of American studies and Renaissance literature. More than
ever, professors of literature were “getting political,” bent on
finding the ideological clues that might be imbedded in novels
or poems.
In this new light, Derridean deconstruction suddenly
seemed an outmoded and trivial activity, a self-congratulatory
way of playing with language. It became reckless, even unfor-
giveable, to ignore the one word that all must swear fealty
to: History. “History,” Fredric Jameson had asserted in his
magnum opus,The Political Unconscious( 1981 ), “is what hurts”:
the ultimate sign of the real. By being historical, scholars could
prove they were doing something valuable, connecting them-
selves to the ordinary world of the people. All that theory
would be put, for once, to political use, in an effort to explain
and thereby combat the forces that rule us. “History,” Harold
Bloom remarked to a class in the mid- 1980 s, “is the shibboleth
of your generation.” Twenty-five years later, it still is.
Derrida implied his careful distance from the immediate
passions raised by politics and history. His role in the de Man
and Heidegger scandals showed the suspicion he cast on all
those, especially journalists, who were eager to make judg-
ments about the involvement of intellectuals with political
events. They didn’t know how to read; it was best just to reflect
on the profound questions that de Man’s or Heidegger’s beha-
vior might raise, rather than trying to judge it.
By 1993 , Derrida’s insistence on the minute details of a
text, and the withholding of political judgment that went
along with such focus, was becoming perilously old-fashioned.
A new age had arrived in the academy: a return of political
commitment, which often required that one find ideological
fault with authors and their texts. It was time for Derrida to
change his stripes, to become a political thinker. He needed a
Politics, Marx, Judaism 227