South Atlantic Modern Language Association

"We're Just Human": "Oleanna" and Cultural Crisis Author(s): Marc Silverstein Source: South Atlantic Review, Vol. 60, No. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 103-120 Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201303 Accessed: 25/10/2010 13:35
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"We're Human": Just Crisis Oleannaand Cultural

MARCSILVERSEIN

the ofhowtoevaluate CRITICAL THE PERENNIAL QUESTION with of DavidMamet's workhasbeenraised overtones misogynistic the renewed (and surrounding commercial by urgency thecontroversy critical)successof Oleanna.'Oleannaconcernsa female largely tenuouschargeof sexualharassment rather student's againsta male his denialof tenure,the loss of a leadingto professor-an allegation that new home he was buyingbasedon the assumption he would secure to receivetenureandpromotion a morefinancially position, with of andthepotential jeopardizing hisrelationship hiswife.In the the finalmoments, professor, drivento a frenziedrageby his play's to her ruin, "begins beat[thestudent]. . . [and] knocks to thefloor" his has the (79).Neverbefore Mametallowed verbal aggression male itselfin termsof brutal directtowards womento express characters violence,andneverbeforehas his audience (bothmen and physical The this women)shownitselfso readyto embrace misogyny. beatcheersandquiteaudible exis often accompanied applause, by ing of to That the beatinganclamations encouragement the professor. in is swersan insistentdesirethe playgenerates certainaudiences by suggested the easewith which some of its spectators forgetthe and distinction betweenactress character. the theatre aftera Leaving the secondactress playthe student to MaryMcCann, performance, in Mamet'sown Off-Broadway encountered shoutsof production, that of for "bitch" suchintensity she ranbackinto the theatre safety. How can we accountfor so viscerala reactionto the play as a whole andto its misogynistic violencein particular, reaction that a to allowedOleanna play to sold out houses?Mamet'sown commentson the role theatreplaysas an expression America's of "naone tionaldream-life" suggests answer:

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We respondto a dramato that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.... The play is a quest for a solution.As in our dreams,the law of psychic economy operates.... The American theatre, acting as a collective mentality,operates ... on considerationswhich approximatethose which determine the individual'schoice of dream material:"Does examination of this idea, of this action, seem to offer a solution to an unconscious confusion of mine at the presenttime?"(Writingin Restaurants8-9) Mamet's sense that theatre stages the contents of America'scollective unconscious and, through that staging, translatesthose contents into consciousness suggests (although he does not make this point himself) that theatrecan demystifyand performa kind of ideology critiqueof the desires and values inhabiting our national unconscious that, to borrowJameson'sterm, is a politicalunconscious, ratherthan some amorphouspsychic entity.This is not to say that Oleannasets out to anatomize the roots of misogyny in American society; however,that so many of those who see the play take evident satisfactionto the point of catharticreleasein the violence directed not simply at a woman, but at a woman backedby and identiraisesthe quesfying herself as spokespersonfor a feminist "group" tion:What can Oleannatell us about the uses of misogyny,about the culturalmoment at for frightening"need" misogyny,at the particular which we find ourselves? To answer this question, we need a clearer sense of the precise natureof this culturalmoment-a moment in which the ascendancy of culturalconservatismwithin America testifies to the enormous success of the New Right in presenting its ideological agenda as a solution to what Habermasidentifies as the legitimationcrisisof the late capitalistwelfarestate.2For purposesof exploringhow Oleanna inscribesa culturalpolitics of misogyny that lends itself to articulation in terms of neoconservativeideology, I am less concernedwith the New Right's economic programthan with the strategythrough which it displacesits analysisof legitimation crisis from the spheres of economics and politics onto the domain of culture.In "The New Obscurity,"Habermas defines this displacement as constitutive of the neoconservative ideology that burdensof a shifts onto culturalmodernismthe uncomfortable more or less successfulcapitalistmodernizationof the economy

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and society.... [The New Right] doesnot uncover ecothe and causes the alteredattitudestowards for nomic social work, achievement leisure.Consequently, atand [it] consumption, tributes (7) crisis]to the domainof"culture." [legitimation thanrecognize these"altered attitudes" a "deepseated as reacRather of of tion against... the pressures the dynamics economicgrowth" (7), the New Right issuesits apocalyptic jeremiads againstthe aldeleterious effectson American culture by produced feminism, leged the of multiculturalism, politicization the academy homosexuality, and and intergenerally the humanities specifically, the postmodern of and (that categories structures is, the "human") rogation totalizing on in serviceof an emphasis cultural, ethnicand sexualdifference. the "evils," New Right calls for a returnto Againstthese cultural a nationalism on the values," "family bordering xenophobia, reconstitution theAmerican of definedmore community-a "community" on thebasisof exclusion inclusion-anda revalorization capithan of talismthrough the vigorous of an entrepreprivileging competition neurial economicorder. While the vision of capitalism's destructiveness dramatized in American Glen Buffalo,Glengarry Ross,and Speed-the-Plow clearly distances Mametfromthe New Right's economicagenda, wantto I thekindof humanism whichit appeals, to Oleanna that, argue through
inscribes a "culturalimaginary"that lends itself to articulation in terms of neoconservativesocial ideology. Such ideology depends for its efficacy on a certain conception of the political--a conception that Mamet himself has expressedwhen drawing a distinction between the kind of ethical critiqueof capitalismcontained in his work and a more explicitlypolitical critique. Referringto this distinction in an interviewwith David Savran,Mamet rejectsthe idea of locating intervention against capitalism within the political/economic sphere, which "is not susceptible to change... [because] it is an outgrowth of the intrinsic soul of the culture"(141-2). In relegating the economic order and the political operations through which that order achievesstabilityto the level of secondary of phenomena-a superstructural "outgrowth" the base, the "soul" of American culture-Mamet performs the very displacement that Habermas defines as constitutive of neoconservativeideology. Indeed, by locating America's"soul"in its culture, Mamet implicitly the circumscribes realm of culture,setting it apartfrom and outside

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of the domains of politics and ideology. It is preciselythis desire to rescue culturefrom the potential contaminationof ideology-a desire that constantly betrays its own ideological dimensions-that determinesthe status of misogyny in Oleanna.In the confrontation between professorand studentMamet dramatizesthe deleteriouseffects when ideology installs itself at the heart of the institution that, perhapsmore than any other,determinesthe content of the nation's culturalcore-the university. In a stinging attack on the play, Francine Russo asserts that education and p.c. run amok" (97) Oleanna's"clever talk of... amounts to little more than a pretextfor the authorto dramatizehis misogynisticfantasies.I have alreadyremarkedthat audiencesseem all too willing to embracesuch fantasiesas what Mamet calls a "solution"to our "unconsciousconfusion"; however,I would also argue that it is preciselythe play'streatmentof educationand its choice of a university setting that allows for this type of audience response. How, then, does its setting affect the play'suses of misogyny? no Perhaps otherinstitutionhasplayedso majora roleas the univerin the New Right'sattemptto deflectattention awayfromthe effects sity of late capitalismand onto the culturalsphere.The writingsof New Dinesh WilliamBennett,AllanBloom,PatBuchanan, Rightideologues, D'Souza,RogerKimball, GeorgeWill and others,depictthe university as a battlefieldon which the forces of cultureconfrontthe forces of who see the we On anarchy. the side of culture, find those,like Kimball, the "theidea of commonculture, functionas disseminating university's we idea that despiteourmanydifferences, hold in commonan intellec... tual, artistic,and morallegacy... that define[s]us as a civilization and us that preserves from chaos and barbarism" The use of "we" (6). of the in "us" this passagemirrors educational agendas the New Rightthatcan andmustbe tranas difference a condition an agendaregarding scended through declared allegiance to a "common culture"that of if marginalizes, not demonizes,those who emphasizethe specificity and class. sex, race, When Kimballdescribesthe universityas a site of culturaltransmission,he revealsthe extent to which the New Right regardsit as a site of cultural and ideological production, constructing a vision of and communitythat can only see the educationand politiauthority as cal claims of feminism and multiculturalism posing a threatto the culture.The "barof universalvalues defining "our" "morallegacy" barism"of such radical educationaltheorists as Stanley Aronowitz

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andHenryGiroux in consists theirarguments whatKimball that calls a "moral has and legacy" servedto legitimateclassist,ethnocentric that the university played essential has an values; patriarchal partin thesevalues, whileatbestpaying service a wateredto promoting lip downnotionof pluralism; the university that couldand shouldbecomeanagentof the radical for democracy appropriate a postmodern culturalpolitics. For such theorists,cultureis not a monolithic, of humannatureand monologicentity expressive our "common" universal values,but, in Giroux's words,"ashiftingsphereof mulandheterogeneous wheredifferent borders, histories, tiple languages, andvoicesintermingle amiddiverse relations power of experiences, andprivilege" Ratherthanreinforcing reproducing and these (32). the powerrelations, university mustprovide conditions students engagein cultural the for to as a form of resistance. Studentsshouldbe given remapping the opportunity engagein systematic to of analyses the waysin whichthe dominant culture creates borders saturated terror, in andforcedexclusions thathavedisabled ... others inequality, to speakin the placeswherethose who havepowerexercise (33) authority. The New Right,at leastin part,owes its ideological ascendancy to the success with whichit has represented callsfor "cultural such as that the of remapping" leadingto an anarchy threatens integrity Americaitself-an "anarchy" in reflected the attempts feminists by and multiculturalists set the pedagogical to The university agenda. canonlyresistsuch"barbarism" serving the fronton whichthe as by New Right can,in Pat Buchanan's a revoluwords,"wage cultural tionin the 1990sas sweeping thepolitical as in revolution the 1980s" (11).The alarming impactof the New Right'scallsfor a conservative "cultural revolution" within the academy be measured can by the popular successof such books as Allan Bloom'sTheClosing of theAmerican Mind and Dinesh D'Souza'sIlliberalEducation-a successaided(effectually not intentionally) a mediacoverage if by thatoftentrivializes caricatures veryrealissuesandconcerns and the thatengendered so-called the correctness movement union political versitycampuses. The extraordinary successof the New Rightoverthe last decade in shapingpublicperception the "correct" of role ideological of the

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academy allows the universitysetting of Oleannato resonate with its audiences in ways that suggest why they have greeted the play's misogyny with such enthusiasm. In her review of the play, Leslie Kane argues that Mamet traces the decline of the university"from liberal community to battlefieldwhere zealot dominates scholar"in orderto dramatize"thepernicious,pervasiveevil of thought control, the McCarthyismof the 1990s"(2). It is the successof this dramatization, Kane asserts,that preventsus from labelingthe play "asantifeminist, even misogynist"(2). I want to suggest that the cultural politics of misogyny in the play are directly related to and depend upon how Mamet exploresthe question of the university. To clarify this last point, let met turn to a moment in the play's second scene.John, the professor, attemptsto reasonCarolinto dropher charge of sexualharassmentby convincing her that she has ping misinterpretedhim. She refusesto retract,accusing him of abusing his professorialpower, and the following exchange occurs. CAROL: You can look in yourselfand see those things that I see. And you can find revulsionequal to my own. Good day. (She preparesto leave the room). JOHN: Wait a second, will you, just one moment. (Pause) Nice day today. CAROL:What? JOHN: You said "Good day."I think that it is a nice day today. CAROL: Is it? JOHN: Yes, I think it is. CAROL: And why is that important? JOHN: Because it is the essence of all human communication. I say something conventional,you respond,and the information we exchange is not about the "weather," that we but both agree to converse. In effect, we agree that we are both and human. (Pause)I'm not a ... "exploiter," you're'not a ... what? Revolutionary . but that we're just hu. "deranged," man. (52-3) John defines the ability to engage in and reach agreementthrough such interpersonalspeech acts as "thegist of education" (56). As he admits, however, this dialogic ideal-the communicative action through which we affirmthe "commonhumanity"that both liberal

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and humanism neoconservative as ideologysee education legitimatwe because "interpret behavior others the of ing-proves vulnerable ... through screens create" the we (19-20). We findherethe familiar Mametthemeof the needfora commuin whichrecognition ourcommonality of becomesthe basisfor nity universal valuesthat transcend limits of strategic, the establishing instrumentalaction. Such values can only establishthemselves the achieved a linguistic in through understanding by practice which the "magic forceof words[is] capable assuring truthin oneself of the or in others" in (MametWriting Restaurants In the contextof 6-7). the play's sucha communal ethicfunctions as less setting,however, ethicalassertion thanas ideological If "thegist of educaprogram. tion"consistsof reaching consensus "thehuman" that servesas the foundation definingmarker subjectivity, the university and of then to thatthe "agree[ment] we are.. that must,according John,ensure . human" takesprecedence the fact"that mayhave... posiover we whicharein conflict' tions, andthatwe mayhave... desires, (53). Theimplicit here sitesof consuggestion thattheuniversity manages flictbyadopting pedagogy a oriented toward social and integration consensus lendsitselfto articulation the educational with of easily agenda theNew Right,inwhichit is precisely thosestudents sites occupying of who find themselvesaskedto class,ethnic,and sexualdifference the of whencompared with (mis)recognize irrelevance suchdifference theirmembership a "common in culture." John's If lackthe speeches rhetoric AllanBloomorRoger of Kimball, overtly apocalyptic focusing on a kindof distorted communication rather thanculture difference as the mainobstacle community, to Oleanna nevertheless associates such distortion the cultural with of he John politics difference. claims wants to engage Carol communicative on terrain where canremove "the they Artificial of 'Teacher,' 'Student'" Viewinghis acand Stricture, (21). tionsthrough "distorted" the screen thefeminist of interpretive "group" thatconvinced to bringcharges her declines ento him,Carol against in suchdialogic I "Because speak, not formyself. gage reciprocity: yes, Butforthegroup" (65). Carol's of echoes an repeated menacinginvocation "thegroup" distinction Mametdraws betweencommunity groups and implicitly in the notes to his play TheWater distinEngine.What ultimately fromcommunities "their is lackof accountability," a guishesgroups lackmanifesting itselfin the refusal dialogue: of "Wecannottalkto them"(Writingin Restaurants 108). Mamet's identification of

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America'slegitimation crisis as a form of communication disorder in which instrumentaland strategicmanipulationof speech replaces the communicative understanding through which speakers reach agreementon ethical principlesof conduct is not unique to Oleanna. succeeds other Mamet groups that threaten Indeed, Carol's"group" both communication and community-the real estate company (GlengarryGlen Ross), Al Capone's crime "family"(The UntouchI Zionist organization(Homicide). am not ables)or the paramilitary suggesting that the structurallysimilar role these groups share in Mamet's work in any way qualifies the misogynistic anger directed we at Carol and her group. On the contrary, can see the play'santifeminism as a logical extension of the "ethical" critiqueof distorted runs throughout Mamet's work. What distincommunication that guishes Oleannafrom Mamet's earlierwork is the insistence with which the play locates the roots of distortion in the claims of a gendereddifferencethat refusesto submergeitself in the ideological a rhetoric of the "human," gendered differencethat threatensto reveal this rhetoric as ideological. It may be objected that Mamet's depiction of Carol'sfeminism is so blatantly unfair that we are asked not to regard her as a "true" feminist, but, as John Lahr suggests in his review of the play, as a study in the destructive"powerof envy disguised as political ideology" (121). In an ideological atmosphere largely inhospitable to feminism's attempts at "culturalremapping,"however, it becomes only too easy to view what Lahr locates at the level of characteras a as judgment on feminism itself, particularly Oleannaoffers no alternativevision of feminism. Indeed, to the extent that it lends itself to Lahr'sreading,the play depoliticizes feminism,transformingits chalto the status quo from the field of ideological struggle to a lenge psychologicalobsession with achieving power as an end in itself. We see this depoliticization,ironicallyenough, when Carol tells John that the universitydenies him tenure based on "yourown actions.... What has led you to this place? Not your sex. Not your race.Not yourclass.YOUR OWN ACTIONS" (64). What strikesus about this moment is that while Carol repeatedlyidentifies hersubjectivity in terms of class and gender-markers of identity that have forced her to "endurehumiliations"and "overcome prejudices[both sexual"(69)-she invokesthe image of the humane]conomic [and] ist subject as autonomous agent when confrontingJohn: "Youare a Free Person"(74). While we might expect such an argumentfrom

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John himself,Carol'swillingnessto locate his "sexist. . . elitist" of in (47) tendencies subjectivity independent sex,race,andclassor, and of moreto the point, independent the discourses, institutions, whichsex,race,andclassacquire raises meaning, practices through aboutwhat Carolcallsher group's seriousquestions (74). "agenda" As Henry Girouxargues,a feminist politicsof differenceand and will that agency engagein theoryandpractice interrogates chalthat andinterdependencies "those mediations, interrelations, lenges (68). give shapeand powerto largerpoliticaland social systems" of John, Such a politicscouldneveremergefromCarol's "analysis" her for the thandiscredit asa spokesperson feminism, logic butrather of of the playsuggeststhat feminismutilizesthe political language and to diversity, pluralism, difference maska desirefor powerenunrelated questions to of"cultural As tirely remapping." the spokesin how forher"group," Carolshowslessinterest challenging person the university dominant of genderandclass (re)produces ideologies thanshe doesin divesting it Johnof his powerandappropriatingfor As Do. herself. she saysquitepointedly, Johnmustlearnthat"You. Not. Have.The. Power" hate me .... Be(50), addinglater,"you causeI have. .. poweroveryou"(68-9). Giventhe play's association feminism of with distorted commuit that the powerCarolseeksis a spenication, is hardly surprising the to cifically verbalpower, power quiteliterally havethelastworda wordthatrefusesto admitthe possibility response an other of by in as WhenJohn positioned anequal partner a dialogical relationship. that asserts his conduct toward Carol"was devoidof sexual content" (a claim that the play supports),she respondsby invokingthis "I monological power: sayit was not. I SAYIT WAS NOT. Don't IT'S you beginto see. . . ? Don'tyou begin to understand? NOT FORYOUTO SAY" "ethi(70).Here,we see how muchthe play's of cal"critique feminismreliesupon a specificfigurefromthe imof the age-repertoire misogynistic fantasy: womanwho appropriates the powerof speech;the womanwho, refusing resignherselfto to not herself withinthe symbolic but silence, onlyinserts order, threatens to evictmenfromtheirprivileged withinthatorder. position to "what womenwant," do Indeed,in response Freud's question, Carol's actions thatwomenaspire the logocentric to suggest mastery thatfeminismattacks patriarchal in culture. playtransforms The the feministcallfor womento fashiontheirvoice(s)into an aggressive urgeeitherto silencemenorto grantthema voiceonlyon condition

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they speak to affirm the woman'sWord (Carol offers to retracther charges if John signs a self-condemning statement written by her group").Similarly,the play decontextualizesthe debate surrounding canon-formation-a debatein which feminismhas raisedimporbetweenknowledgeandpowertantquestionsaboutthe relationship transformingit into a desire to repressmen'swriting as well as their speech (Carol'soffer to drop the charges also depends upon John's agreementto stop assigning and recommendingtexts, including his own, of which her "group" disapproves). Carol'slinguistic terrorism,3her rejectionof communicativeaction in favor of a coerciveverbalpracticethat reducesone's partner in dialogue to an object of manipulation,appearsat its most insidious in the play'sfinal moments.John receivesa phone call from his wife, whom he calls "baby" duringtheir conversation.Carol rebukes him for using this term:"Anddon't call your wife 'baby'.... Don't call your wife baby.You heard what I said. (CAROL startsto leave the room.JOHN grabsherand beginsto beather)"(79). Since Carol has alreadycost John his job, attempted to have his book banned from the university,and pressed charges against him for attempted rape,we might ask what it is specificallyabout this admonition that provokes him to violence. When Carol condemnsJohn for calling his wife "baby," questionthe validity of a linguistic practicethat both reflects and creates ing the emotional tie between husband and wife, she threatenswhat is formof community:the famoften regardedas the most fundamental ily. Families are largely absent from Mamet's work. In American Buffalo, GlengarryGlen Ross and Speed-the-Plow-the so-called "business trilogy"-this absence suggests how capitalism has relacommodified and objectifiedthe privatesphereof interpersonal tionship to the point where it becomes impossible to locate any affective dimension uncontaminatedby the inexorablelogic of capital. In Oleanna,this private sphere becomes the site of ultimate meaning, as John claims that the importanceof family ties functions as a determining factor in his desire for tenure:"To obtain tenure... on the basis of which I contractedto buy a house.... A home. A Good Home. To raise my family"(44). To the extent that it is an object,a commoditythat one contractsto buy, an house is merely an house; once it servesas a place to raise a family,an house becomes an home, a site of the affective mutuality This sense of home and reciprocitythat characterize community. any

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easily lends itself to articulationwith the neoconservativediscourse of "familyvalues"in which the "home"serves as the locus where the traditionalvalues of marriage,family,parenthoodand social life defend against the ravagesof the same culturalfragmentationagainst which the university must fight. John's comment that tenure will providehim with the security"to raise my family"not only suggests that the universityprovideseconomic supportfor the home, but reminds us that universityand home function as two sites for the production and transmissionof culturalvalues, two institutions engaged in a similar ideological project.While Carol's remarkabout John's use of "baby" obviously cannot destroy his home in the same way can that her "group" endangerthe "civilizing" mission of the univerconfirm the New Right's apocalypticscenariosdesity, it seems to picting feminism as a movement that, not content with advancingits claims through the political process, seek to destroy that mythical ideal known as "theAmerican way of life"-an ideal representedby an anachronisticimage of the nuclear family that neoconservative ideology remainsintent on resurrecting. Such culturalconservatismhas found a considerableaudience (an audience it shareswith Oleanna)for a diagnosis of America'sculturalcrisisthat resonateswith largesections of the middle classwho, buffeted by rapidlyshifting economic and social winds, seek an explanationfor the crisis that does not call into question the political/ economic orderfrom which it has derivedits well-being. When this audiencerespondspositively to Carol'sbeating, it readsthe violence less as an act of aggressionthan as a form of defense-not so much self-defense as a defense of the institutions (the family and the university) that, as the guardiansof traditionalvalues, find themselves underattackfrom those who flock to the rallyingcry of"difference." Writing in the conservative journalNationalInterest, IrvingKristol ideals as "the longing for community" argues that such "American" are more endangeredin the 1990s than in the 1960s: "We may have won the Cold War .... But this means that now the enemy is us, not them"(28). By allowing (if not encouraging)its audienceto collapse the distinction between Carol as an "individual" women as character, entities and feminism as an ensemble of sociopolitical biological movements, Oleanna attaches a name and a face to this enemy within-the enemy who must be prevented,through the use of violence if necessary,from contaminatingthe community.To the possible objection that such violence itself constitutes a breach of com-

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munity,one could respond that the internal enemy has forfeited its right to be considered part of the community by refusingto recognize itself in the hegemonic values that define and set "us"apart from the culturalpollution of "them." JOHN: Don't you have feelings? CAROL: Don't you have feelings?... What is it that has no feelings. Animals. I don't take your side, you question if I'm Human. (65) It is not only John, however,but the play itself that insistently while refusingto questionhow questionswhether Carol is "Human," to "the human" helps legitimate social hierarchiesand the appeal power relations that consolidate them. This appealto "the human" amountsto a kind of terrorism.By terrorism, do not mean the play's I climacticviolence so much as the forms of ideological management that effectually authorizesuchviolence,creatingwhatMichaelTaussig calls "thespace of death ... where the social imaginationhas populated its metamorphizingimages of evil"(5, 8). In the play'srepreof sentationaleconomy,Carol occupiesthis "space death"-the death of the university,the family, the community,the "human"-and if the violence directedagainsther fails to contain the threatshe poses, this very failure leads many in Mamet's audience to misrecognize the status of this "imageof evil" as an image, an ideological fiction that mystifiesthe political and economic factorscontributingto our currentlegitimation crisis. That this specific "imageof evil"both arisesfrom and reinforces the image-repertoireof misogynist fantasy raises serious questions valuesin the name of which Mamet'splaysmount about the"human" their culturalcritique.Whether we view Carol,followingJohn Lahr's suggestion, as using the aspirationsof feminism to mask her desire feminist ultimatelydoesn'tmatter for power or regardher as a "real" becausethe textual politics of the play locate the threat she poses to community in her status as a woman, thus foregroundingdifference of at the expense of the "human." Introducingthe "contamination" jeopardizing political divisivenessinto the domain of the university, the culturalmission of that institution which, more than any other for the New Right, must transcendpolitics and ideology, she represents the mediation of"human"communicationby interest-a mediation that, for Mamet, transformsthe relationshipbetween equal

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into exercise powerin which of dialogical partners an imperialistic utilizeslanguage manipulate objectify and to the interested speaker her "partner." "human" the interest and This tensionbetweenthe disinterested informsthe conflicting educational of cultural specificity "philosoof the two characters. John offersa succinctaccountof the phies" "I declineandfallof the American university: saycollegeeducation, of and sincethe war,hasbecomeso a matter course, sucha fashionfor to ablenecessity, thoseeitherof or aspiring the vastnew middle class,thatwe espouse as a matterof right,andhaveceasedto ask, it, 'whatis it good for?'" Mamet's (33).John'scommentsencapsulate of As senseof thedegeneration American culture. he doesin Glengarry Mametheresuggeststhe disappearGlenRossand Speed-the-Plow, anceof criteria grounding for valuejudgments reminding of us by it whathappens whenwe pervert meaning "good," the of wrenching and fromits placeas the vitalcenterof an ethicalvocabulary transJohn implies that the best forming it into a synonym for "success." answerto the question of what educationis good for lies in "alove of learning"(33). In other words, for John (and we can almost hear William Bennett or Allan Bloom speakingthrough him), education is a good in itself-an "in-itself"whose goodness demands that we view education as an end ratherthan a means. of It is preciselythe instrumentalization educationthat Carol represents. Carol freely admits that she sees education as a means for attaining the social mobility that will allow her to rise above her lower class origins. Rather than defining "a love of learning"as an integralpartof the humanistideal of the ethicallygood life, she views knowledge as a good only to the extent that it can alterher status and advancethe interestsof class empowerment.She identifies herself as one of the "peoplewho came here[to the university].To know something they didn'tknow .... To get, what do they say?'To get on in the world"'(12). Such an instrumentalizedapproachto education becomes symptomaticof the largercrisisof AmericancultureMamet explores,a crisis in which, as Lyotardobserves aproposof capitalist legitimation crisis, "successis the only criterion of judgment [our culture]will accept.Yet it is incapableof saying ... why it [success] is good, just, or true, since success is self-proclaiming"(18-9). Like his suggestion that the interpretive"screen" gender issues of distorts the extent to which "we'rejust human,"John's sense that class interest has eclipsed a concerned with what "is good, just, or

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true"when deciding what education is good for, performsits ideological work under the guise of ethical critique.Implicitly rebuking Carol's willingness to use education as a means of furtheringher social aspirations,John obscuresthe extent to which, by participating in the cultural (re)productionof class identity, that university engages in reifyingthe class differencesand antagonismsthat manifest themselves preciselyin the economic "prejudices" "humiliand ations"that Carol desires to escape. While such "prejudices" work to against those "aspiring the vast new middle class,"the university those who, like John, alreadybelong to that class.John's empowers motivationsfor seeking tenure revealhis own desire for an empowerment that is as much materialas it is ideological: That I haddutiesbeyondthe school,andthatmy dutyto myhome, for instance,was, or shouldbe, of an equalweight.That tenure, and security, and yes, and comfort.. . were even worthy of honourable And that it was given me... to assuremyself pursuit. of-as far as it restsin The Material-a continuation thatjoy of and comfort.In exchangefor... [t]eaching.(44) I have alreadydiscussedJohn'sdesire for tenure in relationto the ideologically charged appeals to the "home"as a center of values. he Neither such appeals nor the equally charged rhetoricof "duty" can disguise the fact that John's"honourable employs here, however, of pursuit" "TheMaterial"-carefullyrevealedthroughoutthe playis only another version of both the valorizing of success at the expense of the "good,just, or true"and the reductionof educationfrom end to meansthat Carolappearsto represent.Since I havebeen arguing that the humanisticvaluesJohn espouses are preciselythose affirmed by the play,it may be objectedthat Mamet exposeshis privileging of"The Material"and the elite status it confersupon him in order to submit his values to our critical scrutiny. To answersuch an objection,we must consider how the play invites us to judgeJohn. Insistentlydemonized by the text, Carolnever occupies the position of an ethical or social norm againstwhich we of can measureJohn'sactions. If we find his "pursuit" "The Material"questionable;if we find objectionablehis attitudetowardssuch as social "duties" supportingpublic education through taxes ("Isit a law that I have to improve the City Schools at the expense of my own interest? And, is this not simply The WhiteMans Burden?"

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[34]); if we find him ultimatelyconcernedwith the prosperityof the elite ratherthan the culturaldisseminationof the "human" valuesfor which he acts as an imperfect spokesman,Mamet encouragesus to judge him only in terms of those values. To clarifythe implications of this point, let me refer to C. W. E. Bigsby's comments that Mamet's plays "argu[e]for the necessity of a humanismfor which he cannot alwaysfind spacewithin the plays." Such humanism may never manifest itself in the characters' actions, but remainspresent through Mamet's "retain[ing]the vocabularyof a world which has slipped away"(290, 262). Bigsby here points to the irreconcilable between what Mamet'scharacters andwhat gap say they do in AmericanBuffalo,when Teach declaresthe need for distinctions between right and wrong at the verymoment he engages in the play'sclimactic act of violent destruction,or in Glengarry Glen Ross,when Moss utilizes the language of community and solidarity to coerceAaronowinto helping him robthe realestateoffice.Through such disjunctionsbetween word and action, Mamet allows the audience both to see the charactersas active participantsin the collapse of those valuesto which they appealand to recognizethose values as the kind of ethical norms that ideally should serve as guiding principles of action. In Oleanna,Mamet utilizes this same disjunctionin order to inscribe the text's humanist ideology.When we see John acting out of a sense of the interest of privilege-"Is it a law that I have to improve the City Schools at the expenseof my own interest"-Mamet representshim as failing the values he invokes of a world in which commitment to the characteristics that define our "commonhumandistinctions of class, ethnicity, and gender. By enity" outweighs couragingus to see John in such terms,Mamet placesthese "human" values beyond question. Inviting us to view John'selitism as betraying the values he claims to represent,the play effectuallyrefuses any criticalscrutinyof its humanism,which functionsas the ethicalyardstick by which we measureJohn. Focusing on how his "pursuit" of "The Material"undermines the humanistic "ideal,"the play never suggests how the institutional support of the claim that "we're just human" work to reify social inequality.CondemningJohn'sovert can elitism, an audience can (mis)recognize the elitism promoted and ideologically masked by the claim that differencesand specificities of class, race, and gender are merely distortedinterpretive"screens." Accepting "common humanity"as the fundamentalmarkerof sub-

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jectivity, an audience can fail to interrogatehow regardingidentification in terms of culturalspecificityas "artificial" servesto naturalize the disempowermentof those denied the benefits of culturalcentrality.Positioning John as guilty of the self-interest that threatens the humanistic ideal, the play deflects its audience from exploring the relations of power that both support and find their support in humanism and from questioningthe extent to which John'ssense of entitlement and privilege mirrors (ratherthan betrays)the interests the plea to recognize that "we're just human."4 informing It may be objected that the play's"humanism" less an ideologiis cal position than an utopianyearningfor a society that escapespolarization over issues of class and gender;a society in which John would feel obligatedto subordinatehis intereststo the good of a communal ethic; a society in which Carolwould not have to "overc[o]me prejudices .... Economic, sexual.... And endure humiliation"(69), because the fact that "we're just human"would be the only index of that we recognize. As Oleanna suggests, however,we subjectivity society at the cost of the demonizationand purchasesuch an "ideal" terroristicexclusion of those who identify themselves in terms of those who speakfromthe subjectpositionof women rather difference, at than from the position of the disinterested"human," the cost of the of a misogyny that both proves incompatiblewith any deployment viable ethics and allows us to ignore the underlying political/economic causes of America'slegitimation crisis. While Mamet has receivedpraise for opposing a vision of community to the ravagesof capitalism, Oleannasuggests that we need to take a closer look at the culturalimaginaryshaping that visionan imaginary that equates difference with distortion and divisiveto ness, that offers misogyny as a "solution" our "unconsciousconfusion."If, as Mamet remarksin his interviewwith David Savran, we aregoing to createa communitythat servesas a true site of"ethiboth a sense of comcal interchange" (134), then we must articulate and and a sense of ethics that encourageresponsiveness openmunity ness to the specificity of difference.Within such an ethics, communication would no longer function as a form of containment perbut formedunder the sign of the "human," would providea perspective from which to view differenceas positive and socially enabling. Such a perspective,as Henry Giroux writes, allows us to "to recognize and to analyze how the differenceswithin and between various groupscan expandthe potentialof humanlife and democraticpossi-

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bilities" (34). Lacking such an ethics, Oleannacan only perpetuate the very crisis of culturalfragmentationit seeks to address. Auburn University NCOES
I want to thank HarryM. Solomon for inviting me to deliver an earlierversion of this essay (under the title "David Mamet's Oleanna and the Politics of Misogyny")at the Humanities Discussion Circle at the 1993 meeting of SAMLA. See Elaine Showalter's"Actsof Violence," TimesLiterarySupplement, Nov. 6, 1992, for an early review that sharplyraises the questions of antifeminism and misogyny that continue to dominate responses to the play. 2 See Habermas's Legitimation Crisis for a full discussion of this concept. 3 The extent to which language functions as a form of violence has received much discussion in Mamet criticism-two particularlyinsightful accounts are offered by C. W. E. Bigsby'sA CriticalIntroduction Twentieth-Century to American Drama, VolumeThree:Beyond Broadway and Jeanette R. Malkin's recent Drama. study, VerbalViolencein Contemporary 4 In one of the more creative attempts to save the play from charges of misogyny and reactionarycultural politics, Hersh Zeifman draws a distinction between Mamet as playwright and Mamet as director.Zeifman sees the play as a balanced explorationof the abuse of power that submits bothCarol and the "humanistic"values John imperfectly represents to critical scrutiny.Only "Mamet's badly misconceived production had turned Oleannainto a comic potboiler satirizing Political Correctness"(3). Even if we believe that directorMamet is incapable of understandingwriter Mamet, the disjuncturebetween speech and action that Bigsby identifies as one of Mamet's fundamental dramatic strategies, and that I have discussed in terms of John, suggests the limitations of Zeifman's defense of the text.

WORKS CrED
to AmericanDrama, Bigsby, C. W. E. A CriticalIntroduction Twentieth-Century VolumeThree:Beyond Broadway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Buchanan, Patrick. "In the War for America's Culture, the 'Right' Side is Losing." RichmondNews Leader 24 June 1989. and the Politics of EducaGiroux, Henry. Border Crossings:Cultural Workers tion. New York: Routledge, 1992. Habermas,Jurgen. LegitimationCrisis.London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1976. . "The New Obscurity:The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies." Philosophyand Social Criticism 11(2): 1986. Kane, Leslie. Review of Oleanna. The David Mamet Review 1: 1994. Kimball, Roger. "TenuredRadicals: A Postscript." The New CriterionJanuary 1991.

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National Interest Summer1989. Kristol,Irving."Comment." 16 Lahr,John."DogmaDays."TheNew Yorker Nov. 1992. 1982-1985. The Jean FranCois. Postmodern Lyotard, Correspondence, Explained: Don Barry, Trans. Bernadette Maher, JulianPefanis, SpateandMorVirginia U P, ganThomas.Minneapolis: of Minnesota 1993. Drama.Cambridge: CamViolence Contemporary in JeanetteR. Verbal Malking, bridgeUP, 1992. New York: Mamet,David.Oleanna. VintageBooks,1993. in New -- . Writing Restaurants. York: PenguinBooks, 1986. Voice June1993. 29 "Mamet's The Russo,Francine. Cockfight." Village Traveling New York: TheatreCommunications Savran,David, ed. In TheirOwn Words. Group,1988. 6 Times Elaine."Acts Violence." of Showalter, Literary SupplementNov. 1992:16. in and Michael.Shamanism, Colonialism, the WildMan:A Study Terror Taussig, of andHealing.Chicago: University ChicagoP, 1987. Review1: 1994. The Zeifman,Hersh.Reviewof Oleanna. DavidMamet