MARK BAUERLE IN
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and epistemology, fusing what is true and what passes for true, identi–
fying discovery with justification.
For this reason, inquirers sensitive to such distinctions accuse con–
structionism of philosophical confusion and methodological incorrect–
ness. Philosopher-antagonists like John Searle and Susan Haack express
contempt for the logical credentials of constructionist arguments, while
conservative critics like Roger Kimball mock their sophomoric rela–
tivism. But the continued popularity of the school of thought in the acad–
emy indicates that those charges, however accurate, miss the point. They
rest upon standards of coherence and clarity that constructionists delimit
as themselves constructs not binding to their own way of thinking.
Besides, advocates aim to convince not by their dubious logic or their rel–
ativist beliefs. They do not subscribe to any foundations except the one
which rules "There are no foundations." The concepts and distinctions
that opponents attack them for mishandling, social constructionists have
already negated . They commit the genetic fallacy time and again, but so
what? Since they define knowledge as bound to the context of its con–
struction, the genetic fallacy is not a mistake-it is a policy.
The real questions to put to social constructionists are not those of
truth, but of tactics. Acknowledging the irrelevance of philosophical dis–
putes, we must ask:
If
canons of logic do not apply to constructionist
thinking, on what does it base its assertions?
If
all knowledge is bound
by time and place, how does constructionist persuasion work outside
its
time and place?
If
discovery and justification are one, how does con–
structionist inquiry justify itself?
One answer may be found in the rhetorical patterns of construction–
ist statements . Because constructionist maxims are decreed so ritualisti–
cally in academic discourse, they tend to assume a customary verbal
form, one whose import is often borne by seemingly non-substantive
words and locutions. For example, in the following two citations, notice
the word "surely." First, in a roundtable discussion on evidence in
PMLA
(I996),
Stephen Orgel comments, "Surely historical evidence
depends on interpretation. Even scientific evidence does ." Second, in a
Christian Science Monitor
review of a book on the acceleration of mod–
ern life, Tom Regan writes,
"Faster
[the book under review] will help us
think about the way we 'construct' time-for it surely is a construct"
(August
26, I999) .
Time and evidence are the main objects in these sen–
tences, but "surely" does most of the work. That historica l and scien–
tific evidence are interpretive and that time is a construct are, to say the
least, complicated propositions. But the "surely" rules out any clarifi–
cation or debate, and does so not on logical or definitional grounds, but
