Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism.

Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism. Perhaps critics need to examine the current commonplace assumptionthat politics and literature are two versions of the same thing.Certainly that is one impulse behind Cold War Criticism and the Politicsof Skepticism. In this book Tobin Siebers maintains that a critical"skepticism" of endless doubt based in Freud, Marx, andNietzsche has overtaken literary criticism in the Cold War era andbecome a new and repressive "orthodoxy" whose claims toethical and political relevance should be resisted. One of the strengthsof this book is that it offers a reasonable summary of the currentcritical scene when it defines the "skeptical"orthodoxy's tenets to be that truth claims have been transmutedinto power relations; that the self, reality, and gender are now viewedas constructs; and that language is conceived of as inherently violent,and finally, belief (metaphysics) is obsolete (4). The danger about thisstate of affairs for Siebers is that this "skeptical" world ofradical hermeneutics makes unwarranted claims to be the foundation of aradical politics. In a key passage Siebers claimsthe reduction of all claims for thought to the will to power ischampioned today by many, and it is seen as a liberating politicalgesture. Indeed, it defines the political gesture par excellence incritical circles. But this gesture has a notorious and right-winghistory. It drives one to political conservatism and cuts off theintellect. It locks one in the deep freeze deep freezesee freezer. of cold war paranoia. (151)In a direct assault on the political relevance of skeptical claims,Siebers finds that this anti-essentialist "dogma," far frombeing "political," has in fact stripped criticism andliterature of its political importance, because, "when skepticsstrip themselves of founding beliefs they only deprive themselves ofpolitical direction" (27) and meander within the confines of adesiccated linguistic formalism. Skepticism, in other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , leads tothe withdrawal into language from "our home in the world"because "the radical positionality of language is of a kind not tobe confused with political positions" (27, 114).Though from the title of his book one might infer that Siebers isbent on Adj. 1. bent on - fixed in your purpose; "bent on going to the theater"; "dead set against intervening"; "out to win every event"bent, dead set, out to giving us a detailed analysis of an historical period'spolitical landscape, or a New Historicist reading of recent criticalpractice linking a specific literature, criticism, and culture of theCold War era, in fact he has very little recourse to the particulars ofhistory beyond the most sweeping of generalizations about Cold Warparanoia. Far from the New Historicism New Historicism is an approach to literary criticism and literary theory based on the premise that a literary work should be considered a product of the time, place, and circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated creation. , he lumps that critical school inalong with a long list of other critical offenders and gives us verylittle in the way of connection between the critics he examines and theCold War. Rather, he gives us a series of quite competent and usefulformalist readings of now-dominant critical schools, and for this alonethe book is well worth examining. Beginning with the New Criticism,which he faults for its formalism, he continues by linking the NewCritics to deconstruction (and especially the work of Paul de Man Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983) was a Belgian-born deconstructionist literary critic and theorist.He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in the late 1950s. ), andeven manages a brief look at feminism (which he faults for its"essentialist" contradictions), and the New Historicism asrepresented by Greenblatt. What may disturb most readers is that helumps together Wimsatt and Beardsley, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard,De Man, White, Greenblatt, Jameson, Said (who, "like Foucault,wears his politics on his sleeve" [9]) and pretty much everyoneelse (except Hannah Arendt, whom he praises for her willingness to"take a stand" [130]) as "cold war critics" guiltyof a "skeptical" refusal of politics because they have"stripped themselves of founding beliefs" necessary topolitical action (27).By casting his net so widely in the guise of historicism his��tor��i��cism?n.1. A theory that events are determined or influenced by conditions and inherent processes beyond the control of humans.2. A theory that stresses the significant influence of history as a criterion of value. , Sieberscreates a vaguely defined straw man he can then push over rather easily.That straw man of "skeptical" criticism is created byrepeatedly showing that "skeptical" critics are blind to theirown grasping for power and control; they assume they have gotten beyondquestions of belief or assertions of truth. With this enablingassumption, Siebers' argument can move forward, for he will set uphis critics and knock them over because they all can be shown to havesome moment of grounding or some recourse to a metaphysical gesture thatbelies their putative move beyond an obsolete metaphysics. He beginsthis crusade by showing that Foucault turned back to the category of theself at the end of his career, and the self will remain Siebers'touchstone throughout the book as he takes apart what he calls the"psychological drama" of skeptical criticism.The key to this drama is that while skepticism questions stablenotions of self (e.g. Foucault), it "ends by affirming theexistence of the self" even as it sends the self "soaringtoward a height that can have no groundings in history, politics,ethics, material conditions, fiction, selfhood, gender, sexuality, orany other constructions of belief" (19-20). Untangling theconceptual imbrications in this list would take a separate essay, yet itmay be enough to offer here the fact that the very "skeptics"he condemns are the ones who have made us aware of the necessity ofexamining history and politics, turning us first to the idea of the selfas a construct, and then as the logical next step to the constituentelements of that construct as they are found in the cultural history,gender, and material conditions of that construct's place and time.For Siebers a vision of the self (not "subject") is at thecore of politics as its motivating force - the self is the beginning ofthe "interests" that move us in ethical and political action.The self is his shibboleth Shibboleth(shĭb`ōlĕth), in the Bible, test word that the Gileadites made the Ephraimites pronounce. As Ephraimites could not say sh but only s , his beginning point, and so he finds himselfdefending it tenaciously, if somewhat quixotically quix��ot��ic? also quix��ot��i��caladj.1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.2. , since he faultsskepticism for relying on "the will to power" and thusrecognizing in skepticism a version of the self. Moreover, he is quitecapable to find versions of a self in his analyses of Foucault, De Man,et al., but he is not really able to address the issue of theconstructed nature of these selves; that is, it is relatively easy (onceyou see how it's done) to find a "self" implied in adiscourse. But the point is less that there is some "self"(for Siebers a stand-in for "ground") than whether or not this"self" is in some sense stable, unified, or persistent acrossclass, race, gender, national lines, and time. For all his condemnationof skeptical critics, Siebers has no real answer to their critique butto point out that they, too, must live within metaphysics, a pointDerrida, for one, has never stopped making. To his credit, Siebers hasthe integrity to let us know up front that he does not "believethat a position purified of skepticism exists" and that"skepticism remains intact at the end of this book" (viii,ix). In other words, while Siebers rejects specific political agendas,he remains within the horizon of skeptical practice, and so his ultimatesolution to skepticism based in a notion of self compatible withaltruistic liberal humanism and "dialogue" does notconvincingly address the troubling questions he raises. He demonstratesconvincingly that the skeptical tradition is now dominant in theprofession, and that skeptics indeed do have recourse to moments ofgrounding in their discourses, moments of "skeptical belief,"but this just seems to indicate that skeptics have been grounding theirdiscourse all along, a gesture he claims they must engage if they wishto be effectively political.T.V. Reed, on the other hand, is clearly one of those criticsespousing a radical politics who Siebers finds so objectionable, eventhough they both seem to share a dislike of the sort of formalism oftenascribed to a critic such as De Man, and even though they both end upmaking a similar assertion. fifteen Jugglers explicitly acknowledgesthat "all language is concerned with or implicated in contestationsfor social and political power," (10) that "literature as suchdoes not exist" because "there is no clear boundary betweenliterary and nonliterary language," and hencethat literary texts should no longer be fetishized as autonomous artbut rather should be analyzed as part of a rhetorical continuum wheredifferent kinds of writing (literary, historical, ethnographic,political, and so forth) are shown to produce differing kinds oftextual/political power. (4)In fact, Reed utilizes the neologism A new word or new meaning for an existing word. The high-tech field routinely creates neologisms, especially new meanings. Years ago, there was no doubt that a "mouse" referred only to a furry, little rodent. "politerature" todescribe the textuality Textuality is a concept in linguistics and literary theory that refers to the attributes that distinguish the text (a technical term indicating any communicative content under analysis) as an object of study in those fields. that concerns him, thereby ensuring that hisreaders never lose sight of the historically embedded, necessarilyinterwoven in��ter��weave?v. in��ter��wove , in��ter��wo��ven , inter��weav��ing, inter��weavesv.tr.1. To weave together.2. To blend together; intermix.v.intr. sociopolitical so��ci��o��po��li��ti��cal?adj.Involving both social and political factors.sociopoliticalAdjectiveof or involving political and social factors condition of all discourse.Yet Reed finds himself confronting a version of the same issue thattroubles Siebers: "can a left rhetoric at once acknowledge . . .contingency and indeterminacy in��de��ter��mi��na��cy?n.The state or quality of being indeterminate.Noun 1. indeterminacy - the quality of being vague and poorly definedindefiniteness, indefinity, indeterminateness, indetermination and still make claims to intervenepolitically on behalf of radical positions?" (11). Or, toparaphrase somewhat crudely, how can one critique the notions behindpolitical power as radically indeterminant and contingent without takinga stand yourself, and thus opening your own analysis to the verycriticisms from which you started? This is no small matter. I foundReed's take on the problem candid and insightful, and his solutionof "post-modernist realism" offers a workable beginningstrategy for understanding how to talk about literature and politics.Indeed, though his readings focus largely on issues of representation inmostly canonical literary texts, ranging from Norman Mailer'sArmies of the Night and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Mento Ellison's Invisible Man Invisible Man(Griffin) character made invisible by chemicals. [Br. Lit.: Invisible Man]See : Invisibility , Reed does make significant gesturestoward situating these texts in their time and place. And he breaks outof the canon when he analyzes "The Women's PentagonAction," showing how theory, theater, and politics interpenetrate in��ter��pen��e��trate?v. in��ter��pen��e��trat��ed, in��ter��pen��e��trat��ing, in��ter��pen��e��tratesv.intr.To become mixed or united by penetration: planes that interpenetrate in a painting. .Through his "postmodernist realism" (a proposal for workingthrough the problem of critiqueing power from within a strategy ofindeterminacy), Reed argues unsurprisingly that we have to look to theparticular material conditions of production and reception of anycritical act. But he goes further than most when he recognizes thathaving politics at the heart of interpretation means that once-radicalstrategies of postmodern indeterminacy are themselves open toappropriation by left or right; that is, aesthetic forms carry nopolitical significance in themselves, so they must be analyzed withinthe particular political situation of their deployment. And because ofthis it follows that the sort of "politically usefulinterventions" (21) Reed calls for require that "by the law ofpolitical gravity, we must come down somewhere, and post-modernistrealism comes down amidst attempts to overcome social relationships ofinequality that ground unequal access to 'culturalcapital'" (19). Reed works, then, in the gap opened up by thestrategies of indeterminacy, but fills that gap with a democratic agendamade up of "differing metanarratives of resistance (classsolidarity, feminism, postcolonialism, etc." (17) explicitly in theservice of righting social wrongs. He recognizes further that "itis far from clear that a politics without a subject, [not a"self"] or without an active notion of human agency, can be apolitics at all" (150). Reed here and elsewhere clearly articulatesa change in the role of literary criticism from one of aestheticappreciation and reproduction of high culture to one of conscious socialactivism and political intervention, based in notions of human agencyand ultimately also in totalizing metanarratives. He asserts asjustification that "politerature" has been doing this verytask all along and that critics need become aware of the ways in whichtheir activity participates in the creation of the social real. Finally,his is an ambitious book whose framing of the relation of literature topolitics is bold, provocative, and suggestive.Marc Shell's Children of the Earth seems on first glance toengage the same issues motivating Siebers and Reed, sharing theirconcern with history, politics, and literature, and Shell also offers aclear vantage point and strong assertions. But Shell's book doesnot offer an intervention in the debate over the relationship ofliterature to politics sparked by questions of indeterminacy. Rather, hewrites from an older humanist paradigm. In this regard the subtitle"Literature, Politics, and Nationhood" is a bit misleadingsince Shell's is actually a book of religious sociology, as theauthor notes in his preface. Ultimately Shell could not be much furtherfrom the question of the relation of politics to literature asarticulated by both Reed and Siebers, opting instead for a fairlyconventional Freudian reading of religious ideology. This focus allowshim to move literally all over the map, from Renaissance England toAmerican pop culture, and through vast stretches of time. Underlyingthis methodology is the assumption that what ties all these disparatecultures and time periods together is their common denominator common denominatorn.1. Mathematics A quantity into which all the denominators of a set of fractions may be divided without a remainder.2. A commonly shared theme or trait. ofreligion. And only after one is well into this book does it become clearthat the underlying difference between the two competing forces of"universalism UniversalismBelief in the salvation of all souls. Arising as early as the time of Origen and at various points in Christian history, the concept became an organized movement in North America in the mid-18th century. " and "particularism par��tic��u��lar��ism?n.1. Exclusive adherence to, dedication to, or interest in one's own group, party, sect, or nation.2. " is based on thedifference between religions that call for universal brotherhood The Universal Brotherhood is a term used in theosophical writings. It refers to the theosophical conception that all human beings are members of a spiritual unity. Quotations , andthe "particularist par��tic��u��lar��ism?n.1. Exclusive adherence to, dedication to, or interest in one's own group, party, sect, or nation.2. " and "tribal" kinship metaphoricsof those that do not. His primary examples, of course, are Christianityand Judaism Judaism and Christianity while related some ways are distinctly different. Judaism being an Abrahamic religion fundamentally diverges in theology and practice. While Judaism places the emphasis for holiness on the concepts of clean and unclean, Christianity places the emphasis for .This one-theory-fits-all analysis of the problems in Western cultureinevitably sweeps every question up into the same dustbin. Shell is nota sloppy scholar or thinker, however. Rather, he is an obsessive one; ina book of 353 pages, only 198 of those pages are written text - the restare the apparatus of notes, bibliography, and index, fully 44% of thebook. Unfortunately, even given this extensive apparatus, his thesis isso overarching, his sweep of history so broad, that we end up with apretty sketchy sense of the history of each period he touches, be itmedieval Spain, Shakespeare's England, Jean Racine's France,or contemporary America.His thesis is that the "universalist" claim that all menare brothers is inadvertently a source for much of Westerncivilization's discontents. The danger Shell sees is that, if onesays that all men are brothers, then it is all too easy to treat someonenot in one's immediate group as non-human, that is, invert in��vertv.1. To turn inside out or upside down.2. To reverse the position, order, or condition of.3. To subject to inversion.n.Something inverted. theprinciple that all men are brothers and say that those that are not mybrothers are not men.For the universalist statement turns out easily to mean "anycreature who is not my brother is not human" or "only mybrothers are human, all others are animals" - a conclusion withcatastrophic moral consequences. Particularist ideology, on the otherhand, rules out of order this politically dangerous slide by holdingthat there is more than one brotherhood or tribe of human beings. (163)Fair enough. In a certain psychological sense, I can see thathistorically the idealism of universal brotherhood has been dramaticallyand systematically distorted to allow for all sorts of terror on a grandscale. But does this mean that the claim "all men arebrothers" is itself the cause? Shell's key claim rests on theassumption that "universalists" can simply define other humanbeings as non-human if those others do not belong to one'simmediate group. As a practical matter, Shell's assumptioncertainly makes sense of some of the appalling history of Westerncivilization's organized and often State-sanctioned barbarism bar��ba��rism?n.1. An act, trait, or custom characterized by ignorance or crudity.2. a. The use of words, forms, or expressions considered incorrect or unacceptable.b. . Butthere is no moral, logical, or scientific reason supporting agovernment's or person's decision to split homo sapiens intohuman and non-human groups. Consequently, it seems oversweeping toclaim, as I believe Shell does, that what has been true historically inthe application of a religious ideology is inherent in that ideology,and that, in effect, that ideology is the cause of a whole series ofabusive practices. In sum, then, Children of the Earth stands not somuch as an analysis of literature and politics (as it is advertized) butas a species of religious sociology. Yet even as such the book attemptstoo much and ends by offering too little. Marc Shell confronts thepolitics of interpretation all right, but his approach is so sweeping,so overarching, that I was left with little on which to hold.All of these works point to the (by now) less than startlingconclusion that contemporary critics find a compelling link betweenliterature and politics, though at the same time they recognize thatthese two discourses are not exactly the same thing. Underlying theemerging consensus view of the link between literature and politics isthe assumption of the indeterminate and hence "political"nature of all interpretation, and a fortiori [Latin, With stronger reason.] This phrase is used in logic to denote an argument to the effect that because one ascertained fact exists, therefore another which is included in it or analogous to it and is less improbable, unusual, or surprising must also exist. all literaryinterpretation. Simply put, all discourse may be "political,"but each discourse follows its own rules and constraints, has its ownvocabulary, and so forth. Yet what is also emerging in literarycriticism due to this confrontation between politics and literature, andwhich some may find puzzling given the various theories of theindeterminate "political" nature of all interpretation, is agrowing realization of the necessity in literary interpretation, as wellas in conventional politics, for a determinate DETERMINATE. That which is ascertained; what is particularly designated; as, if I sell you my horse Napoleon, the article sold is here determined. This is very different from a contract by which I would have sold you a horse, without a particular designation of any horse. 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 947, 950. place from which to takea stand.Theron Britt is an associate professor of English, teaches modern andcontemporary literature at The University of Memphis The University of Memphis is a public research university located in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, and is a flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system. .