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intellectual (and political) passivity which is arguably its consequence.15 Again, the objection is to the focus on the intrinsic features of language and literature; the implicit denial of the extrinsic connections of literature with the world, history, society, and political action il n'y a pas de hors-texte and that includes, in a way, the reader, who must surrender himself or herself to the text's own deconstruction. The most prominent of these ideological opponents would be neo-Marxist and feminist theorists, as well as some more traditional critics, such as René Wellek and M.H. Abrams, whose affinities or sympathies with New Criticism are obvious enough. The subordination of the text's content, affect, and even structure to a concentration on the deceptive play of language seemed an abnegation of the critic's task, however broadly conceived, rather than an advance. |
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Contemporary Theories and Current Anxieties |
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It is naturally not to the purpose here to examine the various philosophical theories, Hegelian idealism, dialectical materialism, Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian or Sartrean existentialism, Gadamerian hermeneutics, Wittgensteinianism, logical analysis, and ordinary language philosophy, or even the semiotic theories of Saussure and Pierce that supposedly inspire or validate many of the metacritical theories presently in vogue.16 Nor is there space to consider the wider pedagogical implications of contemporary critical theory (or just "theory") as it now prevails in some North American universities, where it bids fair to usurp the functions of the Philosophy (and other) departments, particularly for those who find the intellectual nourishment of Anglo-Saxon empiricism and ordinary language analysis jejune and unsatisfying by comparison with the intellectual feasts provided by continental philosophy and the new theoretical discourse in general. (Naturally classicists too are welcome to pursue the epistemological and sociological ramifications of critical theory, but then they write qua theorists or philosophers or sociologists rather than qua classical scholars. They might however remember John Miller's comment: "numerous critics of literature who enter the burgeoning field of literary theory become somewhat like most professors who shift into administrative posts: Rarely do they return."17) A discussion of the ambiguities of "modernism" versus "post-modernism" may also be deferred, despite the striking presence of the classics in the writing of such archpriests of ''modernism" (in one sense of |
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15 The most accessible critique of the philosophical foundations of Derrida's theories, for instance, is Searle (1983). On the political implications, see Eagleton (1983) 127, who is careful to exclude Derrida himself from his strictures. |
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16 A sensible guide to the underlying philosophies of the different approaches is provided by Berman (1988). |
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17Vergillius 33 (1987) 118. |
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