Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism

REVIEW Cultural Conservatism, Political income" family, knocking themselves out Liberalism: From Criticism to Cul- to earn the money for the tuitions to send tural Studies, by James Seaton. their kids off to college-quite possibly to Ann Arbor: University of Michigan study English). Press, 1996, 296 pp., $42.50 It takes a certain arrogance to main- hardbound. tain an amateur standing in such circum- stances, but the sad truth is that the more professionalised literary studies get, the David R. Slavitt more they are likely to distort and tra- duce the subjects of their scrutiny. One Because art plus politics equals propa- must have the courage of his lack of con- ganda, I have always been skeptical of victions, if only because convictions have those critics who used literature for po- so little to do with poems and novels. lemical purposes. Some writers, of Robert Hass or Norman Mailer or course, seem to take political positions, Arthur Miller may very well have their but these are never what is interesting political beliefs, but these are about as about their art. Poetry (and plays and interesting to me as those of Charlton novels) involves pseudostatement, which Heston or Barbra Streisand. As citizens demands a certain degree of sophistica- in a democracy, they are entitled to their tion that, obviously, some readers don't views, but until they establish some cred- have. What they fail to understand is that ibility based on experience and compe- the process of writing involves a dia- tence rather than mere celebrity, they logue-or, if you prefer, a dialectic-behave no claims on my attention. tween the author's intention and the Political (and social and cultural) criti- possibilities of the language. The reality cism has been of as little interest to me of the writing is what the poet or novelist as literary theory. I take note of these discovers along the way to whatever he things because they are absurd and, there- or she thought was the destination. fore, occasionally amusing. In any event, Among the advantages of this view, no one can avoid hearing the names and there is its justification for avoiding a learning the positions to which they are great deal of literary criticism on the attached. Campus traditions of one- ground that it isn't literary at all. There upmanship, which are not altogether bad, are too many critics who don't love po- prompt us to investigate areas where we etry and fiction and the drama enough might not otherwise have ventured. I read to be faithful to them. They feel uncom- Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, a most fortable, constrained, or bored as they useful guide to the asylum, in which he continue to profess about stories and explains the beliefs of the various theo- poems for an entire academic career. rists, and I liked that book not only be- They don't believe in it enough and are cause it was informative but more embarrassed to be devoting themselves particularly because it provided a plau- to something they fear at some deep level sible excuse for not going further down may be frivolous. Sitting around and read- those umbrageous paths. It was also ing books in the daytime just for the fun funny, which is a quality I usually inter- of it? That's what housewives in Scarsdale pret as a sign of mental health. do (or used to, before they all found them- James Seaton's Cultural Conservatism, selves in the workplace as a part of a "two- Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cul- 80 Academic Questions/Fall 1997 tural Studies (University of Michigan Press, ous, but Seaton presses onward to the 1996) is like Eagleton's book in some source of much of our discomfort: ways. He, too, offers a series of useful and elegant expositions of the work of a num- the triumph of political liberalism has not ber of literary and cultural critics, but, been matched by any similar consensus as the subtitle makes clear, the book's about morality, culture, or religion. Catho- main thrust is the consideration of the lic and Protestant, Jew and Muslim, secu- conflicts between the habits of leftish larist and fundamentalist, argue and sometimes fight. Nationalisms and tribal- social thought that have been dominant isms dispute and often war with one an- on our campuses and in our republic other in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South during the past generation or so and the America. In North America, Canada is desire some scholars and critics have to riven by language-driven conflict, while in maintain literary standards-which is elit- the United States the era of "culture wars" ist and therefore, necessarily, rightish. has been under way for some time. The ongoing debate about the canon is only one symptom of the confusion in It is in this larger context that he consid- which we find ourselves. In the discus- ers the program of "cultural studies": sions about the way to read, the way to teach, and indeed the meaning of mean- On the one hand, cultural studies presents ing, there is hardly any assertion that does itself as an advance on the traditional hu- not involve a series of inescapable im- manities because it knows the values the plications, and the great virtue of older tradition accepted as authoritative Seaton's analysis of the views of the are based finally on nothing more than different camps is that he is fair in his brute power. Since cultural studies recog- representations but unflinching in his nizes the "contingency" of all points of demonstrations of what must logically view, traditional attempts to "privilege" some literary works as "masterpieces" are follow from each of them. As he puts it rejected, as are attempts to enshrine the in his conclusion (231): validity of some particular set of moral or political values. On the other hand, cul- The notion that the individual has rights tural studies is also driven by a commit- simply because he or she is a human being ment to radical cultural and political is the core notion of political liberalism. The change. These two stances would seem to principle of "human rights" has spread contradict each other, but many propo- across the world, and the ideal of democ- nents of cultural studies embrace both. racy is, if anything, accepted even more widely. The political ideas associated with In cruder terms than Seaton uses, what liberal democracy have no contemporary this means is that literary criticism is ei- rivals. Monarchy, fascism, Communism, ther of the old-fashioned sort Matthew and theocracy (the strongest competitor) have, at most, only limited appeal in local Arnold would have recognized (in which situations....The Charter of the United Na- case it is an expression of a hierarchical tions may be honored more in the breach social tradition to which there is no than the observance, but the consensus on longer any allegiance and for which there behalf of human rights that it symbolizes is is, therefore, no political or intellectual not matched by any comparable agreement justification) or it is in the mode of cul- on any other set of principles. tural criticism (in which chaotic situation one text has no greater or lesser claim to That seems clear enough and even obvi- our attention than another). Nietzsche's Review 81 announcement that God was dead may our own sightings. It strikes me, for in- have had little effect on attendance at stance, that while the lack of any consen- churches, synagogues, and mosques, but sus about the fundamental issues of it has altogether undermined the certain- religion and metaphysics is the basic sick- ties that were the foundations of the ness from which literary studies have been culture and of the modalities of old-fash- suffering, there are incidental complica- ioned literary criticism. tions to the disease. Much of the distor- In practical terms, the critics and theo- tion of criticism comes, I think, from a reticians Seaton examines fall into two yearning to find in poetry and fiction an groups then. There are those who are in- earnestness and importance-in Susan tellectually inconsistent and self-contradic- Sontag's word, a "seriousness." Political, tory, the liberal elitists; or there are the psychological, semiotic, and hermeneutic more intellectually rigorous practitioners approaches to literature may provide top- who are driven by the logic of their pro- ics for M.L.A. discussion groups, but they grammatic approaches to conclusions that betray the works that are their presump- are eccentric if not positively deformed. tive subjects. These performances are not The great critics, like Irving Babbitt, celebrations of writing but dances on the H.L. Menken, Edmund Wilson, Dwight corpses of works of literary art. Macdonald, and the Trillings, Lionel and This bizarre and vainglorious way to Diana, were in the "anti-Emersonian, behave is the norm for the professoriate antiromantic tradition." Whatever their toward which graduate students are so- politics, they were also pragmatists rather cialized. Outside, though, in the real than transcendentalists and were never world, some of these critics behave dif- quite blinded by their social and moral ferendy. As Seaton points out in his essay views. Or perhaps, in Richard Rorty's on Said, even that embattled explicator words, "they want criticism to bring an puts down his dissecting kit in the opera antecedent morality to light, enlarge upon house and the concert hall to become, as it and enrich it, and they resist the sug- much as possible, a "fully committed ama- gestion that there is no common vocabu- teur," admitting that "at the very least 'not lary in terms of which critics can argue all music can be experienced as working with one another about how well this task toward domination and sovereignty.'" has been performed." Most of these critics are, I suppose, The other school is that of the "con- smart people but there are limits to smart- temporary cultural leftists such as Fredric ness.

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