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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AT THE CENTRE 235

centrality to autobiographical and fictional forms, and to the awareness of sexism
36
in textual representations, in ways from which too much theoretical work,
uninterested in gender, has stood separate.
Here we look briefly at three sets of questions: (1) the development of literary
theory in relation to the uneven and divided situations of those teaching at
different levels of the education system; (2) the rapid development of new kinds
of cultural practice scarcely yet described, let alone assessed; (3) the uniquely
strong position of feminist work within the contradictory space between
educational work and cultural practice.

Education and English studies
It has been an important paradox that while ‘English’ has inevitably been caught
within the ever-extending processes of certification and qualification dominating
the post-war growth of the state education system, it has also been at all levels
the most open and ambiguous disciplinary space. But definitions and aims have
diverged sharply and now make up a peculiar pyramid.
At its apex, the university ‘discipline’ of English has remained nearly
inviolate. Since the founding days of Sussex, contemporary or interdisciplinary
work has scarcely been contemplated by universities able to claim financial
stringencies or to shelter under the convenient doctrine of the ‘binary’ system. In
English departments the intellectual consequences of a now eroded confidence in
untheorized readings (‘we feel that….’) have gone little beyond a skirmish with
linguistics. Mainstream criticism no longer treats the great tradition as a unique
repository of moral values, but it gets by in practice (despite an overall
impression of directionlessness, combined with a modishly brisk, colloquial
manner) with an eclectic pluralism of approaches (the sociological, the
psychological, the biographical, the formalist, the bibliographical, and so on, ad
nauseam), which, because they lack a thorough literary historical grounding,
make literary texts appear to be arbitrarily selected out of, or ‘naturally’ given by,
the ‘literary tradition’ itself. Other work has remained isolated, carelessly under-
organized, except in the productive literature/ society conferences at Essex, or
politely absorbed: ‘context’ and ‘new directions’ often remain old ‘background’
writ large. And as Rée remarked in another context: ‘British philosophy still
exists…. Radical Philosophy relates to it decreasingly; it is uninterested; and the
feeling is mutual.’ 37
In the polytechnics there has been an effective movement away from the great
tradition, by way of combined or integrated degrees or by routes into degrees in
Communications, Media or Cultural Studies. The results have included a much
wider range of texts thought worth study, detailed historical work in connection
with the analysis and a greater openness to theoretical questions, even though
‘readings’ and debates rooted in the literary field have remained central. This
work, if still corralled by the general vulnerability of the polytechnics, has had a
considerable effect upon its first generation of graduates. In its wake a range of new