irrevocably placed. By the same token, however, the antifoundationalist hope of escaping local situations through awareness of the contingency of all such situations—through recognition of the conventional/rhetorical nature of all claims to master principles—that hope is to Fish equally foredoomed by the very nature of the situational consciousness, the all-embracing social and intellectual context, in which every individual is separately enclosed. Fish has also noted how, in contradistinction to hopes of an emancipatory outcome from antifoundationalism, anti-essentialist theories arguing for the absence of a transcontextual point of reference have been put to conservative and neo-conservative, as well as progressive, ends. Thus, for example, John Searle has offered an account of the construction of social reality fully compatible with the acceptance stance of "the man who is at home in his society, the man who is chez lui in the social institutions of the society...as comfortable as the fish in the sea". Criticism Anti-foundationalists have been criticised for attacking all general claims except their own; for offering a localizing rhetoric contradicted in practice by their own globalizing style. Edward Said condemned radical anti-foundationalism for excessive cultural relativism and overdependence on the linguistic turn at the expense of human realities. Wittgenstein attacked anti-foundationalism in his book On Certainty: "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty." Anti-foundationalists See also References Further reading Katherine N. Hayles, Chaos Bound (1990) W. J. T. Mitchell, Against Theory (1985) Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) External links Anti-Foundationalism Skepticism Epistemological theories Coherentism Foundationalism