Grievance studies, anti-intellectualism and the death of the hermit

I am not the first to claim that fantasies of fascist times have become disturbingly contemporary. For most people, it is Orwell's 1984 that represents our current policing of thought, ideological emptiness, lack of dialogue and void fanaticism. From the point of view of the academies, I feel Hesse's Glasperlenspiel is urgently contemporary. Hesse's tale departs as an utopian one, in which human sciences have interconnected and developed to a high point and reached unprecedented prestige in their society. But this cenit is menaced by its downfall. The prestige of the academies leads them to shut themselves in, to become hieratic sects that take years of initiation. Inside them, speaking of the outside world is a form of blasphemy. Yet, outside, the world begins to forget about the work and importance of the masters. Political struggles arise, and nobody dares to consider their historical dimension. The isolation of the academies is leading up to their own destruction.

Since my first year in the human sciences, I had a repudiation for the shallow hermeticism practised by so-called cultural studies. Lacan, Derrida, Spivak and most of their followers create a pyramid of self-reference, which legitimates itself by quoting its own mantras. These mantras are claimed to hide a deeper truth. We are expected to have faith in something that cannot be expressed, that can only be grasped through faith and enlightenment. This is not criticism, but fanatic adherence to a belief in the unexplainable. If only they realized that mantras are meant but to void the mind and to understand the futility of our existence, they would see that their building of theory is a distraction from the abyss on which they stand.

Functional language is not always clear language. It is necessary for a higher debate to strive towards a more precise vocabulary that is not equal to the common tongue. Yet, the vocabulary developed in the last decades is everything but precise, it indulges in its vagueness, contradiction and tautology.

Hesse's tale is a mystery play. The narrating voice speaks from a later time which we will never get to understand. The protagonist is full of visions which hint at solutions in a dreamy, obscure way. A circle, a mutual sacrifice, an ever turning wheel of reincarnation. Through the hero's sacrificial death, it is said, balance can somehow be achieved. How exactly, the book leaves painfully unclear. It is for each of us to figure out. But readers were not up to the task in its time of publication, as history shows. Shall we now be able to solve the riddle in time?

The building of shallow academicism is toppling. But with it, truth does not win. Anti-intellectualism, the cult of ignorance and post-truth come in its place. By enabling the enunciation point, the false consciousness and other forms of fallacy, this rhetoric digs its own grave. In deed, what more has postmodernism championed than the complete dissolution of the concept of truth? Much more.

That is, precisely, the crisis we are in. With the attack on obscure writing comes an attack on every form of critical thinking. The main focus of criticism are not the vague formulas of Lacan, but the (quite solidly grounded) social analyses of Nietzsche, Beauvoir, Foucault and Butler. In recent years I have even come to consider that, beyond their pointless rambling, Lacan and Derrida do have some philosophical point worth considering if explained in functional language. This has something to do with the fact that I have the luck to have taken part in an academy that does value clear speech.

However, the philosopher is an enemy of the state. Particularly, of the authoritarian and conservative states currently arising. It is more convenient than ever for them to purge and isolate the academies, to rehabilitate forms of racism, sexism and authoritarianism, to discard every insight that might unleash a possibility of change. The academic reactions to contemporary debate are all too happy to just point back at the past, to blame any form of new idea is deviance and to promote a return to the "good old ways". To survive, we must not yield, but work together. Specialized language is not evident, but it must remain accessible in order to fullfil its function: to mobilize society. The incapacity of some to reinvent language does not prove the impossibility to redo society. We need to keep focusing on the meaning of the ideas expressed in order to represent them clearly. We need to re-learn retorics and re-teach argumentation.