Introduction: In Pursuit of Ethics

Author(s): Lawrence Buell

Source: PMLA, Vol. 114, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethics and Literary Study (Jan., 1999), pp. 7-19
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463423
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Introduction
In Pursuit of
LAWRENCEBUELLis John P.
MarquandProfessor of English
and chair of the English depart-
ment at Harvard University.A
former member of the PMLA
EditorialBoard, he is author of
New EnglandLiteraryCulture
(CambridgeUP, 1986), The En-
vironmental (Har-
Imagination
vard UP, 1995), and otherbooks
and articles on the literature
and cultureof the UnitedStates.
Lawrence
Buell
Ethics
E THICSHAS GAINED new resonancein literarystudies during
the past dozen years, even if it has not-at least yet-become
the paradigm-definingconcept that textualitywas for the 1970s and his-
toricismfor the 1980s.1
As with any groundswell,particularlywhen the centralterm of refer-
ence alreadybelongs to common usage, the challenge of pinning down
what counts as ethics intensifies as more partieslay claim to it. The om-
nibus characterof the call for papersfor this special issue of PMLA,re-
peatedbelow in part,acknowledgesthe de facto heterogeneity:
Theethicsof reading,writing,criticism,interpretation,
theorizing,andteach-
ing. Theethicaldimensionsof particular criticalandtheoreticalorientations
[...]. The ethics of discourses,genres, and culturalinstitutions[...]. The per-
tinenceto literarystudyof [.. .] modelsfrommoralandpoliticalphilosophy.
[.. .] Therhetoricof ethicalwriting.[. . .] Theethicalramifications
of aspects
of professionalculture[...].
The forty-six submissions demonstratedanew, if furtherdemonstration
be needed, that there is no unitaryethics movement, no firm consensus
among MLA memberswho think of themselves as pursuingsome form
of ethically valencedinquiry.This pluriformdiscourseinterweavesmany
genealogical strands,six of which I briefly review before commenting
on some of the specific emphases in the body of scholarship that has
arisen from them, including the five searching and incisive essays that
the EditorialBoardhas selected for publicationhere.
The first and most longstandingof those strandsis the legacy of critical
traditionsthathave dwelled on the moralthematicsand underlyingvalue
commitments of literary texts and their implied authors. David Par-
ker's approachto fiction, for example, seems to a considerableextent a
7
8 In Pursuitof Ethics

subtilized, relativizedupdatingof an Arnoldian-Leavisiteconception of

literatureas ethical reflection (77-78, 120-22, 152). A semianalogous
traditionin United States literarystudieshas been the intellectualhistory
of moral thought from Puritanismto transcendentalismto pragmatism
and beyond, a heritagerecently "multiculturalized" as AfricanAmerican
thinkers have been positioned in relation to it, starting with William
James's one-time student W. E. B. Du Bois (West 138-50; Patterson
159-97). This tendency is represented in the present symposium by
James M. Albrecht's reassessment of how Ralph Waldo Emerson mat-
tered to RalphWaldoEllison. More pervasively influentialwithin tradi-
tional literary studies generally has been ethically oriented theory and
criticismfocused on the rhetoricof genre, such as WayneBooth's oeuvre
extendingover severaldecadeson narrativerhetoricas moralimagination
(from Rhetoric through Company),which continues to be a reference
point for morerecentstudies(e.g., Phelan;Newton,NarrativeEthics;and
Yudice-to list a rangeof responsesfrom sympatheticto highly critical).
The reciprocalturnof certainphilosopherstowardliterature,particu-
larlyMarthaNussbaumandRichardRorty,is a second andrelatedstimu-
lus. Nussbaum'sargumentthatthe richlycontextualizedmoralreflections
of Henry James's novels afford a necessary supplementto the study of
moral philosophy (Love's Knowledge 125-219), a perspective she has
since brought to bear on other writers and on the study of law (Poetic
Justice), and Rorty's characterization,as an alternativeto what he takes
to be the dead end of epistemology,initially of philosophy as "a kind of
writing"(Consequences90-109) and, more recently and pertinently,of
(certain)works of creativewriting as model embodimentsof social val-
ues (Contingency 141-88)-these have matteredto scholarsin the field
of literatureless because of any radicaloriginalityof method (see New-
ton, NarrativeEthics 61-63 on Nussbaumand see Parker33-35 on both)
than insofar as their example has abetted revival of a moral or social
value-orientedapproachto literarystudies.
More instrumentalin shapingthe specific agendasof literaryscholar-
ship have been two otherdevelopments,perturbationsarisingfrom shifts
of thinking by and about the two figures of greatest impact on post-
structuralistliterarytheory of the 1970s and 1980s, JacquesDerridaand
Michel Foucault.
The reevaluationof the ethics of deconstructionis the more dramatic
of these two developments insofar as it is connected with the "fall"of
its prominentAmerican exemplar Paul de Man, following the posthu-
mous republication of his wartimejournalism, which included Nazi-
collaborationistpassages. In an essay whose circumstanceof production
is itself an index of the recentethicalturn,2GeoffreyHarphamseriocomi-
cally remarksof this "event"that "[o]n or about December 1, 1987, the
nature of literary theory changed" ("Ethics" 389). De Man's Wartime
Journalismindeed unleashed a flood of controversywithin and outside
the academyover whetherdeconstructionwas morallyevasive or iniqui-
In Pursuitof Ethics 9

tous. It intensifiedcriticismof the Derrideanpostulateof "nothingoutside

the text"(or textuality)as ethicallymyopic, andpossibly it may also have
had somethingto do with Derrida'sincreasingengagementof social, po-
litical, and ethical issues in recent years (e.g., "Force";OtherHeading;
Specters; Gift 1-34). Yet deconstruction and poststructuralismmore
broadly had already evinced a distinct ethical perspective-even if not
typically called such and even if typically placed in the service of nega-
tion-particularly by "compel[ling]us to reflecton the costs of moralab-
solutism, the violence latent in trying to constructfully realized ethical
forms of life" (M. Jay 46-47). Two specific preexisting ethical currents
withinthe deconstructivemovementthatgatheredmomentumduringthe
late 1980s were a defense of "rigorousunreliability"in criticalreadingas
itself an ethics (Johnson17-24; Miller,Ethics)andparticularlya dialogue
over severaldecadesbetweenDerridaandEmmanuelLevinasthatended,
on Levinas'sdeath,in Derrida'saffirmationthat"thethoughtof Emman-
uel Levinashas awakenedus" to a conceptionof "an 'unlimited'respon-
sibility that exceeds and precedes my freedom" (Derrida, "Adieu" 3),
afterLevinas (between Totalityand Infinity[1961] and OtherwiseThan
Being [1974]) had complicatedhis argumentfor "ethics as firstphiloso-
phy"(meaningthe priorityof ethical obligationfor the otherto ontology,
to being itself) in response to Derrida'scritique of Totalityand Infinity
("Violence").If Levinas should become the most centraltheoristfor the
postpoststructuralistdispensationof turn-of-the-centuryliterary-ethical
inquiry,for which there is mountingevidence (Critchley;Nealon; New-
ton, NarrativeEthics;Eaglestone;as well as the essays here by DerekAt-
tridge and David P. Haney), a good deal of the credit must go to Derrida
for havingcalled the attentionof literaryscholarsto Levinas'swork.
Just as the shift within deconstruction,motivatedby whatevercombi-
nation of external and internalpressures,has given new prominenceto
thinking about ethical responsibility for the other, so the intensified at-
tentionrecentlygiven subjectnessand agency has been emboldenedby a
redirection of emphasis in the later work of Michel Foucault. In the
course of his History of Sexuality,Foucault shifted from his longstand-
ing concentrationon the power-knowledgeproblematicand on the con-
structionof social selves by discursive macroinstitutionsto the care of
the self conceived as an ethical project, a movement quickened by the
perception that for privileged men of Greek and Roman antiquity "re-
flection on sexual behavioras a moral domain was not a means of inter-
nalizing, justifying, or formalizing general interdictions imposed on
everyone" but "an aesthetics of existence" (Use 252-53), indeed an
"ethics of pleasure"(Care 239).3 Here again the trajectoryis not quite
the reversal it might seem, since the spirit of Foucault's work was al-
ways one of irony and at times Nietzschean outrageagainstinstitutional
constraints on selfhood, but certainly his later writing not only under-
scored retrospectivelythe seriousness of his prior interest in the fate of
the self but also markeda new receptivity on his partto the ethical as a
10 In Pursuitof Ethics

semiautonomous arena, "not related to any social-or at least to any

legal-institutional system," and to imagined power relations as "mo-
bile, reversible,and unstable"(Ethics 255, 292). This self-recalibration
anticipates-and probablyhas encouraged-later writers'propensityfor
deploying a critical vocabulary of "ethics"in rivalry to "politics" as a
way of theorizingprincipledsocial engagement.
Anothersymptomaticethical turnevinced by late Foucaultwas his in-
cipient critique of his earlier evaluationof "the idea of truthas nothing
more than a ruse in the service of an epistemic will-to-power,"as a mere
discursiveartifact(Norris124, 126).This strainof recenttheoryconcerns
itself with exposing the intellectualreductionismsand moral hazardsof
the "out-and-outcognitive skepticism" that supposedly characterized
poststructuralism(Norris 3), while avoiding old-fashioned models of
mimeticrealism.SatyaMohanty,in an independentcritique,passionately
decries the tendencyof "postmodernistskepticism""to deny experience
any cognitive value,"arguing that particularlyin narrativesby authors
from oppressedpeoples "we need to explore the possibility of a theoreti-
cal understandingof social and culturalidentityin termsof objective so-
cial location"(234, 216). The strongestimpetusfor those seeking to work
throughthe issue of whetherdiscourse can yield truthfulor reliablerep-
resentation,however, has been Derrideanratherthan Foucauldian(see
Mohanty'sformulationof a "post-positivist"realism [176-216]); and so
far the most characteristicposition has been the argument-advanced es-
pecially by studentsof postcolonialand "minority"discourse-that truth,
authenticity,or historicalfacticity is concealed within, by, or behinddis-
courses resistant, opaque, or elliptical (Chow 39-41). This seems the
purportof GayatriSpivak'sparadoxicalassertionthat"ethicsis the expe-
rience of the impossible":an ethical representationof subalternitymust
proceed in the awareness that (mutual) understandingwill be limited.
"No amountof raisedfield-workcan ever approachthe painstakinglabor
to establish ethical singularitywith the subaltern"(Prefacexxv, xxiv)-
but proceed it must. A correlativeinsight is Doris Sommer'sconception
of an ethics of withholding by which resistant minority writers create
strategicopacities and misrecognitionsfor mainstreamreaders("Resist-
ing" and "TextualConquests"):a "poeticsof defense,"as GeorgeYudice
calls it in his discussion of one of Sommer's proof texts, I, Rigoberta
Menchu (229).
A sixth strandof influence is increasedself-consciousness aboutpro-
fessional ethics, which has stimulateddiscussion throughoutthe univer-
sity about standards of conduct. In law, works of literature have for
some time been offered pedagogically as more full-blooded instantia-
tions of legal thinking and conduct than standard intradisciplinary
sources afford(e.g., Weisberg;Nussbaum,Poetic Justice;cf. the critique
by Posner 305-32)-a tendency, mirroredin other professional fields,
thathas helped preparethe way for, even if it has not directlyinfluenced,
Wai Chee Dimock's bold and importantargumentthat literature's"tex-
In Pursuitof Ethics 11

tualization of justice" constitutes a deeper ethical reflection than the

"reificationof commensurability"to which the legal discourseof justice
is committed(10, 6). At an instrumental,administrativelevel, literature
programsand associations have moved towardtheir own reificationsof
disciplinary-ethical concerns in the form of codes of ethical conduct
(e.g., Mod. Lang. Assn. of Amer.). Finally and most prominently,con-
cerns about the ethics of critical theory and practice have been brought
together with concerns about the ethics of professional conduct-al-
though by no means always under the sign of ethics per se-in studies
of the conceptual,historical, and pedagogical dimensions of canon for-
mation and change (Smith;Lauter;Guillory;G. Jay).4

II

The foregoing review is, of course, an incomplete sketch.5But it should

suffice to show that as ethics has become a more privileged signifier it
has also become an increasinglyductile and therebypotentiallyconfus-
ing one. Ethics as thematicsof moralrepresentationmanifestlydoes not
equal ethics as self-care, nor does eitherhave the proceduralcast of pro-
fessional ethics ("Theappropriatefaculty membersshouldinformcandi-
dates for promotionor tenureof theirrights [.. .]" [Mod. Lang. Assn. of
Amer.76]). In part,this disparityof focus may reflectthe relativelack of
groundingthat ethically valenced literaryinquiryhas in ethics as a sub-
discipline and traditionwithin philosophy.No majorethical philosopher
from Aristotle to John Rawls has attractedanywherenear the attention
amongthose currentlylinking literatureand ethics thatDerridaand Fou-
cault have attracted(neitherof them ethicistsin any strictsense), with the
exception of Levinas, who might ratherbe called a metaethicalthinker
than an ethicist proper.In any event, since no specific model for inquiry
into ethics is sharedby more than a fraction of the scholars working in
the variousdomainsof literarytheory and criticism,it is more thanordi-
narilyperplexingwhen, as often happens,avowed practitionersof "ethi-
cal" criticism neglect to relate their brandof ethics to its alternativesor
to antecedent traditionsof moral thematics, the ideology of genre, the
deconstructiveethics of reading,the politics of canonicity,and so forth.
To date,nobody seems to have worriedmuch abouta problemof caco-
phony, however.Perhapsrightly so. Perhapsa certaindesultorinessis to
be expected of an emergingdiscourse, or congeries of discourses, strug-
gling with self-definition. A matterof more open dispute is whetherthe
ethical turn,to the extent thatit offers somethingsubstantivelynew, is an
advanceor a retrogression.The swift rise of ethics as a more admiredpur-
suit than it had been for several decades can be and has been conceived
both honorifically (e.g., as a reactivationof scholarly and pedagogical
conscience, as a revivalof a once distinguishedhumanisticsensibilityun-
fairly stigmatizedin recentyears, as a substantialretheorizationof alter-
ity) and pejoratively (e.g., as a copycat moral majoritarianismor as a
12 In Pursuitof Ethics

retreat from a politics of social transformationto privatism, as with

TeresaL. Ebert'sdismissalof "ethicalfeminism"as "ludicmystification"
that only pretends to honor alterity in a de facto indulgence of its own
class privilege [301, 230]).6
Regardless of whether one is inclined to be hopeful or suspicious
about the promise of ethically valenced literaryinquiry,its burgeoning
and its increasing currencybehoove one to take stock of its distinctive
contours.Five seem salient.
For one thing, the new ethical inquiry tends to favor recuperationof
authorialagency in the productionof texts, withoutceasing to acknowl-
edge that texts are also in some sense socially constructed:to arguelike
Attridge in this issue, if not so pointedly, for the importance of "au-
thoredness" to the theory of writing and accordingly, "pace Roland
Barthes,"for thinking"work"over thinking"text."In severalof the other
essays, not only authorednessbut also the figure of the historicalauthor
is directly relevant.This is especially true for Albrecht,understandably
so given the empirical cast of his literary-historicalcontention. More
telling as indicatorsof directionalmomentumare the essays by Bradley
Butterfield and Mary Beth Tierney-Tello, both of whom seek to diag-
nose the ethical valence of postmodernism.In Butterfield'sadjudication
of Baudrillardvis-a-vis Ballard,the case for "a critiqueof late capitalist
forms of moralityin favor of a deeper sense of personalliberty andjus-
tice throughaestheticrevolution"rests in no small measureon the estab-
lishment of a distinction, especially in Baudrillard'swork, between the
deceptive appearanceof the "immoral"text and the inferredposition of
the writer. In Tierney-Tello's pursuit of the same general question of
whether a progressive politics of postmoderndiscourse is possible, the
evidence of Diamela Eltit's writingitself standsto a greaterextent as the
chief exhibit, but Tierney-Telloadduces the historical author'smotives
and ethnographicscrupulousnessas importantcontributoryevidence.
More central to ethically valenced theory and criticism overall than
the issue of authorialagency, however,is that of readerlyresponsibility,
which indeed is often linked, as by Attridge,to recuperationof authored-
ness. Key to many such accounts of reading ethics is a conception of
literatureas the reader'sother,a view of the readingrelationsharplydif-
ferentfrom thatof traditionalreader-responsecriticism,which tendedto
celebrate (as did Barthes) readerly appropriationor reinvention. The
newer ethical criticism generally envisages reinventionnot as free play
or an assertionof power but as arisingout of consciencefullistening.At-
tridge proposes the model of "thework as stranger,even [.. .] when the
reader knows it intimately": a strangerto whom one owes respect. In
this Levinasianview, the workis an otherin the form of a creativeact for
which readers are called to take responsibility, to allow themselves to
become engaged even to the point of being in a sense remade.Tierney-
Tello offers a similar argumentfrom a different critical model, derived
from minority and postcolonial resistance theory, about Eltit's avant-
In Pursuitof Ethics 13

gardistversions of testimonio:they make an "ethicallygroundedcall for

solidarity"to the readerpartly by their very resistance to standardge-
neric expectations that require the readerto hear subalternvoices and
see subalternfaces but not fully to grasp,process, or understandthem.7
Indeed,one of the most provocativedimensionsof Attridge'stheoreti-
cal essay and Tierney-Tello'sexegesis is theirreadinessto push as far as
they do the image of engagementwith text (work) as encounterwith vir-
tual person. The hesitancy with which Booth proceeded a decade ago
when revivingthe long-dormantVictorianmetaphorof the book as friend
(Company 168-96), anotherversion of the general notion of reading as
an interpersonalact, now seems less necessary. Haney makes no bones
aboutclaiming"genuineethical significance"for metaphorslike "friend"
used to characterize literary works and about pressing the inference,
drawnfrom Hans-GeorgGadamer's"On the Contributionof Poetry to
the Search for Truth,"that "the process by which the truthof a poem is
revealed is instructively similar to the unconcealing that goes on in the
ethicalhermeneuticsof being open to [. . .] the truthof anotherperson."
The image of textual encounteras personal encounteris not without
its perils, three of them being the temptationto reify the metaphor,the
implicationthatreaderresistanceis unethical(a symptomof obtuseness,
of insensitivity, of ethical underdevelopment),and an astringency to-
ward aesthetics as such like that displayed by Levinas-the most influ-
ential recent theorist of self-other relations.8Yet the model of reading
experience as a scene of virtualinterpersonalitythatenacts, activates,or
otherwise illuminates ethical responsibilitymay nonetheless prove one
of the most significant innovations of the literature-and-ethicsmove-
ment. If so, two importantreasons will probablybe the antiauthoritarian
valorizationof alterityflowing into this body of reflectionfrom Levinas
and from postcolonial criticism and the model's insistence, as Attridge
puts it, on the self-otherdynamicas "anactive or eventlikerelation."
A thirdimportantdimensionof the newerliterary-ethicalinquiry,more
familiarbut no less important,is interestin descryingan ethos or incipi-
ent ethical teleology implicit in specific discourse modes (Butterfield),
genre templates (Tierney-Tello),or formal structuresat the level of the
individualartifact(Tierney-Tello,Haney). Haney theorizes the underly-
ing idea most fully in his redescriptionof selected Romanticpoetic and
critical projectsas expressing a bipolaritybetween Aristotelianphrone-
sis (practicalwisdom) and techne, a bipolaritythathe correlateswith the
imagination-versus-fancydistinction,arguingthat new historicismover-
rode this problematicby its conception of "aestheticthoughtas cultural
labor,"a reduction of the aesthetic to techne. The approachto literary
texts as arenasof ethical reflectionby reason of their formal or generic
contoursis pursuedin much otherrecent work in literatureand ethics as
well, especially studiesof narrativegenres (Booth, Company;Nussbaum,
Love's Knowledge and Poetic Justice; Newton, Narrative Ethics and
"Exegesis";Harpham,Getting157-82). If thereis a mainstreamapproach
14 In PursuitoJEthics

to ethical-critical readings of particular literary works today, this is

probablyit.
A fourth preoccupationof the newer literary-ethicalinquiry appears
in Haney's analogy between the semiantagonistic interdependenceof
phronesisand techne and the ethics-moralitydistinction,a distinctionon
which Attridgealso comments. Both understandethics as ethical sensi-
bility or orientationand see moralityas codes of rules ("specificobliga-
tions governing concrete situations in a social context," according to
Attridge).Yet Attridgewantsto pry the two notions apartas far as possi-
ble by associatingethics with "unpredictability and risk,"whereasHaney
argues for their ultimate inseparability.This felt divergence despite a
shareddesire to posit a similar distinction epitomizes a more pervasive
concern within contemporaryliterature-and-ethicsconversationsto en-
dorse a notion of responsibilitynot bound to rule while acknowledging
some sort of relationbetweenthe categoriesethics and morality.Booth's
effort to affirmpluralreaderresponses without falling into critical rela-
tivism (Company),Nussbaum's vision of a Jamesianrhetoricas a "dia-
logue betweenperceptionand rule"(Love'sKnowledge 157), Harpham's
idea that discourse confers imperativity without specifying particular
obligations (Getting 5), and above all Levinas's conception of responsi-
bility for the otheras signifying "notthe disclosureof a given and its re-
ception, but the exposure of me to the other, prior to every decision"
(Otherwise 141)-all these seem to work with and through the same
problematic:to adjudicatethe relation between disposition and norma-
tivity, whether it is considered from the standpointof author,of reader,
of language,or of humanrelations."
The problem,or opportunity,of the fuzzy borderthat looms up when
one considers the ethics-morality distinction is analogous to-some
might say continuous with-the even more vexing problem of the rela-
tion or distinctionbetween the personaland the sociopolitical. Virtually
all partieswould agree, whetheror not they approveof "postmoderneth-
ics," that "the only space where the moral act can be performedis the
social space of 'being with'" (Bauman185). But thatconsensus far from
resolves the question of whether and how the ethical does or does not
entail the "political."Perhapsthe touchiest single issue for both exem-
plars and critics of the ethical turnis the issue of whetherit boils down,
whateverthe nominal agenda, to a privatizationof humanrelationsthat
makes the social and the political secondary.Ethics is a gallingly (or ex-
citingly?) ambidextrous signifier that points toward both private and
public domains. WhereasFoucault'sexplicit turntowardethics marked
a shift of attention from structuresof domination to practices of self-
actualization,for Levinas ethics as firstphilosophy presupposesthe pri-
ority of the claim of the other on the self. Again, on the one hand, Julia
Kristeva understandsethics "to mean the negativizing of narcissism
within a practice; in other words, a practice is ethical when it dissolves
those narcissistic fixations (ones that are narrowlyconfined to the sub-
In Pursuitof Ethics 15

ject) to which the signifying process succumbsin its sociosymbolic rela-

tion" (233). Yet, on the other hand, for Tobin Siebers "the discipline of
ethics remains inextricably fused to the problem of human character,"
such thatfrom the standpointof ethicalcriticismeven "thedesireto elim-
inate the constitutiveself of literaturehas ethical motivationsthatcannot
be renounced"(5). As in this issue of PMLA,the heterogeneousbody of
theorythatanimatescontemporaryliterature-and-ethics talk and informs
the critical readings based on that talk conveys predictablymixed sig-
nals-to the point thatsome theoristsof ethics andthe literaryhave come
to favorterminologicalhybridslike "ethical/political"(Steele, Theorizing
29, 112) or "ethics-politics"(Newton, "Exegesis"andNarrativeEthics).
Likewise, in the five essays thatfollow the ethical turnmanifestsitself
in (re)new(ed) attention, on the one hand, to the interpersonal as the
basis of both readingand sociality (Attridge)and to the rehabilitationof
aesthetic autonomyas "anethical autonomy"(Haney) and, on the other
hand, to the sociopolitical dimension of a thinkerunderstooduntil re-
cently to be more narrowlyindividualistic(Albrechton Emerson)and to
ethical aestheticsas political intervention(Tierey-Tello).
Nothingis more certainthanthatthe questionof the place of the socio-
political will continue to be debated within and aroundcontemporary
ethical criticism. For no matterhow stronglyliterary-ethicalinquiryas-
sertsthe inseparabilityof social andpersonal,the startingpoint of "oblig-
ation"will continue to seem suspiciously privatisticto many social and
cultural constructionists, not to mention neo-Marxist materialists like
Ebert.Ethical critics will thereforelikely remainunderpressureto dem-
onstratehow exactly obligation might be understoodas potent not only
"culturally"but also historicallyandpolitically.
In a statementthatbringstogetherthe two polaritiesof ethics/morality
and ethical-moral/political,Levinasencapsulatesprettywell both the as-
piration of founding a social vision on the conception of obligation to
anotherand the risks thereof. "Morality,"he insists, "is what governsthe
world of political 'interestedness'"; but "thenorm which must continue
to inspire and direct the moral order is the ethical norm of the interhu-
man,"which admittedly "cannotitself legislate for society or produce
rules of conductwherebysociety mightbe revolutionisedor transformed"
but which nonethelessis the "foundation"of the "moral-politicalorder,"
withoutwhich that order"mustaccept all forms of society includingthe
fascist or totalitarian,for it can no longer evaluate or discriminate be-
tween them" ("Ethics" 194-95). As Levinas's extremely brief remarks
on social justice make additionally clear (Otherwise 157-61), he con-
siders it an indispensable but derivative codification of interhumanity.
This mode of thinking invites at least three criticisms. First, it is self-
contradictory:it insists on antifoundationalism,but it supplies a founda-
tion (interhumanity)to guard against the inference that, as Niall Lucy
shows (204-10), can be drawnfrom a purely relativistic conception of
ethics: "fascism is an ethics, though it may not be one that many of us
16 In Pursuitof Ethics

would choose to affirm"(Lucy 236). But forgive that,and Levinasis still

vulnerable from at least two directions. From one side (the left, basi-
cally) comes this rejoinder: How can moral precepts (e.g., honor the
claim of the other) form the basis of social collectives and ensure a re-
formed society or polity? And even if they can, is there not even some-
thing oppressively homogenizing, if not totalizing, about Levinas's
"other"?(Irigiraydeclares, "The other, [as] woman, he does not notice
her existence" [116].)?1From the other side (the right, basically) comes
this interrogation: How ethical is the ethos of allowing oneself to be
held hostage, without mutualityof personal obligation or a social con-
tractat the foundationof it? From this standpoint,binding oneself to the
otherannihilatesnot only moral individualism(Ricoeur;see my n8) but,
potentially,the other as well, for "unlessyou hold othersresponsiblefor
the ends thatthey choose and the actions thatthey do, you cannotregard
them as moraland rationalagents, and so you will not treatthem as ends
in themselves"(Korsgaard206).
Two predictions might be made with some confidence. First, the
scene of interpersonality,or interhumanity,to which currentethical criti-
cism has been strongly attracted,will continue to exert its power, as the
critiqueof the paradigmsof 1970s textualityand 1980s historicismcon-
tinues to run its course, while at the same time pressures internal (see
Levinas) and external(see Ebert)will continue to push to make ethicity
more sociopoliticallyaccountableor else will do away with it altogether.
Second, the staying power of literary-ethicalinquiry will depend in no
small measureon its capacityeitherto self-corrector to be corrected,its
emphasis on interhumanityfor example bettersynthesized with a social
and/or political ethics. Meanwhile, there is much to learn, much more
thanthis introductioncan encompass,from the literature-and-ethics con-
versationsheld so far,as the five essays in this issue show. It is high time
for these essays to speak for themselves.

Notes
My thanksgo to Kriss Basil, James Dawes, Sianne Ngai, and Doris Sommerfor theirpen-
etratingresponses to earlierversions of this essay and to the Centerfor Literaryand Cul-
tural Studies at HarvardUniversity and the Americanist Seminar at the University of
California,Irvine,for the opportunityto presentand discuss some of these ideas.
'Significant single-authorbooks of literarytheory and criticism devoted entirely or pri-
marily to ethics since 1987 include Miller (Ethics and Versions),Booth (Company),Nuss-
baum (Love's Knowledgeand Poetic Justice), Siebers, Harpham(Getting),Parker,Norris,
Newton (NarrativeEthics), and Eaglestone.Also notableis the recentincreasein books not
primarilyaboutethics per se thatinclude ethics in the title or subtitle(e.g., Phelan;Chow).
2Theoriginal(1990) edition of LentricchiaandMcLaughlin'sCriticalTermsfor Literary
Studyhad no entrytitled"Ethics";Harpham'sessay was addedfor the second edition(1995).
3Veynecomments plausibly,"Foucaultjudged it as undesirableas it would be impossi-
ble to resuscitate this ethics; but he considered one of its elements, namely, the idea of a
In Pursuitof Ethics 17

work of the self on the self, to be capable of reacquiringa contemporarymeaning";"the

self, taking itself as a work to be accomplished," he surmises further,"could sustain an
ethics that is no longer supportedby eithertraditionor reason [ . .]" (7).
4G. Jay does not hesitate to frame issues of canonicity and their implications for peda-
gogical practiceas ethical issues, as when he discusses the teacher-studentdynamic in an
interculturalclassroom (e.g., 143). Lauter,however,tends to think of questions involving
ought as ideological and thereforenot to recognize ethics as a distinct, much less a privi-
leged, sphere (e.g., 257). Likewise, Smith and Guillory are both centrallyconcernedwith
issues of "value,"but especially with regardto the dependenceof aestheticson economics
(within the historyand discourseof capitalism)ratherthanto evaluationas an ethical proj-
ect (although see Smith 158-66). Lauter's, Smith's, and Guillory's sharedcommitment,
albeit very differentlyexpressed,to unpackingthe phenomenonof social-institutionalcon-
trols over interpretationdistinguishestheirworkfrom thatof the ethical turnproperat least
as markedlyas does the earlier work of Foucault, althoughby the same token their work
seems also in a certaindegree to presagethatturn,especially if, for example, one's starting
point, like thatof Jay-who cites all threeadmiringly-is the pragmaticquestionof "what
to do in the wake of the end of consensus and the advent of multiculturalism"(6). To a
considerableextent, Jay's AmericanLiteratureand the CultureWarsmight be thoughtof
as the saga of the conscience of a critical-teacherlysensibilitywho seeks to make practical
applicationof institutions-orientedanalysesby precursorslike Lauter,Smith,and Guillory.
In this framework,"ethics"and "politics"of criticalpracticeeasily converge.
5Conspicuousomissions include the relation of contemporaryliterary-ethicalstudy to
the destabilizationof gendercategories by feminist and queer theory,to Bakhtiniandialo-
gism, to Habermasiandiscourseethics, and to ecocriticism.
6Ebertcites Cornell (113) here, but she includes in the wide sweep of her Marxist cri-
tique all theoreticaldiscourses, feminist or not, that she sees as abandoningthe possibility
of "a socially transformative politics" by "positing history as narrative, as discursive
event"(230, 229).
7A differentversion of readingethics is being developed along the lines of Foucauldian
self-care: readingas a praxis of self-discipline or self-improvement.See, e.g., Augst, in a
history-of-the-book-studiescontext.
8Withregardto the authorityLevinas grantsthe other over the I, Ricoeuris particularly
vehement in denouncing what he takes to be "the hyperbole of exteriority"in Otherwise
ThanBeing, with its conceptionof the I as needing to open itself to the persecutionsof the
other,"who, as an offender,no less requiresthe gestureof pardonand expiation"(Ricoeur
339, 338). Withregardto Levinas'santiaestheticism,on which Haney also remarks,Eagle-
stone makes a braveattempt(154-70) to redeemLevinasfrom his expressionsof Platonis-
tic distrustfor artifactsas substitutionsof image for objectby workingfromhis valorization
of "saying" (in Otherwise), which Levinas uses as an honorific metaphorfor ethical ex-
pressivity.Eaglestone (like Haney) fully recognizes, however,that it is easier to make the
case for Levinasas a kind of verbalartistthanas a philosopherof an ethical aesthetics.
9This is by no means to assert that all forms of contemporaryliterary-ethical inquiry
presupposecommitmentto a "postmodern"understandingof ethics (Bauman,e.g., 10-15)
as ungroundedin moral codes or laws, save for the postulate of a "moralself constituted
by responsibility"(11). Levinas and Harphamwould probablyaccept this premise;Booth
and Nussbaum probably would not. All seem keenly interested in the ethics-morality or
disposition-codesproblematic,however.
l?See, however, Chalier's defense of Levinas's feminism and Chanter'sequivocal ap-
praisal, in the same volume. Spivak is even more categorical than Irigiray,asserting that
the whole "subject-shipof ethics is certainlymale"for Levinas("FrenchFeminism"76).

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