MOTIVES AND EXPLANATIONS

I have said that undoing the science/ideology dichotomy in a rigorous and consistent manner has the result of liberating the ideological critic from any obligation to demonstrate that his or her investigations themselves are ideology-free. For as soon as one recognizes that a mode of analysis is neither essentially ideological nor essentially scientific, then the fact that it has an ideological dimension—the fact, say, that its deployment may be motivated by a desire to demystify the legitimations of inequitable social structures—neither enhances nor reduces its credibility qua science. But such liberation does not come without cost. For my critique of ideological essentialism also defuses the kind of attack that practitioners of ideological approaches have frequently leveled against those who eschew such approaches.

In literary studies, the new critics and other formalists whose aesthetic theories exalt the autonomous work of art and devalue attempts to root literary works in the social context in which they arose have frequently been attacked on political grounds. That is to say, their theories have been analyzed in such a way as to "reveal" that formalism is intrinsically right wing or authoritarian.^[42] By the same token, those who have offered objectivist theories of literary interpretation have been attacked as fascist bullies bent on legitimating authority in general and exerting their personal authority over others. Meanwhile, such antiobjectivist approaches as deconstruction have been attacked for being linked theoretically,

and hence politically, to formalism.^[43] Ryan's attempt to reconcile Marxism and deconstruction undertakes to ward off such attacks by linking the deconstructionist critique of language to the essentialist ideological critique of objectivism. (The tendency for contemporary theorists of various stripes to legitimate themselves by stressing their opposition to the bogey of objectivism [or scientific realism] is reminiscent of the attempt by nearly every faction in the seventeenth century to link its enemies to Scholasticism.) Thus the critique of ideological essentialism serves to undermine not only a certain way of understanding history but also the premises of a good many contemporary polemics among literary scholars.

In the historical study of ideas, particularly philosophical and scientific ideas, the counterpart to literary formalism has been the practice of internalist or intellectualist historiography. Practitioners of such an approach have tended to see ideas as solutions to intellectual problems that had themselves arisen in response to previous solutions to still earlier problems, and so on, throughout the history of a disciplinary tradition. Such historians would not deny that individual thinkers may have motivations that arise independently of the self-contained tradition, but these historians have often denied that these motivations—ranging from personal animus to class interests—are relevant to the scientific study of the ideas. They have in fact branded the ideological analysis of ideas as "the genetic fallacy" that is, as a fallacious mode of reasoning that fails to recognize that the truth value of a claim needs to be evaluated independently of that claim's historical genesis. From the perspective of the internalist, therefore, the doggedness of the ideological analyst in stressing the genesis of ideas has been seen as itself ideological rather than scientific. Conversely, the response of Marxists and other ideological critics has been to treat internalist historiography and the invocation of the genetic fallacy as ideological. Thus the intellectualist historian and the ideological historian have both invoked the science/ideology dichotomy, but each was labeling his own work as science and his opponent's work as ideology.

It could be charged, however, that my critique of ideological essentialism is actually a reformulation of the genetic fallacy, one that likewise serves to protect intellectualist history from ideological attack. Although I am advocating ideological criticism, I could thus

be accused of undermining such criticism or, at best, of pleading for a toleration of other approaches and hence of promoting a genteel methodological pluralism that blunts the oppositional force of ideological criticism. Such an objection, however, would miss the point of my enterprise in several crucial respects.

Granted, insofar as my critique of ideological essentialism dissolves the science/ideology polarity, it allows for the examination of ideas in respect to their scientific dimension, their plausibility as solutions to technical problems. It also protects internalist historians or formalist critics from ideological attack insofar as it disallows essentialist claims that their methodology is intrinsically an instance of false consciousness that is mystifying sectional interests. But this is not to deny that the appeal to the genetic fallacy or the appeal to literature as an autonomous object of study can be motivated by a repugnance for progressive politics. (Although neither the appeal to the genetic fallacy nor the appeal to the autonomy of the literary text disallows contextual analysis, both tend to disparage it.) Nor is it to deny that in a given context the relationship between a given writer's rejection of cultural studies or ideological criticism as a legitimate scholarly undertaking, on the one hand, and that writer's politics, on the other hand, can be demonstrated by responsible techniques of ideological criticism.

What the contextual approach to ideological criticism does not allow is the claim that those who invoke the genetic fallacy or who advocate intellectualist historiography or formalist criticism are ipso facto right wingers by dint of the logic of their intellectualism or formalism or that the ideological dimension of their work necessarily undermines its scientific value. But since the scientific value of intellectualist historiography or formalism can be examined in scientific terms, the critic can legitimately undertake to demonstrate that the intellectualist or formalist approach is, in any given instance, too narrow to be scientifically satisfactory, too narrow, that is, to provide an adequate explanation even by the criteria of the discipline in question.^[44]

Now, it could be observed that since I grant that the separation of scientific analysis from ideological analysis can be useful to enemies of ideological criticism and social progress, then my analysis in this chapter can be embraced and used by the academic right wing and by the political right wing. But this is to say no

more than that my analysis is subject to intellectual co-optation by those whose politics I oppose. This is an inevitable consequence of the co-optability of ideas and hence a confirmation of my argument. But just as this fact does not amount to a scientific challenge to my position, neither does it have potency as a political challenge to the approach that I am offering.

The fact is that those who do not want to do ideological analyses but who want to do intellectualist history do not need my analysis to justify themselves since they can either ignore the demands of contextualist history or appeal to the genetic fallacy. Indeed, the genetic fallacy has long been available as a justification for doing intellectualist or internal history.

What I am doing is taking the genetic fallacy and bringing it over to the other side, using it not as a basis for excluding the social and political context but as a basis for including it in a responsible way and thereby depriving the intellectualist historians of their chief theoretical weapon against ideological criticism. That is to say, my critique of ideological essentialism, insofar as it resembles the genetic fallacy, amounts to an intellectual co-optation of that position. For I am using the undoing of the science/ideology dichotomy not as a way of rejecting ideological criticism but as a way of promoting it.

Moreover, I am able to carry out this intellectual co-optation openly and without having to deny that I am motivated by interests. For one thing, I am motivated by professional interests and hope that the method advocated here will be adopted by others, who will thereby enhance my professional status. I also hope that my arguments in this chapter will help to justify my historical approach, both in this book and in other writings.

If we could tell, once and for all, that a given philosophical theory, scientific hypothesis, or literary style is intrinsically linked to authoritarian politics or a hierarchical social structure, then historical investigations that uncovered the actual ideological functioning of each theory, hypothesis, or style in its specific historical context would be superfluous—mere mechanical "verifications" of the results stipulated by theory. That is to say, our understanding of the logic of each structure would allow us to know in advance how it served sectional interests—whether those of a given social class, gender, race, or profession. Theory would replace history,

and there would be no significant work left for historians who were committed to ideological criticism.

My critique of ideological essentialism uses historical arguments to justify a historically grounded ideological criticism. It thereby provides ideological criticism with a rationale and a program. I have just acknowledged professional motives for advocating the version of ideological criticism that I have been advocating—namely, the desire to justify and promote my own work in the area of ideological criticism and cultural studies. This work, in turn, is motivated, at least in part, by the larger and more traditional political aims that have often been shared by ideological critics—namely, the desire to unmask the various ways in which shifting hegemonic forces have attempted to present the social and political status quo as natural, logical, or inevitable. I want more people to carry out such inquiries and more people to learn from them. But happily, once we have dissolved the science/ideology dichotomy—not just rhetorically, but in actual practice—then the fact that my motives are not disinterested will not necessarily affect the credibility of my claims. I have advanced them in the language of intellectual inquiry, and, although they are not disinterested, neither are they essentially ideological. For they also claim to be science and therefore ask to be evaluated as such.