Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:08:57 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Left conservatism?


Left Conservatism?

A specter is haunting U.S. intellectual life," the bulletin warned, "the
specter of Left Conservatism." Students and faculty at the University of
California, Santa. Cruz, returning from winter break found the campus
papered with provocative fliers. They alluded to a specter animated by
"hostility to the anti-foundationalist theoretical work of the 1980s and
1990s" that can be glimpsed in the "anti-theory polemics" of The Nation and
Socialist Review and in "attacks on critical theory" by three individuals:
feminist writers Katha Pollitt and Barban Ehrenreich and physicist Alan
Sokal. (Sokal is best known for submitting a deliberately nonsensical
article to a serious journal, which the journal published---to test the
intellectual standards underlying some fashionable critiques of rationality
and science.

Such "left conservatives" were accused of "an attempt at
consensus-building...that is founded on notions of the real," and of "an
uneasy convergence with the anti-relativists on the right." A workshop on
left conservatism--to which none of the defendants were invited--was
scheduled for January 31 and featured well-known theorists Paul Bové,
Joseph Buttigieg, Judith Butler and Wendy Brown. It seemed to be the
kickoff of a public-relations campaign to reassert the hegemony of
"anti-foundationalism", otherwise known as postmodernism, and to discourage
further impertinence from its increasingly numerous critics on the left.
[Buttigieg is a well-known Gramsci scholar. How poor Gramsci would dragged
into this dubious project is anybody's guess.]

The workshop got off to a very different start, however, when the speakers
arrived at an auditorium filled with people reading a bright red one-page
counterdocument titled "'Left Conservatism' or Left Factionalism?" Signed
by sixteen U.C.S.C. graduate students (including myself), it challenged the
bulletin's characterization of any criticism of "anti-foundationalism,, as
"anti-theoretical" and "conservative" and criticized the organizers'
'establishment of a tribunal for those with different opinions. The
intervention of the counterdocument changed the tone of the workshop, as
speakers fell over themselves backing away from the initial announcement,
leaving the moderator, U.C.S.C. literature professor Chris Connery, with
the dubious credit of its authorship.

As the speakers proceeded with their prepared remarks, it became
increasingly difficult to determine what "left conservatism" actually
meant. Connnery repeated the original indictments, charging in addition
that writers like Politt, Ehrenreich and Sokal (as well as Michael Moore,
whom he accused of "populist liberal centrism") are "anti-sixties" and that
The Nation is "arguably moving to the right" through its association with
them. Bové offered an excellent critique of fellow postmodernist Richard
Rorty. Butler conceded that Pollitt and Ehrenreich don't deserve to be
characterized as conservatives but described a "new orthodoxy" of socially
conservative Marxists who want to revive an "anachronistic materialism" as
a tactic for marginalizing feminist, queer and racial justice politics.
These characters certainly sounded frightening, though it  remains an open
question how many of them actually exist outside, say, the Spartacist
League. Most disturbing was Brown's use of "left conservatism" to
characterize the positions of anyone  who "refused" the insights of her
favorite postmodern theorists--anyone, it turned out, who still wants to
talk about truth, reality, materiality, oppressive social systems,
revolutionary social transformation or the need for a united radical
movement (anyone, in other winds, who disagrees with Brown about these
things).

After the challenge posed by the counterdocument and the criticisms voiced
by a series of students, faculty and activists, it seemed as if a
constructive dialogue might begin. Butler, to her credit, said that since
postmodernism implies a commitment to the continual questioning of
everything, the questioning of postmodernism itself should be welcome.
There was an emerging consensus on all sides that name-calling should be
avoided---at least until Paul Bové re-entered the conversation. Not only
did be defend the term "left conservatism', to describe people like Sokal,
who, he claims, shares the values of Rush Limbaugh, he insisted that
postmodernism is a technical, professional language that nonspecialists
should neither attempt to criticize nor expect to understand.

Which is precisely the problem that many people have with the use of
postmodernism as a political ideology. If you put Bové's claim that it
should be criticized only by properly trained professionals together with
Brown's claim that it defines the parameters of true radicalism in the
present age, you're left with the most brazen vanguardism that has ever set
foot in American political life--a vanguardism, this time, of
institutionally credentialed professionals. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to see
how such a tendency  can be dangerous to the left.

Let me suggest the following propositions: First, political radicalism
shouldn't be defined by epistemological positions, one way or another.
Second, let's stop trying to associate those who disagree with us about
such matters with the right. Finally, there are far more important issues
out there. We need a left broad enough for everyone who is willing to do
something about them, in theory or in practice.

PATRICK SAND

Patrick Sand is a graduate student in the History of Consciousness Program
at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

(This appeared in the March 9, 1998 Nation Magazine)




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