The point is there is no point, the point is the unavailability of a point.

Stanley Fish seeks to destroy the pretensions of those who want to change society with reference to historical theories or ideals. Logically, such people must be hypocrites, or at best, believers in divine revelation. And logically, Fish cannot condemn them, because to do so would be to assume that he alone can stand aside and say: ‘Your politics are disingenuous.’ After all, how would he know?

Hearkening to me, from my point of view, is supposed to lead to nothing. As I say in Doing What Comes Naturally in answer to the question ‘What is the point?’, the point is that thereis no point, no yield of a positive programmatic kind to be carried away from these analyses. Nevertheless, that point (that there is no point) is the point because it’s the promise of such a yield – either in the form of some finally successful identification of a foundational set of standards or some program by which we can move away from standards to ever-expanding liberation... it’s the unavailability of such a yield that is my point, and therefore it would he contradictory for me to have a point beyond that point. People go absolutely bonkers when they hear that, but that’s the way it is.