Argument in Composition. John Ramage
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and the United States response, a reporter called to ask me if the events of Sept. 11 meant the end of postmodernist relativism. It seemed bizarre that events so serious would be linked causally with a rarefied form of academic talk. But in the days that followed, a growing number of commentators played serious variations on the same theme: that the ideas foisted upon us by postmodern intellectuals have weakened the country’s resolve. The problem, according to the critics, is that since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back.
Not so. Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one. The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn’t be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be an apostle of injustice.)
Instead, we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend.
At times like these, the nation rightly falls back on the record of aspiration and accomplishment that makes up our collective understanding of what we live for. That understanding is sufficient, and far from undermining its sufficiency, postmodern thought tells us that we have grounds enough for action and justified condemnation in the democratic ideals we embrace, without grasping for the empty rhetoric of universal absolutes to which all subscribe but which all define differently.
But of course it’s not really postmodernism that people are bothered by. It’s the idea that our adversaries have emerged not from some primordial darkness, but from a history that has equipped them with reasons and motives and even with a perverted version of some virtues. Bill Maher, Dinesh D’Souza and Susan Sontag have gotten into trouble by pointing out that ‘cowardly’ is not the word to describe men who sacrifice themselves for a cause they believe in. Ms Sontag grants them courage, which she is careful to say is a ‘morally neutral’ term, a quality someone can display in the performance of a bad act. (Milton’s Satan is the best literary example.) You don’t condone that act because you describe it accurately. In fact, you put yourself in a better position to respond to it by taking its true measure. Making the enemy smaller than he is blinds us to the danger he presents and gives him the advantage that comes along with having been underestimated.
That is why what Edward Said has called ‘false universals’ should be rejected: they stand in the way of useful thinking. How many times have we heard these new mantras: “We have seen the face of evil”; “these are irrational madmen”; “we are at war against international terrorism.” Each is at once inaccurate and unhelpful. We have not seen the face of evil; we have seen the face of an enemy who comes at us with a full roster of grievances, goals and strategies. If we reduce that enemy to “evil,” we conjure up a shape-shifting demon, a wild-card moral anarchist beyond our comprehension and therefore beyond the reach of any counterstrategies.
The same reduction occurs when we imagine the enemy as “irrational.” Irrational actors are by definition without rhyme or reason, and there’s no point in reasoning about them on the way to fighting them. The better course is to think of these men as bearers of a rationality we reject because its goal is our destruction. If we take the trouble to understand that rationality, we might have a better chance of figuring out what its adherents will do next and preventing it.
And “international terrorism” does not adequately describe what we are up against. Terrorism is the name of a style of warfare in service of a cause. It is the cause, and the passions informing it, that confront us. Focusing on something called international terrorism—detached from any specific purposeful agenda—only confuses matters. This should have been evident when President Vladimir Putin of Russia insisted that any war against international terrorism must have as one of its objectives victory against the rebels in Chechnya.
When Reuters decided to be careful about using the word “terrorism” because, according to its news director, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, castigated what he saw as one more instance of cultural relativism. But Reuters is simply recognizing how unhelpful the word is, because it prevents us from making distinctions that would allow us to get a better picture of where we are and what we might do. If you think of yourself as the target of terrorism with a capital T, your opponent is everywhere and nowhere. But if you think of yourself as the target of a terrorist who comes from somewhere, even if he operates internationally, you can at least try to anticipate his future assaults.
Is this the end of relativism? If by relativism one means a cast of mind that renders you unable to prefer your own convictions to those of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that’s what makes them our convictions. Relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger.
But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary’s shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end, because it is simply another name for serious thought.
Discussion of Leo and Fish Part I: Some Theoretical Background
We begin with the most controversial element of our discussion: our belief that Fish’s argument is the stronger one and that our grounds for preferring it are not just ideological but professional and technical as well. The first part of this confession is probably less surprising to most than the second part of it. Many readers of this book will find Leo’s argument less persuasive, just as many readers of, say, the conservative newspaper The Washington Times would probably find Fish’s argument less persuasive. The basis for this division is congruent with the different assumptions about argument held by our two authors. Leo would surely claim that our readers have misread his essay and been hoodwinked by Fish because they—that is to say “you”—are in thrall to “moral relativism.’” By the same token, Leo would doubtless find the readers of The Washington Times a more perspicacious lot largely because they have somehow managed to elude indoctrination by a “therapeutic culture” overseen by the intellectual elite—that is, once again, “you.” That is to say, for Leo, the differences between our two hypothetical readings are not so much differences in interpretation as they are differences in meaning. Competent, uncorrupted readers will find the correct meaning in each of the texts, incompetent, corrupt readers will not. There is no room in Leo’s world for Fish’s “rival interpretations” of texts or events because in the end there is only one correct reading.
Fish, meanwhile, would find the differences in the two readings unremarkable, and certainly no matter for scandal. While he would be prepared to argue against a reading of the two essays that deems his argument inferior to Leo’s—indeed one imagines he would be greatly exercised by such a judgment—he would not interpret an unwillingness to acknowledge the superiority of his position as a sign of moral corruption. The Washington Times readers simply constitute a community of readers who share different beliefs and assign different meanings to terms like truth and justice than would an audience of Fish-sympathizers. He would be prepared to present arguments showing why they are wrong and he is right—in effect he does so in his essay—but he would accept at the outset that in his arguments he could not appeal to any set of universal standards adhered to by both his supporters and Leo’s supporters that would underwrite his conclusions and put paid to Leo’s in the eyes of all parties to the dispute. (Because Fish sees the boundaries between communities as far less permeable than we do, he is less optimistic about the prospects for inter-community dialogue than we are.) Leo, meanwhile, assumes that such universals, known to all and perversely ignored by some, do exist, though he is careful not to name them or elaborate on their entailments. Leo’s absolutes to-be-named-later, like religious deities whose names are never to be spoken, are more impressive in absentia than in the flesh.
Our own view inclines us less toward Leo and more toward Fish