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Leitch would have been more willing to take a position - which his own
learning certainly qualifies him to do. Had he done so, Leitch might have
considered the possibility that the emphasis on reader-response is another
road to the anarchy of taste and the subjectivity ofjudgement, leading to the
blurring of distinctions between literary works in terms of values and quality.
I wish he had been more critical of the new left criticism, which, in my opin–
ion, is largely warmed-over and academicized Marxism. I also think it has to
be said that the black esthetic represents special political interests.
As
for the
profusion ofdifferent and often contradictory feminist arguments, it should
be
pointed out that they have one thing in common: except for the more liter–
ary female critics, many of them take a sociological approach to literature;
they assume that novels and poems are largely interesting or important as
reflections of social currents, particularly in relation to gender. To be sure,
these are questions rooted in traditional criticism. But the relation oftradi–
tional criticism to the newer criticism is itself a basic problem.
But there is even a more fundamental point to be made about the
modern scene, taken as a whole: despite the various currents and eddies, it is
all ofa piece. Indeed, I think it can be said that this is the new counterculture,
spreading from politics to philosophy, art, and literary criticism, psychology,
education, ways of living. It has gotten a foothold in the academy and in–
vaded the media. What was once a radical political movement has become a
cultural movement. Professors have taken the place of workers. If one
stands back and takes a longer, more historical look, one can see organic
connections between the various strands of the new thinking. What binds
certain literary theory, educational ideas, feminist criticism, deconstruction,
and a good deal of left politics are the beliefs in a pervasive pluralism, a
relativity of values, a rejection of tradition and intellectual authority, a
skeptical view of Western civilization, and, above all, a profound dissatisfac–
tion with the condition of contemporary life, particularly in America. At bot–
tom, these beliefs are political in origin, and are tied in a vast and complex
system ofassumptions to much ofcontemporary politics.
Now, these intellectual tendencies, especially in their theoretical version,
are evident mostly in the academy; the media dispense them in diluted,
predigested form. Indeed, I don't think it has been recognized sufficiently that
professors have institutionalized their interests. Most of the theories Leitch
discusses have been merged with academic enterprises, involving careers,
jobs, professional publication, and departmental organization. In fact, literary
criticism unfortunately has been divided into academic theorizing and the kind
of discursive, essayistic criticism, stressing taste and judgement, that is prac–
ticed by such writers as Alfred Kazin, Denis Donoghue, Lionel Abel, Irving
Howe, Steven Marcus, Hilton Kramer, Morris Dickstein, Diana Trilling,
Mary McCarthy, and Susan Sontag, whose work appears in publications for a
more general, educated audience not steeped
in
semiotics and deconstruction.
