Continental philosophy departments are actively set up to prevent original philosophical work

It seems to me that there’s something horribly amiss in how philosophy is done in Continental philosophy departments in the United States. It’s all commentary. The real work of theory (French and Frankfurt school theory) is always being done elsewhere, in romance language departments, English departments, social science departments, etc., where people can work with other thinkers, put them to use, without simply having to comment on their work. It is as if there’s almost a prohibition against doing philosophy in these departments, and as if “philosophers” in these departments think that philosophy is identical to the history of ideas. Thus folk like Judith Butler aren’t in philosophy departments, but in a rhetoric department. Jodi Dean is in a political science department. DeLanda is in an architecture department. Even Rorty moved on to literature and humanities departments.

One of the issues here seems to be that Continental philosophy departments are actively set up to prevent original philosophical work. On the one hand, in order to get your tenure you have to continue focusing on a particular figure (who is inevitably from phenomenology, German idealism, or post-Hegelian thought, not the French post-structuralists). On the other hand, Continental philosophy journals and presses tend only to publish commentaries on specific thinkers and various aspects of their thought...August 3, 2007 Che Vuoi?Posted by larvalsubjects under The Bullshit of the Academy , Boring Stuff About Me