“After Theory:

Terry Eagleton and the Political Inertia of the Modern Intellectual”

 

by Haider Al-Kabi

 

The view of the current, crisis-ridden situation of theory, as presented by Terry Eagleton’s book After Theory, reflects the socio-political environment in the midst of which modern theorists work. The proliferation of theories, on the one hand, and the haziness and uncertainty of the positions of theorists, on the other, make it increasingly difficult for readers to choose a theory from among this overabundance of contending and typically abstruse theories. Theories are gradually becoming dissociated from life and from politics, which puts to question the very idea of theory and whether theory is an end in itself or a means to achieve an end.  One can argue that, in effect, this situation is an indirect way returning to the same position held in the past by New Critics, the position of dissociating texts from contexts, of condemning biographical, historical, and interpretive approaches as a constellation of heresies and fallacies, of being satisfied with a ‘close reading’ and of focusing on ‘the words on the page,’ and dismissing everything else. Yet, New Critics were explicit in their aim, that is, severing texts from historical and/or biographical contexts, and it was to their advantage that they did so. By detaching texts from contexts, the relationship between the political background of most of the New Critics, on the one hand, and their critical method, on the other, would appear coincidental.  But then, among literary scholars, it is now widely acknowledged, that, in general, New Critics were far from being politically disinterested.  K. M. Newton, for instance, affirms that, “The early New Critics were politically conservative and their attitudes to literature were shaped by their opposition to certain twentieth-century tendencies of thought, such as Marxism” (Newton 39).  Also, T. S. Eliot, a forefather of New Criticism, pronounces himself “classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion” (Materer 57), though Stephen Spender goes further to describe him as a reactionary “in the strictest sense of the term” (Spender 224).  In fact, as Vincent B. Leitch declares, sometimes Eliot “drifted close to fascism and into racism and anti-Semitism” (Leitch, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 1089).  Besides, Cleanth Brooks, a central figure in American New Criticism, admits that “It is no accident that so many of the [New Critics] have gone on, either to avow an orthodox religious position or else to affirm the possibility and necessity for metaphysics as a science” (Richter 706). Neither was it an accident that, in Britain, New Criticism emerged in the wake of World War I, a definite historical moment characterized by disillusionment and despair caused by the aftermath of war, while, in America, the most prominent New Critics (R. P. Warren, Allen Tate, T. S. Eliot, J. C. Ransom, among others) come from the agrarian south. Now if we apply the New Critical approach to New Criticism, itself, will that not amount to minimizing all of the above-mentioned facts and making them appear as though they have never existed? In essence, however, the situation of theory today seems to chime with the same philosophy of the New Critics of old in that most contemporary theorists have actually dissociated themselves from social and political struggle and are gradually becoming ‘pure’ theorists, if such thing is ever possible. In fact, the critical scene today presents a situation where different approaches of criticism are being discredited on different—notably racial, sexual, and ethnic—bases.  Hence, non-European and minority-group writers, such as Chinua Achebe, Barbara Christian, and Edward Said, have provided several racial, sexual, and ethnic charges against today’s western theorists and have exposed various manifestations of the partiality of the western mind, a partiality that, in its deepest foundation, reflects the clash of interests among various social and ethnic groups. Therefore, the views of Achebe, Christian, and Said deserve close attention because, each from a different angle, they have addressed issues of great urgency and great import that were largely neglected or misrepresented by western scholars before. Thus, it would be in the interest of young and aspiring intellectuals, especially from downtrodden social classes and underprivileged minority groups, to become aware of those issues and have them in mind as they struggle to improve the conditions of their lives.

 

      While Achebe could have been more nuanced in his approach, he correctly identifies one of the major negative norms in European criticism, namely racism against African culture. Achebe blames the white literary cannon for failing to notice the downright racism illustrated in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked” (Achebe 1789). This statement invites readers to question the reason why Achebe, so readily and so effortlessly, is able to spot such an ‘unremarked’ phenomenon that has passed unnoticed by the majority of western scholars. If Achebe’s case against Conrad and his critics is valid, then it is so only due to the fact that one’s way of thinking is restricted by one’s material (social, cultural) background; and European critics are no exception, nor is Achebe himself.  As Terry Eagleton asserts, “It is not difficult to see how Conrad’s personal standing, as an aristocratic, Polish exile deeply committed to English conservatism, intensified for him the crisis of English bourgeois ideology,” (Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, 8). But, according to Achebe, the reason why those critics are unable to detect Conrad’s racism is that racism is too obvious for them to detect because white supremacy, even for the white who desires to help the downtrodden black, is so engrained into European/white American culture that feelings and behavior of supremacy are natural and normal. However, Achebe is able to detect it at first glance because he himself is African. Yet, for the vast majority of Europeans, the injustice/immorality of white supremacy is often difficult to recognize because they have experienced the world only from the oppressor’s seat, and, as such, it is on somebody else’s back that the lashes fall, anyway.

 

       Further, in “The Race of Theory” Barbara Christian brings a host of charges against modern critics. First, there is the charge of the commodification of theory, which has resulted in a ‘race for theory.’ “Theory has become a commodity which helps determine whether we are hired or promoted in academic institutions—worse, whether we are heard at all” (Christian 2257), and this charge is confirmed by Vincent Leitch, in his book Living with Theory, where he declares that “The theory market plays a role in this account. . . The job market for theory expanded very dramatically from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, with many academic jobs going to theorists (labeled as such)” (Leitch 125). All of the above points to the more inclusive charge of the incapacity of culture theory—allegedly the most inclusive and most open-ended of literary theories so far—of being disinterested. But how could it be otherwise when the majority of critics and theorists work within the academic field as professionals and get paid by the same system they intend to change?  Moreover, “Critics are no longer concerned with literature, but with other critics’ texts, for the critic yearning for attention has displaced the writer and has conceived of himself as the center” (Christian 2257). But, the lack of supportive examples here makes this point difficult to evaluate.  When she has made her statement, Christian might have had in mind certain critics (Terry Eagleton, for instance). She indicates that, “in the first part of this [Twentieth] century, at least in England and America, the critic was usually also a writer of poetry, plays, or novels. But today, as a new generation of professionals develop, he or she is increasingly an academic” (2257). Christian could have cited Allen Tate, T. S. Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Archibald McLeish, Wyndham Lewis, W.E. B. Du Bois, etc. Nonetheless, this same remark could have been extended to Nineteenth Century (and even further to Eighteen Century) England, where Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Mathew Arnold were also both poets and critics.  But, if Christian aims to disqualify today’s critics on the basis that they no longer have the first-hand knowledge of literature which yesterday’s critics had, then this charge may well fire against Christian, herself, who is exclusively known as critic, with no known creative works to her credit. Nevertheless, as shown above, this charge can be substantiated by sufficient examples and would legitimately provide a certain moment in the historical development of literary theory, where it has become increasingly doubtful whether critics should be allowed to analyze and pass judgment on such creative literary works which they themselves cannot produce.

 

      The list of charges Christian brings against Twentieth-century critics is quite wide-ranging.  “The race for theory, with its linguistic jargon, its emphasis on quoting its prophets, its tendency towards ‘Biblical’ exegesis, its refusal even to mention specific works of creative writers, far less contemporary ones, its preoccupations with mechanical analysis of language, graph, algebraic equations, its gross generalizations about culture, has silenced many of us to the extent that some of us feel we can no longer discuss our own literature, while others have developed intense writing blocks and are puzzled by the incomprehensibility of the language set adrift in the literary circles” (2258).  According to Christian, this ‘incomprehensibility’ of critical jargon has resulted in excluding a sizable segment of people willing to engage literary scholarship, yet unable to do so because they do not understand such a highly professional jargon used by critics, with the ultimate result that literary criticism has become a monopoly for the few, from which the majority is deprived.  “I see the language it creates as one which mystifies rather than clarifies our condition, making it possible for a few people who know that particular language to control the critical scene” (2260).  What is worth noting in particular here is that Christian expresses her suspicion that such ‘incomprehensibility’ of critical jargon might well be intended to exclude peoples of color and other minority groups.  “That language surfaced, interestingly enough, just when the literature of peoples of color, of black women, of Latin Americans, of Africans began to move to ‘the center’” (2260).  This may well be taken to mean that white critics (critics from European origins, mainly males) are conspiring against emerging colored (especially female) critics.  Now while one can present a considerable instances of the incomprehensibility of critical language, (one may recall the examples given by George Orwell in his “Politics and the English Language,” for instance), one can think of no feasible method to verify the purposefulness on the part of critics.  It is worthwhile, however, to consider the possibility that this incomprehensibility of language might well be an indication of political inertia or a sign of unwillingness to destabilize the system of which one is part. Thus Orwell remarks that “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.  If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration” (Orwell 954-5). By extension, ambiguity of thought may well be counted as an anticipatory step toward political inaction.  One would have every reason not to do anything when one does not know what to do.  But the problem of incomprehensibility, as evidenced by the Orwell quote, returns to a much earlier period than the time-frame within which Christian has made her argument.  Christian may have simply meant to say that incomprehensibility has of late intensified incomparably and intolerably—a statement which one should not have much trouble validating.

 

       Similarly, Edward Said adds another aspect to the problem of intellectual bias. To Said, the western world has viewed the Orient as its contrast. This is demonstrated, on the one hand, in the exotic picture the west has formed of the Orient, such as that found in the works of Chateaubriand and Nerval, and, on the other hand, in the superior tone with which westerners speak of the Orient. The main stream of the scholarly studies of the Orient in the western world has been conducted from the point of view of the imperialist West, and, thus, in a sense, the Orient has been invented by the West.  “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said 1991).  Accordingly, Said understands the relationship between the East and the West in light of power relations. “The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages” (1991).  In this way, Orientalism serves the European imperialist mentality to accomplish various ends:  on the one hand, to define oneself as the master, while the Orient poses as the Other. On the other hand, to have the liberty to restructure the Orient according to one’s interest.  Said affirms that “Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (1992).  Said makes numerous references to Goethe, Gustav Flaubert, Gerard de Nerval, Walter Scott, Chateaubriand, Disraeli, Victor Hugo, Lord Byron, and many other European writers to illustrate how the Orientals were consistently stereotyped and misrepresented by the Orientalists.  Here is an example of how middle-eastern people are represented in a classic comic book that is meant to teach American children humor and puns.  A comic strip in Scream Cheese and Jelly (1979), reproduced in The Bradford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, presents the following conversation between two figures wearing turbans, obviously stereotyping Middle Eastern people:

“—Abdul … your rug is on fire!

 —Sure … that’s my frying carpet! How do you want your eggs?” (Murfin 319).

Thus, one cannot but conclude that Orientalism is a sort of pseudo field of study, created, manipulated, and monopolized by the imperialist West in order to maintain its superiority and control over the East.  As defined by Said, Orientalism could not have issued from a disinterested desire to study the Orient.  Quite the contrary, Orientalism is inherently biased and egocentric.  Furthermore, Orientalism, as such, is meaningless outside the collective mind that has invented it.  Thus, Said notes “that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient” (2007).  Not only that the Orient itself is a stranger to Orientalism, but, also, the main end of Orientalism seems to be to misrepresent the Orient, as a part of a whole scheme to maintain control over it.  As a result, Orientalism is inherently beneficial to the West and injurious to the Orient.  Said continues, “I myself believe that Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient . . . Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment” (1995). In short, Orientalism serves as an intellectual tool to reinforce the European hegemony over the Orient.

 

Though Said seems to take a different route from Barbara Christian’s, like her, he ultimately indicts Western mainstream culture for being ethnically biased with respect to the peoples of the Orient, especially of the Middle East.  In his post-colonial approach to literary theory, Said draws a contrasting picture between the West and the East and attacks Orientalism as a constellation of false assumptions made by Western scholars to reconstruct the Orient from an imperialist point of view—a view that takes for granted and emphasizes Western hegemony over the East.  “It is hegemony, or rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism . . . durability and strength” (1995).   At the same time, Said cautions that the claim to objectivity in cultural studies may well be a mask behind which hides the desire to depoliticize the Orient. “The adjective ‘political’ is used as a label to discredit any work for daring to violate the protocol of pretended suprapolitical objectivity” (1998). Said, here, engages a sensitive point in understanding theory and criticism asserting that, in a politically conflicting world, politics and literature are inevitably interrelated, which point rarely presents itself explicitly in a creative work, and, therefore, must be inferred by circumstantial evidence, to borrow a term from legal jargon.  Similarly, Christian is able to reach the same conclusion.  “I am studying an entire body of literature that has been denigrated for centuries by such terms as political.  For an entire century Afro-American writers, from Charles Chestnutt in the nineteenth century through Richard Wright in the 1930s, Imamu Baraka in the 1960s, Alice Walker in the 1970s, have protested the literary hierarchy of dominance which declares when literature is literature, when literature is great, depending on what it thinks is to its advantage” (Christian 2259).  Hence literary merit is far from warranting the survival of literary works, to say nothing of its being recognized as worthy of critical study. Moreover, literary merit can be acknowledged only in proportion to its conformation to the prevailing literary canon, which sets the standards of how a good literary work should be structured. Now, assuming that writers are economically secure and that they can reasonably cultivate their talents and provide for their intellectual development, they would still have to take their chances through all sorts of socio-political restrictions with which they are besieged.

 

      Said’s concern about the political neutralizing of cultural studies under the pretext of objectivity seems to echo Stuart Hall’s apprehension of the uncertain position in which cultural theory has found itself.  The unrestrained openness of cultural theory threatens to make it an amorphous project marked by vagueness, illusiveness, and doubt.  Unless somehow regulated, this openness would eventually lead to the absence of political standpoint.  This is why Hall, who is by far one of the most ardent representatives of cultural studies, in his address to the Conference of Cultural Studies, in 1990, under the title “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies,” declares that, “Although cultural studies as a project is open-ended, it can’t be simply pluralist in that way. Yes, it refuses to be a master discourse or a meta-discourse of any kind... But there is something at stake in cultural studies . . . Here one registers the tension between the refusal to close the field, to police it and, at the same time, a determination to stake out some positions within it and argue for them” (Hall 1899).  Hence, the void to which cultural studies apparently leads is anticipated and feared by the theory’s most enthusiastic advocates.  Though Hall, as a member of the New Left, “regarded Marxism as a problem, as trouble, as danger, not as a solution” (1900), yet he expresses what is in essence the eleventh of Marx’s theses on Feuerbach, in which Marx maintains that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Tucker 145).  Hall requires that the intellectual should not be satisfied by theory as such, but, one should rather go beyond theory to engage actively in politics.  “I’m extremely anxious that you should not decode what I’m saying as an anti-theoretical discourse.  It is not anti-theory, but it does have something to do with the conditions and problems of developing intellectual and theoretical work as a political practice” (Hall 1903-4).  This concern that theory should not be an end in itself, and that the intellectual should have a role in politics, has been so far raised by too many theorists to be overlooked.  And this same concern is what lurks at the heart of Eagleton’s argument about theory in general and cultural studies in particular.

 

      Hence it is quite understandable why Eagleton should start his book by declaring that “The golden age of cultural theory is long past” (Eagleton 1), although it seems that it is ‘high theory’ rather than theory per se whose ‘aftermath’ he pronounces (2). Theory as such, i.e., as “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions . . . remains as indispensable as ever” (2).  Yet, Eagleton does not hide his anger at that which takes the front seat in the intellectual’s mind today and how the trivial and the vital, in his view, exchange positions.  “On the wilder shore of academia, an interest in French philosophy has given way to a fascination in French kissing. In some cultural circles, the politics of masturbation exert far more fascination than the politics of the Middle East” (2).  This statement may well be taken to mean that in the current intellectual circle there is too much of Freudism and too little of Marxism.  And so, “Socialism has lost out to sado-masochism.  Among students of culture, the body is an immensely fashionable topic, but it is usually the erotic body, not the famished one.  There is a keen interest in coupling bodies but not in labouring ones” (2).  Eagleton might be alluding to the flourishing gay, lesbian, and queer theory, Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (1976), Jonathan Dollimore’s Sexual Dissidence (1991), the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, and the work of Adrienne Rich, Monique Wittig, and Judith Butler, among many others.  But, it is important to note that, in all that, Eagleton’s underlying concern is the modern intellectual’s excessive occupation with the individual at the expense of the social.

 

      Yet, this by no means indicates that Eagleton undervalues the role of modern critical theory, not the least that of cultural theory, in bringing to the fore sexuality, with fervor and urgency, as a vital, yet long-neglected, human concern that demands immediate attention.   “One of the towering achievements of cultural theory has been to establish gender and sexuality as legitimate objects of study, as well as matters of insistent political importance” (3).  What concerns Eagleton is that this occupation with sexuality has gone too far and has been implemented as an instrument to detract attention from the more inclusive and, therefore, more serious issue—the issue of social justice at large.  “We have come to acknowledge that human existence is at least as much about fantasy and desire as it is about truth and reason.  It is just that cultural theory is behaving rather like a celibate middle-aged professor who has stumbled absent-mindedly upon sex and is making up for lost time” (4).  Eagleton suggests that this over-blown obsession with sexuality is not only the antithesis of, but also the other side of, Puritanism; it is rather Puritanism unmasked.  “The hedonist who embraces pleasure as the ultimate reality is often just the puritan in full-throated rebellion.  Both of them are usually obsessed with sex” (5).  Eagleton, who senses that our attention has been unduly drawn toward the individual, would rather have us attend to the social as well because “finding out how life can become more pleasant for more people is a serious business” (5).  Besides, if pleasure is so important to the individual, it is at least just as important to society.  Yet, contrary to the task of achieving pleasure for the individual, to “make life more pleasurable” for the people as a whole invites a revolution because it implies nothing less than changing the deep-seated structure of the social system.  As such, the obsession with sexual freedom, in spite of its essential importance, is understood here as a bribe paid by the existing political system to subvert the potential revolution and, thus, perpetuate the status quo.  Nonetheless, Eagleton credits cultural theory for having illuminated such previously dimmed areas as post-colonial and gender studies (6) though  he criticizes post-colonial theory for having “shifted the focus from class and nation to ethnicity” and subsequently “from politics to culture” (12), which renders post-colonial theory as post-revolutionary.  “Since ethnicity is largely a cultural affair, this shift of focus was also one from politics to culture. In some ways, this reflected real changes in the world.  But it also helped to depoliticize the question of post-colonialism, and inflate the role of culture within it, in ways which chimed with the new post-revolutionary climate in the West itself” (12.) By extension, the theoretical contention against racial injustice, as represented by Christian above, should appear, in Eagleton’s view, no less post-revolutionary than the post-colonial one.

 

Likewise, Eagleton reproaches postmodernism for having eroded or overly marginalized norms.  Though “Norms are oppressive” in that “they mold uniquely different individuals to the same shape” (14), they, nonetheless, are inescapable even for those who stand against all forms of leveling, like Foucault and Derrida.  Further, Eagleton notes that language, itself, is normative.  “To say ‘leaf’ implies that two incomparably different bits of vegetable matter are one and the same. To say ‘here’ homogenizes all sorts of richly diverse places” (14).  And so, norms are not always restrictive.  “It is normative . . . that ambulances speeding to a traffic accident should not be impeded just for the hell of it. . . Only an intellectual who has overdosed on abstraction could be dim enough to imagine that whatever bends a norm is politically radical” (15).  Ironically, however, Eagleton states that, for some cultural theorists, the instability of identity has become “the last word in radicalism.”  On the one hand, this instability of identity renders any possibility of revolution meaningless, since there is nothing against which to revolt.  On the other hand, this lack of identity would not hurt capitalism, which “really doesn’t care who it exploits” (19).  In fact, this means that capitalism, itself suffering from no lack of identity, would be all the more at liberty in exploiting its victims, while cultural theory stands irresolute in the corner and preaches uncertainty and instability of identity.  Further, Eagleton argues that, for the most part, cultural theory has come into existence as a result of “an extraordinarily creative dialogue with Marxism” (35), which statement seems to be in accord with Hall’s aforementioned address to the Conference of Cultural Studies, in which he states, “I entered cultural studies from the New Left, and the New Left always regarded Marxism as a problem, as trouble, as danger, not as a solution . . .What I mean by that is certainly not that I wasn’t profoundly influenced by the questions that Marxism as a theoretical project put on the agenda. . . These important, central questions are what one meant by working within shouting distance of Marxism, working on Marxism, working against Marxism, working with it, working to try to develop Marxism” (Hall 1900-01). In addition to Hall, Eagleton seems to allude to other thinkers and theorists who had started claiming or actually attempting to radicalize Marxism, such as Jacque Derrida, for instance, and diverged from it altogether.  Eagleton remarks that “The question was whether you could loosen the theory up without it falling apart” (Eagleton 37).  And this is why he laments that “What started out in the 1960s and 1970s as a critique of Marxism had ended up in the 80s and 90s as a rejection of the very idea of global politics” (50).  Thus, Eagleton indicts postmodernists and cultural-study theorists for having begun to achieve social and cultural change only to end dropping the political banner in the middle of the road, leaving only a political void behind.

 

      Such a politically inactive standpoint to which the latest development of cultural theory has led can by no means be tolerated by such a staunch Marxist intellectual as Terry Eagleton.  Again, Marx criticized the philosophers for being content with merely explaining the world in various ways; Marx could not think of explaining the world except as a necessary step toward changing it.  Theory, then, is not an end in itself, but a means to create an end.  And this notion is part and parcel of the whole Marxist theory of historical materialism, which, in turn, is an endemic part of the Marxist philosophy (dialectical materialism).  It has been long since Marx decided that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Marx & Engels, “From The German Ideology,” 768). In its deepest foundation, this Marxist view is derived from the belief that life itself is a product of a long evolution that inanimate nature has undergone. As such, life (and therefore human life and human consciousness) represents only one historical moment in the eternal development of nature. This implies that, at a certain stage of its development, nature has become conscious of itself through its human manifestation. The consciousness of an individual is conditioned by the material (and more narrowly and more directly the socio-economic) surroundings in which he or she lives. And so, Marx and Engels state that “The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. . . Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process” (768). Contrary to the Hegelian view, Marx and Engels here affirm that consciousness, as such, cannot stand alone independent of life. Therefore, the consciousness of the individual, no matter how unique it may be, is in the final account, limited by the overall material (and more directly socio-economic) conditions in the midst of which he or she happens to be. Yet, for the most part, this Marxist view has been interpreted to mean that economy determines everything else, which is a natural result of the emphasis Marx and Engels have placed on the economic factor, especially during the time of the theory’s formation, when its originators found their first responsibility to be to emphasize the materialist ground of their theory, in order to face the then dominant idealist philosophy of Hegel, with the result that Marxism has come to be understood only in terms of materialism with the dialectic forgotten, the dialectic which Marx and Engels have inherited from Hegel.  This is why Engels lately condemns such a simplistic view of Marxism in his letter to Joseph Bloch, where he declares,

 

Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize that main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights. But when it was a case of presenting a section of history, that is, of a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was possible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have mastered its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent ‘Marxists’ from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish [which] has been produced in this quarter, too (Engels 788).

 

Applied to art, Marx’s view implies that art is governed by the same regulations that shape all other products of human consciousness such as morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., which “no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking” (Marx and Engels 768).  Apparently, Marx and Engels are not concerned with how the various products of human consciousness differ from each other in the way they undergo the said conditioning process imposed on them by their material production. Their aim is to determine the nature of the relationship between human consciousness, as such, that is, homogenously, and the material production of human life. It is doubtful, however, whether many people will immediately recognize the full implication of Marx’s above-quoted notion about the nature of the relationship between human consciousness and human material conditions, a notion which, if applied, would leave people who seek a true emancipation with no other option than that of taking matters into their own hands, rather than kneeling in supplication before the gods of their own making. As Marx indicates, people will eventually come to realize that, whether for good or for ill, it is they who “make their own history” (Tucker 595), though “they do not make it just as they please,” or without restrictions. Naturally, they are limited by “circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.” Yet, within these circumstances, it is they who are the true masters of their destiny, and it is they who are to be held responsible for both their suffering and their welfare. Had more people recognized this, more of them would have been politically active, and, subsequently, fewer would have been blindly driven, under various deceptive slogans, into such meaningless and destructive activities as sectarian wars, such as the one raging in Iraq today, which might benefit a few capitalist corporations, but which can ultimately only intensify their own suffering and prolong their own servitude.

 

     In Grundrisse, in a fragmentary treatment of Greek art, Marx indicates that certain forms of art are produced in certain historical settings.  “It is even recognized that certain forms of art, e.g. the epic, can no longer be produced in their world epoch-making, classical stature as soon as the production of art, as such, begins; that is, that certain significant forms within the realm of the arts are possible only at an undeveloped stage of artistic development” (Marx 773). Marx decides that it is not difficult to understand that “Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain social development.  The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and an unattainable mode” (774). What Marx fails to identify here is this remarkable characteristic that distinguishes art from other forms of human consciousness, such as religion, for instance.  Contrary to the Greek religious system, which now only provides us with a subject study, and which now entirely belongs in its historical settings, the Greek art still influences and moves us. On the other hand, Terry Eagleton reminds us that “Frederick Engels remarks in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888) that art is far richer and more ‘opaque’ than political and economic theory because it is less purely ideological” (Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, 11). Also, Eagleton cites Lenin who has noted that “What needs to be added is Marx and Engels’s ‘principle of contradiction’: that the political views of an author may run counter to what his work objectively reveals” (53).  This said, it should not be surprising that “Marx’s own favourite authors were Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Goethe, none of them exactly revolutionary” (42). Yet, while they are not “exactly revolutionary,” per se, they were socio-political artist because to comment on the human condition is an act of socio-political engagement.  Furthermore, none of those writers presents characters in an apolitical vacuum.  Each work by each author is rooted in or contextualized under a socio-political umbrella/discourse of how class, religion, economics, cultural sensibilities, and/or science impacts or affects the human condition.  So, to this end, Marx’s “own favorite authors” are explicitly engaging the notion of how the material production of human life impacts or affects human consciousness.

 

      Further, in Grundrisse, Marx has declared that there is no contradiction in that the same Greek arts, which belong in the past and which are no longer reproducible in the present, “still afford us with artistic pleasure,” and he likens the charm and the irreproducibility of the Greek arts to the charm and irreproducibility of childhood.  “A man cannot become a child again . . . Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm?” (Marx 774).  This statement falls short of explaining why this is applicable to art in particular and not to all forms of human consciousness in general.  Hence, Eagleton notes that Marx’s explanation of why Greek art still appeals to us “has been universally lambasted by unsympathetic commentators as lamely inept” (Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, 10).  Eagleton decides that it is ‘unmaterialist’ of Marx to resort to childhood in order to explain why Greek art still affords us with artistic pleasure.  “So our liking for Greek art is a nostalgic lapse back into childhood – a piece of unmaterialist sentimentalism which hostile critics have gladly pounced on” (11). Yet, to do justice to Marx, one need note that, as its title indicates, Grundrisse (meaning Outlines), is labeled as a ‘rough draft’ and was not intended to be published as such.  Its real importance lies in that it affords us an access to the formation (and not the ultimate production) of Marx’s thought at the time.  And while Marx’s explanation of the “eternal charm” of the Greek arts seems, itself, childlike or even contradictory, one can also read that for Marx the beauty of the Greek arts is its simple, uncomplicated notion that there can be no art without the engagement of socio-political issues and that the engagement of socio-political issues need not be cloaked under the cover of sophisticated literary devices to retain its moniker of being “art”.  What Marx seems to have clearly understood is that prior to the wrestling of ritual from art or art from ritual due to the rise in leisure time created by industrial/technological advancement, the beauty of the play, according to Aristotle, was truly man’s recognition of himself, especially man recognizing his own grappling with the various ways that the socio-political aspects of life shaped his being.

 

      Although Marxist criticism is, by definition, historical, Eagleton argues that its originality “lies not in its historical approach to literature, but in its revolutionary understanding of history itself” (3). That Eagleton emphasizes the revolutionary nature of Marxist criticism is of utmost importance for a full understanding of his position.  Eagleton’s deepest concern is that critics, including those claiming to radicalize Marxism, have proved oblivious or neglectful to this essential element of Marxism—its revolutionary nature.  Thus he labels post-colonial critics as ‘post-revolutionary’ because they have replaced class consciousness with cultural consciousness.  Eagleton laments that cultural theorists have detracted attention from social justice to the issues of sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity, even though, in principle, he acknowledges the importance of those issues.  He further condemns the uncertainty and lack of norms which have resulted in a political inertia among theorists.  In all that, as demonstrated in the various examples he has quoted, he may well have produced a fairly realistic picture of the current status of the theoretical circle.  But, from a Marxist point of view, for the picture to be complete, those theorists Eagleton criticizes must have been more or less conditioned by their socio-political circumstances and, therefore, are only partially to blame.

 

 

 

 

 

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writer from Irak / USA

 

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