PETER SHAW
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with theory have decided that the truth lies in a moderate zone between
extremes.
For example, the professor-authors Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and
Margaret Jacob discuss relativist historical scholarship in their recent
book,
Telling the Truth about History.
To begin with, they define the is–
sues politically. "We take on both the relativists on the left and the de–
fenders of the status quo ante on the right," they declare, incidentally
making clear the left political source of scholarly relativism. On the other
hand, somehow, they approve virtually all recent politically-inspired de–
velopments in their speciality, including affirmative action hiring. Soon
ignoring their own putative rejection of relativism, nevertheless, they end
by accepting the radicals' insistence that "new definitions of truth and
objectivity are needed in every field of knowledge."
The formula of theoretical disavowal followed by continued support
for poststructuralist principles also appears in anthropology. There, a
husband-and-wife team has taken over the professional journal,
The
American Anthropologist. The Chronicle of Higher Education
reports them
as stating that "they are not imposing a heavy-handed agenda on the
journal, the main scholarly publication of the American Anthropological
Association." The
Chronicle
report continues: "But yet [they indicate],
they really want to shake things up ." The team's first issue is devoted al–
most entirely to cultural relativism and articles by feminists. Not surpris–
ingly, "some scholars see in the journal what one called 'wholesale ca–
pitulation' to postmodernism and the self-reflexive turn of recent cultural
anthropology." Also not surprisingly, the complaints are acknowledged
by the two editors only in the form of their manifestly disingenuous dis–
claimer of radical intentions.
This happened also with the publication of the Duke conference's
papers. These were introducted by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, who had
convened the conference, and is known for her
Contingencies of Value,
which maintains that no opinion can be objective.
It
followed that the
canon, a product of many opinions, can have no legitimacy.
Given the definiteness of this logic, it is surprising that in her
"introduction" Smith proceeded to retreat from it. Canon makers, she
has said, were deluded to think that their standards of judgment were
any more than the subjective, unconscious products of social forces. But
now she wishes it to be understood that even though the canon has
been revised thanks to such assaults as hers, there is no need to take the
matter all that seriously. If "films and writings by women and minority
authors are being studied and taught," she reassuringly promised, this
does "not reflect or require blithe disregard for appropriate standards."
