There's No Such Thing as Free Speech
And It's a Good Thing, Too
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:30th Mar '95
Currently unavailable, currently targeted to be due back around 2nd February 2025, but could change
From the author of Doing Things Naturally
Contains the author's investigations of issues in literary and legal theory, offering insights into diverse matters ranging from politics and education to literature and culture."I appear before you," writes Stanley Fish, "by virtue of a mistake made by central casting which has tapped me for the role of ardent academic leftist, proponent of multiculturalism, and standard bearer of the politically correct." Indeed, as head of Duke University's English Department, Fish has drawn fire for supposedly championing campus speech codes (he does not, in fact); for his embrace of deconstruction (he would call himself a pragmatist), and for being a "professor who revels in his affluence" (as one journalist wrote)--despite his own status as a white male and a leading scholar in the traditional field of Renaissance literature. But as Adam Begley wrote in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Fish is "the epitome of he academic as showman," a professor of both English and law who is "willfully provocative, politically conservative." In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish shows what all the fuss is about, with seventeen of his pivotal, provocative writings. Fish ranges across reverse discrimination, the First Amendment and hate speech codes, the nature of the law, and the state of the academy, lending his distinctive, insistent voice to the debate with sharply drawn and closely argued opinions. He goes straight to the core of America's orthodox platitudes, arguing that such liberal stand-bys as free speech, tolerance, equality, and nondiscrimination are meaningless in themselves; these concepts only exist in the context of the political views of those who invoke them (the assault on civil rights, he notes, has advanced under the David Duke banner "Equal Rights for All; Special Privileges for None"). Throughout, Fish applies techniques of literary criticism to the political debate, forcing us to examine the basis of our most sacrosanct principles. In the title essay, Fish writes that the First Amendment is "the first refuge of scoundrels." The concept of "free speech" always exists only in reference to speech which is banned in advance because it undermines the basis of a community; it takes a political struggle to decide where to draw the boundary of tolerance--and he finds good reason to put "hate speech beyond the pale. If...
`witty ... a demonstration of how to write well about law and literature in the same volume' The Independent
`Mr Fish deflates anointed truths with joyful abandon, and he is at his best in exposing the often baleful effects wrought by mean-spirited defenders of traditional values' The New York Times Book Review
"Splendid essays by Milton scholar and literary theorist Fish that express his centrist, mediating, pragmatic position in the recent cultural wars over theory, politics, and the place of literature in society....Clear, eloquent, personalbe....Fish offers here exactly what he argues for: clarity, integrity, conviction, the common place of common sense."--Kirkus Reviews
"Fish, the author of numerous books on Milton, literary theory, and the politics of teaching, has become in recent years famous for defending the contemporary academy in a series of debates held at various colleges and universities with the neo-conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza. In anticipation of these debates, he prepared five remarkable essays, which constitute the core of this learned and wide-ranging collection. Other essays concern the political and historical context of controversies of the notion of 'free speech,' as well as with the enduring legacy of Milton and the masochism of Volvo-driving academics. Despite his public reputation, Fish's views cannot be easily subsumed under such laabels as 'deconstructionist,' 'post-structuralist,' or even 'leftist.'...Many readers will find pleasure in Fish's simultaneously literate but blunt prose style. Recommended."--Library Journal
"Contemporary culture without Stanley Fish? Without his intrepid brilliance? Without his verve? Without his zest--for controversy and for life? What a bleak, impoverished place contemporary culture would be."--Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University
"Let the reader beware! Stanley Fish's new book There's No Such Thing As Free Speech will prompt liberals and conservatives alike to campaign to have this English professor named to fill the next U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. While not a lawyer, Fish's essays convince me that the nation needs his brand of historically aware, politically astute, and culturally attuned pragmatism on its highest court."--Derrick Bell, New York University School of Law
"Those who know Stanley Fish will tell you that arguing with him is always an exhilarating and edifying experience, and his new book can be depended on to give its readers the same pleasures and rewards. Brilliant and audacious, There's No Such Thing As Free Speech is vintage Fish: with its swingeing wit, rapid-fire reductios, and bold turns of argument, Fish turns the 'cultural wars' inside out."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Loose Canons, and W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
"By turns funny, savage, and sly--a brilliant and devastating indictment of first amendment orthodoxy."--Richard Delgado, Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado School of Law
"This book is Stanley Fish at his best, passionately hilarious, conservatively radical, delightfully disagreeable, subversively autonomous. This deeply intelligent reflection on campus politics, political pedantry and the first amendment is sure to provoke both insight and argument, yet it avoids the main-spirited sound and fury that has characterized too much recent debate on these toughest of topics."--Patricia J. Williams, Professor of Law, Columbia University
"Good sense, clarity, liveliness."--The Washington Post
"Quite possibly the clearest response to the attacks on curricular reform to date."--The Boston Globe
'His attack on the anti-PC crowd could hardly be bettered. He's certainly right to show that absolute free speech is an impossibility. A dose of Fish always helps to clear the arteries.' London Review of Books
'The strength of There's No Such Thing as Free Speech lies in the probing of how, as much as to what end, cultural and legal business is actually conducted in America.' Times Higher Education Supplement
'a fine introduction to one of the greatest and most accessible minds in contemporary Western thought' Conor Gearty, The Independent
'The book is quite possible the clearest response to the attacks on curricular reform to date.' Zachary Dowdy, The Boston Globe
Fish is a celebrity whose fame rests on his readiness to disagree with, one feels, almost anything. What he does best is defend affirmative action. * Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian *
You will love this wise-guy theorist. * New Statesman & Society *
..he revels...in an exhilarating negative capability, providing a collection of essays that delights in the wholesale slaughter of sacred cows. * Sunday Times *
ISBN: 9780195093834
Dimensions: 214mm x 141mm x 23mm
Weight: 467g
352 pages