To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

civilization it was trumpeted to be by its
ruling class and their lackeys. Quite the
reverse, it was barbaric, and its contemporary
name is "late capitalism." We are, in
other words, in dire moral straits.
To most people the death of the Soviet
and American empires and the end of the
Cold War are welcome events. And whether
one likes capitalism or not, it is extremely
odd to believe that it is in decline, and the
writer herself envisions a world of universal
economic competition, that is, capitalism.
But these are mild fantasies in comparsion
with what follows:
On the other hand, although CIA recruitment
is on the increase, in the academy
we seem to be experiencing an exciting
and progressive development that signals
a very different sort of trend: the
number of canon-busting scholars and
poststructuralist theorists is also on the
increase. A generation of scholars in their
forties, whose social and political consciousnesses
were shaped in the crucible
of the 1960s, has now reached full maturity,
is writing many of the books and articles
we now read, and is attaining (or
seeking to attain) tenured positions in
English and literature departments.
The idea that CIA recruitment, whether
in decline or ascendency, is a major matter
is evidence of the common belief of
Americans that whatever their concern is it
is world class. But that is mere unselfconscious
provincialism. More serious is the
fact that, as usual, capitalism has found a
way to de-fang its most threatening opponents,
for I can think of nothing as likely to
sap revolutionary energy as the pursuit of
tenure. As silly as the passage quoted above
is, it expresses the belief which animates
Pedagogy Is Politics. But let us assume that
the world is worse off than ever, and that
after centuries of struggle men and women
have been enslaved to the most oppressive
of regimes. What will save us? English
departments*. Barbara Foley, the author of
the preceding quotations, says that "the
captains of industry actually need us to do
much of what we do" so "We should not
minimize our importance to ruling-class
hegemony." John Clifford continues this
delusional self-empowerment when he says
that writing is not a value neutral skill, but
"one of the apparatuses through which the
cultural norms and ideological values of
advanced capitalism are reproduced and
legitimized," and since theory undermines
capitalism, Mas'ud Zavarzadeh concludes
that "The politics of resistance to theory is
one of collusion with the oppressive ruling
regime." Such a claim is utterly destructive
of reasonable discussion of anything, but
that is no bar to the inflation of English
department power.
Reading poetry as an atheoretical and
transhistorical discourse produces the
reader as a nonconstrained, self-same
(speaking) subject who is marked by
autonomy and a direct, unmediated
access to the plentitude of the imagination:
an instance of presence free from all
social contradictions. This notion of the
subject is necessary for the maintainance
of the existing exploitative arrangements.
Well, aren't we powerful! All this is innocent
enough in terms of the wider world,
for it doesn't matter one whit to the fate of
capitalism whether English departments in
American universities (for that is what this
is all about) are run by radicals or conservatives.
But it does matter to students, and
on the evidence of this volume radical pedagogy
is a pedagogical disaster.
How do the radicals propose to alter
teaching? Their argument is that the only
way to dismantle the system is to undermine
the idea of legitimate authority, and
that process can begin in the classroom:
"We need to question our own authority."
We, the professoriate, will not determine
what goes on in classrooms, but will make
decisions jointly with students, so that
"standards, expectations, and goals are
negotiated by the teacher and student." The
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