

Anyway, good article.

dhex|10.14.08 @ 10:42AM|#

i think we're in a newer age.

are you joking?

have you seen youtube lately? the internet?

good piece cavanaugh. sucks 'bout the whole firing thing, though.

|10.14.08 @ 12:03PM|#

That was a whole lot of words used to say pretty much nothing.

Or maybe that was a whole lot of words used to say pretty much EVERYTHING. (Depends on how you frame it.)

|10.14.08 @ 12:19PM|#

I'm trying to decide which is the worse characteristic of commenters to this post: the intellectual inferiority complex or the intellectual vanity.

dhex|10.14.08 @ 12:51PM|#

why privilege one state over the other?





:)

|10.14.08 @ 1:01PM|#

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." --G. K. Chesterton

|10.14.08 @ 1:29PM|#

I'm trying to decide which is the worse characteristic of commenters to this post: the intellectual inferiority complex or the intellectual vanity.

First you should decide what your definition of 'is' is.

|10.14.08 @ 1:41PM|#

Sean, I am of the mindset that inferiority complexes are almost always worse than vanity. They're more annoying, and almost always more dishonest.

Paul|10.14.08 @ 2:32PM|#

because critical thinking was never about saying there's no truth out there. It's about saying no one of us has all of that truth.

True...

Paul|10.14.08 @ 2:33PM|#

intellectual inferiority complex

You know, Sean, I resemble that remark and would appreciate it if you'd quit pointing it out.

Paul|10.14.08 @ 2:40PM|#

I don't think there is anything new to this (consider the white identity politics that garnered the KKK so much support in the 1920s for example), though it may be coming out of the woodwork a bit more these days.

Seward,

Interesting point. I do think, however, there's a difference between the hate filled invective of the KKK, and the hey-look-at-me brand of I.D. politics espoused by Webb.

Personally, I dislike both, but for different reasons.

mikethe|10.14.08 @ 8:27PM|#

the article had a great premise, but failed to deliver. the posts, however, are great... i say Reason should ditch the article and attach the headline to the comments.

|10.14.08 @ 8:47PM|#

What comes after postmodernism?

|10.14.08 @ 9:26PM|#

"Craig | October 14, 2008, 8:47pm | #

What comes after postmodernism?"

Time being cyclical, premodernism. Time not being cyclical, it gets replaced by another interesting idea that becomes bastardized into meaninglessness by a bunch of socialists.

|10.14.08 @ 10:23PM|#

Sad to say, but this has a lot to do with the degradation of the hoi polloi's composite i.q. The movement (in this case postmodernism) that compromises values such as "the great American habits of directness, foursquare honesty, and a hearty handshake" are inextricably coupled with blatant cultural confusion, vanity, sloth, etc.
It's ok people; great societies have fallen before. Many more will...

Famous Mortimer|10.15.08 @ 1:07PM|#

"This is the kind of crap that people, who need to get out and actually do something for someone other than themselves, sit around and ponder over brandy in the middle of the day, while hating everything around them for being so unenlightened and too busy with real lives to take time to ponder such inconsequential bullshit."

You just defined Libertarians.

As usual, Libertarians stumble when it comes to irony.

Famous Mortimer|10.15.08 @ 1:13PM|#

I would also like to add that the inferiority complex demonstrated by Libertarians on academic issues is always entertaining.

It's their biggest button, and it's fun to push.

but oh mort|10.15.08 @ 5:58PM|#

that's just the thing: we don't consider this an academic issue. the reception of french theory by american popular culture was an everyday affair. it's not that we couldn't talk about derrida or jameson or foucault or de man or spivak or butler or de certeau or beaudrillard or said. i simply don't find it as rewarding as i used to as a dreamy undergraduate being lured into the glamour of the academic world.

ALSO mort|10.15.08 @ 6:04PM|#

i'm really perturbed by this word pomo. sure, french theory had a heavy influence on the so-called thinkers of postmodernist thought, but postmodern has more to do with economics (see jameson on late capitalism), consumerism and transhumanism. transhumanism or posthumanism is primarily a libertarian's issue, so our button is probably worth pushing. jürgen habermas on the public and the private spheres is certainly worth discussing in a libertarian forum and his thoughts on post-secularism have got to be considered.

|10.15.08 @ 7:15PM|#

Tim,

You weren't fired. You were given space to explore other opportunities.

Schuyler|10.16.08 @ 12:10AM|#

Was this article a joke? Like that one where the guy wrote a jargon-riddled paper full of balderdash and got some prize for it?

There are so many things going on in the world right now, can we please not get caught up in annoying, elitist abstraction?

Or maybe it really was a joke.

Oh man, I used to think I was really very smart. Now I just don't care either way...

|10.16.08 @ 8:21AM|#

The article would have more authority if Cavanaugh had not confused 'postmodern' and 'poststructuralist.'

|10.16.08 @ 12:42PM|#

your thesis that we are all post-modernists when submitted to the law of non-contradiction, deconstructs itself. Asserting we are relativists assumes a truth is in play, and therefore cannot stand.

Hogwash.

|10.16.08 @ 12:43PM|#

Just great.

|10.17.08 @ 12:33AM|#

the reception of post-structural theory in america has been nothing short of abysmal - particularly of Jacques Derrida's work. yes, that's Derrida, not Nader, not Lacan. Derrida has given a corpus that will take a long while for us all to get through, and this isn't because of its obscurity or what some perceive as senselessness - it will take time for us to become more hospitable to these works. Derrida is a writer of extreme sensitivity and each word is chosen very carefully. Without reading the Western canon of philosophy, there's really no point in starting out with his work. It pulls from Plato, to Augustine, to Heidegger. Without knowing their work thoroughly, there is no way to understand what kind of rhetorical stance he is taking. if this seems exclusive, if this turns your off, it's perhaps worth considering what it is that greater specialization in knowledge actually does. We should consider where we draw the lines of elitism. Though one may condemn elitism, it may be beneficial to see what kind of elite systems one does participate in and why. My feeling is that the answers two these questions won't be half as noble as the field of rarified academia. But that's just my opinion....
The inane notion that deconstruction is out to destroy truth is an idea that is long overdue for dismissal. Anyone who were to read more than 30 pages of Derrida's work would realize that it has nothing to do with banishing "truth." In any case, this article spoke very little of postmodern thought, let alone post-structural thought. It seems like an utterly feeble attempt to insist on a kind of criticality or methodology, usually reserved for the ivory tower, finally seeping into the greater public sphere. While there may be a way to point to this more distinctly, this article does not accomplish this. A better knowledge of these ideas is required, and a much higher word-count as well.

|10.17.08 @ 1:50AM|#

This piece isn't even good enough to be called sophomoric; its final sentences are juvenile and insulting. In addition, way before Lakoff, Aristotle and Kenneth Burke were making the same points, so I'm tired of all these claims to novelty and insight, really.

Robert Landbeck|10.17.08 @ 9:23AM|#

There can be no post modern politics without a paradigm change in ethics. Not a return to any model of a premodern past, but a future, new postmodern ethical conception. Those ethics are already be pioneered at:

http://www.energon.org.uk

mikethe|10.19.08 @ 3:42AM|#

doo doo

|10.19.08 @ 5:19AM|#

When someone say's we are all postmodernists now, you can figure he's looking for moral support. Or maybe amoral support since he has to hold there is no moral or immoral.
No, I am not a postmodernist. I've read some pitiful piffle in my time, but nothing comes close to Derrida & Barthes. No thank you.
Most of us are not post-modernists. A lot of us don't like them. Or any other kind of liar.
Mr Cavanaugh, you should speak for yourself. For me, not even a dead post-modernist is a good post-modernist.

|10.22.08 @ 1:19PM|#

Great article!

I wonder whether the fear of "postmodernism" is the closest thing we Americans have to the ancient fear of philosophy?

Fortunately, Jacques Derrida is already dead, so that we do not have to kill him, as the Greeks would do.

And yet, as Hegel once said (or was it Nietzsche? Freud? I forget now...) "what is dead wields a very specific power..." Seems to be true in these comments, no?