In the field of art history, the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, may--and does--prove to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones.

At a moment when all disciplines are becoming more self-conscious, more aware of the nature of their presuppositions as exhibited in the very languages and structures of the various fields of scholarship, such uncritical acceptance of "what is" as "natural" may be intellectually fatal.