ABSTRACT
The appearance in these pages (Textual Practice, 3, 1 (1989)) of the article in which I reluctantly rose to the defence of the Bourgeois or Humanist Subject (abbreviated as BHS) against its bashers among the new historicists, cultural materialists, and some feminist critics associated with them, has produced such a widespread popular demand for a sequel that I have finally bowed to this pressure and agreed, again with considerable reluctance, to take on the task.1 Since that article dealt only with the bashers’ account of how the BHS views itself, I have focused here on the view of the world, especially the socio-economic system, that they attribute to the BHS or to its ideology of ‘liberal humanism’. And since new historicists do not have much to say on this subject, I had to limit my cast of characters to the new Marxists, but I tried wherever possible to use the same ones who starred in the first version, which I assume is what the fans crying out for a sequel would want.
