DAVID LEHMAN
603
distrust. But irony is also the rhetorical trope for the attempt of the
mind to accommodate conflicting points of view. The very
phenomenon of political correctness militates against this trope, this
habit of thought. The politically correct mind has had enough of
complexity, nuance, contradiction, uncertainty, irony. The politically
correct mind yearns to know where it stands and would seem to be
willing to put up with tyrannical limitations on its own freedom
simply in order to enjoy the satisfaction of being always in the right.
MARK LILLA
Only Disconnect .
It
is a sign of the provincialism reigning in American letters today that
no one has noticed how closely our culture wars have been observed and
commented upon by Europeans. Over the past year one could hardly
pick up a publication on the Continent without finding an article on
the latest American hysteria. The French have led the way here. Besides
journalistic treatments in magazines like
Le
NoulJel ObseYIJateur,
there have
also been long and revealing analyses of our present situation in more se–
rious reviews.
Esprit
has published articles on "les defis du multicultural–
isme" and "Le
political correct
aux Etats-Unis," while
Le Debat
ran a spe–
cial dossier that included an interview with historian Fran<;:ois Furet ti–
tled "L'utopie democratique
a
l'americaine," certainly the most lucid
discussion of this issue in any language. A recent number of the distin–
guished
Merkin
is titled "Gegen-Moderne? Ober Fundamentalismus,
Multikulturalismus, und Moralische Korrektheit," showing that the
Germans have also begun to pay attention (perhaps for reasons of their
own). And in Italy the leading left-wing review
MicroMega
has con–
tributed articles with titles like "Assalto alla cultura occidentale," while
Umberto Eco in
L'Espresso
has publicized "il Khomeiniismo" in the
American university.
What strikes one first in reading these European war dispatches is
that, no matter whether the authors are on the political left or right,
they are almost uniformly critical of any attempt to delegitimize the
great works of the Western mind.
If
anything, the European left has re–
acted the most vigorously against ideas like multiculturalism, which it
