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American philosophy, anthropology and sociology. As opposed to this
impulse, on the other hand, there are those who place primary
emphasis on the notion that such discourses are not privileged at all,
and that a pluralism of discourses is the only true and adequate
response to the reality of linguistic activities.
These counterpoised tendencies have always existed in literary
criticism, as they have in other branches of humanistic inquiry. On the
one side, there has always been the impulse, largely academic, to
assimilate the discussion of literature to whatever, at any particular
time, has been accepted as the dominant view of science. The impulse
to describe, classify, fix, analyze, and make systematic accountings of
literary forms, structures, expressions, and themes has been a constant
(though of variable intensity) in the tradition of critical <;liscourse. On
the other side, there has always been the countertendency to state that
language and the realities it engages, refers to, turns away from,
abstracts, and mediates are too complex and unstable a set of phe–
nomena to be grasped in a single determinate, discursive net. Indeed,
the determinate, discursive net, on this account, ordinarily comes
to be regarded as unstable and deceptive itself, as indeed it often is.
These opposing tendencies, as I say, have always been present in
literary critical discourse. But they have never been more overt or
visible than they are now. What worked to make them less visible, and
worked as well to make movement back and forth between them
possible was precisely what was most visibly missing in the writing of
both the New Critics and the structuralists, namely history and the
sense of history. History situates itself precisel yon the locus of meeting
of determinate quasi-scientific discourse, and those discourses that
claim a lesser degree of force, if not pri vilege. William Phillips is right
in seeing the banishment of history as a line of continuity in the recent
development of literary criticism. In addition, however, one wants to
remark that this disregard-a disregard so frequently thoroughgoing as
to resemble amnesia-is syntonic with the absence of a sense of history
or even of an idea of historical existence in modern and particularly
American culture, including academic culture. I have
to
say that I find
it very difficult to imagine literary critics in any sizable number able to
resist, let alone counteract or reverse, this massive tendency in modern
culture.
The idea of history is connected at various points with those
questions of literary judgment which William Phillips places close to
the center of his discussion and which he charges both New Critics and
structuralists with by-passing or ignoring. He states that both the New
