Liberal Enlightenment Research Articles

Is There No King but Custom?

Hubert L. Dreyfus’ interpretation of Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein results in a communitarian understanding of human sociality, ethics, and politics. My contention is that, despite Dreyfus’ own best intentions for a communal toleration based on an ontological relativism and openness, his reading of social practices as embedded and therefore beyond reason must result in a fundamental division between cultures that cannot be bridged by rational means. According to my own interpretation of Heidegger’s politics, this conclusion is disturbing, because it echoes — albeit unintentionally —Heidegger’s attack on Enlightenment liberalism and his support for a politics of finite situatedness, a politics characterized by polemos, that is, confrontation and the harsh differentiation of one community from another. I contend that Dreyfus’ ontological communitarianism undermines the view that reason in ethics and politics can allow us to transcend our finitude and resolve our differences through a rational process, and that therefore an actual politics based on his principles will end up destroying the very openness he supports. I conclude by suggesting that we need to reconcile reason with finitude in a nuanced dialectic.

Uses of The Liberal Tradition: Comments on “Still Louis Hartz after All These Years”

Phillip Abbott is too modest. His essay seeks to defend, against its many critics, Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America, which was published half a century ago. Abbott bases his defense mainly on his discovery that certain concepts of Hartz's—“the liberal enlightenment,” “the American democrat”—remain valid and helpful in explaining the politics of the 1960s and after. Yet the merits of Abbott's interpretation of that phase in our political history rise or fall on his own thinking, not Hartz's—his use of Hartz's book, and not Hartz's book itself. If Hartz's work gets him where he wants to go better than Judith Shklar's or Rogers Smith's does, that's fine. Gratitude is a worthy sentiment, too often forgotten in our narcissistic academic culture. But by now, Hartz is mainly a figure of historical interest. I'm less interested in whether Louis Hartz was right than in whether Phillip Abbott is right—not about Louis Hartz but about the events of 1960s and their legacies.Sean Wilentz is Dayton-Stockon Professor of History and director of the Program in American Studies at Princeton University (swilentz@Princeton.edu).

The Rise and Fall of Anglo‐America

The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America Eric P. Kaufmann. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. The rise and fall of Anglo is a familiar theme in classic American letters. Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of Good (1682), a colonial best-seller, tells with religious trembling of captivity among Native Americans. Though distressed by terrifying Others, she retained enough spiritual discipline to wonder about worthiness of Puritan culture brought over to howling wilderness. Richard Henry Dana's narrative Two Years Before Mast (1840) expresses revulsion at ways of Spanish in California-and then comes to appreciate them, especially after he sees them being defrauded by crude, predatory Yankees. Recent decades have offered books like E. Digby Baltzell's class/caste-oriented The Protestant Establishment (1965), Michael Novak's eloquently irritated The Rise of Unmeltable Ethnics (1972), and Peter Schrag's journalistic meditation The Decline of Wasp (1973). In current year, we have seen Samuel Huntington's alarmist Who We Are (2004), which argues that the persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. He believes that Latinos are refusing to assimilate and rejecting Anglo-Protestant values that built American dream. He calls for renewed vigor in Americanizing them to values he sees them rejecting. Victor Davis Hanson, another fearful voice, draws upon personal experience with farm laborers, ethnically mixed family members, and academy in his viscerally passionate Mexifornia (2003). He mourns California's cultural erosion, blaming illegal immigration, corporate greed that craves cheap labor, and academic race-manipulators who exploit young in pursuing separatist identity politics. A timely rebuff to such lamentations about American's browning culture came with satirical film A Day without a Mexican (2004), a gringos-left-behind exploration of sudden disappearance of California's Latinos (now one-third of state's population). Can a British observer calmly enlighten American readers on these contentious issues of ethnic dominance and assimilation? Eric P. Kaufmann, lecturer in politics and sociology at University of London, has earned distinction as an intensely analytic, theory-laden, and well-read commentator on issues of ethnic dominance. In this book, he helps us step back from turbulent present, offering a frame bounded by important ideological developments in period from 1920 to 1960. Countering common wisdom that today's multiculturalism and diversity industries merely extend 1960s civil rights agitation or retaliate against triumph of Reaganism, this book argues that cosmopolitan, universalist ideals first grew out of internecine conflict within Anglo-Protestant soul. They predate more visible response to pressures exerted by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other movements inspired by death of Jim Crow. This book carefully shows us that by 1920, an assortment of ideological actors had begun to chip away at older WASP forms of ethnic dominance, formulating universahst arguments that reflected liberal Enlightenment ideals. They include figures like Horace M. Kallen, Randolph Bourne, John Dewey, and Jane Adams as secular thinkers, in addition to a variety of ecumenical and social gospel church movements that bridged gaps between competing faith traditions linked to national and cultural ethnicities. These thinkers were also joined by modernist movements in arts, and clusters of literary artists like Greenwich Village Bohemians and west coast beats who reveled m their individualities and popularized notion of self-chosen cultural identity. The 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, is an important watermark reflecting victory of liberal churches, secular reformers, and artistic movements. …

How Hermeneutical is He? A Gadamerian Analysis of Richard Rorty

In the final section of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty refers hermeneutics as what will happen once we give up our futile attempts at trying be epistemological. Two of the concepts, and conversation, he develops there substantiate his claims about the viability of hermeneutics remain central in subsequent writings.1 But in what sense are these specifically hermeneutical concepts? Since both have their roots in a Gadamerian hermeneutics,2 I will compare them Gadamer's conceptions, horizon and dialogue, respectively.3 My purpose is show how Rorty's vocabulary glosses over important and deep hermeneutical assumptions made by Gadamer, and that it is Rorty's failure complete his hermeneutical turn that leads some problematic conclusions, conclusions that even Rorty is uncomfortable with. Both Rorty and Gadamer agree that we cannot make sense of what it means attain a position neutral toward our own (Gadamer's term) or (Rorty's term). Rorty builds on Gadamer's claims about the ubiquity of tradition in order emphasize that being fully grounded in one's own community pre-establishes who one regards as adequate interlocutors. To those outside of one's community one simply does not feel the need justify oneself. Rorty names Nazis and three-year olds as examples of those falling into this category. According Rorty, one always has in mind the group of people whom one believes one must justify oneself. This provides him with his definition of ethno-centrism, which he uses modify his earlier use of Ethno-centrism means: to divide up the human race into the people whom one must justify one's beliefs and the others. The first group-one's ethnos-comprises those who share enough of one's beliefs make fruitful conversation possible (Rorty 1991: 30). One is happily ethno-centric when one admits that there is no or meta-audience whom one can justify oneself but only audiences one deems competent, based on the assumptions of one's very own community. Admitting the circularity implied therein, Rorty retorts that this is a circularity no-one can avoid. Consequently, instead of directing our philosophical energy towards justifying ourselves an ideal or universal community, Rorty advocates that we use our energy justify ourselves our own local, contingent community. Practically, this means that rather than putting our faith in the possibility of achieving rational convergence with all humanity past, present and future-the of traditional philosophy-we should spend our energy cultivating hope, a hope that our liberal community will triumph and spread inclusion rather than exclusion, tolerance rather than violence. True his pragmatic sensibilities, Rorty conjectures that the real fear behind forsaking epistemological commitments is that it will lead political chaos. We may not, for example, be able justify Western enlightenment liberalism against totalitarianism. That is say, there is no possibility for a non-circular argument that proves our starting point is better than the Nazi's. Contextually-based opinions are all we can garner demonstrate (as opposed rationally argue) that liberalism is better than totalitarianism. Rorty insists that rather than seeking metaphysical comfort by vainly attempting construct a universally valid foundation, what we need instead is develop hope, bravery, and honesty face up the fact that there is no non-circular argument in defense of any belief. It is Rorty's emphasis that there is no justification period (i.e., an community) only justification for us (i.e., local communities) that leads him deny that changes of belief amongst communities can be rational. This is due the fact that rationality is so wedded the internal norms and assumptions of a community that when it comes substantive change amongst communities the difference between reasons and causes collapses: There is . …

The morality of everyday life: rediscovering an ancient alternative to the liberal tradition

In The Morality of Everyday Life, Thomas Fleming offers an alternative to the enlightened liberalism espoused by thinkers as different as Kant, Mill, Rand, and Rawls. These thinkers maintain that a problem should be looked at from an objective point of view and a decision made from a distant perspective that is both rational and universally applied to all comparable cases. Fleming instead places importance on the particular, the local, and moral complexity. For Fleming, postmodernism, which began with Nietzsche, is not the answer to moral dilemmas either. Fleming advocates a return to premodern traditions, such as those exemplified in the texts of Aristotle, the Talmud, and the folk wisdom in ancient Greek literature, for a solution to ethical predicaments. In his view, liberalism and postmodernism ignore the fact that human beings by their very nature refuse to live in a world of universal abstractions wherein the attachments of friends, neighbors, family, and country make no difference. Premodern thinkers, unlike those since the seventeenth century, recognized that particular obligations arise from specific circumstances and experiences.

The Listening Subject of Japanese Modernity and His Auditory Double: Citing, Sighting, and Siting the Modern Japanese Woman

From approximately 1887 through World War 1, a surge of commentaries were written and circulated in the Japanese print media about the strange and unpleasant (mimizawarina) sounds issuing from the mouths of schoolgirls. Male intellectuals of various affiliations located the source of their dismay in verbending forms such as texo, noxo, dawa that occurred at the end of utterances. They called such forms schoolgirl speech (jogakuseikotoba). It was jarring to their ears; it sounded vulgar and low class; its prosodic features were described as fast, contracting, and bouncing with a rising intonation: and it was condemned as sugary and shallow. Using the newly available modern textual space of reported speech (Voloshinov 1973), male intellectuals cited what they scornfully referred to as teyo-dawa speech (texoduwii kotoba) in an effort to convince parents and educators to discourage it as a corrupt form of speaking. The irony here is that main of the forms then identified as are today associated with s language, or the feminine style, indexing the figure of the generic urban middle-class woman. The contemporary discourse of Japanese women's language erases this historical emergence from social memory to construct women's language as an essential and timeless part of culture and tradition. Public opinion, responding to a perceived social change toward gender equit recurrently deplores what once again is described as linguistic corruption and the cultural loss of an authentic women's language. As a demographic category. the term referred to girls and young women of the elite classes who attended the women's secondary schools that had been instituted as part of the early Meiji modernization project inspired by Western liberal Enlightenment thought. By the late 19th century, women's secondary education had been incorporated into the state s mandatory education system, and schoolgirls became the immediate and direct target of the state s constitution of the (gendered) national subject b> educating them

Jewish Intellectuals and the Deep Places of the Imagination

This essay considers whether American Jewish intellectuals have achieved the sublime combination of emotion and intellect characteristic of the very greatest art. Lionel Trilling is a keystone figure here, one cut off from his Jewish past by assimilationist tendencies and tied to an unfulfilling middle class liberalism. Trilling's only novel, Th e Middle of the Journey, succeeds as an intellectual exploration yet fails in portraying full-bodied characters emblematic of the "deep places of the imagination." Only occasionally does Trilling begin to touch upon the fullest artistic vision, notably in his short story "Of This Time of That Place," and in his literary-critical discussion of Isaac Babel. The essay argues that Trilling's lack of artistic success is emblematic of those who followed in his wake. One such figure is Alfred Kazin, a writer of potent emotion but limited intellectual achievement. Irving Howe, another metaphorical son of Trilling, is comparable intellectually, but, like Trilling, is emotionally detached from his roots. As celebrated as the New York intellectuals may be, the essay argues that they fail to achieve works of lasting artistic greatness.

Friends and Citizens: Essays in Honor of Wilson Carey McWilliams. Edited by Peter Dennis Bathory and Nancy L. Schwartz. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 311p. $50.00.

Wilson Carey McWilliams is certainly one of the great teachers of American political thought in his generation. The Idea of Fraternity in America (1973), as well as his series on presidential elections and many essays, has captivated both his students and his colleagues. There are, of course, many prominent figures who have addressed the complexity of political thought in America in recent years but few whose influence is acknowledged so centrally on these terms. Of course, it is sometimes difficult for those influenced by a master teacher to convey thoughts once they are removed from the electricity of the seminar or conference. McWilliams is a good example of this phenomenon. At one level his understanding of American political culture is Whitmanesque. McWilliams is not primarily a jeremiadic thinker and much of his writing has the same breezy celebration of America as Whitman's. Added to this perspective is an intense appreciation of Mark Twain's comedic iconoclasm. Both foci are juxtaposed with what is his central preoccupation, a deep attachment to the Puritan vision of the human experience. McWilliams generalized the latter in The Idea of Fraternity in America as a tradition of fraternal politics that was enriched by other European immigrants. Although “Puritanism…was here first,” (113) it was superceded, though not replaced, by the powerful symbols of “Enlightenment liberalism.” McWilliams' model of cultural dualism offered the first systematic critique of Hartz's liberal society thesis and has since been replicated and expanded by many others including Robert Bellah and Rogers M. Smith. In fact, there is some irony in his alternative to Hartz's single-factor explanation of American culture, since it returned the study of American political thought to the traditional dualist perspectives developed by Progressive scholars, who are villains in McWilliams' own reading of American political thought. Moreover, McWilliams' focus on Puritan conceptions of community has led him to an attachment to premodern conceptions of politics as well as to a decided antipathy toward the political world of the American founders.

Image (and) Nation: The Russian Exotic in 19th-Century French Travel Narratives

Drawing from a variety of nineteenth-century French travel narratives on Russia, the paper “Image (and) Nation: The Russian Exotic in Nineteenth-Century French Travel Narratives” explores the idea of nation as a cultural construction and narrative. The paper attempts to address in particular the role of ``exotic othering'' in creating French national identity in the decades following the Revolution. Where post-Revolutionary France discovered a formidable political and military enemy in tsarist Russia, the French likewise viewed the continued enslavement of the Russian peasants as the example par excellence of tyrannical government. Russia thus appeared in the eyes of many a French traveler as the diametrical opposite of post-Revolutionary France founded on liberal Enlightenment ideals. In bringing to light both widely-read and lesser-known French accounts of travel to Russia, this paper suggests how a developing French national identity coalesced in part around the articulation of cultural difference from the Russian Other. Evoking the critical work of Homi K. Bhaba, Edward Said, Benedict Anderson and Lisa Lowe, the paper describes tropes of the exotic as they appear in these nineteenth-century French travel narratives on Russia and suggests how such narrative depictions of the Russian landscape, the Russian woman, and Russians in general established and reaffirmed – through an implicit cultural comparison – the idea of the French nation.

The Limits of the Nation-State, The Possibilities of Asian American Literature

THE 1996 PUBLICATION OF LISA LOWE'S MONUMENTAL WORK, IMMIGRANT ACTS, profoundly reconfigured the terms of Asian American literary and cultural studies in its theorization of the relationship between the state, capital, and culture.1 In particular, Lowe's book made an engagement with Enlightenment liberalism's relationship to the nation-state a crucial concern. Although the title of David Leiwei Li's book alludes most obviously to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, actually Imagining the Nation is more directly a contribution to the set of discussions articulated in Lowe's text.2 Li argues that Asian American racialization is produced out of an incongruity inherent in the practice of the nation-state: the tension between, on the one hand, the promise of universal citizenship and, on the other, the reality of differential access to the state based on race. Asian American literature, then, registers this inconsistency, sometimes expressing the racializing func-

Republicanism, Socialism, and Democracy in Britain: The Origins of the Radical Left

Republicanism, Socialism, and Democracy: The Origins of the Radical Left By Mark Bevir The more powerful the state, and thus the more political a country is, the less it is inclined to look in the state itself, that is in the present organisation of society whose active, self-conscious, and official expression is the state, for the cause of social evils, and thus understand their general nature. Political intelligence is political just because it thinks inside the limits of politics. The sharper and livelier it is the less capable it is of comprehending social evils. 1 When Engels wrote about Chartism, he described the movement as the first to embody the true class consciousness of the workers, a consciousness focused, as Marx had implied, on social evils that had social causes and afflicted the workers as a class. 2 Many subsequent historians, whether Marxists or not, took a similar view. The chartists, they argued, broke with old traditions of popular radicalism to inaugurate the history of a working class movement progressing towards a mature socialist ideology. Recently, however, numerous social historians have challenged this orthodoxy by tracing continuities from the traditions of popular radicalism through Chartism and even on into various movements of the 1860s and 1870s. 3 Although the reasons for this challenge to orthodoxy are many and complex, two stand out. The first is the linguistic turn. An increasing reluctance among historians to define the nature of a movement in terms of the objective social position of its participants has encouraged a new interest in the beliefs and languages by which people constructed their world, and when historians have looked at the beliefs and languages of nineteenth-century radicals, they have found ample evidence of the continuing strength of popular radicalism. The second is the work of historians of political thought on the republican tradition. They have recovered a republican tradition centred on concepts such as virtue, corruption, and liberty as an important and persistent alternative to Enlightenment liberalism. 4

Too Awful to Describe

IN MURDER MOST FOUL, KAREN HALTTUNEN CHRONICLES THE STRANGE career of evil in American life as it moved from an accepted part of the Puritan's daily world to the periphery of the liberal Enlightenment, where it made its presence felt-if not exactly understood-through the emergence of a haunted Gothic imagination. Her subject is murder and the various narrative strategies deployed to understand it. Beginning with the Puritan execution sermon, she argues that evil, construed as a fact of life in early American, did not require explanation. Original Sin was deemed to be explanation enough for the existence of evil. As a result, the execution sermon was conceived as an occasion in which the murderer and the congregation acknowledged themselves as secret sharers in a bond of depravity and turpitude. Bizarre as it might sound to modem ears, the murderer was not viewed as strange or anomalous. Quite the opposite: he or she was seen as representative of the general condition in which all God's children would find themselves but for the benefit of His grace. Halttunen argues that this extraordinary acceptance of evil began to unravel in the second half of the eighteenth century with the emergence of an Enlightenment world view, which posited a liberal subject that was essentially good, rational and capable of self-government (4).

Two‐faced liberalism: John Gray's pluralist politics and the reinstatement of enlightenment liberalism

In Two Faces of Liberalism, John Gray pursues the dual agenda of condemning familiar liberal theories for perpetuating the failed “Enlightenment project,” and promoting his own version of anti‐Enlightenment liberalism, which he calls “modus vivendi.” However, Gray's critical apparatus is insufficient to capture accurately the highly influential “political” liberalism of John Rawls. Moreover, Gray's modus vivendi faces serious challenges raised by Rawls concerning stability. In order to respond to the Rawlsian objections, Gray would have to reinstate the aspirations and principles characteristic of Enlightenment theories of liberalism.

Social stability and harmony: A new mission for the press?

The world appears to be ready for a new journalism paradigm— one that stresses order and social harmony. Western media dominance is still a fact of life as the 21st century dawns. But the social form, pulling ever more complex populations toward order, cooperation, and a need for authority, is thrusting media systems into a new and more harmonious communitarianism. The harbinger of such a drift away from the older libertarianism is found even in the US where public journalism is being heralded by many as an antidote to harmful effects of 18th Century Enlightenment liberalism that is accused of pushing journalism increasingly toward social irresponsibility and even chaos.

Towards Common Minimum Standards on Freedom of Expression in South Asia

abstractSouth Asian states have enjoyed a mixed record regarding freedom of expression. In colonial times periods of enlightened liberalism alternated with periods of repression. The post colonial experience has been little different. Despite expressions of strong resolve to eliminate past repressive practices, the newly independent states have not always been able to match their actions with their rhetoric. Over the years there has been a proliferation of laws which have diluted those constitutional guarantees which had occupied pride of place in these countries. While the most obvious solution lies in the strengthening of domestic legal controls, some commentators have wondered if it might not be a good idea also to bring some external pressure to bear through the establishment of a set of transnational minimum standards to which all countries in the region might be persuaded to subscribe. This paper attempts to examine the feasibility of putting in place such a mechanism with specific reference to freedom of expression, and to suggest possible options in this regard.

Die donker kant van die Verligting

The dark side of the Enlightenment The complex concept “Enlightenment was ambiguous, even in the time of its inception in the 18th century. As such, it was ambivalent, revealing a dialectical tension between rational-irrational, and Christian-antichristian. The sunny face of the Age of Reason is well known: its rational, scientific, and side. Its other side - dark, irrational, and antichristian - is less often explicated While mentioning aspects of its irrationalism, its antichristian character forms the focal point of this article. The Enlightenment was in the sense of formulating Christian truth simply a little more rationally; yet antichristian” in the sense of trading in Christianity for classical culture. Voltaire is called as a witness to this tension, and especially to the antichristian nature of this epoch. Since the rise of the Enlightenment Protestant churches in particular have displayed a disturbing openness towards this movement, embracing its (essentially antichristian) scientific ideals to promote Christian truth. The results of this impossible synthesis are seen, among others, in the tension between theological lecture room (reason) and pulpit (faith), and in the Western churches' (often) uncertain witness to Biblical truth. The dead end in which the mainstream liberal Enlightenment theology finds itself, is illustrated by the contradictory statements of theologians during the past fo u r decades about angels - statements which incurred the contempt of natural scientists like Tipler, Weinberg and Feynman. To see the dark side of the Enlightenment is a challenge to believers (including theologians) to reconsider their allegiance to its scientific ideals and to rethink their position as witnesses to the truth, which is in Christ.

From Revolt to Agitation: Beginning of the National Movement

The Revolt of 1857 was both a culmination and a beginning. No armed struggle of that magnitude against the colonial rule took place thereafter. It was, however, preceded by a series of revolts by displaced aristocracy and civil population in different parts of the country. Motivated by different reasons and shaped by local circumstances, but invariably linked to the hardships generated by colonial subjection, they embodied the early resistance against the alien rule. The peasants, tribals, zamindars and former rulers were all part of these unsuccessful efforts to prevent the consolidation of the British rule. Alive to the alien but not to the colonial character of the British rule they all remained isolated incidents and hence were easily suppressed. The Revolt of 1857, despite some coordination and communication among the leaders, was essentially a large scale enactment of earlier efforts. Its failure was a landmark in the political consciousness of the nation, as it heralded a new phase in the struggle against colonialism. ATTITUDE OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA The character of the new phase was reflected in the attitude of the intelligentsia towards the colonial rule. The emergence of a modern intelligentsia in India was integral to the social and economic policies pursued by the British rule. Products of Macaulayian ambition to create English minds in Indian bodies, the members of the middle class imbibed, through Western education, a political perspective rooted in liberalism. To them Britain represented the best of liberal tradition. More importantly, they viewed British rule as the instrument, ordained by God, for the dissemination of liberal enlightenment in countries like

Is Nietzsche a political thinker?

Nietzsche claimed to be a political thinker in Ecce Homo and elsewhere. He constantly compared his thought with other political theorists, chiefly Rousseau, Kant and Mill, and he claimed to offer an alternative to the bankruptcy of Enlightenment liberalism. It is worthwhile re‐examining Nietzsche's claim to offer serious criticisms of liberal political philosophy. I shall proceed by setting out seven criteria for serious political thought: understanding of material need; procedural justification; liberty and its worth; racial, ethnic and religious difference; gender and family; justice between nations; and moral psychology. I shall argue polemically that on the first six issues Nietzsche has nothing to offer, but that on the seventh, moral psychology, he makes a profound contribution. Serious political theory, however, needs to forget about Nietzsche and turn to those thinkers he found so boring ‐ the liberal Enlightenment thinkers.

Towards Common Minimum Standards on Freedom of Expression in South Asia

South Asian states have enjoyed a mixed record regarding freedom of expression. In colonial times periods of enlightened liberalism alternated with periods of repression. The post colonial experience has been little different. Despite expressions of strong resolve to eliminate past repressive practices, the newly independent states have not always been able to match their actions with their rhetoric. Over the years there has been a proliferation of laws which have diluted those constitutional guarantees which had occupied pride of place in these countries. While the most obvious solution lies in the strengthening of domestic legal controls, some commentators have wondered if it might not be a good idea also to bring some external pressure to bear through the establishment of a set of transnational minimum standards to which all countries in the region might be persuaded to subscribe. This paper attempts to examine the feasibility of putting in place such a mechanism with specific reference to freedom of expression, and to suggest possible options in this regard.

Charting an Uncertain Flight Path: Irish Writers and the Question of Nation, Identity, and Literature

THE COMPAnATIST CHARTING AN UNCERTAIN FLIGHT PATH: IRISH WRITERS AND THE QUESTION OF NATION, IDENTITY, AND LITERATURE Michael R. Molino Recently, Seamus Heaney published a poem dedicated to the British poet Donald Davie, with whom Heaney has had a long-term, public correspondence on such topics as the abiding influence of tradition, the debilitating impact ofcolonialism, and the indelible mark ofone'spatria. Heaney's poem, entitled "The Flight Path," continues a preoccupation with transitions, passageways, and movement through space that has recurred in much of his later poetry. The poem, divided into eight numbered sections, directly addresses Davie only in one short, acerbic section in which the exchanges and barbs between the two poets receive a quick and intolerant précis: 'Tour 'Ireland of the Bombers.' Your yes and no/ And praises and dispraises and poems to me./ Your Royal Navy Days. Your TCD./ England your England. Low Church. High ground. Heigho!" (5). This less than collégial sentiment has its roots in Davie's earlier claim that what some disparagingly call British colonialism is in fact "the utilitarian logic of 'the greatest good of the greatest number'" and that the people who employ this logic speak not the "language ofthe master race but the language of international philanthropy, the language of 'concerned' and enlightened liberalism, of social engineering" ("Poet: Patriot: Interpreter" 34).' The rest of"The Flight Path" explores the problem facing many postcolonial writers—that is, the seemingly inevitable dichotomy of us us. them, oppressor us. oppressed, Irish vs. British. Such a dichotomy retains the old hierarchy in which one of the two sides takes precedence over the other, leading to paralysis as vestiges ofold antagonisms and identities codify. Moving past this dichotomy forces writers to discover some "liminal space"—some form of "transculturation" or "contact zone" between cultures, to borrow Mary Louise Pratt's terms—that is not based either upon the dichotomy of colonizer/colonized or upon the exclusionary ideologies propounded by resurgent nationalists. Heaney has been concerned with such liminal spaces for a good portion of his career—exploring in the process, for example, the way language, dialect, and word-play undermine exclusive senses of self and nation typically articulated in both colonial and nationalist discourses.3 Continuing with this preoccupation, Heaney begins "The Flight Path" with the image ofa paper boat folded and produced as ifby magic by his father's hand, a fragile vessel that holds out the prospect of some kind ofjourney or passageway: The first fold first, then more foldovers drawn Tighter and neater every time until Vol. 20 (1996): 41 IRISH WRITERS: NATION, IDENTITY & LITERATURE The whole ofthe paper got itselfreduced To a pleated square he'd take up by two corners And hold like a promise he had the power to break But never did. A dove rose in my breast Whenever my father's hands came clean apart With a paper boat between them, ark in air, The lines of it as taut as a pegged tent; High-sided, splayed, the little pyramid At the center every bit as hollow As a part ofme that sank because it knew The whole thing would go soggy once you launched it. (5) The image ofthe boat created by the father's hand offers the hope of safe passage, an ark carrying all through the storm. Likewise, the dove of peace, the voice of God descending upon Christ as he begins his calling with baptism, suggests more than just hope, but the potential for lasting spiritual reconciliation—all based upon a promise that could be but never would be broken. But even the young child realizes that this small ark will take on water, become saturated, and ultimately fail in its voyage when put to the test. In subsequent sections, Heaney demonstrates through example why the young chüd foresaw the future ofthat boat so accurately. The stories that follow in sections four and five, for example, reveal the trap that a writer even of Heaney's stature cannot escape. The stories are introduced with a terse statement delivered in the disinterested tone of legal discourse, as if the poet must defend himself before a tribunal: "The following for the record...