The Double Life of Paul De Man Hardcover – March 17, 2014

Reviewers have wanted to shoot the messenger, but this highly readable biography has changed the way we'll think about Paul de Man. It has many flaws. It ends just as de Man becomes successful, as if Barish suffers from schadenfreude. Some of the references seem dubious, although this doesn't negate the bulk of her years of voluminous research. And she doesn't seem to understand de Man's work, either its theory or its practice (but then neither do most of the reviewers of this book). Regardless of the horrors of his personal life de Man requires a critical biography that will clarify his very real contributions to the understanding of literature. Despite these serious shortcomings Barish's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the "theory wars" or the development of literary study since the Second World War.

Sympathetic, compelling glimpse of great critic, whose pre-Yale context as revealed by Evelyn Barish stumbles into the dark places of Belgian/German byways, where he is a chameleon among the Nazis as they rise to power in Europe. Thus presents a moral quandry: does a person's 're-creation' obliterate the past? --jkp

Paul de Man made "the madness of crowds" work to his advantage; then came his unmasking. This is the story of the man behind Paul de Man.

"It is time to start questioning the explicit, declarative statement of the text in terms of its own theatricality." Paul de Man.

Evelyn Barish's unsettling biography of American literary theorist Paul de Man should be essential reading for anyone who wonders what has led to the sad decaying state of the liberal arts in higher American education. Since Barish seems to have left no stone unturned in her chronicle of de Man's morally questionable and often criminal behavior, she will no doubt be accused of mounting an extended ad hominem attack against de Man. On the contrary, to fully place Paul de Man's theories in context, Barish provides an exhortation long needed in the halls of the academy. A brief sketch of de Man's theories will be useful in understanding the man who was once the critical darling of the American intelligentsia and the East Coast media establishment.

Paul de Man built his academic career debunking, assaulting, the idea that the biographical narrative of an individual and the historical facts of an individual's personal relation with the world had any relation to "truth." In the deconstructionist's view, the personal narrative of a particular artist or theorist is not only irrelevant, it is in fact unknowable, as reality itself is unknowable.

De Man claimed that biographical narratives, indeed, any attempt at narration or reading comprehension, is but an illusion: there is no truth, there is no subject, there is no author. Causality, objectivity, identity, personhood itself, are all unknowable. All such systems of "texts," such rhetorical tropes, are inherently contradictory. Language itself is akin to a closed labyrinth of blind rabid rats competing for supremacy over the other.

So the meaning of texts are indeterminate, language is often contradictory and ultimate truth is illusory? So far, so good, right? This seems to have been the trajectory of intellectual thought since the dawn of Modernity. But the deconstructionists don't end there. They argue that reality itself is a "text, " a false construct which Jacques Derrida termed "logocentrism."

Derrida, the Godfather of deconstructionist thought, held that ideas can't be described by writing because words themselves are empty signifiers which necessarily creates both a presence and an absence that can never be fully idealized, an uncentered center that infinitely opens upon itself like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. What is found in each of these nesting dolls?

There can only be a self-referential awareness of a text's own lacking, a perpetually unfulfilled state of being, both a presence and an absence at the same time. There is no truth and there is no reality. There is no past and there is no future. There is only the eternally doomed and impossible attempt to define the text, to grasp the meaning of the present moment itself.

Derrida believed language has an inherent tendency to undermine itself. Because of its self-referential and contradictory nature, any attempt to discern facts and reach some sense of clarity or meaning will fail. There can be no metaphysical truths discovered in texts because there is no external reality beyond the texts themselves.

So, what are academicians to do when confronted with the futility of searching for coherency or clarity in "texts?" Engage in cynical "play." Contradictory rhetoric, convoluted sentence structure, competing ideologies, witty neologisms and self referential puns are the hallmarks of the leading theorists of deconstruction.

And no one can deny Paul de Man's creative wit: de Man once famously referred to Jacques Derrida as "Archie deBunker. " De Man wrote:

"...asked by his wife whether he wants to have his bowling shoes laced over or laced under, Archie Bunker answers the question: "What's the difference?" Being a reader of sublime simplicity, his wife replies by patiently explaining the difference between lacing over and lacing under, whatever this may be, but it provokes only ire. "What's the difference?" did not ask for difference but means instead "I don't give a damn what the difference is." (*)

In addition to being a reference to the reactionary and contrarian 1970s television sit-com character, de Man's pun was also a sly self-referential allusion to de Man's own surname. De Man's remark is likewise a winking allusion to Derrida's concept of "arche-writing," Derrida's assertion that speech is subservient to writing. Here also de Man displays the post-modern penchant to playfully mingle both high theory with mass culture. For Derrida and de Man, there is no external reality or metaphysical idea beyond texts. In the final analysis, deconstruction was simply a post-modern take on nihilism with its tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Is it any wonder that such a "theory" would be so readily adopted and promoted by a narcissist and criminal such as Paul de Man? Deconstruction, at the heart of its impenetrable heart, is not only a denial of reality, it is an abrogation of personal engagement with both the past, the future and ultimately, the present itself. It was an intellectual shell game played out on campuses across the country by con-men wearing Ivy tweed sports jackets. Indeed, deconstructionist theory seems to be a tailor made strait-jacket for a pathological liar such as de Man. Yet predictably, that de Man was a demonstrative anti-Semite, Nazi sympathizer (if not collaborator,) moocher, con-man, thief, bigamist and dead-beat father, will matter not to his army of acolytes.

The greater shame of Paul de Man, however, is not his repeated career-enhancing prevarications, ethical flimflammery and an apparent absence of personal morals. It's that de Man served as the critical wellspring for an entire generation of aspiring academians. The graying and tenured Phd's and English Department Chairs who as winderkund graduate students so joyfully embraced de Man's peculiar brand of literary nihilism are themselves a sad reminder of de Man's critical legacy. Deconstruction was celebrated as a revolutionary and transformational "end of meaning" in literary and philosophical history.

And because of this "break-through," the arts and humanities in a vast number of American universities have become veritable towers of Babel. Deconstruction as a literary fad has long since seen its day. Buts its influence on the modern academy is undeniable. It is for this reason that Chaucer and Shakespeare have no more cultural significance than reading a comic book or watching a pornographic video. And all the while, Archie deBunker's refrain echoes through the cloistered halls of the academy: "I don't give a damn what the difference is!"

The rise and ascendancy of deconstruction is in fact a denunciation of the very academy that so gleefully assimilated de Man's literary theory. Many elite universities now routinely offer undergraduate "Literature" course offerings on topics such as the campy 1960s Batman TV show (with titles such as "Leitmotif Exegesis In Batman") and graduate level seminars on "Deep Throat," the 1970s porn film (with titles such as "The Feminist Dialectic of Linda Lovelace.")

What a fitting and damning biography Evelyn Barish has written of de Man and the cultural milieu which made him the darling of the American academy. A casebook example of the pervasive toxicity which plagues the modern academy and indeed, our culture at large. Paul de Man's blatant disregard for personal responsibility, his audacious embrace of moral relativism and his vilipended denial of history is but a symptom of a larger sickness in our culture.Highly recommended.

(*) ([...])

To say that I liked this biography would not be correct. Its primary attribute for me was that it was thought-provoking, causing me to return (if only briefly) to the academic life of my long-gone youth. Some of these thoughts follow. Even if some of the claims made in the biography are dubious, the biography more than did its job of leading me into critical thought about its subject.

First, based on points made in the biography, it occurs to me that someone with a background like de Man's would particularly love the idea of deconstructionism, because it enabled him to separate from his own past far more effectively than anything else could. If the context of work or thought is irrelevant, he could proclaim his own probably reprehensible background irrelevant to the words he spoke or wrote, something that should not be taken into account in judging the scholar that he became. This view makes his development of deconstructionism utterly self-interested, hypocritical and almost evil: he can completely dissociate himself from who he became from anything he had done. He had to invent deconstructionism to protect himself from his Nazi past.

Second, the book courageously points out the regrettable habit of academe of confusing brilliance with incomprehensibility, something the book courageously points out. All the brilliance in the world is worthless if the one mantled with the status cannot communicate with his or her fellow man. In any event, those who sit at the feet of the brilliant one may believe that he or she is brilliant, but how can they know? Where is the evidence? If you can't tell whether the emperor has anything on, how do you know he's brilliant?

Third, on a personal note, Paul de Man was perhaps more than anyone else responsible for my decision not to pursue the study of English literature. I was fortunate enough (as it turns out) to hear him speak in a small setting that allowed him to expound his deconstructionism in some depth He was utterly incomprehensible. The fawning adulation he received was beyond my comprehension; I knew perfectly well that no one there had any idea what he was talking about either. I decided then and there that if his approach was what the study of literature required, I would have none of it.

Thanks to this biography, I now know that he had a very personal reason for arguing the irrelevance of context. Had we known at the time of his history, he would have neither received nor deserved the worship that others accorded him, no matter how brilliant he appeared to be.