EUGENE GOODHEART
849
business is the study of literature, the confidence seems to be mis–
placed. An exemplary figure in contemporary literature is V. S.
Naipaul, whose sensitivity to ideological thinking is accompanied by
a disquieting skepticism, if not cynicism, about human possibility. A
radically skeptic disposition has recently overtaken the discipline of
literary study and has brought with it a loss of authority in the
literary intellectual to reflect on matters that are not strictly
linguistic. Not only is the critic uncertain about the objective mean–
ing of the text, he is uncertain whether meaning inheres in the text.
Deconstruction, the most radical of literary skepticisms, holds the
view that written discourse is unreliable, that no matter how hard a
text may try to sustain the illusion of unity, coherence, meaning,
truth, it is incorrigibly prone to disunity, incoherence, mean–
inglessness, and error. For such skeptics, "reading" becomes a pro–
cess of discovering the illusoriness of our knowledge of texts and of
the world. Who can complain against a healthy skepticism, but
skeptics should be modest and uncertain. The current breed strikes
me, as it strikes others, as often dogmatic and arrogant, engaged in a
power trip at the expense of literature.
T.
S. Eliot's caveat about
radical skepticism still seems persuasive . "Scepticism is a highly
civilized trait, though, when it declines into pyrrhonism, it is one of
which civilisation can die. Where scepticism is strength, pyrrhonism
is weakness: for we need not only the strength to defer a decision,
but the strength to make one."
It may be that what appears to be an internal development in
literary study represents another recoil from the illusions of the six–
ties, though its anti-authoritarianism may suggest an affinity with
the radical gestures of that decade. The skeptical sensibility prides
itself on its unblinking view of human reality. There is much that is
wrong-headed, pretentious, and even dogmatic in current skeptical
formulations, but it is not a challenge to be ignored. For someone
like myself who has spent much of life in a defensive position, react–
ing against ideological thinking, the new skeptical spirit is a chal–
lenge of another kind.
I find myself in sympathy with Alexander Herzen, the
nineteenth-century revolutionary and writer:
Everyone [he writes] now plays with his cards on the table,
and the game itself has become greatly simplified, it is impossible
to make mistakes: in every corner of Europe there is the same
struggle, the same two camps. You feel quite clearly which you
