Humanistic Criticism, Prophetic Pragmatism, and the Question of Antifoundationalism – Remarks on Edward Said and Cornel West

Abstract

One of the most important aspects of Edward Said's literary and cultural theory is undoubtedly that he always attempted to return criticism to the world. In spite of numerous attacks on worldly theorizing by proponents of formalist criticism, it seems that the notion of a worldly and oppositional criticism still is crucial for leftist literary and cultural theory. However, this is not enough. This article wants to direct attention to the significance of what could be termed an antifoundationalist and anti- essentialist worldly and oppositional leftist criticism. It is argued that while Said has prepared the ground for the development of a sophisticated worldly criticism, the black philosopher and cultural critic Cornel West illustrates even more clearly the complexity and suggestiveness of the phrase antifoundationalist worldly criticism. The pragmatist West has understood the lessons of antifoundationalism and antireal- ism, yet at the same time he makes clear that a radicalization of neopragmatist anti- foundationalism is less productive than dialectically using it as a kind of corrective of still prevailing vulgarizations of oppositional theory. While it is argued that both ver- sions of worldly and oppositional criticism, Said's as well as West's, are valuable and useful with regard to contemporary counterhegemonic theory, this article also under- scores that a sophisticated worldly criticism ought to prove that it is capable of entering into a dialogue with other theoretical approaches. After the prevalence of theory on the academic and intellectual scene in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, American neopragmatists and antifoundationalists like Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty have argued for a move 'against theory.' This strong reaction against theory is only natural in view of the theory boom of the last three decades, but unfortunately it has produced only a few interesting and fruitful results. The Rortyan demand that we should move against theory and toward narrative (or conversation or even sentimental storytelling), and Fish's insight that we simply do not need theory since everything we need is offered by the world of practice, are provocative and stimulating gestures, but they do not adequately describe the potential and the complexity of what they vehemently reject. Fish has underscored numerous times that while antifoundationalism teaches us a lot, we should not expect too much of it. Above all, we are not sup- posed to expect any consequences of it. Antifoundationalism is a thesis about how epistemological foundations emerge; it tells a story in which it becomes obvious that those foundations are not simply out there, something natural, transhistori-