A critique of radical criticism: the inevitability of turning from suspicion to construction

Some time ago I read Johannes Angermuller's book, published in Turkish under the title Neden Fransa'da Postyapısalcılık Yok? ("Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France," Heretik Yayınları, trans. Özge Karlık, 2017), as a story that I did not find very surprising but found interesting, about how the birthplace of certain ideas and the place where they spread can differ. Ideas do not sit in some places the way books sit on shelves. When transferred to other places and societies, they can find far different and far stronger echoes than in the place where they were born. Yet that the new French thought that gave birth to and nourished postmodernist thought has not been able to produce in France the same echo it produced in the world is, from whichever angle you look at it, interesting.

What is called "deconstruction" (yapısökümü), this radical criticality or, from another angle, mental operation, constituted one of the greatest ruptures Western thought has experienced in the last half century. This approach, which at first appeared to be an innocent critical method, in time turned into a great epistemological movement aimed at dissolving not only ideas but truth itself. Today we live in a mental universe that regards not only texts but the family, gender, history, the nation, religion, aesthetics, law, even biological reality as "constructed," that is, as fabricated institutions with no real foundation. And the fundamental question before humanity is now whether a consciousness that constantly dissolves but builds nothing can live for long.

Deconstruction at first served as an important warning against the arrogant certainties of modernity. Thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze tried to show the power relations operating behind the seemingly neutral structures of modern institutions. They said that the prison, the school, the hospital, language, law, and systems of knowledge are indeed not innocent; that every form of knowledge produces a particular organization of power. Take Foucault's understanding of history, for example, which I conveyed, agreeing up to a point, in my book titled Tarihbozumu, but of which I also said that beyond a certain point, with its nihilism and its dismissiveness, it built its own idol. Starting from Nietzsche, he pointed to the idols built by those who attribute a direction and wholeness to history; up to here it was fine, but at the end of this idol-breaking, his statement that "history has no direction or meaning" built a new idol that overstepped its bounds.

A significant part of these criticisms, and of those that formed their point of departure, was right. For modern Western thought had indeed, for the most part, built its claim to universality together with colonialism, class domination, and epistemic hegemony, and the criticisms targeted the West directly.

But the problem began precisely here. Criticism in time lost its measure. The approach that at first wanted to "make power relations visible" moved gradually toward declaring the impossibility of truth itself. Thus method turned into ontology. The issue was no longer merely that some institutions were oppressive; truth itself began to be regarded as an instrument of oppression.

The consequence of this transformation for civilizations was extremely destructive. For a society can criticize its own norms; this is healthy. But when it begins to believe that its norms rest on no basis of truth, it becomes unable to defend them. It cannot legitimize its borders, its law, its culture, its history, even its reasons for existing. The idea that everything is merely "social construction" ends by depriving man of the ground on which he can stand. It suffices to look at the gender debates as an example at this point.

The great cultural crisis experienced in the Western world today is in part that people are no longer sure what is worth defending. For they have been taught that behind every defense lies a concealed domination. If you defend the family, you are patriarchal. If you defend the nation, you are a fascist. If you defend biological reality, you are exclusionary; if you speak of an aesthetic standard, you are deemed elitist. This logic produces an infinitely expanding doubt in itself. And in the end society begins to produce a consciousness that dynamites its own sources of legitimacy.

One of the most striking aspects of criticality based on deconstruction is also its unfalsifiability. For the system works in such a way as to regard every criticism directed at it as void from the outset. If you object, you are told that you object because you are already privileged. If you speak of neutrality, it is claimed that neutrality too is a mask of the dominant ideology. Thus the ground of debate disappears. For this reason deconstruction begins to operate less as a thought than as a closed dogmatic system.

The real problem is that this mental climate has produced a "crisis of construction." A significant part of the generations raised in this period learned to dissolve but did not learn to build. They learned to doubt but lost the capacity to admire. They learned to see power everywhere but became unable to see truth, beauty, and transcendence.

The truth is that civilization cannot live on cynical criticism alone. Civilization demands construction. It demands faith. It demands loyalty. It demands transmission. Even teaching a child language is in fact a great act of civilizational confidence. It means "these words are worth living." Producing a work of art means "beauty is still possible." Founding a tradition carries a metaphysical acceptance that the past is not wholly meaningless.

Yet the radical forms of deconstructionist criticality have severed precisely this vein of transmission. They have taught people that there is nothing to bequeath. A consciousness accustomed to reading everything in the language of oppression, domination, and hegemony ends up knowing only how to demolish. And it takes demolition itself for freedom.

Of course, no one can propose here an approach that condemns criticism at its root. Essentially, no civilization can live without criticism. The problem is criticism's becoming the ultimate aim and producing through it an interesting cynical comfort. For a mind that constantly doubts but attaches itself to nothing in the end renders its own existence meaningless as well. Man cannot live by taking apart alone. He wants to belong somewhere, to protect something, to sustain something.

At the point we have reached, we think the idea of construction needs to be remembered anew, though of course not forgetting that this too harbors its own traps. As Muslims we are by no means lacking in solid, reliable references for construction. Indeed, precisely as Muslims we must have a courageous consciousness that truth is not wholly relative. A moral confidence that the good can truly be distinguished from the bad. An aesthetic intuition that beauty is not merely an ideological fiction. And finally we need to acquire a historical consciousness that heritage does not consist entirely of oppression.

We must not forget that humanity advanced not only by criticizing but by building. Structures were made not by commentators but by architects. Cities were founded not by skeptics but by founders. Great literatures, great music, great civilizations were the work not of those who constantly doubted but of those who believed in a truth.

In the end what remains is always what has been built. For destruction is transient; what is built becomes memory. For this reason the real issue today is not to ban deconstructionist radicalism but to pull it back to its own limits. It is to place criticism once again in the service of truth.