At TAS, Matt Feeney delivers what might be the funniest and most well-conceived blog post of the year. Absolutely hopeless trying to pull a quote. Read it all. Big surprise: it's rife with implications for long conversations about prospects for postmodern conservatives. The main question is whether deconstruction has political implications, and whereas Stanley Fish says no, and Derrida goes so far as to say it's "justice" (this from the guy who also said Nietzsche's corpus might always only mean "I forgot my umbrella), Feeney sensibly enough says yes.
Briefly, all too briefly, I would contend that Matt's generally right and that's where the fun starts. Because Fish's claim that deconstruction does not (as opposed to should not) have political implications is a claim to what I call interobjectivity -- that is, to a shared and sharable conviction of the authoritatively true existence of a metaphysical item. (I continue to refine this definition.) It's not quite the whole story to say that Fish is just baldly masking a subjective preference with a truth claim. And it's not quite right either to say that Fish, as a bourgeois postmodern liberal, can, by the standards of authority internal to his own political philosophy, proclaim deconstruction as neutral with regard to 'political implications' and stop there. The phrase 'political implications' itself, in what it does and does not say, is positively rife with political implications. At its worst, as Matt hints, it can license "a trace of rapt passivity;" at its best, it can invite us to deconstruct what's going on when someone (contentedly or otherwise) settles for hovering over the surface of the world with the careful abstraction 'political implications' instead of saying more forthrightly that MY political philosophy can neither be attacked nor defended by recourse to any of the principles or conclusions of deconstruction.
Ironically I think one of the more pomocon things to do is to recognize that deconstruction does not equally threaten all political philosophies. But again this raises more questions than it answers. When it all boils down, Rorty and Fish (for instance) may paradoxically be able to rely on the United States Armed Forces to perpetuate and protect a system without any of their interests at the fore which nonetheless guarantees their best chance of survival and even flourishing. Postmodern bourgeois liberalism is parasitic on a global political system that's largely inimical to it. Yes, this is something of a dig, but then again Plato long ago recognized that this relationship also basically describes that between philosophy and democracy, at least until some philosopher or group of philosophers encounters the unthinkable (the people nominate them to rule or one day a ruler turns out to have been a philosopher). Whether or not a postmodern bourgeois liberal can cop to this relationship requires them to take a certain stance on politics, one which deconstructs Rorty's claim that we should/do call truth whatever wins in an 'open encounter'.
So what political philosophies are not as threatened by deconstruction as postmodern bourgeois liberalism? Well, postmodern conservatism, for one. Why? Fewer inherent contradictions and (perhaps because of) a more circumscribed commitment to social justice, I suspect. Postmodern conservatives, I think I'd like to suggest, recognize that truth is actually thrown into a constant state of extremity and crisis, or at least can't flourish, when all encounters are truly 'open'. This is different than the kind of cabalism that Straussians are accused of. It's more Aristotelian, insofar as it credits practical reason as a sharable resource for the maintenance and recovery of interobjectivity. But it's also Platonist insofar as it recognizes that the quest for a society of truly open encounters is a deconstructive project that never ends, and deconstructs some of the most noble and enjoyable things available to creative yet faithful human beings. The quest for the truly open encounter is a project of cumulative abstraction masquerading as a celebration of particularity. In that sense, it's like the charge leveled by Tocquevillian conservatives against modern liberals -- you think you're reveling in real diversity but it's really just a superficial compensation for the ubiquitous homogenization of equality.
In Nietzsche's terms, the point is more ominous: the only true diversity is a diversity of nobles. Postmodern bourgeois liberalism works overtime to avoid this conclusion, and to do so it requires of its nobles an endless set of shrugs when presented with the question of whether they are their own society's nobles. Pretty chintzy -- whereas postmodern conservatism -- even of a bourgeois variety -- would be more inclined to credit its own nobles with their nobility, even as it recognizes the virtues in permitting all manner of shades and subtext and subtlety when it comes to talking about and acting out nobility. Rah-rah sessions: generally to be avoided, and to be undertaken with the utmost care when necessary. That, too, has political implications, but my own claim is that, properly understood, deconstruction is like fire: it deserves respect and a little fear but, handled well, will not burn down the political philosophy of a well-informed postmodern conservative. But this in turn requires that the house of that philosophy is built with an eye toward the dangers of fire. And I suppose the bottom line is that a postmodern conservative thinks a postmodern bourgeois liberal is playing with fire but pretending not to be, whereas he or she the postmodern conservative is either not playing with fire or isn't pretending. And indeed, to make Aristotle suffer through a dance with Nietzsche, that not everyone can play well with fire.
That's where the 'political implications' come back in, in their honest guise as political morality, concerning the question of what nonpolitical standards should come into play in judging better and worse regimes. For this reason, America is a special treat for postmodern conservatives, because here is a place that doesn't always do as you'd like but which will probably always be okay in the end if its citizens aren't seduced away from their providential combination of small-bore innovation and wide-lens fidelity.
I like this kind mutual communication very much. I can learn much from that. The opinion that everyone gives also can be as useful information.
Posted by: oil mill | March 17, 2011 at 02:51 AM
Pomocon...
"Fewer inherent contradictions and (perhaps because of) a more circumscribed commitment to social justice, I suspect."
Wouldn't Derrida think of this a yet another canon - the object of deconstruction?
http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/02/what-is-a-postmodern-conservative/
I would love to find some links concerning how pomocon situates itself from the likes of Derrida. Perhaps I can see shades in your discussion of the nobility link from Nietzsche. I could also see Machiavelli and Ayn Rand but not postmodernism. I would agree that liberalism would be just as absurd to maintain. Surely, pomocon must be ironic...
Posted by: Mark Dreher | January 07, 2012 at 11:48 AM