Jacoby

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Review by
James Seckington

    Besides
an additional line on an academic resume or use as a dust magnet on some
forgotten shelf in a university library, today’s humanist scholarship is about
as useful to humanity as silly-putty. Of course, to speak of “use-value” is to
run the risk of being labeled a vulgar marxist by the cool kids on campus and
essentially dismissed as a Neander- thal (as opposed to say, a professional
“marxist literary critic,” i.e., one who sips micro-brews in between sessions
at the regional conference as he lectures a group of first year grad students
on the revolutionary potential of a Friends episode). In today’s post-
modern, post-feminist, post- marxian, post-colonial, post-fill-in- the-blank
world, scholarship need not be useful—just colorful. As Russell Jacoby argues
in his latest book, The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of
Apathy, today’s humanist scholars are no longer animated by a vision of a
new and radically different world founded upon the old values of liberte,
equalite, and fraternite. Instead, he claims, today’s scholars are moved to
produce in the hope of fame, tenure, and office space.

If, as Zack de
la Rocha once rapped, “anger is a gift,” then Russell Jacoby is one generous
fellow. He’s angry as hell in The End of Utopia as he distributes his
gifts like so many molotov cocktails. While some of his students at UCLA,
where Jacoby teaches in the history department, may sport purple mohawks and
pierced pink parts, Jacoby’s rebel stance is far from fashionable. He’s an
old- school radical eagerly “boring from within” an established institution. A
self-imposed outsider, Jacoby tears into the academic scene with the delicacy
of a brain surgeon. His prose glistens with the blood of his cadaver as he
expertly dissects the decaying body of leftist oriented scholarship.

Citing numerous
examples, from the neutral do-nothing stance taken by many western
intellectuals regarding Ayatollah Khom- eini’s death warrant for novelist
Salman Rushdie (and all those involved with the publication of his book
Satanic Verses) on the grounds of cultural relativity; to the proponents
of “ethno-mathematics” who denounce the “Eurocentric” approach to math due to
its “pretense of universality”; to the pop culture pep squad who, shaking
their populist pom-poms, cheer on the corporate forces of mediocrity, Jacoby
richly captures the flavor of the intellectual “left” of today.

To say that
Jacoby is worried about the decline of leftist ideals within the humanities is
an understatement—flipping the pages of this book produce the melancholic
notes of a funeral dirge. Jacoby argues that today’s leftist oriented
academics have turned “utilitarian, liberal, and celebratory.” He reminds us:
“The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market
as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative;
now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once honored independent
intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist. The left once
rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound.”

Perhaps more
importantly, the left once sought a new world where, as Bertrand Russell
articulated one of many incarnations, “the creative spirit is alive, in which
life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to
construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is
possessed by others. It must be a world in which affection has free play, in
which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy
have been dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development of all the
instincts that build up life and fill it with mental delights.”

The left no
longer shares this vision, nor any vision, for that matter. As Jacoby argues
throughout the book, a left without a utopian vision (however nebulous) is a
dead left.

“Once upon a
time,” Jacoby tells us, “leftists and radicals talked of liberation or the
abolition of work.” Today they talk about MTV and the subversive nature of
Madonna. For example, John Fiske writes of the material girl: “Her image
becomes, then, not a model meaning for young girls in patriarchy, but a site
of semiotic struggle between the forces of patriarchal control and feminine
resistance, of capitalism and the subordinate, of the adult and the young.”

“Once upon a
time,” Jacoby tells us, “revolutionaries tried, or pretended to try, to make a
revolution; they harbored a vision of a different world or society. Now dubbed
radical multiculturalists, they apply for bigger offices.” Case in point: M.
Annette Jaimes Guerrero, a California professor who claims that up until
recently Eurocentrism “marginalizes Ethnic Studies or American Indian Studies
or Gender Studies.” Fair enough. But, as Jacoby ponders, “What must be done?
Head for the hills? Blow up the mainstream institutions?” No, rather, Guerrero
states, “American Indian Studies will need to be able to stand on its own as a
fully accredited discipline with departmental status and even with a broader
institutional status.” I guess radical times call for radical measures.

    “Once upon
a time,” Jacoby tells us, liberals and leftists “believed in a new and better
culture for people. No longer. In the name of democracy they anoint the daily
fare of entertainment and movies; their confidence in a transformed future has
evaporated.” From pastel painted strip malls to Star Wars, cultural
studies radicals embrace pop culture artifacts with the enthusiasm of a
Madison Avenue marketer. According to cult studies pin-up boy George Lipsitz,
even good old fashion American consumerism can sow the seeds of revolution. He
writes, “acquisition of consumer goods is no longer posed as a universal
private need, but rather, it becomes part of a class conscious sense of
entitlement to the good things in life.” Lipsitz and company have morphed
Gramsci into Nintendo’s Super Mario—someone please pass the ‘shrooms.

    Jacoby’s
critical eye makes him unique in today’s celebratory intellectual climate.
Jacoby is actually animated by a vision of a new world founded on a belief in
human solidarity and an equality of being. This vision provides the foundation
for the judgments that he passes on his colleagues in The End of Utopia.
While academics have never been much for passing judgments or stating an
opinion on something that might impact present realities, they have
occasionally infused their scholarship with a healthy dose of concern for
their fellow beings and the planet, which supports them. This concern often
led to the passing of judgments, the pointing of fingers, and the general
production of a critical scholarship. For all practical purposes, critical
scholarship no longer exists. To criticize Madonna or even George W. is to
make a claim on the big bad concept known as the universal—to appeal to a
morality, authority, or ideal that exists independent of time and place.

However, as
Jacoby understands all too well, true criticism requires a foundation, a set
of principles, a—dare I say it?—center from which a critique can blossom.
“Once writers and scholars isolate local conditions from universal
categories,” writes Jacoby, “they lose the ability to evaluate them. They
become cheerleaders, nationalists and chauvinists.” Instead of producing any
meaningful critique of the status quo, which, I don’t know, hell, could be
used as a foundation from which to build a movement, today’s young scholars
fill page after page with platitudinous brain spew on how music videos
represent a semiotic struggle in which dominant ideology is both subverted and
reinforced. The lesson of such careful analysis? Watch more music videos,
kiddies, and subvert the dominant paradigm. Working people of the world unite.
You have nothing to lose but your signifiers.

Commenting on
the issue of human freedom, Noam Chomsky once said, “if you assume that there
is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there
is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, etc.,
there’s a chance to contribute to the making of a better world. That’s your
choice.” While Jacoby paints a rather bleak picture of the academic left in
The End of Utopia, he has yet to abandon his hope for a better world. His
vision “evokes neither prisons nor programs, but an idea of human solidarity
and happiness.” It is a vague vision and perhaps a bit simplistic, but a
necessary one at that. As Jacoby concludes, “The effort to envision other
possibilities of life and society remains urgent and constitutes the essential
precondition for doing something.”                    Z