510
PARTISAN REVIEW
nothing goes on in the academy
except the repeated mantra that
reality isn't rea
I.
Brian Artese
Northwestern University
Mark Bauerlein replies:
Brian Artese spends the bulk of
his letter imputing to me a "fear"
of Foucault's influence, an igno–
rance of Foucault's texts, and an
attribution of "silly" construction–
ism to Foucault himself.
Why Artese focuses so much on
Foucault I have no idea, for there
is only one reference to Foucault
in the essay, in a paragraph con–
taining Eve Sedgwick's citation of
him. I don't impute anything to
Foucault, nor do I disregard his
work. (Nor do I
fear
his influ–
ence.) Instead, I propose a reason
why constructionist ideas have
become academic dogma. In dis–
cussing constructionist ideas, I say
not that they are wrong, but that
they are open to question, debat–
able. In most academic settings,
however, that debate is foreclosed,
and the ideas are taken as basic
professional principles. I chose the
Sedgwick quotation because it
illustrates how an idea in Foucault
has become "axiomatic." An
analysis of Foucault's ideas would,
of course, require a careful exami–
nation of
Discipline and Punish
and a dozen other texts.
It
might
also detail the ways in which Fou-
cault's points have declined into
vulgar formulations and carica–
tures in the mouths of disciples
and critics. That would be a dif–
ferent essa y.
Artese is clearly a committed
Foucauldian, and the servility of
such disciples to their masters is
often balanced by the bile they
hurl at those outside the fold. His
certainty that Foucault demon–
strates that knowledge is managed
by institutions and that individu–
als are subject to knowledge
bespeaks a thoroughgoing invest–
ment in Foucault's corpus. Artese
might be less certain about these
matters if he looked into other
arguments, say, discussions of
knowledge by Peirce, Wittgen–
stein, Carnap, Quine, Austin,
Chisholm, Searle, Davidson, and
Haack.
Mark Bauerlein
Emory University
