Author: Ophelia Benson

There is an argument in progress about America-hating among American academics. We’ve linked to a number of entries in this argument ourselves in the last couple of weeks. There is for instance Daphne Patai’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on accusations of attempted stifling of free speech by two Web sites, Campus Watch and No Indoctrination. There is Alan Wolfe’s review of several ‘American studies’ books in The New Republic. And today there is an article by Dave Johnson on the History News Network which examines the funding of conservative commentators and think tanks, including the above-mentioned Campus Watch. Johnson cites an article by Eric Foner and Glenda Gilmore also on History News Network, an article which does indeed express misgivings about ‘a broader trend among conservative commentators, who since September 11 have increasingly equated criticism of the Bush administration with lack of patriotism’.

Moreover, in equating opposition to government policies with hatred of our country, Pipes displays a deep hostility to the essence of a democratic polity: the right to dissent.

I certainly wouldn’t equate opposition to government policies with hatred of one’s country, to put it mildly. So who has it right? Is Patai right that the left only raises the free speech cry when its own ox is being gored? Are Foner and Gilmore right that it’s the other side doing the goring? And who is funding what and why? Maybe we need a Campus Watch Watch, and then a Campus Watch Watch Watch, and then–

Well now…I must say, I’m a bit shocked. My comfortable certainties are all upset, what I thought I knew is sous rature, my binary oppositions are problematized, and things are just generally messed up. If the trendiest of trendy hippest of hippy French philosophers doesn’t like Seinfeld, well–well why bother, that’s all.

Earlier on in the film, an interviewer from South African television chooses to open her questions with a reference to Seinfeld : does Professor Derrida see any affinities between his thought and this ironic, situation comedy? Derrida’s eyes narrow. “Deconstruction as I understand it doesn’t produce any sit-com,” he says in English, audibly putting the last words into pointed italics. “Stop watching sit-com. And do your homework. And read.”

Read? Read? Can he be serious? Read instead of watching television? Do our homework instead of just sitting around being knowing? What the hell kind of injunction is that? What’s the matter with the guy? Has he come over all elitist and bourgeois and logocentric in his old age or what? And what’s with the scorn for darling sit-com? What’s up with that, huh? Sit-com is, like, the art form of the 21st century, doesn’t he know that? I think he needs to get out of Paris and smell the coffee.