Critical Attachment: At Home in the In-between

Defenses of universalism, like attacks on it, are increasingly a trivial pursuit, for it is no longer clear whether there is anyone at home at either end.

Bruce Robbins, in Feeling Global

When I was asked to contribute to an engagement with The Way We Argue Now, I accepted because of the title. In addition to a pedagogical concern with developing a more generous culture of argumentation within the complexity of Australian universities, for five years I have been writing a fortnightly column on "culture" in the Murdoch-owned national newspaper The Australian. They are both privileged positions. The latter has hardened my skin and made me more impatient with the culture of argumentation as it is widely practiced within humanities and social sciences.

What we might call the Australian public sphere is an interesting mixture of accepted and acceptable truisms and behaviors (chop down tall poppies, call a spade a spade, weird twists of egalitarianism, taking the piss, or not taking oneself too seriously, and other traits too many to name or which I haven't yet learned). The Australian media sphere seems to have become more reactionary over the time of John Howard, our right-wing and long-lasting prime minister. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Howard is Bush's staunchest ally, or at least that's how it is portrayed here. The Murdoch and Fairfax papers have a string of journalists who seem to think their job is to support Howard. They go for the jugular of anyone to their left. I can't say that my experience has honed my skills of logic, but it has taught me the importance of tact and tactics for approaching subjects that always get me thrashed—feminism, sexuality, and race pretty well cover that front. But even a judicious use of humor hasn't stopped me from receiving full-page character assassinations or hate e-mail from their loyal readers.

I don't like polemic, and I certainly do not like mean-spirited attacks, but reading Amanda Anderson's book, I oscillated between irritation and boredom. I kept wondering, Why me? I certainly do not feel interpellated by her subtitle: A Study in the Cultures of Theory, which could be revised to the singular. The book is about her investment in post-Habermasian proceduralism, primarily contra Butler's performative-based theorizations of identity. Its argumentation proceeds via a "slam, bam, you can thank me, ma'am" school of style whereby the arguments of others are demolished with stern-faced enthusiasm and garnished by copious references to the author's own arguments. It's quite a feat to mount a supposed argument about Foucault based narrowly on the sins of what she keeps calling his "admiring commentators" as well as one on the defects of characterological statements that "dismiss without examining, [that] imply deficient psychology rather than misguided argument."¹

However, Anderson's book has made me think, and what more can one ask of a book? Although I felt ostracized by the book's content and style, it raises several critical terms with which I will try to engage.

For any feminist the question of universal norms and human rights is unavoidable today. When Bush, shadowed by Howard, uses women's rights as a rationale for invading Iraq, it is justifiable that the public may want to know what supposed experts on the matter have to say. Several journalists have pointed out the shameful failure on the part of many academic feminists to engage with this question, and others. It doesn't matter whether the event is completely fictional and media-generated. For instance, a few years ago Howard pounced on a photograph that putatively showed refugees throwing their children overboard. Australia will not allow people like that, he thundered before winning the election. The photograph turned out to be erroneous. Howard went on to the next election despite the furor. He probably won because the Australian economy was, and is, booming, but we know that the tentacles of the economy and culture are intertwined, as indeed is the question of immigration/refugees and the economy.

The good...