TOWARDS A PRODUCTIVE AESTHETICS: HISTORY AND NOW-TIME IN BLAKE AND BRECHT KEITH O’REGAN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO OCTOBER 2017 © KEITH O’REGAN, 2017 Abstract This thesis is a comparison of the theory and practice of aesthetic politics in key works of Bertolt Brecht and William Blake. I argue that there are two separate temporal moments that define Brecht’s and Blake’s political aesthetics. The first moment is defined by a more direct engagement with the “nowness” and relative newness of their capitalist social world. Capitalist social relations bring out in each of the two a more directly engaging oppositional aesthetics. Given capitalism’s desire to create a form of experience that not only makes sense for its subjects’ own subjugation, while while also attempting to negate any possible alterative to itself, Brecht and Blake develop a political aesthetics that exposes and undercuts these dominant forms of experience. Using Walter Benjamin, I argue that Brecht and Blake posit an “oppositional aesthetics of the now” which takes seriously capitalism’s desires and successes in refashioning experience, but provides a means of both understanding this experience while counterposing and making desirable an oppositional form of existence. This political aesthetic response is grounded in contemporary social relations and responds using this as a framework of reference. The second moment under discussion examines the role of history and historical representation in Brecht and Blake. The central focus is how Brecht and Blake continue the responsive project referenced in the first two chapters by making use of history in aesthetic- political interventions in the present. I argue that they engage historical tropes and use history “against the grain” in the Jetztzeit (Now-Time), as Benjamin notes. Both repurpose history as a means to produce historical recoveries, making failures or losses in the past open for radical productive possibilities in the present. In this way forms of inherited experience or preconceived truths are placed in a space of contestation. Historical representation is another opportunity to cleave open an oppositional aesthetics and unsettle that which capitalism wishes to make silent. ii Acknowledgments As both Brecht and Blake would agree, the work towards completing a dissertation requires the patience, care and above all support of a large network of people. This project began with a conversation with my supervisor, and thus I would like to give special mention to David McNally, who has worked with me over several drafts and even more years and at all times replied with thoughtful and deeply constructive criticism. Likewise, while they entered this project later on, Susan Ingram and Ian Balfour provided detailed, helpful and encouraging comments and both have provided longer term encouragement which both helped get me to this point, and will take me beyond it as well. I should also note that part of Chapter 2 draws slightly upon my previously published article “The View from Below: Film and Class Representation in Brecht and Loach,” published in the journal Cinema. While there are many individuals who are to be thanked for walking alongside me, and at times what felt like carrying me along this long road, there are a few who deserve particular praise. Todd Gordon, Jackie Esmonde, Seth Clarke and Susan Bender have proven themselves to be dearly supportive friends whose unshakable decency, kindness and commitment to me over the years never wavered. Likewise, I have worked with Greg Sharzer through so many trials and tribulations and yet our time together has always left me feeling blessed by his good humour and beautiful friendship. I would be remiss to not also mention and thank Veronique, Rob, Lesley, Paul, Dale, Sarah and Leslie for their help at various stages of my PhD life. My sisters Kim and Tracey and their kids have provided much joy and honesty that has kept me going, especially through the deep loss we experienced. For their friendship I am truly thankful. My wonderful partner Nadra, and her two equally wonderful children, Razia and Ruby, have entered my life in the finals stages of this dissertation, but I am sincerely appreciative for every minute I have had and will continue to have with them. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my mother, Alice, who passed before seeing its completion, but who I know would’ve been pleased and proud by its accomplishment. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents............................................................................................................................iv Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter Two: Brecht and the Now ................................................................................................ 24 Mann ist Mann: The Right Question and the Precision of Time ...................................... 26 The Knowing Johanna ...................................................................................................... 44 Kuhle Wampe and the Good Answer ................................................................................ 56 Concluding Brecht to 1933 ............................................................................................... 67 Chapter Three: Blake, Opposition, and the Now .......................................................................... 70 Blake and Romanticism .................................................................................................... 74 Expect Poison, Demand Movement .................................................................................. 79 Innocence’s Opposition to Experience ............................................................................ 100 Conclusion: The Future in the Present ............................................................................ 114 Chapter 4: Brecht, History and the Productive Past .................................................................... 121 And the Cart Rolls On…Mutter Courage and Learning from Those Who Don’t .......... 124 The Religion of the Now: Galileo and the Knowing Science ......................................... 141 The Chalk Lines of History: Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis, Productivity and the Past .. 154 Concluding the Historical Brecht .................................................................................... 166 Chapter 5: Blake, Milton, and Historical Redemption ................................................................ 170 Blake Contra Newton ...................................................................................................... 172 The Importance of What is Missing ................................................................................ 178 Filling in That Which Is Missing .................................................................................... 184 Milton’s Entrance ............................................................................................................ 187 Blake Labouring in History ............................................................................................. 195 Brecht, Blake and the Uses of History ............................................................................ 209 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 215 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 225 iv Chapter 1: Introduction The origins of this dissertation are located in a desire to understand how materialist (and non-materialist) cultural responses aim to integrate and interrogate the question of the politics of production in oppositional literatures. The absence of a full consideration of the aesthetics of production has resulted in a turning away from the social and economic problems asserting themselves both against and within a tradition of aesthetics that seeks to understand the social landscape which propels it and makes itself possible, and to respond in fully oppositional ways. This has predominantly encouraged a turning away, especially in the age of postmodernity, from oppositional aesthetics.1 Too often aesthetic interventions into the political imperatives of the day eschew an engagement with the actual political situation and respond with old answers to new questions. This has regularly come in the form of a realist aesthetics that presents the contemporary audience with a conception of veracity and devotion to totality2 that does more to obscure than illuminate, and even more so negates the role of agency through the assumption of objectivism in making cultural politics. As Fredric Jameson defines it, “traditionally in one form or another the central model of Marxist aesthetics as a narrative discourse...unites the experience of daily life with a properly cognitive, mapping, or well-nigh ‘scientific