Literary and ｾ＠

Cultural Theory ＠ｾ

Wojciech Kalaga
Jacek Mydla
Katarzyna Ancuta
(eds.)

Political
Correctness
Mouth Wide Shut?

PETER LANG
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
“Political Correctness and Self-Corrections (An Anti-Relection?)” w: Political Correctness—Mouth
Wide Shut?, red. Katarzyna Ancuta, Wojciech Kalaga i Jacek Mydla. Frankfurt, New York: Peter Lang
Verlag, 2009, ss. 36–42.
 Paweł Jędrzejko and Djelal Kadir

Between Self and State: on Discourses of Political Correctness.

A Dialog

A) Political Correctness and State Corrections

It all began innocently enough as a lexical non sequitur. Its aim was to sensitize
public discourse to the sensibility of others in a multicultural era that history has
now dubbed “the culture wars.” Then, in the U.S.A. of the 1980s, the war was not
of terror but of culture as an ethno-racialized construct. The aim of “political cor-
rectness” then was to modulate the voice of contestatory claims by inflecting po-
litical debate with a modicum of civility. Some twenty years later, the phenomenon
has morphed into state impunity, where “political correctness” functions as an ap-
paratus of “state corrections” which proscribes dissent and enforces ideological
conformity. Philologists from Seneca to Cicero, and from Orwell to Auerbach have
always known that the trajectory of lexical morphology serves as a template for po-
litical formations and as a historical marker of social transformations. The itinerary
of “political correctness” conforms to the import of this insight.
The rigors of necessity now remind us that historically, and logically, “politi-
cal correctness” is an oxymoron. Things are either political or they are correct. The
myth that they can be both at the same time is a calculated decision and a political
strategy of the polis, which saw itself in contradistinction to the villainy of the ville,
or the pagan nature of the pagus. As a socio-cultural morphology, “political cor-
rectness” continues to exert a powerful determinacy that legitimates as correct,
irrespectively, the licit and the illicit by virtue of its association with the polis and
the political. In this sense, “political correctness” historically emanates from the
metropolis outward, with the criteria for rectitude and appropriateness defined by
the center for the periphery, no matter that our critical idioms have banished the di-
chotomy between the two. The dynamics of power and determinative force still re-
side in centers that deem themselves to be central no matter what anyone else
might claim to the contrary, and the determinations exerted by the policed privilege
of that centrality still remain paramount.
As in the inviolability of grammar and methodical systematicity, correctness
consists in unquestionable formation that governs as supreme principle and unim-
peachable norm. The political, on the contrary, is comprised by adjudicatory nego-
tiation, inevitably a compromise of elements least deleterious or least noxious to
the negotiating parties. The political designates the lesser of foreseeable evils. The
correct indicates the impossibility of alternatives to what is already deemed ipso
facto good. In combination, the political and the correct are at best catachrestic, at
34 Paweł Jędrzejko and Djelal Kadir

worst an antinomy. We do not say a contradiction, because contradictions can al-

ways be negotiated. Antinomies are not susceptible to that adjudication, because
they lack ambiguity. If they lack ambiguity, they cannot be disambiguated.
Whether nominal or normative, antinomies name and govern as one or as another,
not both at once, much like grammar and the grammatical. Something is either
grammatical or it is not. Contradictions, for their part, are what dictate otherwise,
and by virtue of this fact they can be othered, in turn, through negotiation or inter-
pretative renditions.
Ultimately, “political correctness,” then, as antinomy, can only attain viabil-
ity through coercion, by force of its police, or by the power of the polis and of the
political, for which correctness is an optimal value, no matter what. Under such
conditions of duress and peremptoriness, negotiation is futile. Thus, the political is
overwhelmed by the normative, making it no longer subject to adjudication.
Rather, the political now becomes as absolute as any categorical imperative. When
the political becomes imperative, especially in the cloak of correctness, its passage
to the imperious and the imperial is but a very short distance on a precipitous in-
cline. We live in politically correct times.
The greatest danger of the political as imperative resides in what it banishes
from the realm of public discourse. What the political imperative expels from the
public sphere is not its antinomy (correctness) but its antithesis, namely, the com-
parative. If the imperative is the universal, the comparative is the relational, and
when the universal would stand unmitigated and un-appealable, cleaving unto its
correctness despite its paradoxical or oxymoronic character, it stands as absolute.
You are either with us, or you are null and void.
“Political correctness” is not a novel phenomenon. Any novelty it may now
hold for us as contemporary currency dates from the cultural politics of the United
States of America in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Back then, the politi-
cally correct was a relatively tame oxymoron, deployed, as I have already noted, in
the service of cultural plurality and as an adjudicatory inflection in the tussle of
contending cultural claims. The internal paradox notwithstanding, “political cor-
rectness” then was designed to keep the cultural conversation open and the public
sphere receptive to contestation and counterpoint by modulating vociferation and
injecting civility into social and political intercourse. History, alas, has a way of
catching up with the illogic of discourse. The public sphere is a perilous arena
where political language falters sooner or later, especially if marked by expediency,
willful or otherwise, in the service of political interest. The political sooner or later
catches up with the lexical, and what has been wrought askew becomes subjected
to further twists, as amply dramatized by George Orwell and haplessly demon-
strated by more recent Georges, though the efficacy of lexical opportunism morphs
expediently to meet the political need of the times.
“Political correctness” as twisted universal gives universals a bad name. If in
the latter part of the twentieth century pathologies of ethnocentrisms and ethnona-
Between Self and State 35

tionalisms vitiated the communal, at the beginning of the twenty-first century “po-
litical correctness” is a blight on the universal. The plague comes just when the mi-
cro-narratives of the postmodern have proved as deadly as the master narratives of
hegemonic modernity they were meant to displace. Having dispensed with the use-
fulness of the modern and its posts, we have now reverted to the preposterous
primitivism of atavistic revenants that clamor for moral rectitude and “political cor-
rectness” interlaced with the righteousness of terror and the zeal of terminal escha-
tologies. “Political correctness” as a prerequisite for apocalyptic soteriology is a
non-negotiable toll, failing to pay which the apostates are damned and the defiant
neutralized. In such “political correctness” only the willing can coalesce; the un-
willing must be corrected by the universal truth and by the absolute universal of
rectitude’s twisted categorical imperative, international laws and universal norms
notwithstanding.
How, then, does one negotiate the terrain of righteousness in today’s “politi-
cal correctness,” if one’s means of negotiation consist of scholarly inquiry and cul-
tural critique? Gingerly, no doubt. Honestly, of course. And if one’s field of inquiry
and subject of cultural critique happens to be the absolute universal of “political
correctness,” then what? This, of course, is the predicament of the American Stud-
ies scholar and critic, certainly if said scholar and critic looks beyond the official
disciplinary parameters prescribed by the strictures of today’s “political correct-
ness” and enforced by officially sanctioned professional organizations. There is no
such predicament for Americanists who look right through the intricate web of “po-
litical correctness” as through an open window or a transparent portal. Such unim-
peded vision may be the privilege of the more acute and the more able, of the
clever and quick that always manage to thrive under any circumstances. The more
deliberate Americanist, avoiding any commentary and holding on to his emotions,
like the chronicler in Zbigniew Herbert’s “Report from the Besieged City,” feels
charged with the duty of recording, without knowing exactly for whom, “the his-
tory of the siege.”

Djelal Kadir

***
36 Paweł Jędrzejko and Djelal Kadir

B) Political Correctness and Self-Corrections (A Counter-reflection?)

The above theoretical argumentation notwithstanding, in the cultural practice of the

Western world today, the term “politically correct,” if attributed to someone’s
words or actions, usually is a marker of the commentator’s condescending attitude,
or functions in lieu of a more or less malicious critique. Its use is almost never
meant to denote any positive values, and hence the term itself becomes an instru-
ment of negation rather than of proposition. Seemingly, no wonder: the “gaping
discrepancy” between what is political and what is correct appears to be “univer-
sally” sensed by those who use the term – and, all in all, probably rightly so.
Clearly, the fact that the relationship obtaining between “the political” and “the
correct” is that of “government” rather than “binding” would prove rather difficult
to counter: indeed, words and actions seem to be politically correct when they evi-
dently cannot be plainly correct.1 By the same token, correctness, when determined
by the attribute of “policy/politics,” becomes plainly “political” – and thus loses its
original sense, i.e.: the sense dictated by the dynamics of the dominant meta-
narrative, adopted or inherited by a given community of values.2 For these reasons,
the notion of “political correctness” is somewhat reminiscent of a dated joke,
rooted in the history of communist rule in Poland: uestion: What is the difference
between “democracy” and “socialist democracy?” Answer: It is the same as the dif-
ference between “a chair” and “an electric chair.”
Due to the relational quality of the sense of the word “correctness” itself,
however, it is hardly possible to imagine a “correctness” that would not be “politi-
cal.” Clearly, what is correct to some and remains in accordance with their set of
individual beliefs and their preferred system of values (defining their smaller or
larger scale policies), will be no more than an “electric chair” to others (marginal-
ized by these policies).
The discussion of “the political” and “the correct,” as presented in the previ-
ous section of this article, seems to be informed with a nostalgic wish for a concept

1
Webster’s dictionary provides the following etymology of the word “correct”: [1300-50; (v.) ME
(< AF correcter) < L correctus, ptp. of corrigere to make straight = cor- COR - + -rigere, comb.
form of regere to guide, rule; (adj.) (< F correct) < L]. (Random House Webster’s Electronic Dic-
tionary and Thesaurus, version 1.0, copyright 1992 Reference Software International; based on:
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, Random House Thesaurus, College Edition) Etymol-
ogically, the word “correct” refers to entities compromising to a given set of rules, whether collec-
tively negotiated or imposed. Its sense is obviously relational and thus subject to evolution.
2
The notion of the “original sense” in this section of the text does not refer to any transcendental
values; sense is understood as an exponent of a relational cognition/knowledge/epistemology. Shar-
ing Djelal Kadir’s conviction that “political correctness gives universals a bad name,” I believe that
universals actually lost their good name when they became the cause of suffering for the first time.
Viewed in such a perspective, they have never had a universally appreciated good name. More pre-
cisely, the only ones to defend universals’ good name are those who preach them. The emergence of
“political correctness,” however, does not seem to be the only, or even the most important, factor in
the process by which universals have received a bad name.
Between Self and State 37

of correctness that would be feasible beyond policy/politics. Yet, even though it is

conscious of the impossibility of such a solution, it sees “state corrections” as re-
sulting in “political correctness,” irrespective of the fact that probably no modern
state would be satisfied with anything less than the patent for ultimate rectitude.
Like all dominant discourses, the discourse of the late capitalist state strives to
claim correctness unqualified and unquantified, correctness institutionalized. More
precisely, the most powerful lobbies aspire to produce a language which would
render other languages void, a language in which the term “correct” might mean
nothing else than what the state professes.
Still, even if one decides to understand Djelal Kadir’s assumptions in terms
of what could be termed “self-conscious” or “state-independent ethics,” in its de-
nouncement of “political correctness,” the argumentation above leaves aside one
important aspect of the use of the term central to the present debate. More pre-
cisely, it disregards the consequences of its abuse. Questioning the validity of “po-
litical correctness” as a discursive construct and an instrument of power, the dis-
cussion leaves out cases in which the now-defamed term is readily employed as
such for the purpose of discrediting behaviors and/or statements that might be
found inconsistent with the user’s own agenda. In general, such cases might in-
clude those in which it is impossible to disregard the collapse of the two poles of
the apparent dichotomy/antinomy/binary opposition:
cases in which the question of the “correctness” of “the correct” is regulated by
law. In such cases, the distinction between “correct” and “incorrect” equals the
distinction between “legal” and “illegal.” In this context, the dominant group
will label as “politically correct” actions and language that are “not yet illegal,”
but are not institutionally condoned and as such may “cast ethical doubt upon
the correctness of the legal.” Their opponents will use the same label to denote
all actions and language that “hypocritically support the legal” (which they be-
lieve to be plainly “not correct”) and thus would perceive “political correctness”
in terms of “state corrections.”
all other cases in which the term “politically correct” is deployed to denote
what is “correct” to the effect of questioning its correctness, where “correctness”
is not yet defined by law, but is determined by the dynamics between dominant
social norms and customs of the majority groups, which becomes manifest ow-
ing to possible discrepancies between professed and practiced values, and in
contexts in which cultural Otherness becomes visible.

The working categorization above reflects the assumption that the “correctness of
the correct,” whose sense is relational and depends on the distinctions, counter-
distinctions and crevices within and in the context of the dominant meta-narrative,
essentially rests upon the notion of good faith. By no means is it an innocent no-
tion: religious or not, faith, historically, proves to be the principal cause of all wars.
Irrational and vulnerable, faith is prone to external manipulation and reflects indi-
38 Paweł Jędrzejko and Djelal Kadir

vidual fears, and thus depends on discourses of conversion and/or therapy. Fears
and anxieties, however, are sometimes dispersed by the impact of critical self-
reflection and by that token faith may undergo a process of “independent” reorien-
tation. Even so, however, it is never completely immune to external projects.
In order to illustrate the above observations it is best to start with the obvious.
The fact that critically conscious individuals do not use connotatively charged vo-
cabulary while discussing problems involving a history of oppression is not an is-
sue of political correctness in its condescending sense: it is correct bona fide. It is
correct in ethical terms, because the speakers know that such vocabulary is rooted
in the history of cruelty and hatred and they believe that no living being could pos-
sibly deserve it. Hence, they believe that the conscious use of such vocabulary in
reference to anyone would either be an intentional, or reckless and irresponsible re-
enactment of the same cruelty and hatred. Furthermore, it is correct in political
terms, because they know that non-use of offensive or downgrading terms of refer-
ence serves the unity of the polis, contributing, in the long run, to the elimination of
social tensions which are the source of more or less violent conflicts.
And yet, even though “political correctness” so conceived is likely to foster
general well-being, and as such is believed to be ethically sound, everyday cultural
practice frequently disregards it as “political correctness,” where the attribute “po-
litical” is understood as a negative qualifier. Negative reactions to culturally abu-
sive “humor,” acts of support for marginalized groups, or even the use of neutral
vocabulary, are sometimes met with the pseudo-appreciation of representatives of
various social or political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic. Such con-
duct and such language would often be mock-commended as nothing but “politi-
cally correct,” as if the person “appreciatingly acknowledging” it imputed the im-
possibility of the interlocutor’s good faith in its correctness beyond what is politi-
cally en vogue. Such reactions are as disconcerting as they are frequent in most so-
cial groups, including the milieux of academia and public life.
Sadly, instances of perpetuation of racist, sexist, Americano- or Eurocentrist
abusive practices and/or language, “justified” by what has been fashioned as the
obvious hypocrisy of political correctness, are easily noticed but rarely reacted
against. In the space of social and political discourse, the silence around what pro-
motes hatred and leads to harm is partly a result of the “convenient” odium around
“political correctness.” Public personae capable of efficiently reacting against in-
stances of racism, sexism, and abusive political discourses, or, more generally,
those who take public stances against consumerism-based and hate-promoting in-
ternal and external policies, seem to refrain from action as if fearing to lose credi-
bility (and votes) if labeled “politically correct.” It thus appears as if in order to
avoid the label of a “militant ideologist,” “self-righteous hypocrite,” or an “oppor-
tunist” – all images popularly denoted by the term “politically correct” – one must
become one of these oneself. Lest one be (dis)regarded as “politically correct,” one
Between Self and State 39

must choose not to see the harmfulness of abusive political agendas, or plainly re-
fuse to take a stance against them.
Such use of the term “political correctness” serves to “elegantly” ridicule
those who take action, or openly disagree with individual or institutionalized injus-
tice done to others, or, for instance, refuse to support the development of centralist
discourses in various areas of academic studies. Examples of the rhetorical de-
legitimization of stances debarring cases of marginalization, vilification, or preju-
dice can be multiplied. A full catalog of such instances would require a multi-
volume publication, but bearing in mind the scope of the present, brief reflection,
two analytical illustrations must suffice.
For instance, the emphasis on the crimes perpetrated by Saddam Hussein’s
regime or Al Quaida’s terrorist actions, characteristic of the political rhetoric
propagated by major Western- and Eastern-European media, renders the political
and economic motives of the invasion in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq
marginal. Likewise, it allows the PRs of the interested administrations to conven-
iently disregard the history of political manipulation in both countries, and even to
convince the general public that world-wide terrorist actions can be controlled by a
single person based in a hidden cave in the middle of nowhere. However, stances
that do emphasize these marginalized factors by stressing the pretextuality of the
Bush-Rumsfeld “war on terrorism” and demonstrating causal links between the
“rogue” expansionist foreign policy of the post-war United States and the present-
day state of affairs, cannot be dismissed as completely ungrounded, but can be dis-
qualified as “politically correct.”
The crowning argument against opponents of military action and their “po-
litically correct” humanitarian protests against “bombing Afghanistan and Iraq
back to the Stone Age” (when it is generally known that both countries’ living
standards are desperately close to it anyway) is their potential anti-patriotism. After
all, undeniably, two of the three major symbols of American power have suffered
from (rather efficient) terrorist attacks, and lives were lost in the USA and in
Europe. Those who would link these deaths to American foreign policy are fash-
ioned as non-patriotic and their message is rhetorically reduced to the nonsense
professed by the “politically correct crowd.”3 Such a policy is highly effective. It is
evidenced by popular proclamations, such as the quoted Internet manifesto “Immi-
grants, not Americans must adapt” 4 – but most of all, by the successful introduc-
tion of the USA PATRIOT Act 5 and by the results of the 2004 Presidential Election,
which jointly render administration-professed correctness a legal duty. Thus, opin-
ions and actions that conform to the conception of patriotism as it was first fostered

3
“Immigrants, not Americans must adapt” Source:
http://usaattacked.com/immigrants_not_americans_must_adapt.htm (accessed 13th Nov. 2005)
4
“Immigrants, not Americans must adapt.”
5
“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001.”
40 Paweł Jędrzejko and Djelal Kadir

and then legalized by the administration eventually proved to be adopted by the

majority of voters as correct, and thus correctness became institutionalized. State-
ments that emphasize human suffering as the result of war and criticize “rogue
state” foreign policies (since they cannot be discredited altogether) are, at best,
fashioned as politically correct acts of neo-romantic civil disobedience. They con-
stitute a bearable proof that democracy is still operational, even though they pose a
danger of eroding the faith-based foundations of the correctness of “the correct.”
But, since winning the faith of the voters depends, by and large, on the popularity
of newspeak, which is proportional to access to the media and funds, for the time
being no heavier weapon than the label “politically correct” – which is a part of
said newspeak – is necessary to be deployed.
The example sketched out above indicates the principles of the general
mechanism of discrediting “inconvenient” actions and opinions by labeling them as
politically correct when correctness is institutionalized by law. A similar mecha-
nism proves efficient also in those spheres of social and political life that are regu-
lated by unwritten, customary norms. Acts of willful oversight of pro-social and
pro-individual behaviors combined with a rhetorical strategy of reducing “incon-
venient” voices to voices of “mere political correctness” are manifest to varying
degrees in most domains of public life, ranging from environmental consciousness,
race-consciousness, and gender consciousness to education and research.
For instance, a popular magazine for women publishes a full-page advertise-
ment for cosmetics, presenting an image of an attractive African-American model
wearing makeup combining the colors of brown and violet. The caption, composed
into the image, reads: “Plum in chocolate.”6
On the one hand, the advertisement invokes “tasty” associations with
“banned” fattening food to be consumed though not eaten, and thus efficiently tar-
gets women customers.7 On the other hand, it plays on the masculine fantasy of the
“slavish submissiveness” of an “exotic,” erotically posed dark-skinned beauty, and
thus targets men customers, who may be inclined to buy the advertised cosmetics
as presents for their partners.
However, to achieve this effect, the authors of the advertisement play on un-
just and harmful stereotypes, rooted in the crippling discourses of patriarchalism,
Eurocentrism, and slavery combined, which jointly contributed to the tragedy of
the experience of generations of African-American women. The violet of the
makeup corresponds to the “plum”; the model’s skin color to “chocolate,” which in
itself is a “commodifying” term for a dark-skinned woman. The eroticization and
commodification of the female African body, indicating availability for consump-
tion typical of the historical practice of abuse, is thus reenacted for commercial
purposes.
6
Pol. “Śliwka w czekoladzie.”
7
I am grateful to Zuzanna Szatanik, who kindly shared with me her interesting insight on this mat-
ter.
Between Self and State 41

Criticism of such a reenactment does not target mere lack of civility in the
social discourse. The authors of the advertisement ignored the tragic past of count-
less abused women, and – in fact – contributed to the perpetuation and reinforce-
ment of the harmful bias: the image of consumable, erotically available, and mar-
ketable African female body.

Fig. 1: “Plum In Chocolate.” Source: Viva, nr 26 (206), 20th Dec. 2004, p. 119.

And yet, in light of the fact that such an image has been published by a
magazine for women and by women, the above observations may well qualify as
an exercise in self-righteousness and thus, in all probability, would be dismissed as
“politically correct.” A magazine for women and by women cannot be sexist “by
definition.” Does it mean that only criticism respecting the racist aspects of the ad-
vertisement would not be considered “politically correct,” but simply correct? After
all, it is easy to imagine an analogous advertisement selling a different set of cos-
metics, and featuring a European woman and the caption: “Plum in marzipan.” The
“consummable goods” analogy holds valid, but it would not immediately trigger
associations with present-day women trafficking, or the history of patriarchal ob-
jectification of women (irrespective of their race). Unlike chocolate, marzipan’s
culture-bound connotations do not seem to invoke a history of racial abuse. But is
this enough to make the criticism of the “plum in chocolate” advertisement as racist
and sexist viable in the context of predominantly mono-racial cultures, in which pa-
triarchal discourse is still traditionally “correct,” even if institutional education
would teach otherwise? And does the lack of analogous association render the
theoretical “plum in marzipan” advertisement not sexist? Is it because it is sold in
42 Paweł Jędrzejko and Djelal Kadir

the wrapper of a compliment? Or perhaps no one would find such advertisements

disturbing anymore and so the criticism itself would prove somewhat outdated and
exaggerated? Possibly, given a specific discursive context, all of these claims could
be disregarded as “self-righteous” and “politically correct” and, on the whole, in-
fringements upon the freedom of expression. And so could be any action aimed to
decentralize dominant discourses, whose freedom seems somehow “more free”
than the freedoms of alternative discourses.
Despite the world’s entering the 21st century, the condescending label of “po-
litical correctness” is frequently attributed to discourses and actions aligned with a
vision of a future in which centralist discourses would no longer be powerful
enough to colonize minds. In such a future Martin Luther King’s dream would be
fulfilled: individuals would not be judged on the basis of their race, gender, sexual
orientation, or religion, but on the merit of their character. In such a future, vital re-
sources supporting life would not be endangered. In such a future, more funds
would be allotted to education, research, health care, food production, jobs, and
general well-being than to military control and neo-colonial corporate expansion.
Paradoxically, these are the values that the political lingoes of centralist discourses
emphasize, even though their implementation would question their raison d’être.
These are the values that are simultaneously commended and discredited: they are
“politically correct.”
Therefore, it is important to observe that contempt in the treatment of the no-
tion of political correctness itself, “made legitimate” by advanced philologico-
philosophical argumentation, is employed by those who wish to use the term to
their own political ends. Academic arguments leveled against the phenomenon in
question (automatically “transferred” as pertaining to objects attributed the label of
“political correctness”) lend themselves to being dangerously abused in everyday
discursive practice. Intended to de-politicize ethics, or – more precisely – to make
politics ethical, scholarly statements frequently are made to function as a politi-
cally-attuned tool, paradoxically allowing its user to exercise his or her own policy.
Often, as has been shown, the attribution of the “contemptuous” label of political
correctness to actions or words is intentional, because the ill fame of the term
“comes in handy.” It then serves the double purpose of the denigration of incon-
venient positions represented by others, on the one hand, and of the legitimization
of one’s own unethical actions or statements on the other.
It seems worthwhile, therefore, more closely to scrutinize stances and acts
sweepingly discredited as “politically correct” lest we miss out on their plain cor-
rectness, and thus also waste a chance for a scholarly, or non-scholarly, but cer-
tainly a bona fide self-correction. Especially that, before anyone else, the foremost
addressee of the “history of the siege” is myself.

Paweł Jędrzejko