Public Access Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics

by BERUBE, MICHAEL

• ISBN13: 9780860916789
• ISBN10: 0860916782
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-06-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

In the years of the Reagan–Bush era, the controversy over ‘political correctness’ erupted on American campuses, spreading to the mainstream media as right-wing pundits like Dinesh D’Souza and Roger Kimball prosecuted their publicity campaign against progressive academics. Michael Bérubé’s brilliant new book explains how and why the political correctness furore emerged, and how the right’s apparent stranglehold on popular opinion about the academy can be loosened.

Traversing the terrain of contemporary cultural criticism, Bérubé examines the state of cultural studies, the significance of postmodernism, the continuing debate over multicultural curricula, and the recent revisions of literary history in American studies. Also included is Bérubé’s witty and self-deprecating autobiographical reflection on why interpretive theory has emerged as an indispensable part of education in the humanities over the past decade

Public Access insists that academics must exercise more responsibility towards the publics who underwrite but often misunderstand their work and its significance. Taken seriously as a potential audience, Bérubé argues, such publics can be weaned from their present inclination to believe the distortions and half-truths peddled by the right’s ideologues. The goal of such ‘public access’ criticism is not just a better environment for teachers and scholars, but a world in which education itself achieves its proper place in a society committed to equality of opportunity and true critical thinking.

Author Biography

Michael Bérubé is the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: American Political Culture and Cultural Politics	p. 1
PC and the Humanities	p. 41
Discipline and Theory	p. 43
Winning Hearts and Minds	p. 59
Exigencies of Value	p. 87
Critical Theory in the Public Sphere	p. 117
Just the Fax, Ma'am: or, Postmodernism's Journey to Decenter	p. 119
Pop Goes the Academy: Cult Studs Fight the Power	p. 137
Bite Size Theory: Popularizing Academic Criticism	p. 161
At the Closing of the American Century	p. 179
Paranoia in a Vacuum: 2001 and the National Security State	p. 181
It's Renaissance Time: New Historicism, American Studies, and American Identity	p. 203
Disuniting America Again	p. 225
Epilogue: Harvesting the Humanities	p. 243
Index	p. 269
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