'Crisis'' Discourse and the Study of Literature

'Crisis'' Discourse and the Study of Literature

John Searle may be right in that 20th-century American education has regularly pronounced itself as being in a state of crisis, from the aftershock of Sputnik to the era of 'Johnny Can't Read' (85), yet the discourse of crisis since the 1980s seems to have increased both in intensity and complexity in recent publications within the field of literary studies. While the characterization of what that 'crisis' is varies from one critic to another; for once, all seem to be anxiously calling attention to the present state of that discipline, which many agree, though based upon quite different diagnoses, is in dire need of housekeeping. The intensity of the crisis discourse concerning the state of literary studies in the US may have much to do with the discursive convergence of various social and political forces on the one academic field that has come to be seen as offering optimal room for cultural-political debate. The contest for the power to formulate/interpret the alleged crisis thus constitutes the vicissitudes of a hegemonic process in which involved parties struggle to create a sort of 'world picture' in which the shape of literary studies is to locate its point of reference. And as comparative studies of the discursive maneuvers surrounding institutional change could shed light on the varied function and operation of discourse within different cultural and institutional contexts, the crisis discourse generated by the P[olitical] C[orrectness] debate in the US could very well serve as a point of departure from which reflections could be done upon the institutional status of and the hegemonic process surrounding English studies in Taiwan.