From Marxism via “the New Critique” to Academic Nonsense 3 (Column 180)

With God’s help

Dedicated to my dear son Yossi (who drew my attention to the question of Platonism),

with wishes for success in his studies.

Summary so far: A bird’s-eye view of the process

In the previous two columns I described the dialectical process that begins with Marxism. We saw that it has two characteristics: dogmatism (absolute truth) and a subversive methodology (the search for plots and interests at the root of every opinion, step, or event). The first step is to give up the first characteristic of Marxism and adopt the second, and that is deconstruction. The next step is an attack by deconstruction, which destroys the first characteristic of Marxism (dogmatism) with Marxism’s own tools, in the manner of killing the father. But in the end deconstruction too adopts an absolute truth for which to fight, and thus the war of the children of light against the children of darkness returns. Except that this time the absolute truth is not some concrete value-content (as in the Marxist stage), but the subversive methodology itself. Here the first characteristic rises from the dust and fuses with the second, producing postmodernism out of deconstruction. This is what our postmodern cousins mean when they say that "the tool (or the medium) is the message." The methodology is both the instrument of war and its goal. This is the absolute dogma, and there is none besides it.

In this column I will try to show how the picture described so far explains the various characteristics of postmodern text and conduct. It is important to emphasize that these characteristics were not created directly and fully from the start. This is a complex process, and here I describe only its basic outlines, schematically. This dialectical process continues and develops in stages, as more and more characteristics that were embedded in one way or another in postmodernism from its very beginning move from potential to actuality. As we shall see in this column, in the end this remarkable process leads straight into the realms of nonsense. But first, an interesting note about Karl Popper.

On the Platonic roots of Marxism and deconstruction: Karl Popper

Karl Popper lived and worked in the middle of the twentieth century, at a time when communism was perceived as an existential threat to the liberal West. He was very anxious about the outcome of this struggle, and devoted a good deal of thought and writing to it, both on the philosophical-intellectual plane and on the practical one. Incidentally, he was also one of the great fighters against "bogus sciences," and as part of this he tried to define what science is (something which, ironically, they themselves use for apologetic purposes).[1]

In his monumental book The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper criticizes Marxist thought (historicism, in his terminology) in a very sharp and forceful way, mainly through its implications and less through the doctrine itself. Along the way he also attacks the first stirrings of postmodernity (which had not yet been called that), and in doing so he points to many of the characteristics I have described and will yet describe. But beyond that, his central thesis is that the root of the evil is Platonism, and I wanted to touch on that point here.

The background to this is a fundamental dispute between Aristotle and Plato about how we should relate to abstract concepts and to the connection between them and concrete objects.[2] Aristotle held that abstract concepts do not represent any entities, but rather abstractions that we make on the basis of observing concrete objects (through the categories). Observation reveals that there is something shared by all horses, human beings, birds, fish, and the like, and then our intellect abstracts and creates abstract concepts such as horseness, humanity, animals, birds, fish, and so forth. There are abstract concepts that are not a genus or species of concrete entities but modes of reference, such as time, causality, and space. For our purposes here I will not distinguish between these things, and will only say that in Aristotle’s view these forms (especially of the first kind) describe our modes of reference. They are not entities but mental constructions, aids to thought. Plato, by contrast, held that these are abstract objects that he called Ideas. These are existing objects, though not in our tangible world but in some abstract world that he called the world of Ideas. Horseness is a real object that exists there, and it is expressed (in defective, incomplete ways) in the concrete physical horses we see. The abstract concept, the Idea, is not the product of intellectual abstraction from concrete objects, but the result of observing the Ideas (eidetic observation, in Husserl’s terminology), which is done by contemplating objects that express them. This is an act of cognition-through-observation, not an act of thought as Aristotle held. In Plato’s eyes, horseness is a kind of being, an abstract perfect horse.[3]

Those who follow Plato in this matter are called Platonists. Thus, for example, there is a dispute in the philosophy of mathematics as to whether mathematical entities are objects (Ideas) or only conceptual abstractions. Incidentally, it seems to me that the concept of Platonic love (or Platonic emotion in general) is also connected to this dispute, for the Platonist loves the thing itself and not merely its attributes, that is, not merely what the thing does for him (that is love, not lust). Behind the collection of a thing’s attributes there is an abstract object that those attributes describe, and love is directed to it rather than to them.

In the aforementioned book we pointed out that emotions can be directed either toward a thing’s attributes or toward the thing itself. Love of the Jewish people can be directed toward an abstract concept of Israel, or of a Jew, without relating to any concrete Jew whatsoever (like that rebbe about whom my grandfather used to say that he dearly loved the Jewish people, except that he had a serious problem with the individuals). The Platonist loves the Shekhinah and the Jewish people, but not the concrete Jew. He hates sins but not sinners. Everything for them is directed somewhat mechanically toward abstract spheres, not in a natural and living way that relates to concrete reality. Tangible characteristics and real objects are, in his eyes, embodiments of abstract Ideas, and those Ideas are the important thing that truly exists and truly acts. Tangible objects are illusions, or at least possess only limited existence. They are inferior entities and not terribly important.

From here you can understand what Popper argues, to a considerable extent justifiably, that totalitarian movements draw nourishment from a Platonist conception. As we have seen, they act on behalf of abstract Ideas and general notions, and in the name of all these they trample people and individuals (who serve as oil on the wheels of the revolution). Even the movements and conceptions that oppose them are understood by them as expressions of Ideas, not as real concrete people and groups, as the eye can see. They do not really see human beings before them at all, but rather Ideas and notions that move them. Events (like objects) in the world are, in their eyes, collisions of metaphysical demons and not interactions among people and groups, born of their thoughts and values.

Qualifications: sane Platonism

The resemblance is clear. Metaphysical capitalism, the Shekhinah, the Antichrist, the Jewish people—all these are Ideas which, in Marxist-style conceptions, drive real processes and real people and stand behind them and beneath them. This is genuine Platonism. On the other hand, it is important to understand that the resemblance is not complete at all, in several respects:

• First, Platonism need not be deterministic. One can see the forces that stand behind processes without seeing in them scheming demons. Even in innocent scientific analysis, Aristotelian in character, the conduct of the world will be described in terms of struggles among ideational forces. That is the nature of our thinking, which sees the conceptual depth of processes. Yet none of this implies that the processes are irreversible, or that demons govern them to the bitter end. The point is that people struggle for ideas, not that ideas move people. Marxist determinism takes Platonism too far.
• Second, there need not be conspiracy-mindedness here. The Platonic description of events and people in terms of Ideas can be neutral. Of course, the war will still have the same sharpness, since these are fateful metaphysical wars that steer cosmic processes in different directions. And yet the absence of conspiratorial thinking, and the belief in the innocence of concrete people, can somewhat blunt the sting of this war.
• Third, the underlying conceptual layer need not be something metaphysical. I can look at the struggle between West and East in conceptual terms—capitalism versus communism—without seeing these two as demons or threatening devils, but rather as ideas and values that struggle with one another.
• Fourth, even if we see the root of real processes in a Platonic and metaphysical way, there is no necessity to say that these Ideas lead people around the stage of the world like marionettes, as Popper describes it (that is a Marxist description of the Marxist picture itself). One can also say that people choose to belong to them and to act on their behalf. This is not necessarily a subversive plot, but perhaps only the ideological infrastructure of people.[4]

What I am proposing here is an alternative of sane Platonism, one that does not necessarily reach all the way to the Marxist picture. One can be a non-threatening, non-Marxist Platonist. The war Popper wages against Platonism is meant to destroy Marxism. But Marxism is only one extreme interpretation of Platonism, and therefore such a war throws out the baby with the bathwater. In legal terms, I would say that this is an excessive and harmful expansion of the pleadings.

First correct yourself, or: the fault-finder reveals his own blemish

I remarked above that to a large extent Popper’s own analysis suffers from Marxist Platonism, for in his eyes Platonism bears the struggles and events on its back and is to blame for them (rather than their taking place on its behalf). As noted, this itself is Marxist thinking (about Marxism), that is, extreme Platonism. Popper does not see Marxism before him as an idea, but as a threatening demon that moves people and groups and for that purpose generates ideas in them.

The tendency to describe a bitter enemy in Platonic terms is natural and effective, because that way you explain to everyone why resoluteness is necessary in this fateful war and spur them to fight. But the naturalness and usefulness of a claim do not necessarily make it true. Exactly what it is right to say about the Marxist interpretations that Popper attacks (which are also meant to spur people to fight) is equally true of his own analysis of Marxism.

Let us now return to the implications of the picture described so far, and try through it to understand some of the things I described in the first column (178).

Characteristics and implications: focusing on "theory"

Why do postmodern journals not deal with a particular substantive topic, but with general headings? We saw that in the postmodern-"critical" world there is no journal of sociology or of history. In fact, most journals do not deal at all with a concrete field of knowledge and content, but with a general methodology. Not for nothing are they called by names connected to "theory" or "critique," and not classified by different fields of knowledge as is customary. In light of my remarks above, the reason is self-evident. We have seen that the content with which they deal, for which they fight and which they advance, is not content but method (again, "the medium is the message"). Therefore the one and only subject of their intellectual wars is the "critical" method, and that can be applied to any field of knowledge or content whatsoever. One can dismantle history or law or sociology with the same tools. From their point of view, the field of knowledge is only a medium, or flesh into which the teeth of the deconstructionist method are sunk—nothing more. No one is interested in the findings of sociology, because there are no such findings. The same is true of history or any other field. None of this matters at all, because as I wrote, the nonexistence of psychology, the nonexistence of history, and the nonexistence of law are all equally nothing. Note that even if by chance you find a journal that refers to some concrete content, the title will usually be general and vague; for example: Social Sciences of Duke University (which we will encounter again later). There is no reference here to a focused content-field, because there is really no difference among the fields. All of them are merely pieces of flesh into which the tools of deconstruction are thrust.

Characteristics and implications: the canonical concepts

Within deconstructionist dismantling, they use a set of universal catchall terms: channeling, canonical, political (preferably adding: everything is political), silencing, hegemony, practice, narrative, post, colonial, neo, mechanisms of representation, queerness, the marginalized, identity, feminism, and the like. Incidentally, Marxist analysis also used such a set of terms suited to it. The postmodern list is a continuation of the list of its spiritual father—Marxism. This is their way of exposing and presenting the various subversions.

These terms, of course, do not deal with any specific substantive field. In the case of "theory" or "critique" this is obvious. But do not be mistaken: the same is true of other terms that do seem tied to some world of content. For example, the term "political" has nothing to do with politics in its ordinary meaning. In the postmodern world, "everything is political," from kindergarten and drinking a cup of coffee to relations between galaxies. Therefore in their usage the term "political" does not refer to a field of knowledge (this is not the study of politics in the ordinary sense), but is just another tool in deconstruction’s arsenal of analysis and dismantling. The same applies to the term "colonialism." Here too this is not the description of a historical phenomenon, but a universal tool of analysis and explanation for everything and every field on earth. All these are sweeping broad-gauge terms that appear across the entire front. They are all part of the methodology and do not belong to any substantive field (for, truth be told—or untruth be told—there is no such thing as substantive fields).

Characteristics and implications: proposing an alternative

Postmodern "critique" (with the quotation marks), after it finishes dismantling, will never offer a better alternative. This is not because of laziness, but because there is no such alternative and cannot be one. The moment we propose an alternative, it will contain content and make claims. And from this it will follow that it too is based on interests and agendas, and it will deconstruct itself. In a postmodern world one cannot assert anything, only dismantle. In their eyes, "constructive criticism" is a reactionary concept, invalid at its root. "Critique" is supposed to construct only the vacuum.

Characteristics and implications: the need for arguments and "confirmation bias"

For the deconstructionist, the very fact that we have exposed some assumption at the base of the argument or position under discussion is its dismantling. There is no need to show, or even to claim, that this assumption is unreasonable. An assumption, by virtue of being an assumption, is subjective, and therefore points to subversion and self-interested plots. Substantive arguments on the merits are beside the point.

But in deconstructionist analysis there is also no need to justify why the "dismantling" we proposed is the correct one. Even if there is no room for argument on the merits, apparently one can still "dismantle" the same position in several ways. If someone raises some claim, one can suggest several different systems of assumptions on which that position could be based. So who can guarantee that the dismantling we found is the right one? (Perhaps there is another interest or plot here?) Thus, for example, if a person votes in favor of the surrogacy law, that necessarily means he is homophobic. Why? Maybe he thinks this is the correct law for some substantive reason? Or perhaps he has another plot in mind (for example, against single-parent households and not against homosexuals)? No. Once I have managed to find a dismantling that suits me, that is the correct dismantling. We have exposed the plot. In the same way, if there are fewer women than men in some profession, that is necessarily the result of a plot to discriminate against women. You may ask: perhaps it is the result of some other factor (which is of course also self-interested)? Impossible. Discrimination against women is one of the results in the stock basket of plots with which we arrive at deconstructive analysis. Therefore, once we have managed to find one construction in which the assumption underlying the analyzed position fits discrimination against women, that is irrefutable proof that there was a deliberate and preplanned "political" plot here to discriminate against women (homophobia, chauvinism, and the rest of the ultimate insults).

The deconstructionist never bothers to explain why specifically his dismantling is the correct one. If you have shown that this position advances men at the expense of women, or straight people at the expense of homosexuals, then we have exposed one of the assumptions in our stock basket of plots, and this is therefore proof that the aim of the people holding the position was from the outset a plot to oppress the marginalized (women, homosexuals, etc.). These people have never heard of the distinction between correlation and causation, or of statistical research that tests factors and the relevance of a theory. All of this is unnecessary, because claims, including their own claims, are not meant to be true but to advance agendas. Tools for testing truth are not found in their methodological arsenal. By definition they are armchair scholars, and they would be the first to admit it (proudly, and of course adding that all of us are like that).

How can one explain such a hasty and foolish inference? Here we come to what is called (in the mouths of reactionary modernists) confirmation bias. We all have a tendency to interpret every fact in light of the a priori assumptions we hold. Every event proves our position. Thus the success of Zionism proves to Religious Zionists that they were right, and to Haredim that they were right. The Holocaust too proves to both sides that they were right. Note well: not merely that the Holocaust does not refute our absolute position, but that it proves it. That is confirmation bias. I always incline toward the interpretation that supports my a priori view. Incidentally, that in itself is legitimate, because that is indeed how I think. But in confirmation bias I see the fact under discussion not only as something consistent with my position, but as something that proves it—and that is already nonsense, of course.

If we return to our deconstructionist cousins: if I know a priori that everyone persecutes the marginalized (women, homosexuals, Mizrahi Jews, African-Americans, Orientals, queers), and I have found a dismantling that fits, among other things, the claim that there is a plot of persecution here against one of the groups in the basket, then that is proof that there is indeed such a plot of persecution. The reason is that it fits the given list of plots and confirms what I thought. Therefore, for example, accusations of homophobia or discrimination against women/Mizrahi Jews or any other marginalized group do not require proof. It is enough for us that in practice the result discriminates against those particular marginalized groups. This, of course, cannot be accidental, or something reasoned on substantive grounds, but only the result of a plot. This is Marxist subversion. For them, correlation = causation, and fit (even if strained) means proof.

The postmodernist wonders who on earth invented the term "confirmation bias." In his eyes this is not a bias, but the very essence of deconstructionist logic. We are always and necessarily right (in our claim that no one is necessarily right). Why is there any need to prove something so self-evident? And in general, there is no such thing as biases, for bias is simply another name for thought. There is no unbiased thinking, and from this it follows that there are no cognitive biases. There is one interest and a counter-interest, and that is all. Therefore the postmodernist too makes claims not because they are true but because they fit his agenda. In his eyes, confirmation bias is not a bias or a fallacy, but a logical-methodological rule.

Characteristics and implications: values and facts

A central pathology in these fields is the mixing of values and ideologies with facts. In these fields the distinction between facts and values/agendas was forgotten long ago. They deal in values and promote values under an academic cloak, as if there were factual research going on here. One should remember that from their point of view there are no facts at all. The distinction between what is and what ought to be is a ridiculous, outdated, and primitive distinction.

It is worth seeing what Prof. Yoram Yuval wrote to me when he referred to my response to his article in Makor Rishon (his remarks were brought in column 26), in which he argued that homosexuality is not a deviation. He writes there that psychiatry cannot be detached from values, but this does not prevent him, in the same breath, from claiming under a scientific guise and with "scientific" arguments that it is obvious that homosexuality is not a deviation.[5] "Everything is political," as we have already said.

Incidentally, agenda is also a pathology in the natural sciences. The debates about the creation of the world, evolution, and determinism—which today all take place in the scientific arena (the natural sciences)—are infected with tendentiousness. It is very hard to believe the findings presented there, because on all sides people are engaged in distortions and biases, in tendentious presentations of facts and findings so that they fit an agenda. In the appendix to my book God Plays Dice I brought, in this context, the example of the discussion of Bible codes, where ostensibly the matter concerns mathematical considerations (probability), and yet the battles are waged along ideological lines, and the facts and analyses are presented in a biased and tendentious way. So all this exists in the natural sciences and even in mathematics as well, but there it is marginal. The main body of research and discussion concerns findings and their interpretation, and usually it is not infected by biases and agendas. By contrast, in the bogus disciplines, a substantial part is found in the ideological sphere. But in postmodern-deconstructionist literature this is the essence of the "research." There, explicitly, that is the only thing being done.

To the best of my judgment, academic research ought to be detached from values, even in these fields. The researcher can and should survey value-positions and examine their implications, but the researcher’s own values are not supposed to affect the content of the research or its findings and conclusions. The fact that one cannot reach conclusions without assuming values means only that in these fields an academic researcher must not reach conclusions on the merits. He should lay out the possibilities and their implications, and the reader will formulate his position according to his assumptions. But the minimum required is at least to put these value-assumptions on the table, so that they are open to discussion, and not to smuggle them in or refuse to acknowledge their existence.[6]

Characteristics and implications: erasing the difference between opinion journalism and research

As a continuation of the cancellation of the distinction between values and facts, the distinction between opinion journalism and research is also erased. It is commonly thought that the opinion journalist raises arguments in order to advance an agenda, whereas the academic researcher may perhaps describe agendas but certainly is not supposed to insert his own agendas into the research. He can discuss a value-based or ideological position and its implications, and compare it to other positions. He cannot argue in favor of one ideology or another. That is the job of the opinion journalist. The postmodernists forgot this distinction long ago. They deny it completely.

The move is as follows. In the postmodern world every position whatsoever is based on self-interested subversion. We have seen that postmodernism is aware of this and admits that this is true of itself as well (it condemns others by its own defect, and is even proud of it). If so, the postmodern "researcher" now advances interests and agendas and does so consciously and openly. In his view, that is what everyone does, and the only difference is that he himself is aware of it (he is more honest than they are, since at least he puts it on the table). But then the academic "research" he performs does not come to reveal any fact whatsoever, but to advance an agenda—that is, it is opinion journalism. And thus at a stroke the difference between research and opinion journalism is erased, and the aspiration to objectivity is erased as well. This does not prevent any of them from presenting very clear findings in directions they cherish (one simply chooses the survey or study that supports what one is interested in. For them this is not a fallacy but the very heart of the method). He of course chooses the studies and interprets them as he wishes (note well: not as he understands them), but that is legitimate, since that is what everyone does and there is no other way to proceed.

Characteristics and implications: political correctness

In the postmodern world there are, of course, no criteria of quality and there cannot be any. Therefore, instead of criteria of scientific level and of the quality of research and analytical tools, we encounter criteria of agenda. A study or article is not judged by the quality of the research and analysis, but by the fit of its conclusions and findings to the binding values—that is, to the holy vacuum. Thus academic political correctness is born (similar to correctness in social discourse). The result is that claims of real value cannot receive proper treatment there because they are not "scientific" (= they do not conform to the criteria of political correctness). By contrast, various kinds of nonsense, trivialities, speculations, agenda-promotion, or meaningless word games are published in the "professional" literature as though they were important discoveries, because they meet the criteria (= political correctness).

Thus you will not succeed in reading and/or publishing research that shows that women are less capable than men, or that black-skinned people are less capable than whites, or that conversion therapy for homosexuality can succeed in certain cases. All these will be rejected by the journal editor, or by his pressure community (the indignant readers), exactly as happens in an ordinary (inferior) daily newspaper. See several striking examples here. Even if such results should happen to be published in a less politically correct journal, heaven forfend, there is no need to worry: it will immediately be boycotted on the pretext that this is an arrogant and chauvinistic plot of exclusion. The findings there are the result of the plots of the privileged, and thus the results will disappear from the stage of public discourse. Of course this claim itself is also the result of a plot and an interest. Some of them will deny this despite the inconsistency. But the honest among them will admit it. So what?! That is what everyone does, and that is how academic discourse proceeds. There is nothing else.

An example: the Frankfurt School

The main point at which the "critical" method shared by Marxism and postmodernity crystallized was in the 1920s, in the group of thinkers known as the Frankfurt School. They invented "critique" (with quotation marks) when they took Marxist analysis and expanded it from the economic sphere to additional areas, such as art, law, media, sociology, and the social sciences in general. One can say that there Marxist "critique" crystallized into a coherent method. You will not be surprised to hear that these were thinkers, almost all of whom belonged to Marxism, though in their case the entire range of phenomena I have described here appeared only in miniature (they also did meaningful research, and occasionally even bothered to argue and substantiate their claims). But postmodernity—despite the apparent contradiction on the first characteristic, it is the legitimate child that issued from the loins of that group through the wave of the second characteristic—continued their project. Our contemporary "critiques" continue their work toward the bizarre regions I have described and will yet describe.

To illustrate the matter a bit more, I will bring here an anecdote that I read only this past Sabbath in Shlomo Aronson’s article, "Israel Kastner, OSS and the ‘Spearhead Theory’ at Nuremberg."[7] Aronson deals with the preparations for the Nuremberg trials. He recounts that the person chosen to coordinate the preparations on behalf of the U.S. government was a former Supreme Court justice named Jackson. He worked with a group of jurists from the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA), headed by Franz Neumann, almost all of them members of the Frankfurt School and avowed Marxists.[8] A debate took place there over whether the Jewish Holocaust should be treated independently or as part of the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis during the war. Neumann maintained that antisemitism was nothing but a "spearhead" whose purpose was to unite the German people and prepare hearts and minds for similar treatment of other peoples as well (because of the Jews in their midst). This is an instrumental explanation of antisemitism, which in his view was a cynical political instrument in the hands of the Nazis, and therefore the Holocaust was only an inseparable part of their general move.[9] Aronson notes that this was a development of a thesis Neumann had already developed in 1941 in his book Behemoth, in which he proposed a Marxist explanation for the success of the Nazis as against the failure of other right-wing groups in Germany. Neumann attributed the Holocaust to a political plot, and in that sense there is a Marxist explanation here. He also assumed that the Nazis would not destroy this highly valuable instrument, which of course was later disproved. But to that he added that the destruction itself also played a similar role (to prepare for the destruction of other peoples). Neumann also found various excuses for the decisive evidence raised against his thesis by Dr. Dvorak (another participant in the preparations for the Nuremberg trials). It seems to me that his successors today would no longer bother to do even that.

Neumann’s assumption was that the Nazis planned to advance capitalism and imperialism, and to eradicate communism. The children of light are always the Marxists, and therefore it cannot be that the Nazis fought for other reasons against another enemy. All of history is a struggle between imperialist capitalism and the oppressed proletariat. These two demons constitute history, and there is nothing else on its stage.

Aronson sums up:

There was here a typical Marxist mixture of seeing life as a power-driven, self-interested, materialist, political, and conscious struggle, which turned the scholars who held it into political people first and human beings only afterward.

Neumann, as a man of the Frankfurt School, was not especially moved by facts. He had his own ready-made conspiracy, and he preferred an unreasoned subversive interpretation based, of course, on the capitalist-communist axis. But in court arguments are required, not hallucinations or speculations. In the end Jackson decided to get rid of this entire Marxist group, and apparently he did well.

The last stage in the dialectical process: the leap into nonsense

As noted, the term "critique" that stars in these fields was created following the Frankfurt School, which played a major role in the whole development of this distortion. We saw that already there a Marxist vision was combined—blatantly modernist—and, ironically, it eventually gave birth to the nihilistic postmodernity that exterminated Marxism, and of course to the nonsense that is the last stage in the above dialectical process, which I will now describe.

We have already seen that in the postmodern world there is no need to substantiate any claim, and it is enough that it fit political correctness. But now comes a further stage of abstraction, in which there is no longer even any need to make a claim at all (even an unsubstantiated one). This is the stage of the wild growths I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks: academic nonsense. It turns out that in certain fields, and for certain "critical" journals, one can submit for publication a text that says nothing at all, provided only that it contains, in sufficient dosage, the canonical words from the list above and creates an atmosphere of deprivation of marginalized populations and of plots by the privileged (that is, that it be politically correct). If these requirements are met, then it is an acceptable academic article, even if it claims nothing. Here our dialectical process reaches its final stop, straight to the nonsense articles (which we will reach again in the continuation columns as well).

To get a sense of where matters have reached today, it is worth looking at the humorous Facebook page A Resling Book a Day, which offers possible titles for books published by Resling. Believe me, you will die laughing. Many of them contain words from the canonical list above, together with something banal, such as (the examples are my own fictional ones): Queerness and Eating Breakfast, or An Evening Walk as Post-Hegemony under Neo-Colonialist Channeling. Alternatively, what do you think of a title like: The Politics of Silencing Homo-Palestinian Queers in Hindustan on the Eve of the Outbreak of World War III and the Dystopia of the Band Queen? Believe me, you would not be able to distinguish it from some of the actual titles published there.[10] To complete the picture, you can also browse for your enjoyment through article titles in the journal Theory and Criticism. When one sees the titles, one can understand that it is probably not worth going in and reading inside (incidentally, that is not always true).

As I mentioned, the root of the matter is another step of abstraction in our dialectical process. We saw that the previous step, giving up argument and substantiation of claims, was founded on the fact that we have no way of determining what truth is and what is a correct assumption or a correct argument. There are no standards, and therefore there are no judgments or evaluations. This is an abstraction of the concepts of justification, argument, and truth. The final step is an abstraction of the concept of meaning. If previously we canceled the need and the possibility of justification, now we cancel the very act of asserting. The move here is as follows.

Derrida already taught us that texts as such have no interpretation. The interpretation of the text is what is created in the interpreter/reader.[11] If so, how can one distinguish between claims or texts that have meaning and those that lack it?! Both these and those create some experience in the interpreter, and in both cases that is precisely their meaning. In a postmodern text, what is created in the reader is a kind of mood, not something that arises directly from the interpretation of the words. The devoted reader of Theory and Criticism enters an atmosphere of deprivation and marginalization, and is filled with rage at the privileged, the post-colonialists, and the anti-queer oppressors. Thus he is moved to correct ideological action, and so in fact the article has done its opinion-journalistic work. If so, it has meaning and deserves to be called academic "research" (again, in quotation marks of course, in the same sense as in "critique" and "theory"). The text advanced an agenda (a correct one, or a proper one), and that, as we recall, is its purpose and the only meaning of an academic article.[12]

If so, even a text that literally asserts nothing has meaning. After all, the reader experiences something while reading, doesn’t he?! In particular, he experiences the right things. If so, the man of deconstruction tells us, a text that asserts nothing really also asserts something, just as a text that seemingly appears to us to assert something does not really assert anything (but only creates experiences). Here the process of emptying out and dismantling is completed. Not of some particular field of content, but of content as such. Not of substantiation, argument, and truth, but of meaning and assertion as such.[13] Now there is no assertion, no substantiation and argument, and not even meaning. The postmodern process of dismantling is complete, because nihilism is absolute.[14] At this stage the cognitive chessboard is empty of black pawns (the children of darkness). It has no queen, no rooks; perhaps a few white pawns remain (the words). It is empty of water, but there are snakes and scorpions in it (white ones, children of light).

At the final stage, the last white pawn in the class war reaches the last rank of the board, and the game ends:

…

2018: H:8X

Checkmate!! [Or perhaps is it a stalemate?…]

Summary

I have described the processes and the historical background through which Marxist dogmatism leads, in a direct and continuous process, to nihilism and to a militant postmodern vacuum, thereby delivering a heroic checkmate to thought, truth, assertion, and meaning, whose most spectacular expression is the nonsense articles described at the beginning of my remarks. We can now understand how we reached the pathetic events of scientific nonsense articles being accepted for publication in academic journals. True, they assert nothing—so what? Other articles also assert nothing, but only create (proper) experiences. After all, that is what is really called "asserting." What is this arrogance of yours?! Why should only articles that assert something be accepted for publication?! Do you have a monopoly on meaning (you arrogant privileged people)?!

In the next column I will try to examine the phenomenon of these wild growths and its meanings, and also a bit of what it says about the so-called social sciences and humanities in general.

[1] In the previous column I brought my sister’s testimony regarding the introductions in criminology courses that deal with defining science.

[2] See on this in the eleventh book in the Talmudic Logic series, Platonic Thinking in the Talmud.

[3] Though not a tangible horse, as the "Third Man Argument" proves. See there in our book.

[4] My descriptions of the analytic-synthetic struggle can also be perceived as Platonic, and yet I do not see plots here but rather a clash between values and conceptions. The processes reflect them, but are not necessarily driven and generated by them in a deterministic way. People choose an analytic or synthetic conception, and now they fight for their views.

[5] Two important comments: 1. Yuval wrote to me that he himself opposes postmodern nonsense, but apparently is nevertheless influenced by it. 2. Most of psychiatry does not belong to the bogus sciences. There is serious research and empirical examination there. And yet there is no dispute that there are intolerable mixtures of values and facts there, both in academic research and in treatment. Foucault’s deconstructionist critique of psychiatry is largely correct (I have already written that it was said of him too that even a stopped clock shows the exact time twice a day).

[6] Regarding the distinction between opinions and facts in academia, see my article, "Academic Research and the Prohibition on Involvement" (on the controversy over Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University). The focus of the controversy is precisely this point. Regarding the distinction between values and facts in Jewish law, see in my article on halakhic rulings and expertise.

[7] In the collection Law and History, Dani Gutwein and Menachem Mautner (eds.), Shazar Center, Jerusalem 1999, pp. 305-338. Incidentally, Dani Gutwein is one of the more bizarre Marxists in Israeli academia. Some things I have read and heard from him would not have been out of place among the nonsense articles with which I opened and which I will discuss further on.

[8] It is rather surprising that the American security service had an entire group of such Marxists headed by Neumann. I note that this was a little before the McCarthy period (1950-56), perhaps not coincidentally.

[9] In this, of course, he joins another Marxist from that same circle, Hannah Arendt.

[10] Incidentally, there are quite a few good books there. But there are several titles there such that merely reading the name of the book will make you shudder or die laughing.

[11] See on this briefly in my article on hermeneutics.

[12] Anyone to whom these remarks sound amusing or bizarre is invited to read the responses I received to my columns on Hasidism (104–106). There you can see these claims in all their glory, rising as a defense of Hasidic nonsense (admittedly it has no clear meaning, but it creates meaningful experiences in us). Incidentally, in the columns that came immediately afterward (107-113) I argued that there is room for conceptions that are almost deconstructionist with respect to poetry and literature (where the message is not the literal meaning of the words but the experience created in the reader/interpreter through the words). But here these conceptions appear in relation to what was defined there as prose (an encyclopedic entry, or an academic article).

[13] Meaning here becomes psychological rather than philosophical. See on this in column 159.

[14] One may conjecture that the next abstraction is that we will no longer need words in order to create an article. At that stage blank pages will be published as articles. This brings us to modern art (or postmodern art), and we will touch on that as well in the next column.