Question I have read that authors such as Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler write in such a way as to intimidate or subdue the reader into accepting what they have to say, using rhetorical techniques as well as obfuscation. The accusation that Derrida practiced "obscurantisme terroriste" is a good example of the kind of accusation I'm talking about; Martha Nussbaum made a somewhat similar critique of Judith Butler, and there are several other such instances besides. The core idea seems to be that these writers write using disjointed, heavy-handed rhetoric and difficult-to-decipher prose in order to discourage the reader from challenging their ideas. What do you think? As someone who is not a professional philosopher, I sometimes find myself hard pressed to distinguish between things I am not equipped to understand and things that are actively trying to make me stop trying to understand and simply submit. Do the authors named above engage in such practices, and if so, to what extent? Are there others guilty of such behavior as well?

Accepted:
March 22, 2012

Comments

I really do not believe that any of the philosophers you mentionseek to 'bully' others in their writing, or to achieve the submissionof their readers. We are all human, so no doubt there areoccasionally misjudged attacks to be found in everyone, but I don'tbelieve these philosophers make it a habit. Although that does notrule out that there may be other philosophers who do this. And itcertainly does not rule out that I often find Derrida in particularexasperating for other reasons. There is a ratio of effort needed toinsight gained that, in many of Derrida's books of the mid or late70s in particular, gets way too high for me. I have had a go atgiving one reason for this difficulty here:

http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/1593

There are other reasons, too, not least that a philosopher willnaturally tend to write for his or her colleagues, especially whenthey see themselves working on a particular problem together. Alanguage game can become severely 'denaturalised' in such a case.