Well, since my name has been taken in vain.
Yes, fine, as long as we've all read
Rules for Radicals and understand that liberal democracy is to be hanged by the garter of its most sacred principles. So a postmodern authoritarian says: "Let all fish swim in the aquarium of free thought. My piranha is hungry."
The problem is that Derrida is Nietzsche reduced to Marx (and ultimately to DeSade). "Each of those blind men wants something from that elephant they're feeling up," says Nietzsche. "They say they want knowledge. They're regular philosophers. Philosophers don't know what they want, yet they can't help but tell you. Just look where their fingers are going. What they want is power. But power is complicated. It is what makes us moral."
"Yes, power!" cries Marx who has been getting a little deaf lately. "There are no blind men but only revolutionaries at perpetual war with the elephant. If any of them tell you they are blind men--or men of any kind--get rid of them!"
"Yes, get rid of them," cries Derrida, deafer still. "Where are the post normative blind women? Where is the blind woman of color? The white European blind man
is the elephant! Get rid of him first! Cut him from the curriculum!"
The white European blind man grasps the elephant's tail. Furrowing his brow, he says: "An elephant is like a whip."
"Kiss the whip," says DeSade.
As I've said from the start, texts would necessarily depend on the class. But I add that it would require a return to the grand old literature survey classes that have (predictably) fallen from favor with the postmoderns. And of course a diversity of thought among the more focused classes from other than Otherwise it's just going to be another "how dumb do you think I am?" mug's game. Gee, white European males don't fit into any of our classes (since we only teach classes on decolonized post normative women of color). Who knew? It would be Pip's decolonized classroom writ large.
So no, we're really not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about making room for everyone (even the piranhas) and he's talking about pushing special targets (connected to special victims) into the margins.
My apologies to Pip for taking
his name in vain, especially since he seems to have left the conversation. As before my comments are not directed at him but at woke authoritarianism, here in the handy stiletto of postmodern literary theory.