from her tense, irritable husband, who isrnill-at-ease among guards he finds “scarierrnthan the prisoners,” Angela grows morernand more interested in )ean, who is mysterious,rnvigorous, alive. Fed up, Paul finallyrnkicks Jean out of the house, hopingrnthis will nip Angela’s interest in the bud.rnIt doesn’t, of course; Angela starts seeingrnJean behind her husband’s back.rnReleased from jail, the black Muslimrnquickly gets arrested again for “steering”rn—giving the location of a drug denrnto an undercover cop. Although this inrnitself is a trivial offense, the inmate nowrnfaces a three-year sentence because of hisrnlong rap sheet. He believes, with somernreason, that the system has been unfairrnto him, since the arresting cop repeatedlyrnnagged him for the location of therndrug den. Infuriated, the prisoner goesrnberserk and “shanks” one of Paul’s colleagues,rna well-liked white officer, in thernface. The guards—including a reluctantrnPaul—decide to mete out a punishmentrnthat will sfick. In a scene reminiscent ofrnAbner Louima’s beating, Clarence Ross,rnPaul, and several other guards enter thernprisoner’s cell wearing white rubberrngloves and pummel and torture him almostrnto death. When one of the guardsrnpulls out a switchblade and proposes tornkill him, Paul makes an exit, saying hernwill have no part of it. His astonishedrncolleagues watch him leave, perhapsrnwondering whether they should let Paulrnget away. In the end, they decide not tornkill the prisoner, but we see how the jusficernsystem breeds two different kinds ofrnrage—the prisoner has been driven madrnby a penal code he could not understandrnor endure; the guards go wild because ofrnthe system’s failure to deal with rats thernway it should.rnAlthough he takes part in the beating,rnPaul likes to believe that he is above thernsavage hatred that almost drives his colleaguesrnto kill the prisoner. But Paulrnhimself, though he will not admit it,rnturns out to harbor the same elementalrnfear and hatred that grip his colleagues.rnTroubled by Angela’s coolness towardrnhim, Paul starts following her and studyingrnher ever}’ move. After seeing his wifernleave Jean’s place one night, Paul stormsrnin, revolver in hand, and confronts thernHaitian, demanding to know if he sleptrnwith Angela. When Jean, with his usualrndiffidence, fails to respond right away,rnPaul shoots him in the chest. Despite hisrndesire to be magnanimous, Paul, like thernwhites in Native Son, believes the worstrnabout the black outsider without anv evidencernat all. If Jean spent time alonernwith Angela, he must have slept with her,rnjust as Bigger Thomas must have rapedrnMary Dalton once he had a chance to bernalone with her, momentarily free fromrnthe constraints imposed by white society.rnThe difference now is that by acting onrnhis prejudice, Paul ruins his own life asrnwell as destroying Jean’s.rnThings have come a long way sincernthe days of Richard Wright, when scaredrnblack fugitives were always the ones onrnthe receiving end of prejudice and hatred.rnToday, the sharpest division of allrnmay be that between Uncle Toms andrnblack thugs, as Joe Brewster reminds usrnin the final moments of his film. Somerntime after the beating of the prisoner, thernlaw library receives a phone call purportedlyrnfrom “Captain Thompson,” requestingrnto see Clarence Ross upstairs inrnthe prison’s gym. When he enters therngym and the door slams shut behindrnhim, he confronts not the police captainrnbut six or seven large-bodied inmates.rnAmong them is a certain black Muslim,rnwho greets him with the words, “Irnknow a thousand motherf-—s just likernyou . . . “rnMichael Washburn writes fromrnNew York City.rnLITERATURErnA Future forrnCritical Theory?rnby George WatsonrnAquestionnaire about future needsrnrecentiy sent to a department of literaturernprovoked at least one interestingrnreply: “We do not need a new post inrnCritical Theor)’. Theor’ is Old Hat,”rnAn old hat, they say, is better than arnbare head, and there can be no quarrelrnwith the view that critical theory is old. Itrnhas been so since Plato and Aristotle. Ifrnthe hat bought in Paris a generation agornand more now looks a trifle battered,rnthere is an obvious solution to that. Getrna new one. But it might, before shopping,rnbe usefiil to ask what we are lookingrnfor. I want to propose here a newrnkind of critical theor)’, and one not to bernfound in Paris or, so far, an^jwhere else.rnBeing a proposal, and nothing more, it isrnnot meant to commit anyone. Therernwill still be those who prefer the oldrnwear, and there will still be those whornprefer to go bare-headed. What I propose,rnin any case, is not yet in stock; it isrnhardly even a design. Perhaps it is morernlike the sketch a fashion-designer pencilsrnin on a loose sheet to help him to think;rnand it may easily hirn out, as such thingsrndo, to be an old design, half forgotten.rn”Where is the wisdom we have lost inrnknowledge?” as T.S. Eliot asked in ThernRock, and “Wliere is the knowledge wernhave lost in information?” Theory oncernasked or forced us to forget a lot, and itrnmay not be easy to recover it. As arnphilosopher once said, some of the hardestrnwork a philosopher has to do is to getrnback to where the question began.rnTo take a few steps back, then, in orderrnto advance: the Parisian phase in criticalrntheory, now ending, was above all a denialrnof knowledge, an elaborate exercisernin skepticism. In France, in that era, thernsubtext was political skepticism: first ofrnthe French Communist Party, as thernheroism of the Resistance years faded;rnthen of Marxism; then of socialism inrngeneral. Critical theory in that style wasrnpost-Marxist, and it began in skepticism.rnIndeed, skepticism needed a theoryrnmore than theory needed skepticism.rnMarxism itself, in its day, had beenrnequivocal on the issue of knowledge. Itrnhad scorned bourgeois objectivity as anrnillusion; it had invoked ideology as arnterm of instant dismissal, a bent lookingglassrnthat always distorted and never toldrnthe tiuth. But at that point an embarrassingrncontradiction arose. For Marxism offeredrnits own theory of history as true,rnand certainly true; in that classic tiirn-ofcenturyrnphrase “Scientific Socialism,”rnthe adjective was supposed to mean certainrnand proven. So all ideologies werernfalse except the one that proclaimed thatrnthey were. It was inevitable that suchrnconvenient self-exemption should onernday be questioned; and when it was, itrncompleted the skeptical view and madernit universal. At that point, a generationrnago, all hope of certain knowledge,rnwhether in morality or the arts, wasrnthought to have collapsed.rnThe need now, in a post-socialist age,rnis to find a successor to that failed attemptrnto explain or justify knowledge,rnand in attempting it I shall knowinglyrn44/CHRONICLESrnrnrn