Declining Discourse Peter Shaw

L iterary criticism has declined in prestige, but it has simultaneously taken the place of philosophy in giv-

ing direction to other disciplines. Two kinds of politiciza- tion have occurred in literary citicism during the last fifteen years, both from the Left. The first has been a growth in explicitly Marxist criticism. Marxist critics jet- tisoned their old approach, which had been to look for class warfare in literature, and began instead to champion any tendency that seemed to be critical of the present system. In the 1970s they shifted to the new issues of that age, looking in literature for questions having to do with women, homosexuals, Indians, blacks, ecology, mili- tarism, and imperialism. The Marxist interest in these apparently diverse critical approaches is rarely remarked upon within the profession of literary criticism. Indeed, the Marxists' emphasis has been acquiesced in by silence on the one hand, and by something more important on the other: an adoption of terms such as militarism and chauvinism by critics of vaguely liberal persuasion. This has amounted to an attempt to say indirectly that though "I myself am not sufficiently intrepid to be a radical I would like to indicate by the kind of language I use that I am basically friendly to those who are further to the Left than myself."

This first kind of politicization, though not explicit about its political connection, is nevertheless not difficult to describe. It arose from a fairly straightforward attempt on the part of Marxists to politicize literary criticism. The second movement in criticism, which I regard as more important, is quite different. It has operated as a symbolic movement within criticism. I have to disagree with Steve Balch, in his otherwise excellent remarks, when he writes that radical scholarship tends to be crude and obvious. In the field of literary criticism it has been anything but that; it has been quite subtle and complex.

This kind of literary criticism goes under the name of semiotics, or structuralism, or revisionist criticism, or de- construction. It rests on a belief that literary interpreta- tion itself, if conducted in a certain way, can function as a politically revolutionary act. The implication of this idea for other disciplines lies in the word interpretation, which applies not only to literary criticism but also to much of what those of us who are academic scholars do.

The newest literary criticism is a rather arcane matter. The underlying assumption of this criticism has been that

the supposition of rationality, in and of itself, can be un- derstood as an act of oppression--or, at the very least, as a means of maintaining the status quo. In literary terms, this translates into the assumption that the critic who believes it possible to arrive at a single correct literary interpretation is imposing a form of intellectual control equivalent to the control supposedly imposed by the bourgeois imperialist state on the exploited and the downtrodden.

Such criticism is no longer concerned with specific is- sues, but with what it claims to be the implications of discourse itself. Believing the main implication to be that discourse is a form of oppression, radicals have concluded quite logically that the way to attack capitalism most effectively is through its system of cognitive controls-- that is, through discourse and the commitment to reason. In literature this attack has involved calling traditional interpretations into question by performing so-called acts of deconstruction, which in effect argue that nothing finite can be said about any kind of text. One scholar recently pointed out the similarity between the relativism of this position and the Hegelian dialectic as adopted by Marx himself. Ewa Thompson points out that "the dialec- tical idea" posits "that all natural and human events em- body two opposite and warring principles (both of which are equually 'good' and necessary)." This is an early step in viewing all facts, all interpretations, as of equal weight.

The relativistic idea has clearly had its influence on students and also on other disciplines. In anthropology, for example, there is a structuralist anthropology, which takes a similar approach. The idea that merely writing or talking in a way that calls certainties into question could have an effect in the world may sound bizarre and self- deluded; however, this kind of attack has proven to be highly effective. The radicals were right in their choice of approach. In general, their inspiration came from the work of Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist philosopher, who first suggested that the grounds for revolutionary activity would prove not to be economic, but cultural--a predic- tion that many of us witnessed the truth of in the 1960s.

The radicals were also right to regard rationality as an important matter in itself. This is because our confidence that we can understand one another, and that one idea can triumph over another, does support a firm sense of what these critics invidiously call "bourgeois reality," and

12 / SOCIETY �9 M A R C H / APRtL 1986

therefore does provide a basis for the continuity of our culture. I agree with their analysis on these points, and 1 am sure that they in turn would agree that our society is distinguished by its habits of mind, such as its employ- ment of rationality in science and in other fields of in- quiry, and that these habits are important supports of its

�9 free political institutions. The politically revolutionary implications of the new

relativism were not apparent when it first appeared in the 1970s. In the field of literary criticism there are many who to this day are not aware of such intentions. Others in the field may be more aware, but most of them would prefer

We know that we cannot expect our colleagues to oppose radicalism.

that politics not be mentioned directly: they seem to sense a danger in speaking out. Just how perilous it was to criticize deconstruction can to some degree be gathered from the response of the deconstructivist community to one of the few early critics who, though not mentioning Marxism. did challenge the relativist thesis. The scholar was E. D. Hirsch. His argument was simply that we can approach the meaning of a literary work if we try to get at what the author's intention was. Though we may not quite get there, our attempts to comprehend at least move us in the right direction.

Terry Eagleton, a professed Marxist, political radical, and activist, referred to Hirsch's thesis as "authoritarian and juridical" in his book Literary Theory, an Introduc- tion, published in 1983. He also said that it was "op- pressive in political terms." Wrote Eagleton, "the aim of all this policing is the protection of private property." The notion of policing is a very popular one in this kind of criticism--it comes from Jacques Derrida, who says that "the policeman is always waiting in the wings to enforce linguistic conventions," that is, to enforce "bourgeois re- ality" on us. It was not only Marxists who repudiated Hirsch. In After the New Criticism, a book celebrating relativist criticism, Frank Lentricchia writes: "As a the- orist who speaks unapologetically for rational values, E. D. Hirsch stands pretty much by himself in the land- scape of contemporary critical theory." This was the point that literary theory had reached by 1980, when this book appeared, under the assault of relativism.

This point was reached as a result of an atmosphere of intimidation created by the adherents of relativist crit- icism. This atmosphere recalls the tactics of the student movement of the late 1960s, which involved both intim- idating and making ugly the faces of authority in what-

ever form they might appear. The face of authority in the case of literary criticism was consecutive thought.

It is not hard to guess what would happen to the notion that all authority is oppressive once the people who op- pose present authority come into power. They have given us a preview in their own works. The Marxist critic, Fre- deric Jameson, asks: "If meaning is indeterminate, in what way can we say that the deconstructionist approach to criticism is superior to other methodologies?" His an- swer is that it is superior by will power and fiat. Others tell us that the "stronger" critical voice must prevail. In both instances, the final appeal is to authority after al l-- though not in the relatively benign forms of the consensus of experts or the weight of tradition but rather as power pure and simple, just as in the governance of Marxist nations.

The academy has hardly mentioned the political bases of relativist criticism. For example, Edward Said is some- one whose political allegiances, and whose reason for wishing to politicize literature, should be clear. He is a member of the Palestine National Council. The way Said's deconstructivist criticism has been treated is symp- tomatic of the way that the academy has responded all along. Denis Donohue has praised Said, in a book review in the New Republic, as an "old-fashioned humanist." The situation has been one in which, as Ewa Thompson, the scholar who noticed the link to Hegel has put it, "In the form in which they now exist on American campuses, dialectical methodologies help to legitimize Marxism in the academy without ever pronouncing the word:'

Ironically enough, when the word Marxism finally was pronounced, it was by Marxists themselves in the course of their disillusionment with relativist criticism. They re- vealed that relativist criticism was always intended to have a political result. Edward Said's complaint, for example, was that the "new criticisms" had not brought about radi- cal changes in society. Instead, to his disappointment, they had only further solidified and guaranteed the social structure and the culture that produced them. Jacques Derrida, also disappointed, said that American de- construction, as opposed to the original French version, "serves the dominant political and economic interests of American society." Terry Eagleton explained that post- structuralism was a product of the failed student revolu- tions of 1968 in Paris: "Unable to break the structures of state power, post-structuralism found it possible, instead, to subvert the structures of language." Roland Barth6s, another of the French originators of what developed into American deconstructionist literary criticism, waged a campaign against "coherent belief systems of any kind," partly on the grounds that they were enemies of the stu- dent movement.

The disillusionment that produced these revelations, combined with the dreariness of practicing relativist crit- icism, probably spells an end to the newer literary crit- icisms. If that end does come about, it hardly seems likely that the nonradical critics who adopted the movement's

language will either recognize or admit to having served a radical political tendency. They will instead maintain that both their adoption of and eventual abandonment of that language were purely literary acts. The Marxists, on the other hand, who regard the same language as primarily political, seem to think that it accomplished nothing for them. In view of relativism's inroads on academic thought, their pessimism seems unwarranted. At the very least they leave behind a cohort of graduate students, many of whom will be nonpolitcal in their careers, and many of whom will not understand the political origins of what they are doing, but who will nevertheless continue to espouse and teach deconstructive discourse and its rel- ativist assumptions.

One can add that another legacy of deconstruction is the record of the academy in responding to i t --a record of silent acquiescence, of cooperation, of waiting until it is safe to speak out. I am particularly troubled by this failure of academics, so much in the spirit of their failure in the face of the student movement; but it at least suggests an

POLITICIZATION OF SCHOLARSHIP / 13

approach to the flaccid liberal middle in academe. We should be able to call upon our colleagues who make up that middle--in whatever field the structural, relativist approach to scholarship makes its way--at least to name this approach for what it is politically. In urging that they acknowledge the politics, we can point to the kind of evidence that has begun to come from the Marxists them- selves. We know that we cannot expect our colleagues to oppose radicalism, or even to defend the Western tradi- tion when its essential systems of thought are brought under attack. If our colleagues can be induced to speak the truth about radicalism in the academy, we will have made a beginning.

Peter Shaw is visiting professor of English at Barnard College. He has published two books of historical and literary scholarship on American subjects. His critiques of contemporary intellectual developments have appeared in many publications, including American Scholar, Commentary, Encounter, Partisan Review, and Sewanee Review.

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