EMAIL OF THE DAY

“Thanks for pointing out the profile of Julia Kristeva in the NYT. I spent a while in grad school studying French philosophers and psychoanalysts, as well as other figures (mis-)appropriated by the academic left like Arendt and Freud. What the American university (and the British, too, if my experience at Sussex can be generalized) has done to their work has been grossly unfair. Some examples: Arendt is among the most pointed critics of communism and boldest theoretician of freedom (and constantly critical of feminism and identity politics in their ’60s guise). Freud was deeply attached to conservative, bourgeois values and affirms exactly the sort of thesis you suggest in your piece about rioting and the gratification of human urges. Derrida has spent much of the last decade taking religion much more seriously than it will ever be taken in the NYT (a theological debate I saw between him and the Catholic theologian Jean-Luc Marion was breathtaking). And Lacan famously said of the rioters in Paris ’68, “All they want is a new master.” The left, of course, benefits from its blindness to that which doesn’t fit neatly into its world-view, but the right shoots itself in the foot by holding up these figures as straw men for what’s wrong with the American university. In fact, there is enough in these figures to create a dynamic, intellectual base to the right if it’d stop badmouthing and start reading.”