The “Legitimation Crisis” of English Literature
Over the past thirty years, English has distinguished itself from the
other disciplines considered here by broadening its mission—to the
tasks of producing, teaching, and celebrating literary canons, the
profession has added the job of reflecting on the canonization pro-
cess itself.^28 It is perhaps the strong influence of post-structuralism,
and of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault in particular, that has
made literary scholars particularly aware of standards of excellence
as power-laden and anything but platonic ideals. Much of Derrida
and Foucault’s writings concern the construction of arbitrary hierar-
chies of meaning.^29
Given the commitment to deconstructive analysis that literary
scholars evince in their classrooms and in their studies, it should not
be surprising that many are ambivalent about the evaluative role of
funding panels. The scholars whom I interviewed describe them-
selves as skeptical of whether “true quality” exists and, if it does, of
their ability to recognize it. They tend to understand excellence as a
construction resulting from the interaction of panelists, as opposed
to an objective quality inherent to the proposal being evaluated. In
responding to questions about whether they “believed in excellence”
and whether the “cream naturally rises to the top,” they emphasize
intersubjective processes, such as how panelists collaborate to label
specific proposals as being “high quality” based on agreed-on, but
certainly “subjective,” criteria. One English professor, when asked if
she believes in academic excellence, says:
My first impulse is to say no, I think I don’t. Let me put it this
way: Maybe I believe in academic excellence, but I don’t think
that’s a natural category. I think that we have some kind of con-
sensus around what we like for certain reasons, and then we call
them excellence, and then that’s what we hold for excellent.70 / On Disciplinary Cultures