Political Dreams, Economic Woes, and Inquiry in the Humanities

Books Reviewed: Michael Bérubé, The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Cary Nelson, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (New York: New York University Press, 1997); and Susan Haack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). These works are cited parenthetically.

What is the goal of academic inquiry in the humanities?

Many literary and cultural critics would shy away from that question. The term inquiry strikes current practitioners as somewhat wrongheaded. It has too many scientistic and verificationist overtones to satisfy critics of a theoretical or political stripe. An inquiry aims to produce knowledge, to yield true statements and justified beliefs, with truth and justification determined by logical and evidentiary guidelines. In a word, inquiry relies on epistemological commitments, and those run against the grain of theory and cultural studies. What makes an inquiry epistemological is that it aims not just to generate statements and beliefs but to certify true statements and justified beliefs. Epistemology asks not “what do we know?” or “how do we know?” but “how do we justify what and how we know?” Critics seem to think that epistemology covers any discourses that explore knowledge and subjectivity, a conception that derives from Michel Foucault, who defines epistemology broadly as “analysis of epistemes.” But to most epistemologists today, epistemology concerns criteria of evidence and inference, not subjectivity and knowledge per se (those are the purview of cognitive psychology). Its role is to provide inquiry with norms of argument and warrant, to distinguish certainty, to provide requirements for truth-claims. This does not mean that epistemology marks a grand search for extrahuman foundations for knowledge. That is Richard Rorty’s caricature of epistemology, one vague enough to serve numerous rhetorical designs and few explanatory purposes. In fact, epistemology survives on more temperate, less metaphysical grounds, such as that of attempting to separate better from worse evidence.

Such considerations are important for criticism because of the basic exigencies of academic labor, specifically, the requirement that scholars not only produce knowledge but judge knowledge. We have seen the astonishing proliferation of innovative textual strategies, alternative conceptions of disciplinarity, and radical retheorizations of culture, all impressively new knowledges that seem to stem directly from Paul Feyerabend’s infamous axiom, “anything goes.” But despite the enthusiasm and “breaking-bounds” sloganeering accompanying this expansion of critical methods, grounds for judgment and evaluation have not proven as malleable or liberatory as those for the production of knowledge. Manuscripts must have readers’ reports, assistant professors must be reviewed, job candidates must be interviewed, papers must be graded. The imagination and interests that motivated the works under scrutiny may be respected, enjoyed, disdained, and otherwise entertained, but the examination of the works themselves cannot be so flexible or free-for-all. Judgment, by definition, is critical and selective. Limited institutional resources force exclusions. The question is, What principles of selection should scholars invoke?

More precisely, while criticism has expanded in political and personal directions, can political or personal criteria serve hiring committees, dissertation directors, and other professional judges in their decision making? Few academics would agree to have their works and careers decided by the political or personal preferences of their colleagues. Scholarly ideals and academic freedom demand a more objective review, a judgment based on methodological standards, guidelines of evidence and interpretation, consistency of terms, clarity of thesis—in a word, on epistemological grounds. Only these argumentative criteria can provide a discipline with open and consistent evaluations of students’ and professors’ work, for unlike political and personal standards, evidentiary and inferential norms allow for a diversity of opinions (as long as they are carefully argued). This is not to say that politics and personality can be entirely removed from judgment, but only that there is a rough distinction to be observed and that judges can make valuations without linking them necessarily to particular political or personal interests...