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PARTISAN REVI EW
dogma but in channeling it by pitting dogma aga inst dogma."
This brings us up to the 1980s, when the contest o f competing dog–
mas was largely turned inward . The victo ry o f R eagani sm and home and
the decline of third-world revolution abroad made campus politi cs in to
a compensato ry prize. "T oday the streets may be qui et ," read a 198 1 ar–
ticle in th e sho rt-li ved periodi cal
dell/ oerae y,
" but j o urnals, uni ve rsity
presses, and lectures bristl e with defi ance. Especially in literary criti cism ..
. at grea t ri sk to th e parti cipants."
Self-dramatization as ide, the articl e's autho r, Mi chael Fischer, uni n–
tentionally drew th e conn ections between sixti es radi calism and eighti es
irrationalism :
T he radi ca lism of th e 60s prepared us fo r Derri da's assoc iati on of
freedom with mobility or endless possibili ty, as we ll as hi s attack on
hierarchi es and o n arbitrary, invidi o us distin cti o ns between ri gh t and
wrong, sa ne and insane. H is program of releasing in terpretati on from
th e constraints of logic, authorial intent , the text, and th e di ctates of
authoriti es meshes with ideas we have all heard before: that stu dents
have a ri ght to th eir own language; that experti se is a dangerous un–
democrati c charade; th at standards are elitist; th at correcting someone
smac ks of ridi cul e, arroga nce, eve n tyrann y; th at claiming tru th for
one's va lu es means imposing th em . The politi ca l appea l of Derrida's
work li es in its fa miliarity, not its nove lty . He kee ps ali ve th emes that
no longer animate po liti cal movements.... he offers ... hope. . .
The power we have lost in Congress we ca n recapture in our prose.
Perhaps, th ough , the power of the prose he refers to seems to come
from the assumpti o n o n the part of some undergradu ates that its very in–
decipherability suggests hiddenlforbidden knowl edge . And there is noth–
ing teenagers like better than to be let in o n adult "secrets."
For all its rh eto ri cal swagger and burea ucrati c muscle o n campus, PC
is, in part, a counse l of despair.
It
says that obj ec tivity and rati o nality
have to be ceded to the ri ght beca use it is no lo nge r possibl e in classic
lefti st fas hi o n to spea k truth to power. T he attempt to contain debate
by arguin g for a new " ri ght no t to be o ffended" is likewise an admission
o f failure. It's an admission that the left-lib eral poli cies of the past quar–
ter centu ry, parti cul arly o n the rac ial quotas to whi ch the uni versiti es are
so deeply comnlitted , can 't stand up to criti cal scrutiny.
In the lo ng run PC will fail no t o nl y the unive rsiti es but th e
" vi ctims" over whose interests it promises to stand guard as well. If the
ea rli er "di versity" movement on behalf o f the men tally ill is any guide,
the re is
little
reaso n to expec t a promi sin g future fo r th e new
"benefi ciari es" of radi cal mythmaking.
