of the neoliberal consistency that has gained in power and influence in the US during the last 50 years.
This leads us to the second difficulty, which arises when we consider the nature of this ostensible occasion for their argument: The obviousness of Bush’s abuses of power is cited in order to obviate political engagement in literary scholarship, as “the disasters and triumphs of the last decade have shown that literary criticism alone is not sufficient to effect change.” Here they admit literary scholarship’s implication in politics, by offering its lessons as germane to disciplinary objectives, but deny that such scholarship in turn has implications for politics. Literary studies is thus subordinated to determination by political events, while they deny its capacity to share in the determination of those events. So, while they disapprove of Bush’s actions, they also argue against scholars’ efforts to respond, dismissing them as pointless attempts to make literary criticism into “political activism by another name.” But if demystifying protocols cannot “explain our oppression” or “effect change,” as they claim, then why would it also be necessary to argue that its effects are obviated by the obviousness of Bush’s acts? The former implies that demystification is insufficient to the task, while the latter implies that it would be sufficient, but it is not necessary, since those abuses and lies are apparent even without sophisticated interpretive techniques. If criticism is incapable of explanation, then why insist that its explanations are unnecessary because “many people” recognize “immediately” or “instantly” the deceptions and abuses that are taking place?
Like their attribution of novelty to aspects of the Bush administration with ample precedent in US history, their argument in the alternative suggests that Bush is used as a rationalization for their views on political engagement, rather than having led to those views in the first place. The remaining two difficulties indicate some of the conditions that allow for such rationalizations to pass unnoticed. Best and Marcus call ideology critique “superfluous” in connection with a catalogue of Bush administration misdeeds that cites dehumanizing aestheticizations like Islamophobia and racism, a prominent denegation in a disavowed imperial war, and victim-blaming against subalterns impoverished by state policy—to characterize only a few aspects of the events named there. Their argument that critique of ideology is irrelevant is proposed in a rhetoric that implicitly universalizes the recognition that certain views and systemic inequities are harmful, in spite of its authors’ explicit acknowledgement that those who so recognize are “many,” and not all. The clear implication is that those who do not view Bush as they do, need not be heeded, and their different interpretations need not be explained or addressed. And yet, precisely because I recognize like Best and Marcus that the harms of the Bush administration were unambiguous and apparent, I am genuinely puzzled by their incurious attitude toward the majority of US voters who approved of him.
To produce the recognition described by Best and Marcus generally requires a particular position in the system of US property relations, one that seems relatively common among humanities academics, but characterizes a small minority of the US population. This position is indicated by the conditions necessary to each perception Best and Marcus cite: Relatively high-speed internet access was required to encounter “images of torture at Abu Ghraib” that were “immediately circulated on the internet.” Cable television was required to view “the real-time coverage of Hurricane Katrina.” The instant recognition of “mission accomplished” as a lie is made far easier by a lack of personal connections to those fighting it, given the deeply wish-fulfilling valence of that banner for every parent, sibling, partner or child of a US soldier, who is disproportionately likely to come from a poor or working class background. And the initial desirability of these policies and actions is conditioned, in part, on racist, Orientalist, imperialist, militarist, patriarchal, compulsorily heterosexist, capitalist, theistic and otherwise metaphysical ideological assumptions that are usually unlearned only through some prior training in some mode of demystification, whether in an academic context or otherwise. But all this positional specificity and class or educational background is implicitly presumed as a premise for what should define the necessary features of higher education research and pedagogy in interpretation and writing. It is as though Best and Marcus believe their experience to be representative, instead of conditioned upon an exceptionally privileged position in a society where, for example, tenured professors’ income places them in the top quintile. Here the entire orientation of literary study as an educational enterprise and a social good is predicated on the class experience of that elite group.
This suggests an explanation for their indifference to the interpretive problem posed by widespread support for Bush during much of his presidency, including after most of the actions they cite. Instead of approaching this support as an occasion for pedagogical and interpretive interventions, as an opportunity to demonstrate the utility of literary studies in explaining our world, the Bush administration is described solely from the perspective of his opponents, as if they constituted a majority all along. This invented majority of interpreters who agree with Best and Marcus are then cited as evidence of the superfluity of politicized criticism—as if the ineffectuality of this fictional majority is proof that interpretive clarity is insufficient to affect politics. It is as though, having been trained in a culture and era that universalized and glorified the solitary heroism of the thinker and interpreter “supposed to know,” a mythic figure of Western thought whose agency is sufficient unto itself, Best and Marcus reject this agency’s omnipotence by concluding that it is utterly impotent. As if the diametrical opposite of a debunked fiction would be the only possible truth.
Far from obviating the need for sophisticated interpretive methods, the demystification of theoretical omnipotence would seem to call for unprecedented efforts. What appears transparent to one of us often appears as a mirror to those on the other side. The “MeToo” movement has lately dramatized how patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality has encased even liberal, educated professionals in an interpersonal version of this two-way mirror, in which powerful men preen, reflecting on their own demands without reciprocal attention to others. This masculinist narcissism has long been transparent to many women who struggled to make careers in a sexist society. But so many men now seem to be shocked that their mirrors were windows to those on the other side, that their abusive behavior had been plainly visible to those who were not empowered to hold them accountable. White privilege and class privilege operate in homologous ways to that masculinist culture of assault and objectification. And on a national scale, we are increasingly divided into ideologically homogenized factions viewing entirely different realities. Just now, the increasingly desperate rhetoric used by journalists and pundits to describe these problems would seem to indicate that explanations are difficult to come by, and expertise in interpretation might be useful. Perhaps if more scholars and teachers in literary studies would acknowledge and attend to the relevance of politics to interpretation, then we could contribute to understanding the relevance of interpretation to politics.
In their dismissiveness toward political engagement in literary studies, Best and Marcus not only present inconsistent or impoverished characterizations of their opponents’ views, but also misrepresent or misrecognize their own intellectual lineage. They seem to speak to both sides of the perennial question of autonomy and engagement, claiming the political environment of the aughts showed them “that literary criticism alone is not sufficient to effect change.”29 Similarly, they cite authors who advocate for the disqualified, demeaned, harmed and neglected, but at the same time argue against scholarship as “political activism by another name.” This difficulty is elided in their characterization of themselves as “the heirs of Michel Foucault, skeptical about the very possibility of radical freedom and dubious that literature or its criticism can explain our oppression or provide the keys to our liberation.” But like their rejection of “literary criticism alone” as sufficient for social change, the invocation of “radical freedom,” taken colloquially, implies an extreme or unreasonable opponent, and understood terminologically, it introduces a Sartrian phrase with little purchase among US activists. It is also a concept that can be critiqued as apparently voluntarist or idealist, especially in light of Marxian, Nietzschean
