The minimal core of what is being sought, found, and denounced in the victimary discourse that dominates cultural studies today is exclusion from dialogue. The repeated accusations of sexism, racism, not to speak of ableism, ageism, sizeism… reflect–beyond fashion and self-interest–the resentment of those who, whatever their concrete sufferings, were until recently not invited to participate in conversations concerning them. The withering sarcasm of many of these analyses demonstrates with vengeful joy that the formerly excluded can wield the rapier of polemic discourse as well as the former excluders.
In
the process, the historical parameters of failures of reciprocity tend
to be given short shrift. Historical justifications, however plausible,
lack conviction in our post-historical times. The postmodern era begins
with the Holocaust, which demonstrates the obscenity of
making historical excuses for antisemitism. But the same argument can be
made for colonials, people “of color,” women, homosexuals… Equanimity
in the face of denial of reciprocity is no longer acceptable. The ethics
of past and present must be held to the same moral test: the linguistic
reciprocity of the originary scene, the free and equal exchange of
signs.
The
enduring contribution of contemporary victimary discourse is to force
the reframing of our cultural conversation to include everyone. This
trend reflects with new clarity the originary moral truth that
discursive reciprocity is the de facto horizon of all
cultural discourse, including political discourse. This does not imply
economic equality, although the presence of all parties in the political
debate surely influences economic policies. The radical change in the
economic sphere is not that inequalities of status will be abolished,
but that they will henceforth have to be explained, and in a sense,
justified, to those who are disadvantaged by them.
This new understanding of public conversation is no abstraction; it is currently being imposed by the legal system. To choose an example from my own sphere of activity, University personnel dossiers that in the past contained confidential documents are now open to the party under evaluation. The principle is if you intend to fire me, you have to tell me exactly why.
The
model of the social order this suggests is radically different from
anything we might have conceived even a few decades ago. Status has been
detached from conversational exclusion. We appear to be demonstrating
that the moral reciprocity of the exchange of signs can be indefinitely
extended without the nightmares entailed by attempting to impose the
distributive equality of things. The right to participate in the
conversation is not tantamount to political equality, let alone economic
equality. But if it does not mean the elimination of all injustice, it
does signal the expulsion of sacrificial, victimary structures from
modern society.
This
means a return to civility; arguments concerning perceived injustices
should no longer impute exclusionary intentions to one’s opponents. But
less obviously, the abolition of cultural restrictions to dialogue also
implies that market values will increase in importance.
Only the criteria of the marketplace can provide material for the
objective evaluation of an employee who can read–and contest–the
contents of his or her personnel dossier. Once all cultural values are
equally “appreciated,” the only remaining criterion of evaluation is
that of the market–not the monopoly capital monolith of
nineteenth century socialism, but the fragmented and indefinitely
proliferating market of our own era. Our debt to the Holocaust and to
the ensuing postwar liberation struggles tends to make us forget that
the conditions for a post-sacrificial society are economic as well as
social, and that only our consumer society‘s production of wealth provides the material mediations that allow us to respect each other’s cultural diversity.
The Left wants to educate children directly for the newly universal cultural conversation. Hence it gives priority to fostering unconditional reciprocal recognition through such policies as including handicapped children in ordinary classrooms, promoting understanding for “non-standard” life-styles, emphasizing minority contributions to history, avoiding competition and hierarchy, making class advancement automatic, attributing failure to “learning disabilities.” Ideally, these policies should be implemented in an all-inclusive public school system, so that the incipient dialogue include all children. Given the decline in the public teaching environment, however, most parents with money or ambition send their children to private schools, leaving the cultural emphasis of the public schools as a compensation for lack of achievement.
The
Right’s idea of education is limited to building a foundation for
marketable skills (“the basics”) while inculcating cultural knowledge
and values that stress the unity and the underlying non-sacrificiality
of the national culture. In order to make this agenda available to the
general population, the Right favors voucher programs to permit pupils
to attend private (or enhanced public) schools of their parents’ choice.
For the marketplace to function effectively, it must operate within a society that not only shares a set of general norms, but has evolved means of negotiating cultural differences. But the Left’s emphasis on mutual recognition over educational content neglects the mediations required between the (cultural) exchange of signs and the (economic) exchange of things. Differences in abilities should not be denied but encouraged. The value of ranking pupils in a given discipline includes helping the lower-ranked to find their place in another. But even if this is not possible, sacrificing the learning potential of the more gifted generates not mutual respect but resentment.
The decline of our educational level with respect to other industrialized countries should suffice to convince those not yet persuaded that it is urgent to invest our energies in preparing children for the marketplace. The postmodern Zeitgeist–and the continued expansion of consumer society–are far more effective than the schools in teaching not mere tolerance but cultural interaction. Those white kids with their caps on backward that I talked about last week didn’t acquire their taste for minority culture in the classroom.
The very openness of its racial and ethnic tensions insures that the United States will remain a model of polycultural integration. Our cultural conversation is arguably richer than any other; we must educate our children to profit from these riches in the world marketplace.
