In January 2023, a conference was held at the Sorbonne: Who's Afraid of Deconstruction? " which gave rise to the publication of a work by the Presses Universitaires de France¹. I will limit myself to a brief analysis of the fourth cover page. Filled with insults towards those who do not think like the authors. As if one could not debate calmly... The concept of "deconstruction" was born from the works of Derrida and, according to his kind followers, "it has become, in the minds of reactionaries of all stripes, the portmanteau word designating everything they hate in thought, when the latter seeks to emancipate rather than to order". Right from the start, those who do not think like them are treated as "reactionaries"... The easy insult, just before "extreme right" and "fascist" which are a notch above - which has not been crossed, that's fair. And "of all stripes", an easy expression undoubtedly intended to humiliate, but not to build an argument.

Let us first point out that these authors do not know what the expression "portmanteau word" means.². Then, emancipate who? Order what? That will remain unsaid. Yet these are transitive verbs, says a dictionary. Derrida's original works date from the 1960s, it is amusing that this word appears under their pen as the paragon of modernity! Wouldn't there be something a little new to get one's teeth into, to better bite the adversary? All fashions pass after seducing fools; when Lévi-Strauss introduced the term structuralism, many dull thinkers rushed in, proclaiming that they too were structuralists! Even an unfortunate surgeon-biologist, Henri Laborit, who claimed to be one... It was the same for deconstruction, which everyone claims as part of "modernity". Let's be modern: let's reconstruct, it will be more original. And more new!

Let's move on: the enemies of deconstruction would attribute to this concept "everything that is wrong with the world: degeneration of culture, contempt for great works, interpretative delirium, linguistic amphigouri, political danger, sexual confusion, moral license"... What a beautiful hodgepodge! As if Derrida's thought had been important enough to bring about a "degeneration of culture", as if a Tiphaine Samoyault owed her "contempt for great works" to deconstruction, as if transgender activists, in sexual confusion³, were aware when they ransacked the Café Laïque in Brussels⁴, to follow a philosophical thought, as if the sansculottism of a political party threatening to destroy democracy was based on Foucault's thought, as if linguistic amphigouri was not currently the most widely shared thing in France... There are many things that are at the origin of "everything that is going wrong in the world": ignorance, social networks, fanaticism, identity politics, communitarianism; what the hell! Deconstructionism cannot be responsible for everything...

Let's continue: this back cover poses an important question: "What does the frenzied fixation of a fringe of intellectuals on anything that might resemble a different, inventive and fundamentally democratic thought mean?" These intellectuals would be "frenzied", but who is stirring in the fishbowl? They would only be a "frenzy of intellectuals", let it be said: it would therefore be the deconstructionists who constitute the mass! Yes, but, is it not the mass that we call "sheepish" because it blindly follows the ideas of the self-proclaimed elite? A "different and inventive thought" would come from the deconstructionists: let us give examples! Many imbeciles have "different thoughts", this is not to be put to their credit: the flat earthers, the saucerists, the conspiracy theorists and many others; having a different thought is not a guarantee of intelligence.

To end this anthology of empty terms, the thinking of the deconstructionists would be "fundamentally democratic". I don't see what "fundamental" is doing here, it's just filling in with a catch-all adverb: has anyone ever seen a thought that would only be democratic?incidentally, not being able to be fundamentally ? And if the deconstructors boast of being democratic, that would mean that their opponents, the constructors, are not democrats; they are therefore… well yes, of course, fascists! But the funniest thing about the whole passage is this strange accusation that closes this summary of the work: the non-deconstructors would have “the will to police thought […] to better, then, police bodies”. Giving thought its due – the best of themselves –, certainly, that is their will! But wanting to “police bodies” is a far cry from that. What happens in the deconstructors’ bed doesn’t really interest them! As long as they do it between consenting adults… We can see where the discourse of certain academics can fall when they let loose! What an intellectual drift.

Let us now compare with the proceedings of another conference, also held at the Sorbonne a year earlier, " After deconstruction »⁵. I'll pretend I didn't read it and just look at the back cover, as with the previous one. It's not the deconstructionists who are attacked, it's deconstruction: it's not men who are taken to task, it's an ideology. The deconstructionists are not called pretty bird names as in the other work, and even the original principle of deconstruction is celebrated: "A once salutary enterprise for unearthing prejudices and unmasking illusions". What this work attacks is not people, it is "a deleterious fashion, a pretext for a new moral order, a supporter of an ideology that invades knowledge, paralyzes culture and terrorizes debate". No a priori anathema, no attacks. ad hominem who would claim, for example, that deconstructionists "hate thought" or constitute "a fringe of intellectuals" eager to "police thought in order to better police bodies". We are dealing with a debate of ideas between academics, not a settling of scores, and especially not below the belt.

This is all that differentiates ideology from reason.