Wolin 1994 Deconstruction at Auschwitz- Heidegger, De Man, And the New Revisionis

7/28/2019 Wolin 1994 Deconstruction at Auschwitz- Heidegger, De Man, And the New Revisionis

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/wolin-1994-deconstruction-at-auschwitz-heidegger-de-man-and-the-new-revisionis 1/22

The South Central Modern Language Association

Deconstruction at Auschwitz: Heidegger, de Man, and the New RevisionismAuthor(s): Richard WolinReviewed work(s):Source: South Central Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 2-22Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern LanguageAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190264 .

Accessed: 11/03/2012 08:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The Johns Hopkins University Press and The South Central Modern Language Association are collaborating

with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to South Central Review.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=scmla


http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190264?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190264?origin=JSTOR-pdf



http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup



DeconstructionatAuschwitz: Heidegger,de Man,and the New Revisionism

Richard Wolin

RiceUniversity

Deconstruction's viability as a method of criticism has of late suffered

from a preponderance of damning circumstantial evidence. This "evi-

dence" pertains to its relation (or non-relation) to the greatest crime of the

moder era, the Holocaust. For in the aftermath of the Heidegger and de

Man scandals, its evasions, equivocations, and denials with regard to this

theme have caused its standing to plummet-perhaps not so much amongtrue-believers, but among an open-minded public prepared to judge sine ira

acstudio,without passion or hatred. The widespread controversies over the

repressed pasts of Heidegger and de Man have had the effect of exposingdeconstruction to an unprecedented public scrutiny. To be sure, some of

this scrutiny has been prejudicially motivated. But some has also been

genuine. What has been of positive value about these recent debates is that

they have forced deconstruction, as never before, to take a position on

matters of great historical importance: on questions of fascism, collabora-

tion, anti-Semitism, and the repression of sordid biographical pasts. For the

esteem in which both Heidegger and de Man were held has fallen insofar

as both men proved inauthentic (here, I choose my words carefully) in

failing to own up to their far-from-trifling youthful transgressions.As any lawyer knows, circumstantial evidence is not enough to gain a

conviction. Moreover, it would be wholly irresponsible to condemndeconstruction on the basis of a type of intellectual guilt-by-association:the idea that, because anumber of its theoretical forbears or exponents werefor atime avowedfascists Heidegger, de Man, and, to a lesser extent, Maurice

Blanchot),1deconstruction, too, would somehow be contaminated. I wouldlike to suggest-quite forcefully-that the attempt to read these recentacademic scandals as somehow implicating deconstruction in real historicalcrimes is patently off-base. Moreover, such attempts serve as a disingenu-ous mechanism to close off debate prematurely. After all, if a method of

criticism can be qualified as "fascist"or convicted of "intellectual collabora-tion," then it would appear that there is not much more to discuss. Thosewho believe that there are"grounds forviewing the whole of deconstructionas a vast amnesty project for the politics of collaboration in France duringWorld WarII2 surely have jumped the gun. It is not along this route that thetrue intellectual stakes of the Heidegger and de Man affairs are to be found.



South CentralReview

I would like to propose instead that these contentious recent debates be

treated as a symptomatology: once they are divested of their polemical

surcharge, they provide real insight into the possible weaknesses of

deconstruction as a method of political analysis. They show that textual

analysis and historical analysis are far from the same thing; that, to para-

phrase Derrida, "IIy a bien de hors texte"; and that when the "hors texte" of

history is systematically kept at a distance, it will ultimately wreak revengeon the methodology that chooses to ignore it For the debate over the

heritage of fascism-or, metaphorically expressed, over the historical sig-nificance of Auschwitz-may be treated as a type of litmus test concerningthe judgmental capacities of a given critical school. This is true insofar as,for better or for worse, our century's moral sensibility, the reigning sensus

communis,has been constructed upon the ruins of the totalitarian experi-ence. It has as it were been "indexed" in relation to the horrors of the

Holocaust. We may not know how to define the true, the right, and the

good per se; but we do know that an event such as Auschwitz stands as an

important negative index as to how we might go about seeking them.

Habermas once remarked that, "We can if needs be distinguish theories

according3towhether or not they are structurally related to possible eman-

cipation." In light of deconstruction's weak showing in the aftermath of

the Heidegger and de Man controversies, its serviceability for the ends of

possible emancipation has been called into question.Paul de Man's wartime journalism has been discussed ad nauseum. The

Schadenfreudeum unmitigated glee of deconstruction's detractors has been

palpable and can in no way serve as areliable guide to what is truly at stake.

Here, I wish to restrict myself to a number of essential points that, amid the

clamorous arrayof accusations and counter-accusations, have fallen out of

account. My concerns will be threefold: (1) the line of defense established

by de Man's defenders; (2)the historical status of de Man's collaborationist

writings; and (3) the possible relation between those writings and (as

aficionados might say) "so-called deconstruction."Deconstruction has been purveyed as a form of radical criticism. In its

own view, it is the mostradical. In a Heideggerian mode it seeks to ferret

out and unmask all instances of "presence": specious, metaphysical claims

to totality, wholeness, or Being-in-Itself; claims that are part and parcel of

the onto-theological biases of Western metaphysics-a preference for sub-

stance over accidents, necessity over contingency, essence over appearance.Of course, there are many intellectual trends that have also sought to

radically call such onto-theological prejudices into question: sophism,

nominalism, skepticism, in addition to a variety of antinomian movements.In this respect, deconstruction hardly comes down to us without precursorsand precedents.

Itis all the more astonishing, therefore, to view the initial reactions amongthe deconstructionist faithful to the unflattering revelations concerningPaul de Man. Suddenly, the unsparing critical sensibility for which

3



Richard Wolin

deconstruction had become known was placed on indefinite hold. Theinterventions of its leading practitioners, J.Hillis Miller and Derrida him-

self, immediately gave notice that the critical spirit stops at home: it was

not so much de Man's youthful misdeeds that should be exposed and

denounced, but the cabal of academicians and journalists who had daredto unmask him. From the beginning Derrida has always insisted that"deconstruction . . . is not neutral. It intervenes."4Yet, where the institu-tional status of deconstruction itself is at stake, intervention must be sus-

pended. One circles the wagons. Deconstruction has become a massiveinstitutional force in the American academy, with conferences, journals,and entire departments dedicated to disseminating its virtues. To allintentsand purposes, its response to the de Man affair was consistentwith the most

typical and predictable academic corporatism: a defense of considerable,vested institutional interests. All of this suggests that deconstruction, itscriticalpretensions notwithstanding, has itself become aform of "presence,"that its anti-institutional pretensions have been undermined by its ownsuccess. In an era marked by the death of the "subject,"Derrida has becomean intellectual mega-subject and deconstruction an academic cottage-in-dustry. Not a few observers failed to note the irony that so many critics of

subjectivity felt obliged to preserve the veritable cult of personality thatPaul de Man had engendered at Yale.5

But let's dispense with generalities and enter into specifics. Taking HillisMiller's several contributions to the affair as a point of departure, ironies

begin to multiply. Miller chastises JonWiener, the professor-journalistwhobroke the de Man story in TheNation, for failing to base his judgments on"anaccurate identification of the facts . . . and on a careful reading of thedocuments."6 Prima facie, there is nothing wrong with this claim. But

deconstruction, if it's taught us anything, suggests that "documents" and"facts" per se do not exist; instead, they are the "effects" of textuality,rhetorically constituted, a priori embedded in value-laden narrative frame-

works. Why in this case might a (pre-critical)appeal to the integrity of factsresolve the dilemmas at issue? After all, does not a reliance on so-calledfacts invoke precisely those delusions of "presence" and absolute knowl-

edge that deconstruction has always called into question? For adeconstructionist to suggest such a naive appeal to evidentiary sources asa way of settling a disagreement cannot help but raise our suspicions.

Miller opens another contribution to the debate with the followingwords: "Theviolence of the reaction in the United States and in Europe tothe discovery of Paul de Man's writings of 1941-42marks a new moment in

the collaboration between the university and the mass media."7 What arethe implications of these remarks? Miller denies that it is Paul de Man whowas a collaborator or a perpetrator. Although he admits that certain of hisarticles may be so interpreted, he, like Derrida, goes on to perform a classicaldeconstructive reading which shows that de Man's purportedly collabora-tionist texts are in fact rhetorically self-undermining, that his appeals for

4



South CentralReview

collaboration urn out to mean the opposite of what they say. Hence, deMan is merelya pseudo-collaborator.Millereven goes so far as to muster

hearsay,defyingmassivetextual evidenceto the contrary,o the effectthat

de Manwas a closetrdsistant. Conversely, f we returnto the remarksust

quoted, we discoverwho the real collaboratorsare:the mass media and

professorswho have conspired at home and abroadto sully de Man's

reputation-and, by implication, hatof deconstruction:

Therealtarget s not de Man himself. . . . The real aim is to discreditthat formof interpretation alled"deconstruction",o obliteratet as faras possiblefromthe curriculum, o dissuadestudents of literature,phi-losophyand culture romreadingdeMan'sworkor thatof hisassociates,to put a stopto the "influence" f "deconstruction."8

Let'sbe clearaboutthe intentionsand effects of Miller'sdeconstructivestrategy,his "overturning"nd"reinscription"f the inheritedbinaryoppo-sitionbetweencollaboration nd non-collaboration.twas,afterall,de Manwho disingenuouslypraisedthe "decency, ustice,and humanity"of the

Nazi occupationorcesandurgedhisfellowBelgians o cooperatewith them

to the utmost;9who in 1941claimed hat"the utureof Europecanbe envi-

sionedonlyin the frameof the needs andpossibilities f the Germanspirit. It

was not amatteronlyof a seriesofreformsbut ofthe definitiveemancipationof a [German]Volkwhich finds itself calledupon to exercise, n its turn,a

hegemonyin Europe";10ho asserted hat"thenecessityof actionwhich ispresent n the formof immediate ollaborations obvious to everyobjectivemind";11 ho contrasted he "stirringpoetic intuition"of Germanicitera-

turefavorablywith"Latinintelligenceandreasoning";12ndwho eulogizedthe "very beautiful and original poetry" that prospers "in the fascist climate

of contemporarytaly."'3Itis this de Manwhose collaborations seriouslycalled into questionbyMiller.Instead, n Miller'sreading, t is the interna-

tionalcabalofprofessorsandjournalistswho becomethetruecollaborators.

Lestthis pointbe missed,in the samearticleMillergoes out of his way to

emphasize hatit is not Paulde Man,but in facthiscritics,who displaythereal affinitieswith the totalitarianmentality. Accordingto Miller,their

argumentagainstde Man"repeatshe well-knowntotalitarianproceduresof vilificationit pretendsto deplore. It repeatsthe crimeit would con-

demn."14 One fears that amid this sorry confusion of actualhistorical

collaborationwith those who, somefifty years ater,have merelyreportedthe events,the realityprinciplehasbeen left farbehind. Atissue in this sad

tale of misguidedyouth arethe horrorsof war, occupation,collaboration,

anti-Semitism, nddeportation.Miller's oremostconcernseemsto be that

owing to the damningrevelationsconcerningde Man,in the future,a fewstudentsmightbe deterred romreadinghis books.

Derrida'sown apologeticsfarelittlebetterthan Miller's. LikeMiller,he

sees a definite parallelbetween the "gesturesof simplificationand the

expeditedverdicts"containedin the journalisticcoverageof the de Man

affairandtherealitiesof European ascism-"what happenedaround1940-

5



RichardWolin

42 . . . in Europe and elsewhere."'5 One feels impelled to point out thatunder the conditionsof democraticpublicityat least Derridaand his col-

leagues have the right to a publicresponsewhen they feel theirinterests

have been misrepresented;a right that was systematicallydenied to the

opponents of fascismliving under the Germanoccupation. To insinuatethat those with whom one bitterly disagreesarein essence fascist,or are

behavingfascistically,doesnothing to raise the level of debate. Moreover,the analogicalconflation of shoddy journalismwith historicalfascismis

purely nflammatory, nhistoricalparallel hat sby anystandardsspeciousand inapt With reference to JonWiener'scontributionsto the de Manaffair,Derridaobserves:"It s frighteningto think that its authorteaches

historyat auniversity."16Derrida s of courseentitledto his opinion. But

whatmakesthis instance of character efamationanymoreacceptablehanthe famous case of the Yalephilosophy professorwho, in a letter to theFrenchministerof culture,urged that Derridabe forbiddenfrom callinghimselfaphilosopherduringhis sojournsabroad, incedeconstructionhas

nothing to do with philosophy?In his analysisof de Man'scollaborationistwritingsDerridaemploysthe

method of textual analysis-"so-called deconstruction"-he has refinedover a period of thirtyyears. De Man'swartimejournalism,he tells us, isafflictedwith the sametextualfissuresand cleavagesthat characterize ll

ecriture:t is 'constantly split, disjointed,engaged in incessant conflicts."Or,as he goes on to informus in a classicallydeconstructionistmode:"all

[deMan's]propositionscarrywithin themselvesa counterproposition";llaremarkedby a 'doubleedgeand a double ind."17s a result,they becomefodder for the by now familiardeconstructionisttechnique of a double

reading:of a doubleeance ra doubleecture.One can,I think,concedeDerrida'srhetoricalcaveatswhile disagreeing

with the materialconclusions to which they ineluctablypropelhim:thattextswhich at firstglanceappearedcollaborationistprovein factnot to be

so oncesubjected o theprocedureof thedoubleecture-which increasinglybecomes a type of hermeneuticaluniversalsolvent Moreover,as a resultof this classicaldeconstructionistgesture,a new leitmotifin the de Mantexts becomes apparent:Derridashows them to contain a veiled protestagainstthe occupationandits consequencesforEuropeancultural ife.

Theboldness of Derrida'sstrategy s unquestionable. He undertakesadeconstructionof de Man'smost blatantlyanti-Semitic ext,"TheJewsin

ContemporaryEuropeanLiterature,"o showhow anarticle hatconcludesby recommending the creationof aJewishcolony isolatedfromEurope"as a "solutionto the Jewishproblem"18masksinstead the sentimentsof aconscience-riddenr6sistant. However, accordingto the historian RaulHilberg, author of TheDestructionof the Europeanews,at this point thedeportationsn Belgiumhadreachedsuchanextreme hat twasimpossibleto remainunaware of the insidious fate awaiting the Jews. As Hilbergobserves,"AlmostalleducatedBelgiansknew by 1941or atthe latest,1942,

6



South CentralReview

that Jews were being sent eastward to be exterminated."19 Even if de Man

remained unaware of the fate awaiting Belgium's deported Jews, there

could be little doubt concerning the massive, everyday persecution theyendured at the hands of the Nazi occupiers and their Belgian henchmen: a1940 decree had already banned Jews from the civil service, the press, the

practice of law, and education. In the summer of 1941, Jewish businesses

were confiscated; and a few months later, a curfew was imposed on Jews.In the words of historian Michael Marrus: "One would have had to live in

a plastic bubble to be oblivious to the massive, open, intense persecution of

the Jews then underway, which was perfectly evident to someone in de

Man's position."20 But Derrida characteristically shows little interest in

historical context. He is exclusively interested in rhetoricalcontext, which

he proceeds autocratically to define. Yes, he at first concedes, such remarkswould seem to reflect poorly on the young de Man. Nevertheless, he

counters, "one must have the courage to answer injustice with justice"-that is, "justice"for de Man.

The linchpin of Derrida's double reading concerns de Man's by now

well-known critique of "vulgar anti-Semitism," an ideology that perceivesthe entirety of inter-war European literature as "degenerate" insofar as it

has been "enjuiv." De Man comes to the defense of European modernism

of the 1920s and 1930s in order to deny that, as the so-called vulgar anti-

Semites would have it, Jews have played a dominant role. "Itwould be arather unflattering appreciation of Western writers to reduce them to beingmere imitators of a Jewish culture that is foreign to them," he observes.

Moreover, de Man tells us, itis the Jews themselves who are guilty of havingdisseminated this myth:

Often,theyhave glorified hemselvesastheleadersofliterarymove-

ments that characterize ur age. But the errorhas, in fact,a deepercause. At the origin of the thesis of a Jewish takeoveris the very

widespreadbelief according o which the modem novel and modem

poetryarenothing but a kind of monstrousoutgrowthof the worldwar. SincetheJewshave, n fact,playedanimportant ole nthephonyand disorderedexistenceof Europesince 1920,a novel bor in this

atmospherewould deserve,up to a certainextent,the qualification f

enjuiv.21

The vulgar anti-Semites thus commit the additional sin of succumbing to

Jewish propaganda. De Man in no way contests the fact that, to repeat, "the

Jews have . . . played an important role in the phony and disordered

existence of Europe since 1920."He merelywishes to point out, in amanner

that is consistent with his general position on moder art and literature,that the sanctumof twentieth-centurymodernismhas fortunately argelyremained uncontaminated by pernicious Jewish influence.

Now, for Derrida, de Man's equivocations concerning "vulgar anti-Semi-

tism"suggest an interpretation of the foregoing passages that is remarkablyfree of slippages and ambiguities. Instead, it would seem they make for an

7



RichardWolin

open-and-shut case in de Man's favor. Here are Derrida's conclusions:

Toscoffatvulgaranti-Semitism,s thatnot also to scoffat or mock

the vulgarityof anti-Semitism? . . To condemnvulgar anti-Semi-tism may leave one to understandthat thereis a distinguishedanti-Semitisminwhosenamethevulgarvarietyisputdown. DeMannever

sayssuch a thing,even thoughone maycondemnhis silence. Butthe

phrase can also mean something else, and this reading can alwayscontaminate he other in a clandestinefashion: to condemn "vulgaranti-Semitism,"specially f one makesno mentionof the otherkind,isto condemn anti-Semitismtself inasmuch s it is vulgar, always and

essentiallyvulgar.22

This is a conclusion that, shortly thereafter, Derrida considers worth

reemphasizing: "The logic of these first two paragraphs controls every-thing that follows; it is a matter of condemning anti-Semitism inasmuchasit is vulgar . . . and of condemning this anti-Semitism as regards iterature:its history, its own laws, its relations to history in general."23Consequently,Derrida believes that as a result of de Man's forthright denunciation of

vulgar anti-Semitism, "TheJews in Contemporary Literature"represents a"nonconformist" text ("as Paul de Man, as also his uncle, always was

[nonconformist]").24But, contra Derrida, in the article in question de Man's discussion of

vulgar anti-Semitism does not blossom into a critique of anti-Semitism in

general; or even, as Derrida contends, of all "anti-Semitism inasmuch as itis vulgar." Instead, the reference is decidedly localized and specific, refer-

ring only to those who employ anti-Semitism in order to denigrate modemart and literature. Moreover, there exists a third possibility-very likely,the most plausible-that Derrida strangely fails to contemplate: that in thetext in question vulgar anti-Semitism stands for a type of traditional Euro-

pean cultural anti-Semitism, to which a modem doctrinaire and systematicanti-Semitism stands in opposition. Cultural anti-Semitism rests content

with attributing to Jews primaryresponsibility for a vast arrayof social ills,such as excessive economic, professional, and cultural influence. Con-

versely, scientific anti-Semitism understands Jewish influences in terms oftheir unexpungeable hereditary bases. In fact, one of the distinguishingfeatures of National Socialist racism is that it presented an insidious andmethodical alternative to this customary European anti-Semitism. Underthe old anti-Semitism, which was religiously based, Jews at least had the

option of conversion to spare themselves from proscriptions, persecutions,and the inquisitor's auto-da-ft.According to Nazism's biological anti-Semi-

tism, conversely, there was no possibility of escaping the strictures of bloodand race.

De Man's recommendation concerning "the creation of a Jewish colonyisolated from Europe"is of course farfrom innocent Instead, it correspondsto the so-called "Madagascar solution" to the Jewish question openly en-tertained by Nazi officials during the 1930s, which envisioned a massive

8



South CentralReview

resettlementofJewson the African sland. Theplanwas scrappedonce theNazis realized that it was something that the British, who controlled vital

Atlantic shipping lanes, would never permit Once abandoned, it was

replaced by the better known final solution. Nevertheless, in a 1937Nazi

publication, one finds the following ominous reference to its currency in a

Francophone context: "The Madagascar solution has also found its parti-sans in France; we would like to quote as proof this phrase that has been

seen written by us a number of times in French newspapers: 'Madagassezles Juifs."25

Finally, as the historian Zeev Sterhell points out, "The men in charge of

German propaganda . . . had awonderful knowledge of the mentality of

the French-speaking intelligentsia. They grasped that a coarse, low-level

anti-Semitism could be counterproductive, that they needed something

[more] subtle"-such as the more refined racism purveyed by de Man.

The editors of de Man's wartime journalism do their readership a poten-tial disservice by characterizing the articles as "texts,chiefly on literary and

cultural topics, [which] at times take up the themes and idiom of the

discourse promulgated during the Occupation by the Nazis and their

collaborators."26 That de Man's contributions to Le Soir in the main con-

cerned "literary and cultural topics" makes them no less collaborationist

As anyone familiar with the terms of the occupation should know, an

essential part of the Nazi program consisted of a battle for the hearts andminds of the civilian population. The more the Nazis could present their

conquests as a palatable or legitimate alternative to the status quo ante, the

less they would have to squander their resources via more forceful means.

Once their military conquests proved successful, their struggle for Euro-

pean cultural hegemony began. Prominent journalists and intellectuals

who urged cooperation with the Nazis on cultural grounds often facilitated

their success asmuch as those engaged in more directforms of collaboration.

De Man plays into the hands of the Nazi conquerors in precisely this vein

when he urges his readers not to view the German victory as a Belgiandefeat, but as "the beginning of a revolution that seeks to organize Euro-

pean society in a more equitable manner."27 In not a few cases-e.g., that

of French fascist litt6rateurRobert Brasillach-ideological collaborators

were in fact tried and executed for their acts. In order to avoid a similar fate

Brasillach's fellow fascist scribe and collaborator, Drieu la Rochelle, com-

mitted suicide in 1945. The following year, the wartime editor of Le Soir,

Raymond de Becker, was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death

(though the sentence was later commuted). Finally, one of de Man's LeSoir

colleagues, Louis Fonsny, who, like de Man, was a regular contributor tothe paper's feuilleton section, was assassinated by the Belgian resistance in

January 1943.28

The article on "The Jews in Contemporary Literature"notwithstanding,anti-Semitism did not play a large role in the collaborationist worldview of

the young Paul de Man. Moreover, a cursory reading of his wartime

9



RichardWolin

writingsrevealsthat,althoughde Manmayhavebeen aNazi sympathizer,he was anythingbut aNazi. Instead,he was what onemightcalla"normalfascist"-a term hat merits urtherscrutiny f one is to fathomtherationale

behind de Man's commitmento the occupationistcause. Forwhat standsout aboutde Man's collaborationistwritingsis thatthey areentirelyunex-

ceptional;a fact which makesthe voluminous and immenseinterpretiveenergiesthat have been devotedto deciphering heirhidden meaningsallthe morecurious. Thus,according o Sterhell, "Consideredn their con-text, de Man'syouthful writings appearto be extremelybanal."29Alice

Kaplanexpressesaremarkablyimilarinsight:DeMan'swork n LeSoir s at once abrilliantandbanalexampleofalltheclichesof fascistnationalism: rilliant or theway he argueshis position,for the logic he brings to bear, and banal because a thousand otherintellectualsclaimed the same high ground,reached the same conclu-

sions,had essentially he sameeffect

Inhis youth, de Manparticipatedn aEuropean-widemovement tohave

quitwith thevaluesofliberalism, epublicanism, umanism,ndividualism,droitsde 'homme;n short,to put anend to the so-called"ideasof 1789"hathad beenushered ntoEuropeanpoliticalculturebytheFrenchRevolution.The Europeanfascist movementsvaried from country to country. TheGermanvariantwas fanaticallyanti-Semitic;n Italian ascism,conversely,

racialanimustoward theJewsplayedno role. French ascism,closerto theItalianmodel in many respects, stood somewhere in between the two.However, if one perusesde Man's wartimearticles,one finds that all theessentialconceptsand categoriesof the genericfascistWeltanschauungre

unmistakablypresent:an endorsementof the valuesof leadership,virility,authority,hierarchy,corporatism, ndrace-all of which stand as antithe-ses to the heritage of Europeanliberalismand representthe necessarypreconditions or a sweepingnationaland culturalrenewal.

Thefascistworldviewofwhich deManpartakesdidnot emergesuddenly

orexnihilo.InFrancetwas alogicaloutgrowthof thecounterrevolutionaryideology of the Third Republic,which gained political credibility andcoherence n the aftermath f the BoulangerandDreyfusaffairs.Dreyfus'scase revealed dramaticallyandwell in advanceof conditions in Central

Europe)the tremendousamountof politicalcapitalthat anti-Republicanforcesstood to reapfromplayingthe anti-Semitic ard. In the mid-1920s,GeorgesValois's Faisceaugave France ts first (if short-lived)bona fidefascistparty.Bythe 1930s hepolitical tockof theThirdRepublichadfallenso low that the cry of many intellectuals-both on the left and on the

right-had become:"BetterHitlerthanBlum."Formany,aGermanvictoryofferedthe prospectof abandoningamoribundbourgeoisdemocracyand

supplantingit with "asuperiorpoliticalculture,based on the primacyofthe collectivity,on the senseof dutyandsacrifice,on hierarchyanddiscipl-ine."31InJuly1936,MauriceBlanchot,writingin the proto-fascist ournalCombat, ould openly polemicizeagainst"thedetestablecharacter fwhat

10



South CentralReview

is called with solemnity the Blum experiment" (i.e., the Popular Front

government), which he characterizes as, "Asplendid union, aholy alliance,this conglomerate of Soviet, Jewish, and capitalist interests."32 A yearearlier, Georges Bataille, in "The Psychological Structure of Fascism,"had

openly sung the praises of the European fascist leaders: "Opposed to

democratic politicians, who represent in different countries the platitudeinherent to homogeneous ociety, Mussolini and Hitler immediately stand

out as something other."33

In de Man's case the influence of his uncle Henri-convicted of treason

in absentia by a Belgian military tribunal following the war-would play a

determinative role in the nephew's political formation. The elder de Man,

president of the Belgian Worker's Party and a leading figure in interna-

tional socialism during the inter-war years, was largely responsible for

convincing King Leopold III, whom he served as adviser, to capitulate

following the German invasion. By 1940he was convinced that, "Thewar

has led to the debacle of the parliamentary regime and of the capitalist

plutocracy in the so-called democracies. For the working class and for

socialism, this collapse of a decrepit world, far from being a disaster, is a

deliverance." His conclusion, expressed a few weeks later: "Henceforth,

democracy and socialism willbe authoritarian ortheywill not exist at all."34All of de Man's defenders-Miller, Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, and many

others-who declare that the articles published in LeSoirin 1941 and 1942were far from the work of a die-hard National Socialist are perfectly rightAt the same time, their observations are entirely beside the point In the

years 1940-44 one need not have been a convinced Nazi to have been an

extremely valuable collaborator. In fact, often the opposite was true. After

all, despite its brutality toward communists, Jews, rdsistants, and other

undesirables, the Nazi occupation of Western Europe was not on apar with

what was occurring simultaneously in the East With the exception of

historically disputed Alsace-Lorraine, there were no large-scale annexa-

tions in the West Nor did there occur, as in the East,mass deportations ofslave laborers. During 1940-42,two-thirds of France remained unoccupied

and, under PNtainand Vichy, was allowed a semblance of self-rule. All of

which is to say that in Western Europe, including Belgium, the Nazis puton a very different face from the one they wore in Poland, Czechoslovakia,

and the Baltic states. In France and Belgium they were at great pains to

present themselves as conquerors who were also liberators: as victors who

purportedly had the best interest of the vanquished peoples in mind; as

occupiers who sought to free them from the political morass of a decadent

democratic culture and thereby to pave the way for the establishment ofindigenous corporative-authoritarian political regimes, such as Vichy. To

this end, and strange as it may sound to American ears, the Nazis system-

atically strove to pass themselves off as the guarantors of European civili-

zation: a civilization whose greatness was threatened by the values of

corrupt, plutocratic, and materialistic democratic regimes. They wanted the

11



RichardWolin

occupied countries to view the war against England and the United States

(not to mention the Soviet Union) as a heroic struggle against an ignoblematerialist culture-against the spirit of "Manchester"-that was alien to

the good European traditions that the Nazis claimed to defend. After all,didn't France's "strange defeat" of June 1940serve as an undeniable histor-ical confirmation that those governments who represented the "ideas of1789"had failed to measure up to the might and vigor of Europe's youthfulfascist regimes? Hence, the German occupiers were not so much desirousof propaganda that would reflect Nazi values per se. They actively soughtto mask the true brutality of those values. Instead, in the West they wantedthe ideology of fascism to conjure visions of post-democratic Europeancultural renewal. In this context de Man's contributions to LeSoirfit like a

glove.One theme over which de Man's advocates have pondered concerns his

stalwart defense of literary modernism. To take one instance: in the articleon the "Jews in Contemporary Literature,"he singles out Gide, Lawrence,

Hemingway, and Kafka for praise. Surely, this is a stance that is not onlyunreconcilable with the Nazi position on art, according to which modem-ism was summarily dismissed as "entartete Kunst"-"degenerate art";itmust represent aform of covert criticism of orresistance to the heroic realismof National Socialist aesthetics. Indeed, this is the conclusion explicitlyreached by Derrida:

In1941,under the Germanoccupation,and firstof allin the contextof this newspaper, the presentationf such a thesis [in defense ofaesthetic ormalism] . . goes ratheragainst he current One can atleastreadit as an anticonformist ttack Itsinsolence can takeaim atandstrikeallthosewho were thenundertaking ojudge literature nditshistory, ndeed toadminister, ontrol,censor hemin function of thedominantideologyof thewar . . . Theexampleschosen . . . rep-resent everything that Nazism or the right wing revolutions would

have liked to extirpateromhistoryand the greattradition.35Derrida's argument would be plausible were it not for two caveats. First,as I have already indicated, in France and Belgium Nazi censorship was,within certain limits, much less inflexible than Derrida believes. This sem-blance of tolerance, moreover, was instrumental in allowing the occupiersto pass themselves off, at least in the eyes of those who chose to look theother way, as humanitarian and cultured. As we have seen, de Man'sdefense of the occupation and of the "decency, justice, and humanity" ofthe occupiers may be squarely situated within such an ideological position.

Secondly, and at least as important, Derrida's defense of de Man presup-poses an untenable opposition between moderism and fascism; that is, it

implies that one cannot be both a modernist and a defender of fascism. Not

only is such a contention unsound; it flies in the face of the many historicalinstances where partisans of fascism and aesthetic modernism made com-mon cause. The locus classicus of this seemingly strange alliance was of

12



SouthCentralReview

course Mussolini's Italy, where the fascist literati included Gabriel

d'Annunzio, EzraPound, and Filipo Marinetti. One might look at the case

of the British writer Wyndham Lewis, whose embrace of both fascism and

literary moderism has been ably analyzed by FredricJameson.36On occa-

sion, pro-fascist themes made their way into the work of both Lawrence and

Yeats.37 Finally, one might consider the example of the German fascist

modernist ErnstJiinger, whom de Man goes out of his way to praise as "the

greatest German man of letters of the moment" as well as "the author of a

most remarkable sociological study, DerArbeiter."38The latter treatise is an

unadulterated fascist encomium that gained widespread influence in the

years immediately prior to Hitler's seizure of power.In his wartime journalism, de Man on several occasions reserves special

praise for cultural developments in contemporary Italy. For during theinter-war years Mussolini's Italy had gained areputation as a state in which

not only did artists play a leading role, but, in particular, those who did

inclined toward aesthetic modernism. As one observer has remarked:

Theyoung Paulde Manwas not tor between fascismand a commit-

ment to modem art;he identified hem. Andjustas important, his is

notanidiosyncratic otiononhispart Hewas in a coherent ntellectual

traditionwhen he lookedto Italian ascismas a model of a statethat

gave birthto modernart and gave a roleto artists. Seeingde Manin

that tradition,as that type of fascistintellectual-different from theNazis but no less fascistfor all that-makes much in the wartime

journalism learer.39

The marriage of convenience between fascism and aesthetic modernism,

therefore, is not as strange as it may at first sound. After all, literarymodernism was often implicitly critical of the unexalted, pedestrian, and

utilitarian orientation of moder bourgeois society. Some of its represen-

tatives, such as the surrealists and Joyce, chose to align themselves with the

political left. Others, such as Pound, the Futurists, and Celine believed that

the optimal political means for overcoming the degraded reality of bour-

geois liberalism lay with the young fascist regimes. Moreover, the propo-nents of fascist modernism believed that arthad an essential role to play in

the process of European cultural renewal. Modernist works, be they poetic,

architectural, or literary, were to have a demonstrable effect on the reader

or viewer. "No longer an autonomous object of beauty to be contemplated

by a passive recipient, [they] were designed to transform the status of the

recipient in order to reunite him or her with the primal order of race and

the permanence of unquestionable values."'4 For de Man, conversely,

literary modernism was not immediately practical. It was, nevertheless, a

primary manifestation of a cultural health.

There is a final line of defense concerning de Man that also bears scrutiny.

It concerns the claim, perhaps most eloquently articulated by Geoffrey

Hartman, that de Man's later criticalwritings represent "abelated, but still

powerful, act of conscience"; they constitute "a generalized reflection on

13



RichardWolin

rhetoric spurred by the experience of totalitarianism.. . [H]is turn from

the politics of culture to the language of artwas not, I think, an escape intobut an escape from aestheticism: a disenchantment with that fatal

aestheticizing of politics . . . that gave fascism its brilliance."41This is a point that has also been forcefully made by Hillis Miller, who

claims the relation between de Man's early and later work is one of "rever-sal":

Thespecial argetsof his radicalquestioningof receivedopinionsabout

particularauthors,about literaryhistory,and about the relationofliterature o history n his laterworkwerejust thoseideas aboutthese

topics that recurin the articleshe wrote for Le Soir:notions about

specificnationalandracial haracter nd aboutthe uniquenessof each

nationalliterature,notions about the independent and autonomousdevelopmentof literatureaccording o its own intrinsic aws and ac-

cordingto a model of organicdevelopment, hatis, according o whathe called n his latestessays"aestheticideology."42

According to Miller, de Man's later critique of aesthetic ideology expressesthe political pedigree of deconstruction: "Deconstruction is in all its manyforms a contribution to knowledge by being a contribution to good andaccurate reading of 'social and political reality' as well as of literary and

philosophical texts and of the relation between the former and the latter."43

In the lexicon of de Man and others (e.g., Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe andJean-Luc Nancy in The LiteraryAbsolute) aesthetic ideology refers to a

longing for wholeness, reconciliation, and formal integrity. It represents a

modernist impulsion that one can traceback to romanticism in the programsof "aesthetic education" one finds in the theoretical writings of Schiller andKleist44 It promotes delusions of aesthetic totalization which played acrucial role in the self-understanding of the fascist states. In its reconcilia-tion of antagonisms and its suppression of difference, the drive towardaesthetic totalization, whether in politics or in art, betrays an essential

violence. Jonathan Culler takes up where Miller leaves off:

De Man's critiqueof the aestheticideology now resonatesalso as a

critiqueof the fascist endencieshe had known. .. . The factthatdeMan's wartimejuvenilia had themselves on occasion exhibited aninclination oidealizetheemergenceof the Germannation n aesthetictermsgives specialpertinenceto his demonstration hat the most in-

sightful literaryand philosophicaltexts of the traditionexpose theunwarrantedviolence requiredto fuse form and idea, cognitionand

performance.45

In response, I wish merely to pose some questions concerning the viabilityof the critique of aesthetic ideology as a point of departure for the critiqueof fascism.

I begin by citing a remarkby Thomas Pavel: "Isn'tit rather fortunate thathalf a century ago the adversaries of Nazi Germany had other weapons to

rely on?"46Yet, not only is the critique of aesthetic ideology remarkably

14



SouthCentralReview

free of social, historical,or politicalpoints of reference;de Manpositivelycautions against the employmentof such references. As he remarks nBlindness ndInsight:"Thebasesof historicalknowledge are not empiricalfacts but writtentexts,even if these textsmasqueraden the guise of warsorrevolutions";"Considerations f the actualhistoricalexistenceof writersare a waste of time from a criticalviewpoint";"Insteadof containingor

reflectingexperience, anguage constitutes t"47 The emphasison the au-

tonomy of texts, on the irreduciblerhetoricityof texts, the confusion of"texts" nd historical"events"aclassicallytructuralistonfusion,onemightadd) threatens o make this criticalapproachvirtuallyWirklichkeitsfremd-"alienated romreality." The concernwith the rhetoricaldeterminantsof

textualityis perfectlyjustifiable; he exclusivityof emphasis,however, is

notFor de Man'sapproachexplicitlyshuns the idea of historicalexperience

quatouchstoneorreferent It concentrateswith single-mindednesson the

rhetoricaldimensionof texts. Whilethe rhetoricalapproachmightexcelat

accountingfor the figurativedimensionsof literary exts-metaphor, me-

tonymy,catachresis, nd so forth-there would seemto be very littleroom

for another series of conceptsand categoriesmanifestlymorerelevantto

the analysisof historicalstudy-categories such as class,economiccrisis,

modernization, overeignty,and so forth,manyofwhich would be central

for an accountof fascism'shistoricalviabilityandsituatedness.48Historicalevents are most often co-determinedvia the forcesof "agency" the inten-

tionalityof actors)and "structure"pre-existingnstitutional actors);theycannot be exclusively understood according to a textual model.

Deconstructionistswho claim that "everyhuman act whatsoever"is a

variant of "reading"risk confusing the issue by inflating the textualist

approachto the point where it threatensto become a metaphysicalfirst

principle nstead of a"practice."49Caveats such as these point to the limitationsof invoking de Man's

thought as a prototypeof anti-totalitarianriticism.In the interpretationprofferedbyMiller,Culler,andothers,the emphasison fascismasavariant

of "aestheticideology" s drasticallyoverblown.50The"aestheticization f

politics"(W.Benjamin)s a prominentmomentof fascism. It is doubtful,

however,whether it is the most importantaspector even one of the most

important It is an approachthat certainlyrecommendsitself to those

versed in literaryor aesthetictheory. Butit makespreciouslittle effortto

accountfor otherprominentaspectsof the fascistexperience:the ideologyof anti-Semitism,he pitfallsof the GermanSonderweg,he leadershipcult,

Germany'sbelated nationhood, or its crisisof modernizationcirca1871-1929. None of these factorscan be explainedexclusivelyin semiologicalterms. Their origins are to be found in non-rhetoricalcomponents of

Germanhistorywhose crucialdatesare1806,1848,1871,and 1918.

One cannotescapethe suspicionthatthe attemptto endow the laterde

Man with the credentialsof a militant, literary critical anti-fascistis a

15



RichardWolin

post-hoc construct, the stuff of apologetic convenience. What raises suspi-cions, moreover, is that efforts to portray de Man in this vein occurred onlyafter the existence of the LeSoirarticleswas first disclosed, not a day before.

Contra the insinuations of Culler and Miller, what strikes one about deMan's literary essays is how remarkably free they are of references to

political and social concerns. To paraphrase Hartman, if the later de Man's

writings were not quite an escape into aestheticism, neither do they appearas an unmitigated triumph over aestheticism. The emphasis on the auton-

omy of literature (albeit, a rhetorically fissured autonomy), on the non-re-lation between the rhetoricity of texts and their historicity, unambiguously

parallels the repeated claims concerning the autonomy of literary modern-ism in the wartime journalism.

The Heidegger controversy has also posed a serious threat to the theoret-ical claims of deconstruction; above all, to the standpoint of philosophicalantihumanism on which it has staked so much. Since I have written at

length about these stakes elsewhere, in the present context I will confine

myself to essentials.

The strategy employed by Derrida in Of Spiritto account for Heidegger'sNazism is extraordinarily weak True to form, the entire argument hingeson a diacritical mark;or, more properly, the absence thereof. Thus, accord-

ing to Derrida, the distinguishing feature of Heidegger's pro-Nazi rectoral

address is that he removes the inverted commas that, in his previous texts,

always served to problematize the word "spirit" For Derrida, this naivebelief in spirit is of a piece with his commitment to National Socialism. Itshows Heidegger's infatuation with Nazism to be of unambiguously meta-

physicalprovenance. t is Heidegger's overvaluation of the traditional subjectof Western metaphysics, therefore, that in Derrida's view accounts for hisembrace of Germany's National Revolution. Nazism is therefore read as a

type of logical outgrowth or manifestation of the paradigm of self-realizingsubjectivity characteristic of Western rationalism. According to Derrida, in

the rectoral address, Heidegger "engages in avoluntarist and metaphysicaldiscourse that he will subsequently view with suspicion. By celebrating thefreedom of spirit, its glorification resembles other European discourses

(spiritualist, religious, and humanist) that people generally consider op-posed to Nazism."51 In Heidegger, Art, and Politics, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe draws the conclusion that is implicit throughout Derrida's discus-sion of Heidegger's case: "Nazism is a humanism insofar as it rests upon adetermination of humanitaswhich is, in its view, more powerful-i. e., moreeffective-than any other."52

But Derrida's analysis accords more weight to the missing quotationmarks than they can in fact bear. Most importantly, he fails to consideranother quite obvious explanatory tack: that in the rectoral address, the

emphasis on "spirit,"the allusions to the tradition of metaphysical human-ism, the citations from the pre-Socratics, the emphasis on "the Greekbegin-ning," all represent elements that preventHeidegger's discourse from de-

16



South CentralReview

generating into that of a Nazi typique. It was precisely the philosophicalnature of his discourse that served to distinguish his partisanship for the

Nazi cause from that of almost all others, and which, moreover, eventuallyearned him the wrath of party superiors. It was because it became apparentto him quite soon that this political movement was so totally void of

significant philosophical aspirations that his alliance with it proved so

short-lived. (Finally, in this connection one might recall eyewitness Karl

L6with's description of the reaction to Heidegger's address: "at the end of

the speech, the listener was in doubt as to whether he should start readingthe pre-Socratics or enlist in the SA."53)

Contra Derrida, it is not the allurements of a "voluntarist and metaphys-

ical" discourse that account for Heidegger's attraction to National Social-

ism. We know for afact, moreover, that the historical emergence of Germanfascism was explicitly tied to a rejection of Western thought; more specific-

ally, to a rejection of the heritage of the European Enlightenment and all it

stood for: cosmopolitanism, universalism, liberalism, parliamentarianism,the "rights of man"-in sum, the "ideas of 1789."Itwas, after all, none other

than Goebbels who, in a 1933 speech following Hitler's seizure of power,

gloated: "Theyear 1789 is hereby eradicated from history." In arecentwork,

the historian Aro Mayer reemphasizes this point: "There is no questionbut that in Germany the assault against the Jews was grafted onto a violent

backlash against democratic liberalism. . . 5I would like to suggest that the reason the Heidegger affairtook so many

of his French supporters by surprise has to do with the perils of the

exclusively textual and highly decontextualized readings that dominated

the reception of his work in post-war France. The intellectual bases of

Heidegger's Nazism have very little to do with the categories of Western

metaphysics. Only because Derrida has staked his intellectual reputationon deconstructing them do they play such a disproportionate role in his

analysis. Here, deconstruction promotes its own undoing by adhering to

the counter-intuitive and ahistorical proposition that the genocidal Nazi

dictatorship represents, as it were, the crowning achievement of Western

humanism, the ultimate realization of this paradigm. However, if one is

interested in ferreting out the true cause of Heidegger's own Nazism one

would do better to examine those aspects of his early fundamental ontology

that bear significant affinities with the conservative revolutionary

worldview that was so current among intellectuals on the right during the

1920s and 1930s: that is, categories such as resolve, fate, destiny, everyday-

ness, the anonymous "they," Gemeinschaft and das Volk,all of which play

a prominent role in the existential analytic of Being and Time. HerbertMarcuse, Heidegger's student from 1928-32,underlines precisely this aspect

of Heideggerian Existenzphilosophie: If you look at his view of human

existence, of Being-in-the-world [as expressed in the main concepts of Being

and Time],you will find a highly repressive, highly oppressive interpreta-

tion, . . . human material for the authoritarian personality."55

17



RichardWolin

All of the categories I have just enumerated are of a piece with the

ideology of the German Sonderweg: hat is, with the view that Germany's

path to modernity must be sui generis and non-Western; n the tradition of

the Obrigkeitsstaat rom Bismarck to Hitler, it must be authoritarian and,

hence, achieved from above. Only in this way will the risks of democratic

revolution, or modernization from below, be avoided. Proceeding from this

ideological stance, Germany took pride in identifying itself as a Kulturna-

tion, in opposition to the decadent, materialistic Zivilisationrepresented bythe Western democracies, England, France, and the United States (un-

coincidentally, Germany's traditional geopolitical enemies). If one wishesto investigate the political culture that served as the crucible for the devel-

opment of German fascism, the anti-Western ideology of the German

Sonderwegproves a crucial elementThe attempt to understand the origins of Nazism-or, to return to the case

at hand, those of Heidegger's Nazism-in terms of metaphysics, or the logicof Western humanism, proceeds at too great a plane of abstraction: it risks

explaining away that which needs to be demonstrated. Above all, it fails to

account for those indispensable features of National Socialist ideology that

are avowedly anti-Western. As I have argued elsewhere, the attempt to

deconstruct the binary opposition between Nazism and non-Nazism (i.e.,the Western democracies) risks making them indistinguishable: since both

are viewed essentially as expressions or manifestations of Western meta-

physics, the crucial normative differences between these two forms of rule

are fundamentally blurred. To say that contemporary democracies are

imperfect and in need of criticism, that they are ridden with the injusticesof poverty, race, gender, class, does not mean that, as a basis for criticism,

they must be assimilated with the types of oppression characteristic offascist regimes. To do so risks overgeneralizing the concept of fascism tothe point where it threatens, in a strong sense, to become theoreticallymeaningless.

At one point in Of Spirit,Derrida rails against the fact that,

The constraintof this program i.e.,the programof metaphysicalhu-

manism] s verystrong, t reignsover themajority f discourseswhich,todayand for a long timeto come,statetheiroppositionto racism, o

totalitarianism,o nazism,to fascism,etc.,and do this in the name of

spirit, n the nameof an axiomatic-for example, hat of democracyor"humanrights"--whichdirectlyornot,comesback o thismetaphysicsof subjectivity.All the pitfallsof this strategyof establishingdemarca-tionsbelong to this program,whateverplaceone occupies n it The

only choice is the choice between the terrifyingcontaminations tassigns. Even if all formsof complicityare not equivalent,they areirreducible.56

Derrida understands the demarcation established by the "metaphysics of

subjectivity" between democracy and fascism as offering us essentially achoicethat is no choice; t provides us merely with a network of "contamina-

18



SouthCentralReview

tions"(offascism, otalitarianism,Nazism,etc.)which "terrify." s forms of

complicity,democracyand fascismare "notequivalent," aysDerrida;buttheir similaritiesare,to use his words, nevertheless"irreducible."What is

lacking n his account s anunequivocalstatementof their essential differ-ences. Then we mightsee that the standpointwe customarily quatewithtraditionalhumanism-a basicrespectforhumanrights,civilliberties,and

equalitybefore the law;allprecepts hat were systematicallydeniedby thefascistregimes-is indeedqualitativelypreferable;t constitutes,moreover,the indispensablenormativebasis for anyfuturedemocracy.

That Derrida cannot provide an account of the essential differencesbetween democracyand fascism s far from accidental.It is, instead,theo-

retically overdetermined by the standpoint of deconstruction quaHeideggerianDestruktionofWesternmetaphysics).For the specificationof qualitativedifferencesbetween these two forms of politicalruleprovesunthinkable for the discourseof philosophicalantihumanismon which

deconstructionhas staked so much. Accordingto this neo-Nietzschean

perspective,the sources of Europeannihilism derive from the credo of

"man"as it has been historicallyarticulatedby apostles of humanism,democratic iberalism,historicalprogress,and so forth. Thethought that

deconstructioncannotthink is that it is not humanismper se, but instead

antihumanismn the guiseof fascism, hathas in ourcentury ed European

civilizationto the edge of the abyss. Tocontemplate his thought is struc-turally inadmissible since it risks the suggestion that fascism and

deconstruction,quavariantsof antihumanism,mightsecretlysharecertain

value orientations;value orientations hat pertainto the systematicdeni-

grationof "man," eason,and kindredliberalshibboleths. The manifest

difficultiesdeconstructionhashad in generatingpolitical udgments(here,one thinks of the conceptualpyrotechnics involved in Derrida's anti-

humanist critiqueof South Africanapartheid)may be attributedto the

conceptualrequirement hat the "discourseof man"-and the correspon-

dent humanistsensibility-be kept at a conceptualdistance. Theperform-ative contradiction o which it has succumbed s thatin orderto partakeof

the new democraticsensibility of the times, it needs to partakeof this

discourse;yet,havingmadephilosophicalantihumanismhe linchpinof its

theoreticalstance, t provesincapableof doing so.

TzvetanTodorovhas characterizedhe aporiasof the poststructuralist

critiqueof reasonas follows:"Itmaybe difficultto be sure whether one is

for or againstrationality; hings become a little clearerwhen one under-

standsthat the decisionis also a choicefor or againstdemocracy."57The

stumblingblock for poststructuralism t Auschwitz,therefore,lies in itsinabilityto reconcilea demonizationof reasonwith the democratic ensi-

bility of ourage.

19



Richard Wolin

NOTES

1. For Blanchot's case, see Jeffrey Mehlman, LegaciesofAnti-Semitismin France(Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota, 1982),6-22.

2 Jeffrey Mehlman, quoted in Newsweek,15February 1988.

3. Habermas, TheoryandPractice,trans. J.Viertel (Boston: Beacon, 1973), 32

4. Jacques Derrida, Positions(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981),p. 93.

5. Thus Duke English Professor FrankLentricchia: "The real problem of the demanians is hero

worship-the spectacle of grown men and women idolizing another person.' In his view, de

Man was the "godfather"of the Yale "mafia."Cited in D. Lehman, Signs ofthe Times(New York:

Poseidon Press, 1991),212.

6. J. Hillis Miller, "An Open Letter to Jon Wiener," in Responses:On Paul de Man's Wartime

Journalism,ed. W. Hamacher, N. Hertz, and T. Keenan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1989),334-35.

7. TimesLiterarySupplement,no. 4446, 17-23June 1988: 676.8. Ibid.

9. Paul de Man, WartimeJournalism, 1939-1943, ed. W. Hamacher, N. Hertz, and T. Keenan

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1988),66.

10. Ibid.

11. Cited by Stanley Corngold, in Responses,81.

12. De Man, WartimeJournalism,194.

13. Ibid., 29.

14. Miller, TimesLiterarySupplement: 76.

15. Derrida, *Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell: Paul de Man's War,"Critical

Inquiry15 (Summer 1989): 647.16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., 607.

18. De Man, WartimeJournalism,LeSoir,4 March 1941.

19. Quoted by the New YorkTimes,2 December 1987: 1.

20. Cited by David Lehman, Signs of the Times: Deconstruction nd theFall ofPaul deMan (NewYork: Poseidon Press, 1991), 182.

21. de Man, WartimeJournalism, 5.1.

22. Derrida, "Paul de Man's War,' 625.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Cited in Alice Y. Kaplan, "Paul de Man, Le Soir,and the Francophone Collaboration,"in

Responses,274-75. According to Kaplan, if one tries to understand de Man's anti-Semitismwithin the spectrum of other "respectable"contemporary forms of anti-Semitism, one perceives

not so much the slight disjunctions between positions, as anumber of approachesto the anti-Semitic genre-cultural, racial, historical-which in their very dis-

agreements, give them the appearanceof respectable 'debate.' What is more, allof them draw in some way on a critique of an "incorrect' form of racist thinkingthat is beneath their dignity, and which is exemplified . . . by the pamphletsof Celine. As it turns out, Celine is useful to make everyone else sound better.

All the positions [published in Le Soir in conjunction with de Man's "TheJewsin Contemporary Literature"]converge because of the existence of somethingmore vulgar: de Man's article participates in this convergence, and in the legiti-mation of anti-Semitism. (274-75)

26. Citedby Stanley Corgold, "On Paul de Man's CollaborationistWritings,' in Responses,80.

27. De Man, WartimeJournalism, 38.

20



South Central Review

28. See the discussion of cultural collaboration in Lehman, Signsof theTimes,179.

29. Sterhell, "TheMaking of a Propagandist,"TheNew Republic (6 March1989):31.

30. Kaplan, 'Paul de Man,"268.

31. Sternhell, "TheMaking of a Propagandist,"3232. Citedby Jeffrey Mehlman in LegaciesofAnti-Semitism in France,108.

33. Bataille, 'The Psychological Structure of Fascism,"in Visionsof Excess: SelectedWritings,1927-1939,ed. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1985), 143.

34. Peter Dodge, BeyondMarxism: TheFaithand WorksofHendrikDe Man (The Hague: Martin

Nijoff, 1966), 197-98,201.

35. Derrida, "Paulde Man's War,"628.

36. Jameson, FablesofAggression:WyndhamLewis,theModernistasFascist(Berkeley: Universityof California, 1979).

37. In Lawrence's case, one should consultAaron's Rod.

38. De Man, WartimeJournalism,31. Fora discussion of de Man's relation to Jiinger, see OrtwindeGraef,Serenity nCrisis: APreface oPauldeMan, 1939-1960(Lincoln: University of Nebraska,

1993), 25-27;and de Graef, 'A Stereotype of Aesthetic Ideology: Paul de Man, Ernst Jiinger,"

ColloquiumHelveticum11/12(1990): 39-70.

39. Reed Way Dasenbrock, "Paul de Man: The Modernist as Fascist,"in Richard Golsan, ed.,

Fascism,Aesthetics,and Culture(Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992),238. Manyof the essays in this volume shed essential light on the underresearched historical nexus

between fascism and modernism.

40. Russell Berman, "Modernism, Fascism, and the Institution of Literature,"in Modernism:

ChallengesandPerspectives,ed. M. Chefodor, R. Quinones, and A. Wachtel (Champaign: Uni-

versity of Illinois, 1986),94-102

41. Geoffrey Hartman, "LookingBack on Paul de Man," ReadingdeManReading(Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota, 1989), 3-24.

42. Miller, "An Open Letter,"337.

43. Ibid.,339.

44. See de Man's essay, 'Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist's UberdasMarionettetheather,"n The

RhetoricofRomanticism,Columbia University Press (New York, 1984).

45. Jonathan Culler, "'Paulde Man's War and the Aesthetic Ideology,'" Responses,780,783.

46. Thomas Pavel, The FeudofLanguage Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 147.

47. De Man, Blindness andInsight(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1983), 165,35,232.

48. See above all his essay on "LiteraryHistory and LiteraryModernity," ibid., 145-65.

49. J.Hillis Miller, The EthicsofReading(New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 58.

50. For an excellent analysis of the problem of aesthetic ideology in de Man, see Martin Jay,

"The Aesthetic Ideology as Ideology: Or What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics," Force

Fields(New York: Routledge, 1993),71-83.

51. Citedin TheHeideggerControversy:A CriticalReader,ed. R. Wolin (Cambridge: MITPress,

1993),xv-xvi.

52 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger,Art, and Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 95.

He continues: "Thesubject of absolute self-creation . . . it transcends all the determinations

of the modem subject, brings together and concretizes these same determinations (as also does

Stalinism with the subject of absolute self-production) and constitutes itself as a subject in

absolute terms."53. Lowith, "The Political Implications of Heidegger's Existentialism," TheHeideggerContro-

versy, 177.

54. Amo J.Mayer, Why Did the HeavensNot Darken: TheFinal Solution n History (New York:

Pantheon, 1988), 160.

55. Marcuse, "Heidegger's Politics: An Interview,"ed. R.Pippin et. al.,HerbertMarcuse: Critical

Theoryand the PromiseofUtopia(South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1988),99.

21



Richard Wolin

56. Derrida, OfSpirit: Heideggerand theQuestion(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990),40. When asked to respond to the issue of Heidegger's silence about the Holocaust in a

recent interview, Derrida had the following to say:

The excess of responsibility of which I was just speaking never authorizessilence. . . . I suppose, I hope, that you are not expecting me only to say that

1 condemn Auschwitz' or that 'I condemn all silence on Auschwitz.' Concern-

ing the latter phrase or its equivalents, I find the mechanism of the trials

organized against all those who one believes can be accused of not having named

or analyzed 'Auschwitz' a bit indecent, even obscene . . . if we admit-and

this concession seems to me evident everywhere-that the thing remains un-

thinkable, that we do not yet have discourse that can measure up to it, if we

recognize that we have nothing to say about the real victims of Auschwitz, those

same victims that we authorize ourselves to treat through metonymy or to name

via negativa, then let people stop diagnosing the so-called silences and making

the 'resistances' and 'nonthoughts' of just about everyone be confessed. Ofcourse silence on Auschwitz will never be justified, but neither will the fact that

people speak of it in such an instrumental way and to say nothing, to say nothingthat is not self-evident, trivial,and that does not serve to take positions or to show

off. ("'EatingWell,' or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with JacquesDerrida," WhoComesAftertheSubject, d. E.Cadava et al., [New York:Routledge,1991], 118.)

57. TzvetanTodorov,OnHumanDiversity:Nationalism, acism,ndExoticismnFrenchThought(Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1993),xi.

22

Wolin 1994 Deconstruction at Auschwitz- Heidegger, De Man, And the New Revisionis

Documents

Transcript of Wolin 1994 Deconstruction at Auschwitz- Heidegger, De Man, And the New Revisionis