“Nothing will come of nothing,” spake King Lear, but that didn’t stop Jacques Derrida and his disciples from turning the study of literature ? and eventually several other disciplines ? into what author Roger Kimball correctly describes as an
attack on the cogency of language and the moral and intellectual claims that language has codified in tradition. The subversive element inherent in the deconstructive enterprise is another reason that it has exercised such a mesmerizing spell on intellectuals.
My encounter with Derrida enthusiasts during my final semesters of study in English literature was what caused me to decide against pursuing postgraduate studies in the field, because in my opinion one would have to hate literature and language, not love it, in order to subject it to such a nihilistic enterprise. They were, as I described, not only followers, but enthusiasts ? I specifically recall one fellow student who cited Derrida so frequently (pronouncing it “deh rih da”) that he sounded as if he were gargling.
I could not fathom why one would wish to believe that great authors, great thinkers, were puppets of the “inherent” racism, sexism, classism, etc.-isms of their language ? but now as I write this, I begin to see a rather base reason for their enthusiasm: the same people who like to believe that through deconstruction they triumph over those imagined linguistic foes also prefer to view the rest of us, including the great minds whose output they could not hope to match but can disparage, as still clutched in the grips.
In short, Derrida was the chief clothier of the emperor’s new tailors; we, garbed in our appreciation for the fine art of the pithy phrase and the moving tale, “ignorantly” mock or shake our heads at those proudly wearing nothing as if it were something.
