Language and Politics: An Afterword

Abstract

Student rebellion and the rule of law; student rebellion as part of the swirling social movements of our time; student rebellion as political expression and as object of political analysis; student rebellion as a manifestation of youth culture; student rebellion now and in time past-we have examined the rebellions at Columbia, Nanterre, and elsewhere in all of these contexts, and it would seem hard to believe that there may be other angles from which to view the matter, significant lessons other than those already drawn from the events that have been described. And yet, of course, there are. An Afterword is a final word without being the last word, and so it may not be presumptuous to add still another thought to those already presented-another thought and another hope. One is uneasy at using the word these days, uneasy because-so political has its meaning become-he runs the risk of being stoned by the faction that hates the word and of being clasped to the bosom of the faction that conjures with it to ward off the terror and the evil of change. It is true, as E. M. Forster once wrote, that many of those who speak in praise of order confuse it with orders, and it is true that many of those wlho disparage order confuse it with repression. But it is also true that order-one dares at last to use the word in the hope that it will not be too heavily freighted with the connotations of contemporary politics-may