Michael Lynch argues here that "By abandoning notions like truth and objectivity, many of us in the academy have forgotten the political value of those concepts". In what is both an anti-bush and anti-PoMo screed Lynch seems to equate the fundamental shift towards an anti-absolutist, or relativist, stance in much of the humanities as a causality for the disengagement with the intellectual class from the nitty-gritty of political warfare.
(note this is not a close reading of his paper but my first impressions:)
His argument- well stated and (suspiciously) free of jargon-makes, at first glance, a strong argument for absolute truths in the political (and intellectual) arena. The fallacy is in the fact that I can find no authors that equate a lack of trust in absolute truths or binary world views who also does not point out the fundamental inequities that these same Truths have been used to establish and permit through the creation of hegemonic histories.
In other words, the work that has been done to show post-modern complexities has been done, primarily, in the service of creating a more just world.
The fact of the matter is that work which is being done to show the very in-flux nature of political and social life is also used to fight tyranny and unjust hegemony. Lynch is really just trying to show that he feels that these goals are too revolutionary for the type of moderate liberal (anti-revolutionary) worldview he supports.
Posted by thickeye at September 10, 2004 01:20 AM | TrackBack