WILLIAM PHILLIPS
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tive lowbrowism and middlebrowism - and the myth if not the reality of
egalitarianism.
9. The University
As Alan Wolfe notes, the character of the American university has
undergone many changes. Until recently, it has been assumed that the
purpose of the university is to transmit knowledge to students. It has
been free of the trendiness and gimmickry of multiculturalism. But it has
not been the educational utopia of some nostalgic commentators.
In
lit–
erary studies, until the arrival of the New Criticism, it was full of old–
fashioned, Germanic scholarship. It did leave room for genuine research
and thinking, and for independent ideas. It did not have an ideological
power group such as the PCers today. It was possible for good students
to get a classical education. One of the by-products of multicultural
contemporaneity is the elimination of courses with general historical and
intellectual content in favor of studies in movies, feminism, gay libera–
tion, pop culture, and various other causes and trendy subjects. But in
addition
to
the deteriorating effects of such politically correct curricula,
in general, there has been a drift to more popular subjects which the
PCers have exploited for their own ends.
One of the side effects of political correctness is to obscure the basic
conversion of many universities into conveyors of mass culture. And this
is a cultural phenomenon that most educators and intellectuals have not
faced. Perhaps this shift has been unavoidable in the wake of mass educa–
tion. So far as I know, America is the only country where egalitarianism
has gone so far as to assume that everyone has the right, regardless of
qualifications, to go to college. Even in the former Communist coun–
tries, it was taken for granted that only qualified students had this right.
Other students went to vocational schools. I don't suppose the clock
can be turned back. But some bold steps would have to be taken to re–
store the intellectual level of the university. Nor can the infusion of
money do anything but conceal the problem.
10.
Theory
PC is heavily weighted with literary theory and the entire movement
by a foundation of general theory - or perhaps it should be called ide–
ology. It is interesting to note that both the literary and the general
theory have their source in the line that runs from Saussure through Levi–
Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault. As Brian Vickers points out in his
excellent book,
Appropriating Shakespeare,
the thread consists essentially of
isolating language, separating it from its object, detaching the signifier
from the signified. The process was started, though only partially, by
