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Chapter 1: Critical Theory and the Marxist Paradigm 1. the Question Notes Chapter 1: Critical Theory and the Marxist Paradigm 1. The question here is not one of political affiliation. It is possible to work within the marxist paradigm without being politically marxist. The New Historicism is an ambiguous case in point (see next note) inasmuch as there are many non-marxist practicing New Historicists. Russian, Prague and Israeli formalism is another case in point inasmuch as such formalism seems to represent a flight from politics. See Ehrlich (1955), Galan (1985) and Feldman (1985). 2. Some New Historicists have recently begun to situate the New Historicism in relation to marxism. But its practitioners have, for the most part, emphasized their difference and their newness, and focussed on the diversity of political affiliation rather than on methodological congruity. Compare, for instance, Howard (1986) and Montrose (1986) with Veeser (1989). For a critique of New Historicist claims to newness, see the essays by Brook Thomas and Frank Lentricchia in Veeser (1989). 3. More traditional marxisms have also been trying to appropriate formalist and poststructuralist theory for marxism. For England, see Williams (1977) and Bennett (1979); for America, see Ryan (1982), Norris (1985) and Frow (1986). These are all attempts to mesh critical traditions which are assumed to be fundamentally different. I would argue, however, that marxism is only bringing its own rebellious sons back into the fold. 4. The theory of reflection is a theory of mimesis, though in traditional marxism it was treated as epistemology and science, and the con­ nection was not really made. It is being made now, and it is worth keeping the connection in mind as a sub-text, for instance when considering Lacoue-Labarthe's extensive rethinking of mimesis. See 'Man the Producer and the Poet', Chapter 3. 5. Althusser himself, of course, was not a proponent of the economist theory of reflection, though he did for a long time retain the notion of the determination in the last instance by the economic sphere. He was among those (who include the Frankfurt School and Gramsci) who began to invert the economist position (see below). In Pour Marx, Althusser began by insisting on 'the relative autonomy of the superstructure' and its 'specific efficacity'. Later, in his essay on Ideological State Apparatuses (in Lenin and Other Essays), he argued that ideology can produce State Apparatuses and functions. 6. Some of those who invert the base-determines-superstructure argu­ ment claim that this invertion corresponds to the most recent phase of capitalist development in which the media and informa­ tion services generally play a dominant role. In other words, the 195 196 Notes to pp. 6-12 inversion is presented as a necessary extension of marxist thinking to a new phase of capitalism. This line of thought apppears at least as early as Henri Lefebvre and the Situationists in France (see Lefebvre 1968 (reprinted) or Guy Debord's Societe du Spec­ tacle). However, despite this historical specification, the inversion is imposed methodologically on earlier phases of capitalism, on feudal societies, and on all texts of culture without difference, thus undoing the historical distinction and turning the inversion into a paradigmatic constant. 7. See for instance, Macherey (1978); Balibar and Macherey (1981) and Williams' essay 'Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory' in Williams (1980). For a critical discussion of this idea and its journey from France to England, see Kavanagh (1982). 8. For differences between Febvrian and poststructuralist views of this, see Bannet (1989b). 9. This move should not be associated exclusively with Althusser, Foucault and Cultural Materialism. See, for instance, Horkheimer's 'Authority in the Family' in Horkheimer (1972) and Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of the Enlightenment. 10. See for instance, Bennett (1989) and Denning (1987). 11. 'Only in association with others has each invidividual the means of cultivating his talents in all directions. Only in a community, there­ fore, is personal freedom possible ... In a genuine community, individuals gain their freedom in and through their association' (Marx, 1970b: 83, 84). 12. Ideology has a long history in marxist discourse. For more recent uses, see Eagleton (1976a and 1976b). Narrative and unconscious structures move from the structuralist work of Levi-Strauss, Propp and Greimas to poststructuralism. See esp. Foucault (1973), Lyotard (1984), and White (in Cohen). For mentalite, see Vovelle in Jones (1982), and for collective representations, Chartier (1988). For 'cog­ nitive mapping', see Jameson in Nelson and Grossberg (1988), and for interpretative communities, Culler (1975) and Fish (1980). 13. In current debates, great emphasis is placed on the difference between speaking of classes (which are identified according to their position in the relations of production) and speaking of marginal groups or of subjects occupying different subject-positions and belonging to several groups at the same time. This distinction is significant for arguments about where the proper agent of revolution is to be sought, and it is also often used for labelling - for instance, if you speak of class as well as of a marginal group like women, you are a marxist feminist; if you are concerned only with gender, you are not identified as a marxist. I would argue, however, that the distinction between class and marginal group is a distinction made by theologians who belong to the same Church and espouse the same fundamental tenets, for the debate is about where the subject of revolution is to be sought, not about seeking it, or about how groupings are to be identified, not about whether people should be thought about largely/exclusively in collective configurations. Notes to pp. 15-35 197 14. For Lukacs, see Tavor (1982); for Foucault, Foucault (1977) and (1980); and for Spivak, 'Feminism and Critical Theory' in Spivak (1988). 15. For some social applications of this idea, see LaCapra, 'Rethinking intellectual history and reading texts', reprinted in LaCapra and Kaplan (1983), LaCapra (1987) and Iser in Cohen (1989) - Iser here picks up Bloch's idea about the Utopian function of art. 16. See, for instance, Aronowitz (1981) and his 'Postmodernism and Politics'in Ross (1988). 17. For some recent thinking about history within the marxist paradigm, see Armstrong (1988), Attridge (1987), Hobsbawm (1983), Eagleton (1985), Ross (1988), Simpson (1988), Terdiman (1985). 18. Chartier seems to be reviving the Annales school concept of intel­ ligibility, and trying to combine it with more recent notions of narrativity, as well as with deconstructive notions of the trace. Although not precisely a postmarxist, Hayden White is also now emphasizing the links between narrative and reality. Compare his 'The Historical Text as a Literary Artefact' in White (1978) with his "'Figuring the nature of time deceased"' in Conen (1989). 19. There are some intriguing parallels between the notion of self- government by the people and control from below on the one hand and Bakunin's anarchist program on the other. It was Bakunin's argument, against Marx's 'authoritarian 'communism' and 'state socialism', that 'groups of human beings' need to 'federate spon­ taneously, freely, from below upwards, by their own movement and conformably to their real interests, but never after a plan traced in advance and imposed on the "ignorant masses" by some superior intellectuals'. See Michael Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State (London: Freedom Press, MCML) 19. 20. Quoted in 'Soviets abandon communist tenets', The State, July 27, 1991. Chapter 2: Limits of the Marxist Paradigm 1. For recent work on the subject, see esp. Jay (1990), Heller (1986), Nealy (1988) and K. Silverman (1983). 2. Ryan makes a not dissimilar point about the dialectic: 'It is in the different modes in which philosophy is used that political values make themselves evident. The dialectic was conservative when it sanctified existing institutions, denied democracy, and foreclosed further knowledge. The radical use of the method takes different forms altogether. It promotes a sense that the social world is in movement, that previous conclusions are merely starting points, and that much remains not only to be known but also made' (64). 3. This argument has recently been taken up again by a whole group of historians and anthropologists who argue that marxism itself shares the capitalist assumptions of the society in which it emerged, and Notes to pp. 35-60 that it is therefore inadequate as a means of describing pre-capitalist societies. See, for instance, Baudrillard (1975) and Jones (1982). Laclau and Mouffe have tried to resolve this difficulty by giving plural and decentered subjects a capacity for negotiation and alliance which they lack in Foucault, and by conceiving of politics as the democratic negotiation by shape-changing groups of their goals and principles of action. In other words, they try to prevent the formation of any unconscious and anonymous subjecting principle by bringing the principle which will govern the different statements made, the different truths asserted and the (political) behaviour which is permitted or proscribed under the conscious control of a common strategy differentially applied by (the leaders of?) a variety of counter-hegemonic groups. While this does not resolve the problem - since an episteme or discursive formation by definition operates behind or beyond consciously determined strategies - it does bring Foucault's grass-roots maoist politics safely back into a more traditional Marxist mould. This shared assumption erases the sort of distinction one might otherwise wish to make between Pico's or Aquinas's bounded cosmos with its well-defined grid of modes of being, and the more 'open' and fluid cosmos supposedly underlying current thinking, by constructing different grids (hegemonic and institutional this time) and by paradoxically making the 'open' universe even more constraining than the closed one. Chapter 3: The Other Body of Man in Derrida, Levinas, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy and Borch-Jakobsen There are continuities between (de)construction and deconstruction, but these will not be stressed in this chapter.
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