Leo Bersani
LANGUAGE AND POLITICS
The spirit of critical, skeptical and - to the extent that
this is possible - dispassionate analysis is tested most severely when
it must turn its skepticism and its criticism to an analysis of its own
conclusions and procedures. I would say t.hat, on the whole, the lib–
eral mind has shown a willingness to engage in such analyses of its
positions and that when it has done so it has shown the real virtues
of tentativeness, of being authentically open to revision and to rejec–
tion of certain cherished ideas. On the other .hand, the most subtle
strategy for those interested in discrediting liberalism of any kind
is to refuse even to engage in critical discussion of it.
This
is an in–
tolerable blow to proponents of what is assumed to be open, critical,
rational inquiry. Intolerable because it constitutes, first of all, a
refusal to admit that inquiry should or even can be open, critical
and rational, and second, because of the further contention that feel–
ings and ideas are intellectually "nonnegotiable" and derive their
validity from the intensity wit.h which they are asserted. Confronted
with an assault of this nature, the spirit of open inquiry often tends,
understandably but disastrously, to transform itself into a system of
closed defenses, thereby seeming to justify the scorn of those who
would destroy it.
As
teachers in particular know, nothing is more likely to erode
one's sympathy for the young than their presumption t,hat to examine
what they say is a sign of hostility. Unfortunately, that presumption
is by no means entirely unjustified. Indeed, almost all the
books
I'm
about to consider more or less validate the charge. Most crucially,
they illustrate, for those of us who continue to
be
interested in ra-
