HEATHER MAcDONAID
711
forced to figure out our world for ourselves. In defense against that
possibility, modernizing turns ancestors who might otherwise appear
somewhat cagey and aloof into the most avuncular of kin, dispensing
advice from around the kitchen table. Handel and Aristophanes had
us
in
mind all along; they worried about
our
race problems,
our
imperialism
problems,
our
class problems, and are ready to give us a hand out of
those problems. We don't need to try to enter their world, for they
already inhabit ours. Underneath their powdered wigs and doublets, the
ancients are moderns just like us: when Shakespeare wrote ghosts, he
didn't really mean ghosts, he meant the return of the repressed.
The impulse to modernize is not confined to stage directors. Cur–
rent teaching in the humanities violently updates the past. Deconstruction
and poststructuralism wrench works of literature and philosophy from
their original context and force them to speak in the language of critical
theory. All past works become harbingers of the deconstructive gospel.
Plato was not really interested in the nature of truth and reality but was
instead developing a theory of writing that foreshadows Jacques Der–
rida's. Wordsworth was too deconstructively sophisticated to concern
himself with "Nature" and the "human soul"; instead he shared Paul de
Man's obsession with muteness and absence.
Uncovering such modern academic concerns in the past serves two
functions . It provides today's theories with an august pedigree. And it
obviates the unpleasant task of learning history. You don't need any
cumbersome luggage to study literature and philosophy, you don't even
need to pack your toothbrush, because the ancients are coming to visit
you!
Scholarly updating has more serious consequences than theatrical
updating. The artistic world values novelty, insuring that for every Or–
pheus playing an electric guitar, there will be three others with a lyre,
and one not singing on stage at all. While any given production may
cause us to see that work in a different light, its impact
will
be mitigated
by other productions. (For that reason, the apocalyptic cries that have
greeted Sellars's work seem a touch overwrought.) The academic world,
on the other hand, rewards conformity. Every assistant professor is trying
to churn out as many articles as possible mimicking the official line on
"textuality." That official1ine imposes conformity on the past as well. It
does not recognise ideas that have no value to present theory. As a result,
students receive a monolithic and exceedingly narrow exposure to our
culture's great expressions of thought, an exposure that reduces most
large ideas to the random play of tropes. And since most students will
never pick up a book not on the bestseller list once they graduate, that
exposure will be their last.
Weare all modernizers. Any act of interpretation necessarily brings
