A Reply to Elizabeth Powers: “Woke” Activists and Deconstruction

“The respective propriety of each strand of said activism must be engaged with on a case-by-case basis, rather than be lumped together with all other causes before being explained away with references to academic trends.”

Introduction

In a recent article for National Review, Elizabeth Powers argues that “woke” activism is an extension of the predominately “French” philosophy of deconstruction that has since gone mainstream. Powers claims that deconstruction goes by many labels, including “post-modernism” and “multiculturalism”; however, she prefers the former term since it “best encapsulates” what is at the core of these doctrines. This is the desire to undermine the traditions and values of Western civilization through exposing the subversive “racism, misogyny, repression, and so on that is hidden below the overt text of a novel.” Powers, unfortunately, does not provide a much more elaborate account of this apparently ubiquitous philosophy than this, swiftly moving on to complain about allegedly declining educational standards. She argues that, in the 1960’s, relatively few high school students pursued a post-secondary education, by contrast to today when 70% do. While not elaborated on, Powers implies that this democratization of post-secondary education is to be mourned since it has enabled the less capable to enter and undermine what were once elite and meritocratic institutions. As she puts it “no one in 1963 thought that the boys sitting in the back row of public-school classrooms were college material.” Powers then goes on to praise her generation for doing “real scholarship” in a variety of fields, before returning to the topic of deconstruction. She then provides a rather confusing definition of what the aim of deconstructive theory was, describing it as an effort to “read forward” rather than backwards. She writes:

“The aim of theory, as it was called in the academy, was to ‘read forward.’ It would no longer be a case, as in traditional scholarship, of reading backward, of studying sources or analyzing the traces of literary predecessors (one could also apply this to historical events), documenting the immediate conditions of the creation of a work or of its reception by contemporaries, but instead it would lay bare the biases of its creation— intolerance, racism, privilege, misogyny, you name it—that lived on and was passed down in literary works. Those of my cohort who majored in English literature, which for the most part also meant the study of a ‘foreign’ literature, i.e., the British literary tradition, carried out a similar job of deconstruction of that field. Currently, one of the biggest areas of research among American scholars of 18th-century British literature is the Atlantic slave trade. As I said, students already knew that anyone born before them is an idiot. They walked out of the classes long ago, and the scholars talk only to themselves.”

Why an effort to go back and uncover the “biases” in the creation of the work—including its sources and predecessors—constitutes reading “forward” rather than backwards is not explained. Powers proceeds to argue that the popularity of deconstruction is apparently responsible for declining enrollment in classes in foreign languages—and in the humanities more generally. Why this would be due to deconstruction and not socio-economic pressures to refrain from pursuing “useless” or “scam” degrees, as some right-wing pundits put it, is not discussed. Consequently, we must decide for ourselves whether the impact of French philosophy on our culture —or a desire for jobs after completing an expensive university education—is more responsible for declining interest in the liberal arts. She then returns to the theme of protestors, claiming the minds of protesters lack depth, while comparing them to literary criminals. Powers writes:

“…But the minds of the young protesters are virginal, without depth, without empathy for differences of point of view. They have become more cynical than even the most hardened criminal when it comes to the values of Western civ.”