PARTISAN REVIEW
343
UBERATION. Another scandalous instance of political mindlessness and
fragmentation is the acquiescence in a resolution denouncing Israel by the
delegates to the U. N. convention of women in Mexico City. One would have
thought that the very idea of liberation would have led them to walk out of a
meeting manipulated by political forces not known for their feminism.
Instead , they came back all buoyed up by the triumph of sisterhood and
solidarity at the conference. Perhaps the main lesson of such a performance is
that liberation from thinking-even in the interest of solidarity-does not
advance any kind of political or human liberation , particularly since solidarity
was suspended in the treatment ofLeah Rabin. As Marx might have said: The
liberators need to be liberated .
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. The Birnbaum-Lasch dialogue in this issue
presents a number of interesting questions , which we hope will stimulate
further thinking about our political and intellectual plight. But it is also a sad
reminder that as the questions become more urgent we seem to be further
away from the answers. This is certainly a remarkable historical situation: one
in which we have no reasonable explanation of the economic crisis, of our
political predicaments, of the cultural chaos, nor any sense of where we are
headed-not to speak of answers or solutions.
It
is as though generalizations
had been banned and a resolution passed to avoid theorizing about any
subject or issue or making any political and cultural connections. How else
explain the almost complete turn to professional specialization of the period
we have just come through? It would appear that whatever intellectual energy
has been available has been used up by the liberation movements, which,
themselves, have been becoming both narrower and more modish .
It
would
seem that the style of our thinking is being affected by the media, with their
cult of the' 'fact" and their premium on lightness, casualness , sensational–
ism, mass appeal, avoidance of too much theory or speculation-all adding
up to a capacity for instant replay . It is ironic that Daniel Bell's end of ideol–
ogy, by which he meant the end of radical ideology, should have turned out to
be literally true.
w.p.
