YESTERDAY I was discussing the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), and his reaction both to the linguistic methodology and prevailing structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009). However, around the same time that Derrrida produced his 1967 deconstructionist work, Of Grammatology, he also published a lesser-known collection of early lectures and essays that contain a chilling subtext for the insipid political correctness which plagues us in the twenty-first century.

Discussing the post-war decolonialisation that was beginning to have an impact on an increasingly cosmopolitan France, Derrida was of the opinion that the language of Lévi-Strauss – particularly in relation to the discussion of literate and non-literate cultures abroad – was far too ‘ethnocentric’ and that it represented a stubborn remnant of traditional metaphysics. Now, keeping in mind our contemporary struggle to retain a semblance of free speech in light of the more recent mass invasion of Europe by economic migrants, consider the remarks that Derrida made almost half a century ago in relation to what he perceives as the dangers of ethnology as a human science and of ethnocentric discourse in general:

“In fact one can assume that ethnology could have been born as a science only at the moment when a decentering had come about: at the moment when European culture – and, in consequence, the history of metaphysics and its concepts – had been dislocated, driven from its locus, and forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference.”

This, he discussed in a work known as Writing and Difference (1967), which criticised Lévi-Strauss more directly than in his aforementioned work, but whilst I do happen to believe that an excessive use of ethnocentrism (or ethnology) can often blind people to the realities of those cultures which happen to exist elsewhere, it seems perfectly natural for somebody of a particular ethnicity to look at the world through the eyes of his own kind. Not in the crass and exaggeratory sense that one finds in things such as American exceptionalism or racial supremacy, for example, which are clearly ignorant, self-centred, lack empathy and ultimately fail to take other cultures into consideration whatsoever, but certainly in terms of preferring one’s own racial and cultural peculiarities to those of others.

Derrida, of course, was attempting to deconstruct the structuralist notions of his French counterpart as a way of accounting for the fact that the world was rapidly changing and people from other nations were beginning to flood into post-war Europe. As we know from our own experiences with political correctness and the imposition of nonsensical race laws, rather than apply the old adage, ‘do as the Romans do,’ the Establishment will frequently bend over backwards to ensure that its new arrivals are made to feel at home at the expense of the indigenous population. This has less to do with the ruling class making a conscious effort to be welcoming and hospitable, of course, than with seeking to protect and nurture its prospective economic assets. Derrida goes on to explain that

“ethnology – like any science – comes about within the element of discourse. And it is primarily a European science employing traditional concepts, however much it may struggle against them. Consequently, whether he wants to or not – and this does not depend on a decision on his part – the ethnologist accepts into his discourse the premises of ethnocentrism at the very moment when he denounces them.”

Here, Derrida is clearly talking about the masochistic tendencies of Lévi-Strauss, who, in his self-flagellating efforts to apologise for the interference of European civilisation among the more ‘primitive’ peoples of Africa, Asia and South America, inevitably views his subjects through French-tinted spectacles. Derrida realises that Lévi-Strauss is only trying to help, but his aggressive brand of deconstructionism sought to go much further by completely destroying all forms of traditional discourse. He continues:

“The quality and fecundity of a discourse are perhaps measured by the critical rigour with which this relation to the history of metaphysics and to inherited characteristics is thought. Here it is a question both of a critical relation to the language of the social sciences and a critical responsibility of the discourse itself. It is a question of explicitly and systematically posing the problem of the status of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the resources necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage itself. A problem of economy and strategy.”

And there it is, in a nutshell. The modern exponents of political correctness, i.e. those who promote other races and cultures at the expense of indigenous Europeans, have themselves been spoon-fed a well-orchestrated diet of Derridian philosophy. Something which, after the gradual demise of Lévi-Strauss and the influence of structuralism in the late-1960s and its consequent supplantation by the forces of deconstructionism, eventually became a fundamental part of the academic syllabus.

Derrida’s methods, then, in relation to the deliberate alteration of language in order to suit the needs of the outsider and their opportunistic hosts who are seeking to benefit, are once again coming to the fore as a way of meeting the numerous challenges determined by another wave of non-Europeans and thus engineering their hasty assimilation.