Gregory S. Jay
American Literature and the Culture Wars
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pp. 238. $37.50 $13.95
Reviewed by Ricardo Miguel Alfonso
Writings on the consequences of multiculturalism, political correctness, and the culture wars of American literature and theory are already legion. These seem to be among the most fashionable topics of discussion today, since the existence of new, conflicting views on tradition and the classics in academic life are an indication of a crisis in, and a renewal of, our perception of literary history and culture in general. Political correctness and the so-called “culture wars” are now the metatheoretical framework within which the study of literature is developing.
Gregory Jay’s recent book is a major contribution to this contemporary field of inquiry. The objective of his volume is twofold: to situate the different stances on the culture wars within their respective political and ideological backgrounds, and to define a socially and culturally responsible vision of the effects of several postmodern innovations (in philosophy, epistemology, etc.) on literary studies and academic teaching. For such a valuable project, Jay implicitly relies on his earlier work in America the Scrivener (1990), a book in which he provided the practical application-or reading-of the new strategies that he is now discussing in conceptual terms. In a way, his recent book is a deductive exploration of the issues he raised some years ago; however, the effects it produces are different. This time, the author provides a more explicit theoretical background for the consideration of literary texts as representations. His readings of nineteenth-century American writing have now become a systematic appraisal of multiculturalism and its significance for the renewal of the humanities and literary studies.
American Literature and the Culture Wars is an analysis of right- and left-wing appraisals of postmodern skepticism concerning universal ideals of art. Stressing the essentially political dimension of any approach to literature, Jay claims that “[s]olidarity between different communities is not likely to be produced by a focus on culture, since culture is seen as that which distinguishes, rather than connects, ethnic and social groups” (125). Few statements could be more appropriate to define the current panorama of literary theory and criticism, where markers and distinctive traits are so often called upon in the name of one’s cultural background and past. However, Jay uses this concept of culture as “distinctiveness” in order to reconstruct the multiethnic core of America as a cultural phenomenon. Against the exceptionalist vision of the country, both literary and theoretical texts appear in Jay’s book as the manifestation-formerly repressed, now retrieved by academia-of a ceaseless contest between communities and a struggle for voice and recognition.
The book also includes responses to many well-known critics and novelists, including Henry Louis Gates, Edward Said, Ralph Ellison, and Adrienne Rich, whose writings are representative of literature as a “project” against imperialism and subjection. Jay provides a comprehensive panorama of what Cornel West has called the “new cultural politics of difference.” But most important of all, his analyses tacitly provide new alternatives for critical theory. This book is a significant exploration into our different processes of appropriation, validation, and transmission of literary and cultural values, into a field in which pedagogy functions as a primary means of canon formation and revision.