MARK BAUERLEIN
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rejoined that since constructionism is universally accepted by academic
inquirers, there is no need to argue for it anymore. A phrase from Eve
Sedgwick's
Epistemology of the Closet
nicely encapsulates this credu–
lousness. Referring to Foucault's argument that "Western culture has
placed what it calls sexuality in a more and more privileged relation to
our most prized constructs of individual identity, truth, and knowl–
edge," she proclaims she will proceed "in accord with Foucault's
demonstration, whose results I will take to be axiomatic. ... " This is a
strangely empirical language to apply to Foucault. Only those already
adopting a Foucauldian outlook would judge the speculations in
The
History of Sexuality
to mark a "demonstration" that yields "results."
No matter how controversial are Foucault's contentions, or how fre–
quently historians, anthropologists, and philosophers have disputed
them, to Sedgwick they are axioms, starting points for inquiry. Though
Sedgwick suggests that Foucault's ideas have only a provisional justifi–
cation-"I will take," she says-she still places them first, and never
stops to ask,
What if they are wrong?
Such constructionist notions are
so ingrained in the humanities mindset that nobody bothers to substan–
tiate them at all. Save for a few near-retirement humanists and realist
philosopher holdouts, academics embrace constructionist premises as
catechism learning, axioms to be assimilated before one is inducted into
the professoriate. To believe that knowledge is a construct, that truth,
evidence, fact, and inference all fall under the category of local inter–
pretation, and that interpretations are more or less right by virtue of the
interests they satisfy is a professional habit, not an intellectual thesis.
One can prove the institutional nature of social constructionism by
noting how easy it is to question. The weakness of social construction–
ism as an epistemology lies in the fact that one can agree with the bare
premise that knowledge is a construct, but disagree with the conclusion
that objectivity is impossible and that the contents of knowledge are
dependent upon the social conditions of the knower. Of course, knowl–
edge is constructed.
It
must be expressed in language, composed
methodically, conceived through mental views, all of which are histor–
ically derived. Constructionists extend the fact that knowledge materi–
alizes in cognitive and linguistic structures which have social
determinants into the belief that knowledge has no claim to transcend
them. That knowledge cannot transcend the conditions of its origina–
tion stems from the notion that cognition is never innocent, that cog–
nition has designs and desires shaping its knowledge-building process,
that knowing always has an instrumental purpose . This human dimen–
sion is local and situational, constructionists argue, a historical context
