To the Editors:

I enjoyed D. G. Myers’s lucid analysis of the American Council of Learned Societies’ pamphlet, “Speaking for the Humanities.” I would just like to emphasize one point especially that Mr. Myers had a chance only to imply.

The writers of the pamphlet claim that new modes of analysis are introducing the viewpoints of “marginal” groups other than “white males” into the academy. Even apart from the dubious assumptions behind it, this claim needs qualification. Feminist criticism, for example, is not genuinely concerned with literature by and about women, but only with a feminist ideological interpretation of such literature. This interpretation has as much to do with the full range of women’s experience as hurricanes and tornadoes with the full range of weather possibilities. So it goes for most of what passes for feminist “scholarship” today. So much for the “female viewpoint” in the academy. I have more than a suspicion that the case is similar with all the other “marginalized” and “oppressed” groups for whom these scholars claim to be speaking.

Carol Iannone
New York, NY