both but because we are, in largenmeasure, indifferent to all religion. Wendo not, after all, believe in toleratingngroups which disagree with us on fondamentalnissues: religious “bigots,” racists,nfascists, nazis, aristocrats.nCapitalist democracy has brought unprecedentednprosperity to the West. Wenhave every reason to be proud of ournachievements. If man lived by breadnalone, ours would be the most blessednsociety since Eve persuaded Adam tonstand up for his rights. If any man couldnhave defended democratic capitalism asna self-sufficient social creed, it wouldnhave been Michael Novak. Unformnately,ncapitalism rests more securely onnWrecking CreationnDenis Donoghue: Ferocious Alphabets;nLittle, Brown & Co.; Boston.nEdward Weeks: Writers and Friends;nLittle, Brown & Co.; Boston.nRussell Fraser: A Mingled Yarn: ThenLife ofR.P. Blackmur; Harcourt BracenJovanovich; New York.nby Stephen L. TannernK. p. Blackmur, in 1935, definednliterary criticism as “the formal discoursenof an amateur.” How things havenchanged. Literary theory and criticismnare presently enjoying a boom in literamrendepartments, but it scarcely seems anleague for amateurs. To be fully conversantnwith the versions of poststructuralism,nparticularly deconstruction, requiresna professional philosopher’snknowledge of Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger,nWittgenstein, and others, as well asnan understanding of the influence ofnsuch thinkers upon certain contemporarynFrench philosophers and literary theorists.nIt also helps to have more than annDr. Tanner is professor of English atnBrigham Young University.nMandeville’s principle—that private vicenis public good. We have learned to whatnheights of prosperity men can climb,nonce their wills and energies have beennset free, but we have forgotten the oldnlessons of order and stability; in our zealnfor freedom and equality, we havenneglected the aristocratic virtues ofncourage, honor, and loyalty. The freenmarket and democratic processes arentools to achieve our ends, not the endsnthemselves. Novak has done Americannpolitical thought an immeasurable servicenby reopening communication withnthe Old Conservatives, whose warningsnwe, in the time of our greatness, refusednto heed. Dnamateur’s acquaintance with modernnlinguistic theory.nMost people interested in literaturenknow about the New Criticism. In fact,neven though the New Criticism has beennessentially dead as a conscious movementnfor over two decades, its mark can bendiscerned in almost all of the teaching,ninterpreting, and reviewing of literaturenthat goes on today. But relatively few arenaware of how the basic tenets and implicationsnof that approach to criticism havenevolved and transformed in recent years.nMany English professors got off at thenNew Criticism stop, settled in the neighborhood,nand haven’t noticed that thentrain continued on to such stations asnstmcturalism, semiodcs, reader-responsentheory, and deconstruction. The routenhas become increasingly technical andnspecialized. Many passengers who mightnbe inclined to continue the journey can’tneven puzzle out the timetable. But duringnthe last few years, a battle has brokennout that has brought poststructuralism tonpublic attention. It erupted in the pagesnof scholarly journals devoted to criticalntheory and filtered down through journalsnof less rarified content and wider audiencenuntil it reached popular magazinesnsuch as Harper’s, Newsweek, andnnnthe New York Times Book Review. Itneven found its way into two sessions ofn”The Dick Cavett Show.”nOne of the first important skirmishesnoccurred in 1972 in Diacritics when J.nHillis Miller published a devastating’nreview of M.H. Khtzxas’sNatural Supernaturalism:nTradition and Revolution innRomantic Literature. This is a book in thengrand tradition of modern humanisticnscholarship, the tradition of Curtius,nAuerbach, Lovejoy, and C.S. Lewis. Itnwas because of this that Miller attackednit, for his real target was the traditionnitself, which he considers inadequate innits concepts of language, literature,nhistory, and interpretation. This openingnsalvo led to an all-out war in which,naccording to spokesmen for contendingnforces, the very nature of writing and thenfuture of criticism are at issue.nOn one side are the partisans of thenhumanistic tradition, who believe thatnliterature is a reflection of life and thatnthe purpose of criticism is to interpretnand evaluate it under the general assumptionnthat authors have some kind ofnmeaning or criticism of life they wish toncommunicate. On the other side are thenproponents of a radical literary theorynthat undermines all the humanist’s assumptionsnabout relationships betweennauthor and reader, literature and life.nDeconstruction is the term applied tonthis approach, and the French philosophernJacques Derrida, the most discussednnew thinker on either side of the Atlantic,nis the moving force behind it. His influencenhas been most vitalizing among andistinguished group of Yale professors:nGeoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Paulnde Man, and Harold Bloom. Deconstmction,ndrawing heavily upon modernnEuropean theories of language and thennihilistic philosophy of Nietzsche, andnlearning something from existentialism,nargues that all writing is reducible tonlinguistic signs on the page whose meaningsnhave no relationship to the author’snintentions or to the world outside thentext. “There is no outside-the-text,”nDerrida asserts. To explicate any givennpassage, the reader must execute whatnmmmmmmm^WnNovember 1982n