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The revaluation of Huckleberry Finn discussed in Chapter 4 shows that by the twentieth-first century, the global economy has undermined the nationalist ideals of the state, American public and higher education has been integrated, and black, women’s, and ethnic studies programs and literary traditions provide competing definitions of what counts as American literature and an American. Scholars like Louis Budd assume that the public status of the great artist overcomes this multicultural diversity, but in this new context the multiple American canons justify the revaluation. Scholars also assume that the public character of Native Son overcomes this diversity, but in this case also the contrary readings that the novel acquires show the progressive influence of black studies and the black aesthetics movement.

The belief that literary study is truthful, not formal or political, characterizes those I call humanists. Be they liberal, conservative, or Marxist, they all pursue non-partisan, seriously profound truths. For example, Matthew Arnold, who sires the tradition of liberal humanism, sees in classical objectivity and intellectual free play an ideal of human truth eclipsing the political commitments of politicians, feminists, radicals, nationalists, aristocrats, philistines, dogmatists, subjectivists, and skeptics. Similarly, Georg Lukacs, who fathers the line of Marxist humanists, esteems classical realists like Balzac or Tolstoy because they overcome their ideological biases and grasp the naked, "objective" truth-that brutal exploitation, callous greed, and self-serving apology infest capitalist society. Humanists like Arnold and Lukacs seek profound truths; in addition, they repudiate the autonomous formalism of the New Critics. Invariably the formalists betray some ethical or theological beliefs. Inevitably unsuccessful, the search for neutral forms reveals biases and values. Formal study does not escape politics. Humanists insist that at a formal level apolitical truths are not possible; however, they do not allow that at a "human" level such truths are also impossible. Unlike the "insubstantial" New Critics, the humanist does not ignore the noisy world of politics; nonetheless, he sets an interpretation of a text above the conventions and approaches