When Language Loses Its Meaning

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Herbert London

'n an open letter to the Duke University faculty, Prof. Stanley Fish not long I .ago claimed that the National Association of Scholars was "widely known to be racist, sexist, and homophobic." Although Fish could not provide any evidence to substantiate this charge, a colleague later defended him in a letter to the National Review (25 February 1991), asserting that he "was merely advanc- ing an opinion couched in the inflammatory rhetoric of our time." This colleague went on to note that while one might agree or disagree with Prof. Fish on the merits, "Surely no one today would be foolish enough to try to find 19YOs-style literal meaning in phrases of this sort" (emphasis added). Here in unadorned form is where deconstruction has brought us. Words mean whatever we want them to mean; hence, who would take literally terms like "racist," "sexist," and "homophobic"? This remarkable argument leads us down a linguistic path that even George Orwell didn't imagine. Words don't mean the opposite of what is intended; they mean whatever we wish them to. Yet simultaneously, "political correctness," deconstruction's ideological sis- ter, has managed to establish an elaborate standard of usage to chastise those whose criticism takes the wrong direction. Several years ago, for example, a Yale University student was placed on probation for a sign he made poking fun at "gay pride week," despite his denial of malevolent intent and citation of First Amendment rights. While his punishment was eventually overturned, he could have probably saved himself a lot of trouble by using the better defense of deconstruction in what, after all, was then deconstruction's stronghold. "How dare you take my words at face value," he might have cried, "I am merely using a language of symbols. Do you suffer from a 1950s literal-mindedness or, worse yet, logocentrism?" Or perhaps the Brown University student who was recently thrown out of school for shouting antisemitic and racial slurs should have said, "Don't be so unsophisticated. Attending a prestigious university like Brown, and exposure to Derrida, Foucault, de Man, and Bloom (Harold, not Allan) has taught me the absurdity of precise meaning. How can I be held accountable for using words that haven't any literal significance?" Of course, on the modern-day campus these "defenses" would be of no real avail, since the self-appointed interpreters of meaning have arrogated to them-

In addition to being editor of Academic Questions and chairman of the National Asso- ciation of Scholars, Herbert London is dean of the Gallatin Division of New York University, New York, NY 10003. From the Editor's Desk 11

selves the right to cut through the Gordian knot of indeterminacy whenever it is convenient. Words are illusions only so long as these arbiters do not choose to transform them into something more concrete and sententious. Can you imagine the outcry, if, on the basis of no evidence at all, NAS officials had called Stanley Fish racist, sexist, and homophobic? In the unre- lenting onslaught that would have followed, any defense that relied on "mere rhetoric" would undoubtedly have been laughed out of court. Apparently only literary radicals can tell what is genuine, and their standard is invariably solip- sistic. This condition certainly helps explain why rationality is in retreat at many American colleges, and why the victors in intellectual debate are usually those who bully their adversaries with pretensions to a level of knowledge they would deny to everyone else.