Jordan Peterson is many things. Moderately-accomplished clinical
psychologist. Disgraced ex-professor. Self-induced coma survivor. Sufferer
of extreme Meat Sweats. But he might also be something else. Something he claims to
be fundamentally against. Something he s railed against, publicly, repeatedly,
lucratively. Jordan Peterson might be a secret Postmodernist. Because a clip from a recent
Peterson video s gone semi-viral recently, and it finds everyone s least favourite Canadian doing
a seemingly sincere impression of the sorts of thinkers he s built his career on bashing. So,
let s take a look at this clip, and have a go at breaking down what it tells us.
Alright, so. Woof. If you know anything about Peterson s general ideology and worldview, you
ll know that one group he seems to hate above all others are postmodern philosophers and theorists.
If you know any more about Peterson, you ll know that when he complains about the postmoderns,
when he isn t referring to them as postmodern neo-marxists a contradiction in terms - he
mostly sticks to the same small handful of names. Above all, Michel Foucault and, crucially, Jacques
Derrida. There s a good video Wisecrack recently put out which touches on Peterson s strangely
limited knowledge of this cultural movement, why he only tends to cite a tiny number of thinkers,
and how those citations often fundamentally misrepresent what was actually being said link in
the description to that but in this video, we re just going to have a very quick look at Derrida,
and some basic Derridean concepts, as they pertain to Peterson, and how they might show
Peterson himself harbours some secret postmodern sympathies. So, in the simplest possible terms
Derrida was a French philosopher whose ideas were hugely influential in the development
of structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. A key part of his philosophy
was deconstruction. You see, from Derrida s perspective pretty much all central works of
western philosophy since Plato s time have oriented themselves around oppositions or
dichotomies - like mind vs body, for instance and Derrida argued that these dichotomies are often
arbitrary, and indeed that by reproducing binary oppositions like these, most works of philosophy,
perhaps unconsciously, had sort of locked away a lot of the complexities, nuances, and potential
meanings of the stuff they discussed. Questioning these inherited dichotomies,
uncovering other meanings that had been, in a sense, bricked over Derrida called that process
the de-construction of Western culture. But Derridean deconstruction isn t a concept exclusive
to philosophy, or to matters so broad and storied. At its most basic, it s just about language. It s
about how tricky it is to pin down any solid sense of meaning in a sentence, a phrase, a question,
because of all the implications, assumptions, meanings, suppositions, and so on baked into them,
and into the mind of any given writer or speaker. In a broad sense, then? Deconstruction one of
the foundations of postmodern philosophy is the attempt to take apart the seldom-noticed
ways that our usage of pre-existing conceptual structures either the accepted structures of
something like philosophy after Plato, or merely the structures of language itself, the way words
and grammar direct and form meaning. Actually, no, let s keep things even more basic. Wikipedia
s entry states that deconstruction argues that language, especially in idealist concepts such
as truth or justice, is irreducibly complex, unstable, and difficult to determine . So,
for instance, if you asked Derrida whether the Cain and Abel story really happened, he
might well begin his answer by pointing out that from a certain perspective, this question itself
is a pretty loaded one, presupposing as it does a particular understanding of what happened means.
If that sounds familiar, then good, you ve been paying attention.
That s right. Jordan Peterson answers this question by attempting, somewhat feebly it
must be said, to deconstruct it. Now if there s any Peterson fans watching this whose heads didn
t immediately explode, you may well be wondering whether I haven t slightly misrepresented things,
whether I ve oversold how tied this mode of thinking is to Derrida and postmodernism? Might
it not be that Peterson is broadly familiar with postmodernism, with Derrida, but simply isn t too
versed in this linguistic side of things, the way reality and meaning are constructed by language,
according to derrida s worldview? Well, no. This isn t in any way incidental to Derrida. If you
were reading a book on theory, and you got to the Derrida section, this d be page one stuff.
But you don t have to take my word for it. This is the second edition of the Norton
anthology of theory and criticism. It s a fairly basic text. You could get it in a lot of places,
or at the very least, you could get a book like this in a lot of places. Essentially it collects
the basic ways that the past century or so of thinkers have tried to understand texts,
analysis, culture and the world more widely. Let s open the Derrida section shall we?
Fancy that. Not even one paragraph into the introduction to Derrida, we get the following
sentence: all the gestures of certainty that allow philosophers to say what something is, especially
when that something is itself an intellectual operation, become objects of particular critical
attention for Derridean deconstruction Wow, that sounds kinda familiar, don t you think guys!
So, what s going on here? Why is Jeterson doing The Bad Thing? It s at this point we
ought to consider the context of this moment. Who s he saying this to? Why? Well this is from Jpeets
recent video, Talking to Muslims about Christ , and the guy he s having this discussion with is
Mohammed Hijab. Who is Mohammed Hijab, though? To some, he s merely a British influencer who
teaches a conservative version of Islam. Others have described him as religious fundamentalist.
In the past few weeks, some British press has reported that he was linked to the recent episode
of Hindu/Muslim unrest in Leicester, while other websites have claimed these reports are merely
a smear campaign. It s hard to say which of these descriptions are most accurate, but what
is clear is that despite Peterson s ostensibly atheist schtick, he and Hijab share plenty of
viewers. Jordan Peterson s work has long been enjoyed in the Islamic world, and increasingly,
the psychologist has reached out directly to this subsection of his audience. Now a cynic might say
that there s actually a fair amount of ideological overlap in terms of gender roles and hierarchy
between traditionalist Muslims, conservative Christians, and that whole nominally-secular
right-wing crowd enamoured with, quote Western Values , The cynic might continue that Peterson
has realised this, that Peterson has also realised this opens up a whole new set of eyes, ears,
and wallets, and that as a result he s expended more and more effort into growing this audience,
even while revealing a gross lack of knowledge around the social and geopolitical issues which
have helped to determine the modern history of the Islamic world. A cynic might say that there
s a clear and compelling financial incentive for Peterson to built ideological bridges with
Mohammed Hijab s audience. But we don t need to be cynical, because for the purposes of this video,
why Peterson wants his discourse and doctrine to be seen as compatible with the Islam of Mohammed
Hijab, complimentary to it, and relevant to the struggles of young Muslim men isn t particularly
relevant. No, we just need to be aware that this compatibility is broadly the angle he s going for
here because then the clip we started with makes a bit more sense. It becomes, very transparently,
a pretty weak gambit by Peterson to hide a moment of incompatibility. And that is what s happening
here. The context of Peterson s positively Derridean response is that Hijab has stated
orthodox Muslims don t view the stories of the Quran as mythical. They view them literally,
as history. That isn t the Petersonian position. Following his Jungian fixation, and as shown by a
wealth of previous comments on the matter, Peterson views the Cain and Abel story,
and indeed many Biblical and Abramic stories as true only in a symbolic, or archetypal sense.
Hijab knows this. He s pressing Peterson about this incompatibility. And this is a tricky moment
for Jordy. How to solve this? How to get around this thorny issue, without losing any similarly
literalist potential fans? That s the point at which Peterson pulls out his ace in the hole,
that deluge of intelligent-sounding word salad, which here basically takes the
form of JPeets pointing out repeatedly that there s more going on with these notions of
events happening than we might have realised. Peterson goes through the question word by word
suggesting we really consider the functions each one might be playing here in other words,
supposing that the meaning of this question is largely determined by its linguistic construction
and that light may be shed upon this meaning by reversing this process. By deconstructing it.
As you may remember this is something Peterson claims to be violently opposed to. He hates this,
apparently! He hates postmodernism, he hates Derrida, he hates deconstruction! And other people
have noted this irony, even people who are broadly on board with Peterson s project. So why does he
do it so much? Well, one answer suggests itself. Jordan Peterson is secretly a postmodernist. He s
actually the #1 Derrida Stan. And he s so devoted to these sneaky, Western-Civilisation-destroying
neo-Marxist elites, that he s following in their footsteps, trying to destroy rationalistic,
conservative, traditionalist, normative society from the inside out. But that s not necessarily
the only explanation, because to be honest, even Derrida wouldn t bother going through a basic
question like this and trying to deconstruct every single word in-turn every time someone asked him
something! And that brings us to what I like to call the Peterson Dilemma. Because there are three
possibilities here. That s the first one, that Peterson s a secret postmodernist, but I think
the other two are probably the more realistic options. He s either so completely ignorant of
what postmodernism actually entails that he hasn t realised his favourite argumentative trick is
essentially an extreme little snippet of Derridean post-structuralism or that he does realise this
and is simply operating in perpetual bad faith. So, as you can see this video s title wasn t
clickbait it s actually the most charitable way we can possibly interpret this clip and JPeets wider
pattern of behaviour. He s a hypocrite, a secret PoMo enthusiast otherwise, he s either supremely
ignorant, or he knows what he s doing, knows how nonsensical his position on postmodernism is,
and doesn t care, because it s working, and making him rich. Those are the options. Personally, I d
tend toward the latter but even if we extend the benefit of the doubt as far as it will possibly
stretch? There s no good answer here, no solution to the Peterson dilemma that doesn t reveal the
guy as a charlatan of the highest order. And that s kind of what happened here,
in his discussion with Mohammed Hijab. The guy calls JPeets out on precisely this.
Peterson s response is a 5 minute tangent about, and I m quoting here, the problem of perception
and the multitude and multiplicity of perception, which ends with him crediting the postmoderns for
accurately perceiving this problem, but proposing the wrong solution. Peterson s talking about
Foucault here, presumably, but misrepresents him horribly. That Wisecrack video I mentioned
earlier, by the way, is a good explainer on how Peterson misinterprets Foucault but I think this,
the aftermath of Peterson s little postmodern flourish is quite telling when it comes to
answering the Peterson dilemma. Because maybe there isn t just one correct answer.
Maybe it s not that he s ignorant, or a grifter, or a secret postmodern sympathiser. Maybe it s all
three. After all, he loves this little trick of linguistically deconstructing tricky questions,
and he habitually does it when he doesn t have an answer to give. But on top of this yeah,
he seems to genuinely misunderstand Foucalt. So after seeing this new video, the Peterson
Dilemma has four possible solutions. A: Peterson s secretly a postmodernist par excellence, B:
he fundamentally doesn t understand the philosophy he s criticising, C: he does see the hypocrisy
here on some level, but chooses to ignore it, or D some combination of the above. And ultimately I
ll leave you to decide what the answer is here. This YouTube channel is many things, and one of
those things has always been keeping an eye on old Jordan, and taking note of every time he says or
does something particularly, well, dumb. So that s what we ve done today. I hope any Derrida scholars
or enthusiasts watching won t mind the fairly broad summaries I ve given of his general deal,
but this is YouTube, so you gotta streamline it a little. And hey if option two is correct,
if he is just a bit of a thicko, really, I think it d be pretty cruel to put this all in
terms Peterson wouldn t understand himself. The thing is, though this isn t the only nonsensical
Peterson news item from the past couple of weeks. So I might have to break my pattern of only doing
videos like this every few months. No, expect the next instalment in the Dumb Peterson Stuff
saga to release in a matter of days. In the meantime, though, thanks so much for
watching. Every time I drop a video like this, a whole bunch of people instantly unsubscribe,
so if you ve stuck with me and watched this whole thing, you re a real one. The award for
realest of the real, though, must, as always, go to my Patreon supporters onscreen now especially
Jonathan Francis Bond, Kevin Douglas, Ian Fyfield, and Ztrangefolk. Thank you all, and goodbye.