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PARTISAN REVIEW
sible to sustain.
It
might have been dismissed as simply silly. But academic
protocol required that a technical, philosophical refutation be put for–
ward. It consisted of the observation that the poststructuralist characteri–
zation of the bourgeoisie was itself an analysis and an interpretation. As
such, it was logically open to the same charge of being subjective and
unconsciously class-influenced as were the analyses and interpretations of
the logocentrists.
The poststructuralists had to be aware of this contradiction. After
all,
the Sophists of ancient Greece, who were their relativist predecessors,
recognized it at the outset. Their solution was insouciantly to pro–
nounce their own arguments just as uncertain as those of Plato and their
other opponents. This the poststructuralists could not emulate. They
could not bring themselves to deconstruct their own political beliefs. To
have done so would have meant abandoning their commitment to social
change, as they denoted their vaguely leftist-liberal reformism. Reform
was the only thing they firmly believed in - which meant that once their
adherence to certainty was exposed, they were philosophically undone.
In 1983, Gerald Graff exposed this endeavor. But he went on to be–
come an apologist for the multiculturalist-political makeover of the uni–
versity. At present, Gerald Graff is a professor at the University of
Chicago and president of Teachers for a Democratic Culture, an organi–
zation dedicated to resisting the traditionalist counterattack on political
correctness and poststructuralism. But in 1983 Graff deftly identified the
relativist assault as resting on the proposition "that all theories are a
function of politics and power." This proposition, Graff pointed out,
could be directed at deconstruction itself "Like the familar paradox of
the liar," he wrote
This line of argument suffers from a built-in tendency to self-destruct.
Presumably the proposition that truth is a function of power is itself
asserted as true; yet presumably by its own declaration, the proposition
too is a function of power. How then is the proposition to be
taken? If the truth of the proposition that truth is a function of
power is compromised by the fact that the proposition itself is a
function of power, then there ceases to be any reason to take the
proposition seriously as an argument.
In reaction to this and other devastating refutations of politically
correct radical relativism, there have finally begun to appear breaches in
the united front of "theory," the term preferred by its practitioners. Like
the partial dissenters from political correctness, those previously associated
