Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> Yup. One of the reasons I started this list was because I got tired
> of all the cheap "anti-pomo" shots that rightoues class warriors were
> making (and I used to be one of those shooters myself). Criticize JD
> all you like, but all this motive-questioning is embarrassing.
>
_Critical Inquiry_ tends to honor Pope's couplet,
Be not the _first_ by whom the _New_ are try'd, Nor yet the _last_ to lay the _Old_ aside.
My impression from reading the last two or three years of the journal is that "postmodernism," whatever it is, is gradually entering the stage where it can be laid aside. When practiced, it tends to be practiced in diluted ways -- as was the case of New Criticism and History of Ideas in the '60s and the Unity of Science movement in the '40s. That's merely an impression, which I wouldn't want to push very hard. It's been quite a while since I've seen any shock expressed at it however, and that's usually a bad sign for any tradition.
I have never believed (whatever the subject) that any intellectual position can be explained merely by fashion (since the fashion itself then needs explanation). And I certainly agree that "motive-questioning" (as in references to "true believers" etc.) is vile. In political as well as philosophical or literary questions it is not only possible but essential to tell the dancer from the dance.
Carrol