Professional Correctness: Literary Studies And Political Change

Few literary scholars have won the fame--or notoriety--achieved by Stanley Fish. As a founder of Reader Response Theory, critic of what he calls free speech ideology, and activist chair of the English Department at Duke University, he has become an icon to a new generation of leftist literary critics--and a demon to right-wing opponents of "tenured radicals," as Roger Kimball called them. How ironic, then, that Fish now makes a powerful case that politics and literary studies don't mix. In Professional Correctness, Stanley Fish challenges both left- and right-wing thinkers by directly attacking the notion that literary studies might engage and influence political issues. All the sniping over politically driven scholarship, he argues, isn't worth the ammunition; given the structure of both politics and the academy, literary scholarship simply will not reach an audience that might convert it into effective political action. Once the boundary between literature and the day's political debates was porous, or even nonexistent. Now, "deprived of a secure if unofficial place in the corridors of government and commerce," he writes, "literary activity is increasingly pursued in the academy where proficiency is measured by academic standards and rewarded by the gatekeepers of an academic guild." This professionalization has guaranteed a permanent place for students of literature, but it has also taken them out of the political sphere--and activist scholars cannot wish that fact away "by changing the object of one's attention from poems to T.V. shows or by changing the name of the literary enterprise to, say, cultural studies." There are no paths from the academy to political power. By the same token, right-wing attacks on recent trends in literary scholarship are woefully misguided; there is no danger of the cultural studies professoriat working a revolution in America. Fish goes on to argue that academic literary scholars should not try to justify their profession by appealing to some larger goal, but should celebrate and extend the traditions of their craft, extolling the pleasures and challenges handed down by their predecessors. Written with rare grace and incisive wit, Professional Correctness presents Fish at his provocative, unpredictable, and full of good sense. It is a book that challenges the profession of literary criticism even as it glories in its pleasures.