Thanks to many readers who have been sending it to me, starting less than thirty minutes after it appeared, thanks to its description of this as a "conservative philosophy blog" (another Halbertsam moment). Ms. Gessen, the author, was apparently travelling, but she did indicate she had asked for a correction, which has now appeared, much to the disappointment, I am sure, of my friend Scott Shapiro. One other misleading phrasing remains, though perhaps that too will be fixed; the article states:
Meanwhile, as I was writing this piece, Reitman’s press agent kept sending me additional materials, including a blog post by Brian Leiter, the philosopher who broke the May letter in defense of Ronell, alleging that, thirty years ago, Ronell had a relationship with Jacques Derrida’s son, which began when he was sixteen.
This phrasing makes it sound like an unsubstantiated allegation from this blog, when, in fact, as the link shows, I was quoting an article from Salon that was, in turn, quoting from a biography of Derrida, in which Ronell herself is quoted discussing the affair with Derrida's son. [UPDATE: Neil Easterbrook kindly sends along the reference: "On page 310 of Benoit Peeters' biography Derrida (Trans. Andrew Brown, NY: Polity, 2013--the French edition is 2010), *both* Ronell and Pierre Derrida (who now goes by the name Pierre Alferi) are quoted and assert that they had an affair. In June 1980, Pierre moved into Ronell's Paris apartment. The last word the bio has abt their affair is that in December 1981 Pierre was with Ronell in NYC (335)."]
As for the substance of the piece itself, I am inclined to agree with a philosopher in Europe who aptly described it as "a kind of pseudo-sophisticated piece geared totally towards deflection." The truth is this case is not that complicated. First, leading "theory" folks in literature departments disgraced themselves with their letter to NYU, so much so that the letter's primary author, Judith Butler, had finally to issue a sort-of apology. Second, if even half the allegations in the complaint filed against Ronell are true, then she engaged in abusive and unprofessional behavior with her student, for which she should probably lose her job; if the allegations are not true, then she is the victim of a frivolous lawsuit and a malicious campaign of harassment. What actually happened will be settled through an adjudicative process far better than any university's Title IX process.
I do think The New Yorker piece began on an unfortunate note, betraying its bias I suspect:
Ronell, who is sixty-six, is a literary scholar and philosopher at New York University and, by all accounts, one of the great academic minds of our time. [bolding added]
This isn't reporting, this is hagiography by a sympathetic pundit. A reporter might, for example, have tried to find out if there was a single person in the NYU Philosophy Department who thinks Ronell is "one of the great academic minds of our time." I am fairly confident I know the answer. Or consider a philosopher in Canada who wrote me last week that, "I watched an hour plus of her talks last night: absolute twaddle — mind numbingly free-associative, chaotic, name-dropping. An utter con job." As I observed in an earlier posting:
A big part of the narrative that has emerged is that Ronell is a "world-renowned scholar," an "academic rock star." I have to admit I'd never heard of her prior to this, though it seems clear she's well-known in some of the feebler parts of the humanities. Out of curiosity, I looked her up on "Google Scholar." Her most-cited authored work, apart from a translation of something by Derrida, 1989's The Telephone Book, has been cited about 560 times, less than, for example, my 2002 book on Nietzsche, and I'm not an "academic rock star." (The contrast with Judith Butler's Google Scholar citations is also striking.)
She undoubtedly has some well-known friends, some of whom, like Butler and Zizek, are undoubtedly "academic rock stars," whatever one's opinion of the work itself.
UPDATE: A philosopher elsewhere calls to my attention this rather shocking line from Gessen's article: "Reitman’s complaint, filed with the New York Supreme Court on August 16th, reads like a tawdry romance novel.” First, this is a ridiculously inapt description of the complaint. And second, as my correspondent wrote, "I cannot imagine anyone writing this about a complaint made by a potential victim against a potential accuser." This, again, suggests the author's pro-Ronell bias in this matter.
Recent Comments