PARTISAN REVIEW
549
It is frivolous to evade the issues by immersing oneself in an atmo-:,
sphere of radicalism and assuming they are being taken care of by the
cultural revolution. Brooks's rationale for not confronting these questions
is that we need "to find new forms-to handle, or even to talk about,
the realities of our political situation." But to put one's emphasis entirely
on the novelty of the current situation, as both Brooks and Bersani do,
is to exempt oneself from having to think about political standards, since
political acts are converted into happenings, which can be judged only
by literary criteria. We do face new problems today. But is the situation
entirely unique? Do none of the traditions of radicalism or liberalism
apply? And if some do, then which ones and how? Blurring these ques–
tions means that anything calling itself revolutionary is taken to be rev–
olutionary. It also permits liberals to masquerade as revolutionaries, and
vice versa.
In short, the reason for all the ambiguity land misunderstanding is
that Bersani and Brooks, like so many people of good will and intel–
ligence today, stand somewhere between liberalism and radicalism, having
the best of both worlds, flirting with revolution, but not going all the
way, and indulging in the fashionable putdown of liberalism, without
giving up its intellectual comforts. They are very much like academic
critics who do nort have positions of their own but are sympathetic to the
vibrations of anything new. Thus they cover up essentially conventional
attitudes with an air of up-to-dateness.
In literature one can live with it. But in politics playing at revolu–
tion-which is what having it both ways amounts to----can be dangerous,
for it frightens the Right with the illusion of strength on the Left.
