The Use and Abuse of Rousseau

The politics of interpretation thrives. Two recent volumes on Rousseau serve as reminders as to what a battleground political theory remains. Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov, editors of The Legacy of Rousseau, and Mira Morgenstern, author of Rousseau and the Politics of Ambiguity, pursue self-appointed missions with impressive zeal. They wish to preserve and protect the work of Rousseau, to save him from friend and foe alike, that is, from those who would do violence to his thought through the act of interpretation. According to Orwin and Tarcov, assaults flow from both the Left and Right, as well as from postmodernists who, apparently, do not have the decency to have a politics at all. Similarly, Morgenstern locates interpretive menace from so-called orthodox readings in the grip of a political agenda that simplifies and distorts Rousseau’s thought by privileging the framework of the critic rather than that of Rousseau himself.

Yet these authors too are implicated in a politics of interpretation. First, they elevate their own understanding of Rousseau’s authorial voice (all the while denying that their interpretation is decisive) in an attempt, one suspects, to preempt alternative appropriations contaminated by undesirable political perspectives. Second, while they may appear to be interpretively candid, their endeavours are often veiled behind requirements that somehow have been placed on the enterprise of political theory. These strictures serve to discipline political theory by channelling its activities in requisite (read predictable, calculable, regular) directions. What do I mean?

Consider some of the demands facing political theory, especially political theory understood as a conversation with the great works of the past. Students routinely wonder why they have to study thinkers dead for centuries. What connection does such an enterprise have to contemporary politics? How will such study help them with future job prospects? Publishers have begun to ask similar questions about political theory. Squeezed by economic forces beyond their control (the Republican revolution did have its successes after all), they feel compelled by the bottom line. The value of scholarly contribution now recedes before a book’s ability to generate undergraduate course paperback sales. What books are likely to do so? Presumably those that address the issues of the day in a direct and meaningful fashion. In addition, editors of regional political science journals first ask theorists why non-specialists would care to read their essays, displaying zero tolerance for theory for theorists.

Public perception of the academy contributes to these trends. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the 93rd annual meeting of the American Political Science Association held in Washington, D.C. Though the discipline as a whole was subjected to ridicule, political theory seemed to be a special, or exemplary, target in the short article (duplicated by one in The Chicago Tribune). The failings of the discipline seem self-evident to its critics, including those within the academy. Typically objections are posed through questions, the formulation of which dictate answers which then confirm judgments already rendered. (Surveying ostensibly outrageous theory panel paper titles, John Harwood of The Wall Street Journal asks: “What does this have to do with American politics as we know it?”)

There’s something happening here. Apparently, an expectation has been formed that political theory must be immediately and directly relevant to today. What it means to be relevant is both taken for granted and narrowly construed, as if a consensus has already been reached to which one and all assent. Or soon will. The study of classic texts, for example, thus falls under suspicion. If classics are to be read, don’t they need to offer concrete solutions to current problems? Shouldn’t they have to address issues that transcend constraints of time and place? Must not they have anticipated or foreshadowed later developments? Must not they lend themselves to rereading in a way that they can be made to speak to issues of the day? Failing to do this, political theory then subjects itself to deserved self-marginalization. In the words...