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PARTISAN REVIEW
whatever trace effects remain of their "radicalizing" humanities and
social science courses. On the other hand, some critics of postmod–
ern ism see its baleful influence spreading throughout the culture, "a
dangerous license," writes one, "for disruptive propaganda or socio–
pathic behavior." Legal theory that denies the possibility of justice,
political practice predicated on equivocation and subterfuge, even schol–
arship that fails to distinguish between fact and fabrication : these-and
worse- have been deemed the spawn of postmodernism. Whatever the
case, any worldview that can conform reality to ideology, that can "dis–
appear" facts at will, that can subvert the very concept of objective truth
clearly would serve the needs of authoritarians. This was the truth
hypothecated by Orwell, historically demonstrated by the Lysenko
affair. Out of this same experience with totalitarianism and its ideolog–
ical (mis)construction of truth, Camus in
The Plague
has a character
affirm the essential imperative: "But again and again there comes a time
in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four
is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this . And the
question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the
making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two
and two do make four."
