PC Wars

PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy addresses the very issue of political correctness and the current skirmishes in the culture wars. It includes statements from many of our leading contemporary public intellectuals, including Joan Wallach Scott, Michael Bérubé, Bruce Robbins, Henry Giroux, and Gerald Graff. The collection marks a watershed in the debate about pc in that it presents serious considerations and analyses of the factors, causes, and consequences of the culture wars. Carefully examining the construction of pc, PC Wars analyses political correctness by focusing on the mass media, class politics, and the ideology of managerial democracy. It places the disputes around pc in the context of contemporary developments in critical and cultural theory and the current backlash against theory, manifested in the recent attacks on Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. The book also scrutinizes the undercurrents of anti-intellectualism and anti-professionalism which have tended to create a fertile ground for the pc hysteria. Offering much more than slogans and slinging arrows, PC Wars provides a spirited and critical look at the reaction, ideology, and political forces that have coalesced around the term. Contributors: Michael Bérubé, Reed Way Dasenbrock, Frank Farmer, Henry Giroux, Gerald Graff, Darlene Hantzis and Devoney Looser, John S. Howard and James M. Lang, Tom Lewis, James Neilson, Christopher Newfield, Richard Ohmann, Burce Robbins, Barry Sarchett, Joan W. Scott, Michael Sprinker, Jeffrey Williams

Jeffrey Williams

Chapter 1 Introduction, Jeffrey Williams; Part 1 The Campaign Against PC; Chapter 2 On "PC" and Related Matters, Richard Ohmann; Chapter 3 The Campaign Against Political Correctness, Joan Wallach Scott; Chapter 4 Truth, Justice, and the American Way, Michael Bérubé; Chapter 5 The Great PC Scare, Jim Neilson; Chapter 6 "Political Correctness", Tom Lewis; Chapter 7 What Was "Political Correctness"?, Christopher Newfield; Part 2 The Trouble with Theory; Chapter 8 The War Against Theory, Michael Sprinker; Chapter 9 We've Done It to Ourselves, Reed Way Dasenbrock; Chapter 10 Theory Against Itself, John S. Howard, James M. Lang; Chapter 11 "Not Theory ... But a Sense of Theory", Frank Farmer; Chapter 12 Of Safe(r) Spaces and "Right" Speech, Darlene M. Hantzis, Devoney Looser; Part III Othering the Academy; Chapter 13 Russell Jacoby, Antiprofessionalism, and the Politics of Cultural Nostalgia, Barry W. Sarchett; Chapter 14 Othering the Academy, Bruce Robbins; Chapter 15 Academics as Public Intellectuals, Henry A. Giroux; Chapter 16 A Paradox of the Culture War, Gerald Graff;