EUGENE GOODHEART
PC or Not PC
"Discourse," Paul Ricoeur reminds us, "consists in a series of choices by
which certain meanings are selected and excluded." What does the pre–
vailing "politically correct" discourse select and exclude?
It
selects the
postcolonial agenda which reminds us of the destructive legacy of impe–
rialism; it requires us to focus on the claims of particular groups, charac–
terized by race, gender, and sexual orientation. Its politics are "identity
politics." Difference has become sacrosanct. There are differences among
those who subscribe to the prevailing discourse. New historicists may
quarrel with Marxists over the importance of class as an explanatory cat–
egory, Marxists with Foucauldians, and so on, but the prevailing dis–
course excludes persons of conservative or even liberal persuasion who do
not view all the evils of the modern world as springin g from Western
imperialism and who are concerned with the discovery of commonalities
among people rather than differences. Exclusion means that these views
are ignored or are treated with contempt as reactionary. To be excluded
means not to be part of the discussion; it may mean not to be consid–
ered seriou ly for a grant or for a job.
But if all discourse enta ils exclusions, why shou ld the currently pre–
vailing discourse incur the charge of censoriousness? A prominent expo–
nent of the prevailing discourse reminded me that there was a time when
literary critics were rebuked if they sought to determine an author's in–
tention or if they promiscuously consulted their feelings in reading texts.
The intentional and affective fa ll acies entered into "the speech codes" of
the New Criticism. The ana logy between then and now is fa lse.
It
was
always possible then to contest the intentional or affective fallacy with–
out being made to feel that one was arguing a view that was politically
or morally disgraceful. What characterizes the present situation is the way
in which all differences have been politicized and transformed into ideo–
logical encounters. Every community, no matter how generous and in–
clusive its accommodation of political differences may be, has a view of
what is outside the pale. An intolerance of Holocaust revisionism is not
in itself a sign of general intellectual intolerance. We sense intolerance
when what is viewed as o utside the pale coloni zes more and more the
territory of possible differences.
It
is an irony that for all the talk about
difference, real differences of view are often not tolerated in cultural de–
bate.
Though political correctness on the left is not limited to the
academy, the academy is where it is most at home. Political correctness
has not been associated with the right, but in the world outside the
academy, the intolerance assoc iated with PC can be found on the right
