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Marxism and Historicism
Author(s): Fredric Jameson
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 11, No. 1, Anniversary Issue: II, (Autumn, 1979), pp. 41-73
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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http://www.jstor.org/stable/468870
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Marxism and Historicism
Fredric
Jameson
T
HE RELATIONSHIP
of Marxism to historicism
is
part
of a
larger
problem-that
of a
properly
Marxist hermeneutic-which
can-
not
fully
be dealt
with here. Let us
merely
observe that the two
thematic
paths along
which this
problem
is
generally approached-
that of historicism and that of an
interpretive
master
code-form,
along
with the third and more
distantly
related theme of
representation,
the three
major polemic
and
ideological targets
of
most forms of
poststructuralism today,
even
though
full-dress
philosophical
onslaughts
on these three
concepts
have
rarely
been mounted.
Still,
the work of the Tel
Quel
group,
Barthes, Derrida, Baudrillard,
Lyotard,
and
others,
presupposes
this
polemic
at the same time that
it contributes
locally
to this or that
aspect
of
it;
while the most
system-
atic statement of the
repudiation
of historicism has been made
by
Foucault
(in
The Order
of Things
and The
Archaeologyof Knowledge),
and
the most
systematic
statement of the
repudiation
of
interpretation
is
expressed
in the
Anti-Oedipus
of Deleuze and Guattari.
All
of
these
statements, however,
presuppose
a
more
basic master
text,
namely,
Althusser's
Reading Capital,
which,
owing
to its
explicitly
Marxist
framework,
is
probably
less familiar to American readers than other
texts in French
theory today.
Althusser's attacks on Marxist histori-
cism and on classical hermeneutics
(which
he calls
expressive
causality)
are therefore basic reference
points
in what
follows,
even
if
we cannot
here
engage
Althusser's
fundamental work
directly.'
As for
interpretation,
I can
only
assert here what
I
will
argue
more
systematically
in another
place,2 namely,
the semantic
priority
of Marx-
ist
interpretation
over the other
interpretive
codes
which are its
rivals
in
the
theoretical
marketplace today.
If indeed one construes
interpretation
as a
rewriting operation,
then all of the various critical
methods or
positions
may
be
grasped
as
positing,
either
explicitly
or
implicitly,
some ultimate
privileged interpretive
code in terms of which
the cultural
object
is
allegorically
rewritten: such codes have taken the
various forms of
language
or communication
(in
structuralism),
de-
sire
(as
for some Freudianisms but also some
post-Marxisms), anxiety
and freedom
(in
classical
existentialism),
temporality
(for
phenomenology),
collective
archetypes
(in
Jungianism
or
myth
crit-
icism),
various forms of ethics or
psychological
"humanism"
(in
crit-
Copyright?
1979
by
New
LiteraryHistory,
The
University
of
Virginia
42
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
icism whose dominant themes are the
integration
of
the
personality,
the
quest
for
identity,
alienation and
nonalienation,
the reunification
of the
psyche,
and so
forth).
Marxism also
proposes
a master
code,
but
it is
not,
as is sometimes
commonly
thought,
either that of economics
or
production
in the narrow
sense,
or of class
struggle
as a local
conjuncture
or
event,
but rather that
very
different
category
which is
the
"mode
of
production"
itself,
which we
may
therefore
expect
to
make
its
appearance
at the conclusion of the
present argument.
For
the
moment,
suffice
it to
say
that the
concept
of a mode of
production
projects
a total
synchronic
structure in terms of which the themes and
the concrete
phenomena
valorized
by
the other methods listed above
necessarily
find the
appropriately
subordinate structural
position.
This is to
say
that no
intelligent contemporary
Marxism will wish to
exclude or
repudiate
any
of the themes listed
above,
which all in their
various
ways designate objective
zones in the
fragmentation
of con-
temporary
life.
Marxism's
"transcendence" of these
other methods
therefore does not
spell
the abolition or dissolution of
their
privileged
objects
of
study,
but rather the
demystification
of the various
frameworks or
strategies
of containment
by
means of which each
could
lay
claim to
being
a total and self-sufficient
interpretive
system.
To affirm the
priority
of Marxist
analysis
as that of some ultimate and
untranscendable semantic
horizon-namely,
the horizon of the
social-thus
implies
that all other
interpretive systems
conceal a seam
which
strategically
seals them off from that social
totality
of which
they
are a
part,
and
constitutes their
object
of
study
as an
apparently
closed
phenomenon.
Thus,
for
instance,
the
powerful
closed her-
meneutic of the Freudian
psychic
models is
unexpectedly
and dialec-
tically
reopened
and transcended when it is understood that such
models
ultimately depend
on the concrete social
reality
of the
family
as an institution. As to the final
stage-in
all the
poststructuralist
critiques
of
interpretation-in
which
allegorical
rewriting always pre-
supposes
some
ultimately privileged
form of
representation-in
the
present
instance,
presumably,
the
representation
of
something
called
"History"
itself-we can
merely
assert here that it is
precisely
in this
respect
that a Marxist hermeneutic can be
radically distinguished
from all the other
types
enumerated
above,
since
its "master
code"
or
transcendental
signified
is
precisely
not
given
as a
representation
but
rather as an absent
cause,
as that which can never know full
repre-
sentation. I must here limit
myself
to a formula I have
proposed
elsewhere,
namely,
that
History
is not in
any
sense itself a text or
master text or master
narrative,
but that it is inaccessible to us
except
in textual or narrative
form, or,
in
other
words,
that we
approach
it
only by way
of some
prior
textualization or narrative
(re)construction.
MARXISM AND HISTORICISM
43
artifacts,
and traces.
The dilemma of
any
"historicism" can then be dramatized
by
the
peculiar,
unavoidable,
yet seemingly
unresolvable alternation be-
tween
Identity
and Difference. This is indeed the first
arbitrary
deci-
sion we are called on to make with
respect
to
any
form or
object
from
out of the
past,
and it is a decision which founds that contact: so that
on the one
hand,
as with Sartrean
freedom,
we cannot not
opt
for one
or the other of these
possibilities
(even
when for the most
part
we
remain oblivious of a
choice
made in an unthematized and unreflex-
ive
way),
while on the
other,
the decision
itself,
since it
inaugurates
the
experience,
is
something
like an absolute
presupposition
which is it-
self
beyond any
further
philosophical argument
(thus,
we cannot
ap-
peal
to
any
empirical
findings
about the
past,
since
they
are them-
selves
grounded
on this initial
presupposition).
That this is meanwhile
an intolerable
option may
quickly
be
conveyed by
an
oversimplified
demonstration:
if
we choose to affirm the
Identity
of the alien
object
with
ourselves-if,
in other
words,
we decide that
Chaucer,
say,
or
a
steatopygous
Venus,
or the narratives of
nineteenth-century
Russian
gentry,
are
more
or
less
directly
or
intuitively
accessible to us with our
own cultural
moyens
du bord-then we have
presupposed
in advance
what was to have been
demonstrated,
and our
apparent
"comprehen-
sion" of these alien texts must be haunted
by
the
nagging suspicion
that we have all the while remained locked in our own
present-the
present
of the societe de consommation with
its
television
sets and
superhighways,
its Cold
War,
and its
postmodernisms
and
poststructuralisms-and
that we have never
really
left home at
all,
that
our
feeling
of
Verstehen
is little
better
than mere
psychological
projection,
that we have somehow failed to touch the
strangeness
and
the resistance of a
reality
genuinely
different from our own. Yet
if,
as
a result of
such
hyperbolic
doubt,
we
decide to
reverse this initial
stance,
and to
affirm,
instead and from the
outset,
the radical Dif-
ference of the alien
object
from
ourselves,
then at once the doors of
comprehension begin
to
swing
closed and we find ourselves
separated
by
the whole
density
of our own culture from
objects
or cultures
thus
the latter's
monuments,
These
preliminary
remarks about
the
problem
of
interpretation
would
therefore seem
to have restructured in advance the other re-
lated
problem
which is our official
subject
here,
namely,
that of his-
toricism,
to which we now turn. I will
speak
in a moment about the
curious
destiny
of this
term,
which cannot
today
be
pronounced
with-
out
furtively
turning up
one's
lapels
and
glancing
over one's shoulder.
Let us for the moment construe this
problem
in a more
empirical
or
commonsense fashion as
being simply
that of our
relationship
to
the
past,
and of
our
possibility
of
understanding
44
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
initially
defined as Other from ourselves and thus as
irremediably
inaccessible.
The status
of the classical
world has
long
been
paradigmatic
of this
dilemma.
When
Greek forms and
Latin
texts were felt as classical for
us,
what was affirmed was not
merely
the
Identity
of these formal
languages
and
sign systems
with our own aesthetic values and
ideals,
but rather
also,
and
through
the
symbolic
medium of the aesthetic
experience,
a whole
political analogy
between two forms of social life.
This we are
today
in a
position
to
grasp
better,
when Greek forms-
and the ideal of classical
beauty
that derives from them and of which
the art of
Raphael
has
generally
been taken as the
supreme
embodiment-come to be felt as
insipid
and when the
temptation
arises to rewrite them more
"strongly"
in terms of Difference. Then
the Nietzschean reassertion of the
Dionysian
and of the
orgiastic
counter-religion
of the
mysteries,
the ritual studies of the
Cambridge
school,
Freud himself
(and
Levi-Strauss's
rewriting
of the
Oedipus
legend
in terms of
primitive myth),
decisive reversals in classical
scholarship,
such as the work of
George Thompson,
Dodds's The
Greeksand the
Irrational,
or the newer French classical
scholarship;
above
all,
perhaps, contemporary
aesthetic
reinterpretations
of the
Greek
fact,
such
as Karl Orff's
opera Antigone-all converge
to
pro-
duce an alternative
Greece,
not
that of
Pericles or the
Parthenon,
but
something savage
or
barbaric,
tribal
or
African,
or Mediterranean-
sexist-a culture of masks and
death,
ritual
ecstasies,
slavery,
scapegoating, phallocratic
homosexuality,
an
utterly
non- or anticlas-
sical culture to which
something
of the
electrifying
otherness and
fascination,
say,
of the Aztec
world,
has been restored. That this
powerful counter-image
is no less conditioned
by
our own collective
fantasies than the "edle Einfalt und stille
Gr6sse" of the
Apollonian
classicism which it
replaced, may
be deduced from
its
kinship
with
other
persistent
historical
motifs,
such as the constellation of "to-
talitarian" fantasies
expressed
in
1984,
images
of
Wittvogel's
Oriental
Despotism,popular representations
of Stalinist
"bureaucracy"
and of
the
cyclical
return
(particularly
in science
fiction)
of various images
of
imperial
domination and of archaic
power systems.
Nonetheless,
the content of these new motifs allows us to reevaluate the older vision
of the classical
world,
which now
proves
to be less a matter of indi-
vidual taste than rather a whole social and collective mirror
image,
in
which the
production
of
a new artistic
style-neoclassicism-comes
to
serve as the vehicle for
political legitimation:
now it is a whole domi-
nant
social
class,
the
English
aristocratic
oligarchy
as it
persists
as a
privileged
enclave
within
the hostile
environment
of
industrialization
and commerce and the alien element of a brutalized and
mentally
and
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