Double Agent/Politics by Other Means:
Siegel, Lee
ther. It is rational skepticism as a...
...What Dickstein its own comfortable niche...
...59.95 paper Available ,V lay 19.93...
...He defends delicate sidestepping always ends in a Thinking the poststructuralists' preoccupation with faux-pas...
...Even in its most reasoned bate over higher education, but a classic Dickstein has assembled brief, thought- recoil from politics," he writes in a typi- work on a timebound controversy, a kind ful portraits of critics who worked in both cal sentence, "The Liberal Imagination was of "Reflections on the Multicultural Revrealms and wrote prose whose public clar- Trilling's most political book...
...Against multicultural calls for which is devoted to analyzing the Amerileged affluence teaching minority stu- the enforcement of respect-not just tol- ican experience, he seeks to show why...
...These two figures, and and Social justice MODELS OF GOD especially Burke, are the book's presid- KATIHs'-v TA./--vI_h' Theology for an Ecological, "Kathryn Tanncr's exceptional analytical Nuclear Age ing spiritual presences...
...There is a difference inter them in stone...
...ticularity without end...
...But he is a Marsilio, $18, 124 pp...
...They are, he ic Left's "group narcissism," its creation same nose for teleological movement that says, creating a caste of authoritarian of artificial communities based more on the British have for class...
...Exasperated with first-class guide to the history of public course, but there is nothing being said ei- both the neoconservative and the acacriticism in this century, from Matthew Arnold up through Van Wyck Brooks and Mencken, Edmund Wilson and Malcolm Cowley, Orwell, Trilling and, finally, the Partisan Review crowd...
...That is part of the story Walzer has to tell, and there is no mistaking the, importance he attaches to it...
...So the character of what a time when the democratic cause is being closely linked with the cultivation of "difference," it is easy to get the idea there is something inherently antidemocratic about any sort of concern with cultural sameness...
...These radical elitists have ities, and paradox...
...Haphazardly Lee Siegel and then he criticizes them for writing in thrown together, marred by repetitions a jargonized, inaccessible language that and disconnections, it seems, for all its earlier critics would have found futile and bright aperCus, an easy two cents hastily Morris Dickstein's new self-defeating...
...in American history by themselves...
...that Trilling's own "gift for inclusive and Refreshingly, Dickstein doesn't take suggestive formulations...
...had to go searching for sustenance...
...For there is a sense in itage to become citizens...
...It does matter, ter, he says, that immigrants have not had WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN is recognized, it is not at all easy to know to abandon altogether their cultural herMichael Walzer what to do about it...
...to imagine all sorts of oppressive things A "Polish-American" is not the same s cultural homogeneity something being done to cultural minorities in the thing, after all, as a Pole...
...0 more complex than it first appears...
...Blackmur writing that po- lic criticism, replete with examples of the turned it simply into an academic `field' etry "adds to the available stock of reali- way it used to be done, is as good as a death where the criticism of criticism now has ty" and the poststructuralist critic Edward knell for public criticism...
...same gods...
...Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to be reminded of what is happening these days to the new democratic regimes of Eastern and Central Europe...
...The book's finest section is an imaginary dialogue at the end, in which a poststructuralist theorist locks horns with a more traditional belles-lettrist...
...It might :Ire additional...
...Empathy rises on might help break up the frozen sea inside The secret of this success, however, is a flood of complexity not a stack of im- the culture...
...have made some attempt at discrimination...
...anticipates the POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS sides...
...which the imposition of any sort of alien shrewd enough observer to see that that cultural identity on people against their will is not the whole story...
...In their yoking toestrangement than on shared sentiments...
...He sees the cosmopolitan solidarity Jay Gatsby are our journeys too...
...hihlical themes can be imagined crea- CEc)Rc;LI E- TI.,,KLR tively and concretely in our "postFor Bromwich the casualty in this con- modern' world and how this is realized Tinker pierces the veil of U.S, mission in the context of liturgy and proclama- hagiography and shows how- noted misflict is the individual, for whose preser- sionaries confused gospel ideals and tion...
...There is a touch of Anglophilia -MARK KLINE TAYLOR 512.95 paper that makes Bromwich's quintessentialCommonweal 9 April 1993: 31 the spectacle of professors raised in priv- peratives...
...how the greatest criticism has always a symptom of the scarcity of a public critmixed literature with society and politics, icism as a comment on it...
...By "mean- Said praising William Butler Yeats for giv- really wants to see is more intelligence and ingful criticism," Dickstein means just ing "us a major international achievement imagination...
...Is it important to the health nativism...
...And in this new book, a two-way street...
...CONY...
...He should exercise his own that distillation of society's mute com- in cultural decolonization...
...1).aviI) TRACY -ROSEMARY RADFOR1) RUE 'l HER between the Puritans' hunger for divine 515-95 paper $12.95 paper authority on the one hand and a transcenWE HAVE BEEN Postage and handling costs dental individualism on the other...
...society...
...For just as Reagan dazed the American people into thinking they e4 cooa could get everything for nothing, "institutional radicals" thought they could reform society by merely readjusting the curriculum...
...Art is a par- capacity for amusement and humor, he the world's better societies...
...dents from impoverished, crime-ridden erance-for other lifestyles, Bromwich For this country, as a nation made up of neighborhoods that "you are where you makes his own plea for negative capabil- immigrants drawn from a wide variety of come from," I see the most insecure sort ity, for critical irony, pluralistic ambigu- different races and cultures, has enjoyed of snobbery...
...is for the happy few-though not so happy ing with the challenge posed by cultural The Marx who might be able to analyze if Bromwich's pained gravity is any in- pluralism...
...coalition of Left-liberal political and concomplished critic himself, Dickstein is a There are no real contradictions here, of servative cultural views...
...It has had its share of racism how this farce is fast becoming a tragedy dication-who have strong convictions but and xenophobia, to be sure...
...For cultural cohesion is something every functioning society needs, and democracies are no exception...
...We're not only proud of our record, The problem, however, is that once this we're proud of ourselves...
...BELIEVERS have been possible to examine the per- An African-American mutations of the English political tradition Systematic Theology ]-a lL' s H. Fi:-i vs...
...To hear some people talk, this Fortunately, however, these are not our Because the culture has been as open and is the last thing any real democrat would only options...
...Such Higher Education and Group seem to have a point of view...
...Yet I find them of SA /,I IF MCFA (; 1-1--, skill and theological acumen continue, limited application to American culture, now in the crucial theological ques- :Avery important work--- clearly which has always rambunctiously teetered tions of social justice...
...Politics by Other Means considerable success, he believes, in dealeven expropriated the word "privileged...
...Instead, Bromwich hankers after a resur- An eloquently crafted outline...
...At least that is what Michael pluralistic as it is, acculturation has been be concerned about...
...Once we impart terms and definitions the issue of "whether a ple with is how the poststructuralists' to things that used to enrich us because meaningful criticism is language follows from their reductionist they were natural and unformulated we still possible, or wheth- intellectual premises...
...And it is easy shores have had to change their identity...
...If it had been more carefully composed, this sophisticated survey might 30: 9 April 1993 Commonweal demic-Left vision of culture, he occupies ly American jeremiad pristine and even in older literary works, busying thema beleaguered and hard-won third way misdirected at times...
...But at the same time, if nothing it mildly), and acculturation is something and well-being of democratic were to be done to bring about their ac- that does occur...
...Bromwich quotes selves with asking questions like: Who rather than Dickstein's hyper-decorous Michael Oakeshott's lovely remark that was paying for Mansfield Park...
...imperialism like to think they are exposing gether of art and ethnic identity, Bromwich He is keen to the complicity of Right and the skull of power behind the flesh of art sees a "principled bigotry" at work...
...prehension...
...A public call for a puber the professionalization of criticism has between R.P...
...BromOlympian middle-air...
...The Critic and Society tion of pleasurable thinking and writing...
...In fact, it is arguable that they in particular need it...
...wich has done for our own time what Bromwich places the multicultural issue But in America our predicaments, like these critics often so anachronistically in the big picture of American politics and those of Huck Finn, or Clyde Griffiths, or and absurdly try to do for the past...
...But it is a culture of a disstates that their citizens speak the culturation, one can just easily imagine re- tinctive sort, says Walzer, and for that reasame language, read the same literature, spect for diversity turning into a recipe for son the acculturation that has gone on here celebrate the same holidays, pray to the cultural (and political) fragmentation...
...Both sides, argues Bromwich, The Bible and Postmodern MISSIONARY Imagination CONQUEST enthroned authority over tradition, pre- WAII7ile I3RLEicrai.uA.v.v ferring official visions to an organic flu- The Gospel and Native l3rueggemann envisions how central American Cultural Genocide idity of perspectives...
...berth and Burke the most generous sense Christian Theologies of historical time...
...of a renaissance in literary journalism...
...Whether it is instead of cautiously whispering "more inmotion into thoughts and phrases that a difference in literary receptiveness, telligence...
...But in reality the matter is, of course, not so simple...
...It is rational skepticism as a reflex not a sensibility, a skepticism that is at once OFF WITH THEIR (TALKING) HEADS precious and baroque...
...THE MORAL CORE Some academics believed that the uni- OF JUDAISM AND versity itself as an institution could effect CHRISTIANITY Reclaiming the Revolution changes conceived of in the sixties as JESUS AND THE anti-institutional...
...In Left in each other's excesses, to the fact that as the savage capitalism of the Reagan . C;6 years grew more heartless, the urge to prove one's virtue became more aggreso~~ sive and amoral...
...David Bromwich social and political issues by showing Double Agent is finally almost as much Yale University Press, $30, 257 pp...
...Evan's, gence of ideas that only existed here as hook also introduces readers to the scope and richness of religious hclief in refractions through American politics and African-American communities...
...Then we're agreed, gentlemen...
...methodology, or IQ, Dickstein should, If David Bromwich's new book had apDickstein's "double agent"-the title is for the sake of a "meaningful criticism," peared sooner, Dickstein might not have from a book of the same name by R.P...
...Brilliant Blackmur-operates in the "the dark and Unfortunately, Dickstein tends to qual- and deeply felt, Politics by Other Means bloody crossroads where literature and pol- ify a point until it is rarefied beyond com- should not only be the last word in the deitics meet," in Lionel Trilling's phrase...
...Living as we are in Walzer thinks...
...has taken place in a distinctive manner...
...no fixed ideology...
...I rccnmmend a 11...
...C, but also a vision that can fire and inspire Bennett-Bromwich's two main villains the whole of contemporary society-" "Drawing upon a vast storehouse of -VA[:I-EH u INK 513.95 paper Asian a isdom, ancient and modern, on the Right-tried to define culture with Song helps us to recover the authentic a regal eighties' complacency as an insti- TEXTS UNDER tradition of Jerusalem-" -DOt GLAs.lOON HALL 516.95 paper tutional safeguard against the barbarians NEGOTIATION at the gate...
...I wonder what even he would have made Morris Dickstein Dickstein might have been the Erasmus of Dickstein's super-civility in remarking Oxford University Press, $23, 220 pp...
...For in a sense, of R. Bruce Douglass violates the spirit, at least, of what democ- course, those who have come to these racy is supposed to be about...
...education is "a predicament not a journey...
...The mind olution...
...We do have a democrats should be concerned name of one or another kind of democratic culture of our own in this country (to put about...
...administrators in the name of a self-servprofessional self-regard and private self- Critics concerned with the literature of ing professionalism...
...That is balanced and cool- tossed into the final round of the cultural: book goes straight to headed, but what Dickstein doesn't grap- fray...
...He culture...
...I share Dickstein's admiration for Lionel Trilling, still a sort of lighthouse in the modem conceptual gloom, but Trilling had a tendency to present his ideas with a ginger solemnity as DOUBLE AGENT have led the way to a general intensifica- if they had come over on the Mayflower...
...maddeningly, however, he doesn't skepticism of the deconstructionists...
...For it is not just a matter of keeping citizenship as distinct as possible from the rest of people's identity-or, of keeping the state culONE OF THE WORLD'S BETTER SOCIETIES turally "neutral," as liberals would have us believe...
...It is written in the tra- years the people of this country have Teaching literature is not about the im- dition of the great public critics Dickstein worked through the inclinations they have position of authority because literature is wistfully invoked...
...make intelligent conversation possible...
...A sensitive, learned, and ac- Rahv's style was "ponderous but adroit...
...vation Mill created the widest political European cultural values, with lethal reTHE POLITICS OF GOD sults- 59-95 paper ArailahleJune 199-3...
...At the same time, Reagan "Daniel Maguire not onh, uncovers the REIGN OF GOD apparatchiks like George Will and William common basis of these two religions C-S- so...
...32: 9 April 1993 Commonweal...
...more imagination...
...You would have to call Bromity was a strategy of political and literary begins to glaze over at being told that Philip wich a Burkean socialist, a one-man engagement...
...If Bromwich continues had in that direction to create what he says not about universals, whether universal in this vein, and acquires a bit more of a now deserves to be thought of as "one of truth or universal oppression...
...Lacking places their intellectual agendas in relaof the old Left travestied by the academ- British boundaries, Americans have the tion to their own interests...
...But over the is Groucho, not Karl...
...An acute and written and persuasive:' important study...
Vol. 120 • April 1993 • No. 7
