PARTISAN REVIEW
547
PETER BROOKS
William Phillips's comments on my article in the last
PR
con–
stitute an exercise in persistent misreading. Far from assuming "that
Hoffman and Rubin and the Panthers ... represent in some absolute,
unquestionable way
<The Revolution,'''
I tried to probe whether the
term revolution could in fact mean anything to us in America, 1970,
whether it was conceivable other than as a cultural gesture (Rubin), or
as an authentic but alien political stance beckoning to us but finally ex–
cluding us (The Panthers). Phillips wants to see me as the apologist of
current radical styles, whereas I was seeking new forms adequate to new
and baffling situations. He would have it that I regard violence as "a
matter of essence" and "a genre of permanent radical activity," while I
in fact attempted to test the meaning, and danger, of violence as a politi–
cal gesture in a society so deeply permeated with physical and psycho–
logical violence. He maintains that I accept Panther doctrine at face
value since I claim that the "real issue" had nothing to do with the guilt
or innocence of the New Haven Nine. What I quite clearly meant by the
"real issue" in the passage in question was what Yale had to deal with:
its relations
to
the Blacks within the university and in New Haven. I
wasn't appealing to higher forms of immanent justice, or revolutionary
strategy; I wasn't sitting in judgment on the trial and I don't know why
Phillips would have me do so. As for "taking sides, as though there were
only two": I tried to make it clear that in some contexts - where the
polarization was simple and the enemy clear - one could and had to
take sides, whereas in other (and larger) contexts it wasn't possible, or
wasn't yet possible, to do so. And Phillips surely must understand that
when polarization has really taken place, there
are
only two sides.
If
I mention Phillips's misreadings, it is not simply because they are
in themselves serious distortions; they also point to what I think is a
widespread failure to bring mental and imaginative energy to the discus–
sion of political events and issues. He accuses me of "a suspension of
what is normally considered to be political thinking." When I connect
this reproach to Phillips's problems in
reading
my text, I am forced to
conclude that for him "political thinking" means simply the ritual repe–
tition of the old categories and concepts of American politics, be they
electoral, Marxist, Trotskyist. In his objections to my "esoteric" language,
to my "substituting literary criticism for politics," what he is suggesting
is that "politics" is a separate realm that must be dealt with in a separate
language. Behind his argument for the usual language of politics, Phillips
is really, if unwittingly, arguing for politics as usual. That so sensitive a
man and thinker should do so is an indication of our political despair,
our inability to find new forms - and the metaphors that precede the
construction of new forms - to handle, or even to talk about, the reali–
ties of our political situation. So to pre-assume the nature of politics, to
assign it to a special realm of activity and language, is to remain in futile
disconnectedness, and toO assure that the poOlitical will never be rebuilt on
