The Case Against Avital Ronell

A few Thursdays ago, a good friend of mine sent me an articlefrom The New Yorker on the sexual assault case against Avital Ronell, one of Comparative Literature’s most influential scholars and a niche intellectual rock star.

I had recently attended one of her three-day seminars and was in a class for which she was a one-time guest professor. To be honest, I don’t remember much about the seminar (it was about complaint, and she had talked a bit about Jean-Luc Nancy) or that one class she guest-lectured (during which we discussed Wordsworth’s “The Idiot Boy”). But I do remember how everybody was drawn to her, despite (or perhaps because of) how soft-spoken she was and how much space she didn’t take up (physically speaking, at least). Behind her innocuous demeanor was someone who I perceived as exceptionally creative and deeply erudite, whose thought process worked nothing like mine and who fascinated me endlessly. Her essay on “The Idiot Boy” read like the academic, scholarly version of prose poetry, in  that it flowed freely but not chaotically. I wished I could write and think like her – and, in a way, I still do.

And so, like so many other individuals who have come across Ronell’s work, whether or not they still be in the world or academia, I was taken aback (to say the least) when I read about Reitman’s accusations, and was rendered pretty cynical after reading his statement of claim. What troubled me even more was the letter that Judith Butler had written in May, which dozens of major academics signed, among whom are some of my professors from undergrad. In fact, I think the revelations against Ronell were less shocking to me than the letter itself and the fact that some of the people that I admired the most during college had professed their allegiance to Ronell despite the content of the letter and their absolute lack of knowledge about anything that had gone on (the statement of claim had not been released at this point, so they had no idea of what had happened at all.) These are some of the most perceptive and incisive readers and thinkers I know, and somehow they read the letter and thought to themselves, “Yes, this is a good statement of support, and I will sign it.”

The fundamental question that I found myself circling back to was: How could they be so blind? These are some of the most eminent scholars of literature and the humanities. Their centers around their ability to see things most people can’t, to extract those threads that have been left in the corner, and to exercise the highest degree of critical thinking and self-awareness. And then you finally begin to recognize the degree to which they are entrenched in and rely upon the structure of power that they have criticized for decades. They’re so embedded and profit so much off of these structures of power that their letter of defense seems to parrot something that Harvey Weinstein would have written. And it is at this point that the initial shock devolves into frustration and anger, and then to deep disappointment. It’s a sad day when you realize that some of your idols were hypocrites all along.