Wondering

In writing fiction, should the author present concepts or problems in a way that is as overtly thought-out as in theoretical essays? That is to say something a little different than what I wrote: while a book like Ziziek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce unwinds the implications of the real-life narratives in politics, economics, and television, should a work of fictive narration strive to structure its own future debates? I tend to answer these questions too simply (right now I am afraid that I would say something like “well even if one tried to do that, inevitably there are always other kinds of processes available in any text…”

But still, I wonder if writing fiction demands less of  a stance. Now that I’m thinking of it, this question might be stupid, because it doesn’t really matter what the intention of an author is. In other words, literature as fiction seems to be  symptomatic and maybe requires a positive, theoretical (no, no a realistic!) tether (from either within the book or via an outside writer) to move it into meaning. Yes? No?

Working through Althusser: “Feuerbach’s ‘Philosophical Manifestoes’”

Anyone who reads the texts on the Reform of Philosophy and the Preface to the Principles will realize that they are true proclamations, a passionate annunciation of the theoretical revelation which is to deliver man from his chains. Feuerbach calls out to Humanity. He tears the veils from universal History, destroys myths and lies, uncovers the truth of man and restores it to him. The fullness of time has come. Humanity is pregnant with the imminent revolution which will give it possession of its own being. Let men at last become conscious of this, and they will be in reality what they are in truth: free, equal and fraternal beings.

Such exortations are certainly manifestoes as far as their author is concerned.

(L.A. For Marx, pg. 43)

What a clever fellow, this Althusser. I am enjoying his writings.

After his sardonic introduction of Feuerbach, Althusser sheds light on the historical context that binds the philosopher’s manifestoes to Marxism. Althusser carefully prefaces any further exploration of the nineteenth century Feuerbach with a warning: he was still working in philosophy (read: ideology).

[I am interested in the recurring citation of existentialism and theology (almost always together). They are present in both Althusser and Lukacs' essays (well, the ones that I have read so far... I can't lie and say I have an extensive understanding of either, at this point).]

So, by the end of the second, third, and fourth pages, I think I’m getting what it’s all about (drum roll) Young Marx v. Mature Marx. Sorry Feuerbach…

(The question of the young Marx, transitional Marx, and mature Marx is dealt with in depth in a later essay, but I think my re-reading has allowed me to ‘connect the dots’ a bit more thoroughly. Read my next entry: Understanding ‘On the Young Marx.’)

Okay. So L.A. is giving this map out of why we care about Feuerbach in Marxism today: (blah, blah gave an exact ideological ‘resolution’ to the young radical intellectuals of 1840′s Germany who were basically freaking out because they had reached this IMPASSE. OMG. And then… Feuerbach makes it all better with this New Philosophy) it was the inversion of history. And this tradition of inversion of ideology (and consequently, history) was carried on by not only our kinda-sorta friend Hegel, but MARX… at least, for a while.

Althusser moves on to say that the Young Marx was not at all Marx during this period (citing his direct borrowing of the ‘inversion of the subject and predicate’ from Feuerbach); in fact, he calls the Young Marx “no more than an avant-garde Feuerbachian applying an ethical problematic to the understanding of human history.

Now, I don’t know about you. But it seems to me like Althusser COMPLETELY disagrees with Lukacs…

In my personal experience in reading both of these authors (and so close together) it seems to me that the later Althusser makes a significant break with what Lukacs deemed “Orthodox Marxism” is what Althusser would have disregarded as Hegelian, Feuerbachian… and even worse, philosophical.

Treacherous treadings for a sycophant like me.

Something to let stew, chew over, swallow or spit.

In the second place, this fragmentation of the object of production necessarily entails the fragmentation of its subject. consequence of the rationalisation of th e work-process the human qualities and idiosyncrasies of the worker appear increasingly as mere sources of error when contrasted with these abstract special laws functioning according to rational predictions. Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of the process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already pre-existing and self-sufficient; it functions independently of him and he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not. As labour is progressively rationalised and mechanised his lack of will is reinforced by the way in which his   less and less activity and more and more contemplative. The contemplative stance adopted towards a process mechanically conforming to fixed laws and enacted independently of man’s consciousness and impervious to human intervention, i.e. a perfectly closed system, must likewise transform the basic categories of man’s immediate attitude to the world; it reduces space and time to a common denominator and degrades time to the dimension of space.

-Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness

I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one who thinks that’s amazing.

Getting back to the point that I had tried to ignore

…but I couldn’t. There is a little snippet in Lukacs’ essay that sort of… well… to say the very least, made me double-take. After all, there is so much in these so few pages that it’s hard not to get quite excited over the material. (Like, for instance, the disarmingly concise visualization of modernism on page 23:

The more conscientiously the facts are explored–in their isolation, i.e. in their unmediated relations–the less compellingly will they point in any one direction. It is self-evident that a merely subjective decision will be shattered by the pressure of uncomprehended facts acting automatically ‘according to laws.’

I must remember to pull-out Mrs. Dalloway and excerpt the plane scene before the royal gates. But this is just me rambling on and pretending I understand all this.) But it is important to scrutinize the discrepancies in the learning process. I am hoping (and fairly certain) that it is a discrepancy in my own understanding of the material.

So here it is, my conundrum. Lukacs is going on and on about the purpose of Orthodox Marxism, right? And that’s important, but in order to fully explicate the importance of Marxism, Lukacs has to prove the relationship between man and society… or consciousness and society in relation to the proletariat’s self-knowledge as the subject and object of history. He states:

Marx urged us to understand ‘the sensuous world’, the object, reality, as human sensuous activity. this means that man must become conscious of himself as a social being, as simultaneously the subject and the object of the socio-historical process. In feudal society man could not yet see himself as a social being because his social relations were still mainly natural. Society was far too unorganized and had far too little control over the totality of relations between men for it to appear to consciousness as the reality of man. (The question of the structure and unity of feudal society cannot be considered in any detail here.) Bourgeois society carried out the process of socialising society. Capitalism destroyed both the spatio-temporal barriers between different lands and territories and also the legal partitions between the ‘estates.’

I am thinking that his minor parenthetical concession statement is the key to my misunderstanding. But even so, this one paragraph, seemingly so full of eye-opening material, fills me with doubt. When Lukacs says “[i]n feudal society, man could not yet see himself as a social being because his social relations were still mainly natural,” it hits a sour chord in my thought-processes.

I can’t help but postulate that perhaps man did not see himself as a social being within the constraints of feudalism because he was not a social being to the extent that humanity ‘recognizes’ itself to be today. In fact, the argument presented in this essay i.e. that consciousness is a product of society and not vice versa, seems to support the idea that consciousness and society are changing, and that it would be expecting too much from poor little history to lead to the over-determined belief in the social system of capitalism as a means (after nearly 7 thousand years of written and political history) of FINALLY discovering that man is an intrinsically social being.

Although (I’m hoping) that this is an instance of my ignorance, I wonder why Lukacs doesn’t cover his bases (sorry, I hate sports) and go into a little bit more detail about it. Just wondering. Does anyone have anything for me?

Working through Lukacs: “What is Orthodox Marxism?”

Let me just say, it is so nice to read someone who can write well. In his 1919 essay “What is Orthodox Marxism?” Georg Lukacs attempts to answer the title question in terms of clarification.

Getting straight in to things, here are a number of excerpts from his essay (as read in an anthology entitled History and Class Consciousness) and my comments (that, in actuality, end up being questions). I have only one thing to ask of any reader: do not grow too frustrated with me; I know that I am completely helpless in this field as of yet and nothing can be said for me…

What is Orthodox Marxism?

Orthodox Marxism… does not imply an uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not in the ‘belief’ or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepend only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to surpass or ‘improve’ it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality, and eclecticism.

(1)

Here, Lukacs attempts to untangle the various misconceptions of OM. Aside from the quippy sentence where he employs both ‘belief’ and ‘sacred’ to counter his position, I found his writing to be especially clever when he says “dialectical materialism is the road to truth.” I am wondering if in many ways this is quite an exacting thesis. Dialectical materialism (in terms of his essay) can only lead insofar as it moves both in and out. (I think that ‘in’ and ‘out’ are better terms than ‘left’ or ‘right’ because of the way Lukacs goes on to describe historical totality in relation to the immediate present.) Road, as a conceptual image, is the fundamental starting-point in my understanding this essay as a whole.

Only in this context which sees the isolated facts of social life as aspects of the historical process and integrates them in a totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge of reality.

(2)

In this section of the essay, Lukacs moves into his discussion of the capitalist modes of thought. This section of the essay prefaces his eventual discussion of the proletariat as both the subject and the object of dialectical materialism. But, before he can move on to this, Lukacs goes to great pains to explain the upside down conception of social structure to though (or better stated as the misconception between consciousness and reality). He says, “[Capitalism's] determinants take on the appearance of timeless, eternal categories valid for all social formations.” As well as, “When the idea of scientific knowledge is applied to nature it simply furthers the progress of science. But when it is applied to society it turns out to be an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie.” (10)

Paying careful attention to the last quote (where it is entirely too easy to misconceive the author’s point) there are several reasons for this statement. According to Lukacs, the affinity between the method of natural and science and capitalism exists because they share the same ability/drive to distill the ‘facts’ into a contained unit of pure truth. (Which I am guessing in terms of science would gesture towards the alienation of society in terms of science.) Since science (as we practice and perceive its methods in today’s reality) is a product (a ‘plant’ if you will) resulting from the soils of capitalism. But, in the case of, let’s say, philosophy or theory, the inherent antagonisms in that field do not harmonize with capitalist modes of thought and science. To continue this train of thought:

When, for example a thinker of Ricardo’s stature can deny the “necessity of expanding the market along with the expansion of the production and the growth of capital,” he does so (unconsciously of course), to avoid the necessity of admitting that crises are inevitable.

(11)

Hmm…. will finish the second half in a bit.

Signing off.

B

Re-introducing myself to 2009

For about a week, I’ve been researching different poetic works, commentaries, and genres on the web. I’ve concentrated a large amount of my focus on ‘blog poetry,’ because I think there are a lot of important components of poetry written, shared, and critiqued through the same interface. I’ve also spent a lot of time looking at new media poetry (I tend to be drawn to audio-visual illuminations rather than graphic installations, but I try to be fair).

More than just accepting or mimicking these new ways of poetry, or asking, “is new media production a poem?” I’m concerned with the relationship to two-dimensional poetry (poetry attained through the idea of a ‘page’ interface) and that of new media poetry that represents itself as more of a ‘screen.’ 

However, as in cinema, I hypothesize that there are moments in new media poetry that demand the presence of the page.

In preparation for this exploration, I am seeking out strong examples of two-dimensional poetry and new media productions (from blogs, online ‘zines, art hosts, etc) and ask the following questions:

1. In what ways does two-dimensional poetry utilize the space of the page, either in ‘traditional’ lay-outs or more experimental spacing?

2. How does new media poetry restructure itself without the most commonly understood boundaries of poetry (line, meter, punctuation, the codexical nature of the two-dimensional poem) in a more continuous and media-aided format?

3. How might the different genres of poetry translate in to one another? How might a two-dimensional poem with dramatic spacing translate into the space of a ‘film’? Is the page, even in part, an essential peice of the 21st century poetic puzzle?

 

Keeping my eyes open but not unfiltered.