GERALD GRAFF
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subversive literature of modernism, now suddenly elevated from its
formerly despised status to a place of prominence, even preemi–
nence, in the curriculum. Furthermore, the genteel social tradition,
which had originally supplied academic humanism with its legiti–
mating social ideals, had little meaning in a university system dedi–
cated to mass education. Shorn both of precise definition and of its
elite social basis, "humanism" had no content. It was whatever pro–
fessors of literature did to earn a living, whether that be Anglo–
Saxon philology or explications of Williams and Pound. From the
viewpoint of the remaining Arnoldian humanists of the Irving
Babbitt type, both kinds of work were inhumane, yet Arnoldian
humanism had no more apparent relevance
to
American culture
than did either pure explication or pure research. Neither the old
humanism nor the new professionalism that took over its name fur–
nished a cultural rationale for literary study.
Even if there had been no attacks from sixties radicals, the root–
lessness of academic literary study, its failure to relate itself
to
a gen–
eral body of ideas that might give it a relation to the social world,
would have produced a crisis. That crisis has come, and one must
understand it and the default of "humanism" if one seeks to make
sense of the otherwise inexplicable irruptions of avant-garde theoriz–
ing which have lately caused so much hand wringing in humanities
departments . It's useless to denounce the sins of structuralism,
deconstruction, and other exotic, critical methodologies without
looking into the reasons why these methodologies have arisen and
why they have been embraced by so many. These reasons have a lot
to do with our failure as custodians of humanistic studies to address
the absence of cultural and social context in our disciplines. Despite
the esoteric quality of the new theories and methods, their attraction
actually lies in their promise of restoring that context, of mitigating
the isolation of literature and criticism from society, history, and
politics.
This political promise explains much, if not all, of the appeal of
deconstruction, which is for some a kind of bookish insurrection, a
means of dismantling social hierarchies through their textual and
professional support systems. (Hence the new prominence in criti–
cism of words such as "power," "institution," "strategy," and
"intrinsic." To quote the editor of a recent poststructuralist anthol–
ogy,
Textual Strategies,
"To the question how should the critic
approach knowledge, I answer :
strategically.
The power and produc-
