506
PARTISAN REVIEW
race, and gender in particular."
The remaining sections of
Contemporary Sociology
continue in the
same vein. So I will confine myself to highlights that underline the ideo–
logical displacement of sociology by its contemporary practitioners. At
times implicitly and other times explicitly, they reveal alienation from
and anger at American culture. Indeed, this theme defines the character
of so many of these reviewers and of the books they review.
In some instances, the fit between book and reviewer is perfect. Peter
Fitzpatrick's
The Mythology of Modern Law
is considered by Jane Collier
(in this case from the other discipline marching toward self-destruction,
anthropology). Here the author and reviewer share the premise that law
"construct[s] bureaucratic practices and market hierarchies as right and
normal by defining the cases law handles as 'aberrant'." However, no
cases are cited, except that the series' editors say that this entire notion
of the universality of law " ... can be extended to modern sexism as
well." The source of this mythic (read: evil) notion of law as universal is
the "Enlightenment thinkers," who it is claimed "invented the Man of
Reason by conjuring up his opposite: the person who was by nature in–
capable of rational, objective thought. 'Savages' were constructed as
promiscuous, propertyless, lawless, and unfree, thereby endowing
Rational Man, by implication, with morality, property, law and auton–
omy." This inversion of intellectual history seems to forget that almost
every figure of the Enlightenment - ranging from Diderot to Rousseau -
had a love affair with "savages." It was precisely the freedom of Natural
Man that was contrasted with the decadence of Rational Man. This is
no place to argue intellectual history, but Mr. Kirkpatrick's elementary
disregard for plain truth is as characteristic of an alienation from truth as
is a society that plagues social science with an agenda of race, class, and
gender.
Even solid reviews of decent books betray heavy bias in peculiar
ways. Carol Mueller, reviewing William B. Hixon's
Search for the
American Right Wing,
concludes with the observation that Hixon's
"cultural modernization analysis is more successful than other recent at–
tempts to provide a comprehensive account of the virulent attacks on
communism, feminism, and the civil rights of minorities in the late twen–
tieth century." In doing so, the reviewer gives grist to the mill for those
who see sociology as a mode to confirm the radical character of the
struggle for racial and religious equity and, conversely, the respectable
nature of communism.
There is some relief Bruce G. Carruthers offers an outstanding anal–
ysis of Robert Brenner's
Merchants and R evolution,
indicating the central-
