Lukacs Handout 545p1m

Notes on Georg Lukács, “The Ideology of Modernism” (1956); or, “One Cranky Dude” (1217-1232) -

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most prominent theorist of Western Marxism during 20thC o influenced Benjamin, Adorno, Jameson o in this article, responding to Adorno and other Leftist and non-Leftist proponents of modernism (including various avant-garde movements) Major works: The Theory of the Novel (1920), History and Class Consciousness (1923), Studies in European Realism (1948), & The Historical Novel (pub. 1962) Reflects early- to mid-20thC debates within the Left re: what art form(s) could best contribute to growth of socialism not so popular these days (poststructuralists don’t like him)

Critiques of Modernism:  Bourgeois Subjectivism: Modernist emphasis on alienation and isolation of human beings—and absurdity of modern existence—becomes delinked from reality and history, and becomes not only naturalized and universalized but also glorified. - “the denial of history, of development, and thus of perspective” becomes “reality” 1226 if neither individual subject nor reality can be understood, situation becomes horrific, absurd, STATIC - this “ontological dogma of the solitariness of man” is actually an “ideological problem” (1224-5) - the deeply-rooted subjectivism of “the modern bourgeois intellectual” is actually “an intoxicated fascination with his forlorn condition” 1228  Quietist – i.e. actually helps maintain status quo of bourgeois society - this “is the ideological complement of their [bourgeois critics and artists’] historical position” (1224)  Formalism – says praise of modernism by leftist and mainstream critics comes out of too much emphasis on aesthetic form: “by concentrating on formal criteria, by isolating technique from content and exaggerating its importance, these critics refrain from judgment on the social or artistic significance of subject matter” (1226) Trad. Realism (esp 19thC) -

bourgeois in origin and outlook, but still politically good bc shows historical forces at work narrative objectivity solitariness is specific social fate, product of historical forces 1219 -

Modernism -

professed ideology may be various/contradictory 1221 - much modernist lit sees itself as protest against modern society but emphasizes subjectivity (stream of consciousness, point-of-view) makes solitariness a universal condition 1219

historical, recuperates meaning A)

Dialectical - deals with “dialectic between the individual’s subjectivity and objective reality” - i.e. treats hmns as “political animals”

“man” is ahistorical 1220 - individuals are confined to limits of own exp - individuals are often without personal history - bc this situation is not historically situated, “reality is static” 1

1224 “displays the contradictions within society and within the individual in the context of a dialectical unity” 1225 - realism helps explain world and subject as dynamic, meaningful, objective, dialectic btw group and individual, reality and subjectivity -

Particular/Universal – “Typical” Lukács’ conception of “typical” is central to his thought “concrete typicality”preserves both individual as well as social: “the average man is simply a dimmer reflection of the contradictions always existing in man and society; eccentricity is a socially-conditioned distortion” 1225 - The “typical”: although individuals are “normal” or “typical,” relationships between the individual and the world are dynamic & developing

B) “Reality” is inability to know reality 1221 - assumes outer world inherently inexplicable 1222 - “negation of outward reality” - “the attenuation of actuality” C) Deliberately makes “dissolution of personality” a universal condition (1222) - i.e. an “immutable condition humaine” 1225 - humans are “a sequence of unrelated experiential fragments…as inexplicable to others as to himself” “escape into neurosis as a protest against the evils of society” becomes “reality” - pathology becomes normalized and/or even romanticized D) Neurosis becomes glorified 1225 - critique of psychoanalysis (Freud) - “fascination with morbid eccentricity” 1225

E) In fact, this “flight into psychopathology” is noncritique - this “rejection of reality is wholesale and summary, containing no concrete criticism” and Selective use of perspective & distortion “purely subjective” 1224 - social critique “lacks both content and direction”  Uses perspective “selectively”—i.e. not as 1) lack of definition (LACKS CONTENT) everything (in other words, objective and 2) leads nowhere, “an escape into nothingness” subjective points of view of are (LACKS DIRECTION) discernable/exist) - so Mod’ism is an EMPTY GESTURE, only - concept of normal “places” distortion expressive of “nausea, or discomfort, or longing” correctly 1224 - “selective principle” of perspective 1226 - assumes “change and development to be F) rejection of history & loss of grounds for critique the proper subject of literature” 1227 - presents “social and historical phenomena as static” 1227  “Previous realistic literature, however - “Lack of objectivity in the description of the outer violent its criticism of reality, had always world finds its complement in the reduction of assumed the unity of the world it described and reality to a nightmare” 1225 seen it as a living whole inseparable from man deprives literature of a sense of perspective himself” 1229 - distortion in portrayal of reality 1226  there is - even when use “elements of no “normality” to compare it to disintegration,” such as “subjectivizing - & furthermore, “to present psychopathology as a of time,” still serves to portray complex way of escape from this distortion is itself a whole 1229 distortion” 1226 - no grounds or basis from which to criticize  “Every human action is based on a  Modernism has ideological continuity with literary presupposition of its inherent meaningfulness, Naturalism at least to the subject. Absence of meaning - by only looking at surface (not entire system), makes a mockery of action and reduces art to 2

naturalistic description” 1227 - ex) Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead provides perspective, relation to reality, meaning, etc.

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naturalizes and then actually prescribes the way things are presents our only choices as conformity or neurosis (all or nothing) 1223-4

Political/Social implications/influences - product of bourgeois self-absorptoin - through Heidegger and Schmitt, links modernism to Nazis and fascism 1223 - “unity of thought and principle” seen by Modernists as “backwoods philosophy” 1222-3  disintegration of modernist art serves ideological intention of separation, abstraction, ahistoricism – i.e. so you can’t put the whole picture together and understand it - reality becomes static, subjective, incomprehensible - Modernism is the “negation of art” 1232 Examples  “As the ideology of most modernist writers asserts the unalterability of outward reality… human activity is, a priori, rendered impotent and robbed of meaning” 1227 - “psychopathology became the goal…of their artistic intention” 1224 ex) “Kafta’s artistic ingenuity is really directed towards substituting his angst-ridden vision of the world for objective reality” 1222 - impotence, paralysis ex) Joyce’s stream of consciousness 1222 ex) Symbolism, Futurism, constructivism, Surrealism 1226 ex) Bergson – exp’d time, space = real time/space - “by separating time from the outer world of objective reality, the inner world of the subject is transformed into a sinister, inexplicable flux and acquires – paradoxically, as it may seem – a static character” 1228  Refers to Walter Benjamin: “the notion of objective time is essential to any understanding of history, and that the notion of subjective time is a product of a period of decline” 1230 / 1139 c1 - So this is the problem with, say, modernist allegory vs. realist allegory (typical/individual) - realist allegory treats each element as “both individual and typical” (1230) o preserve distinctiveness of each element while also relating to whole o i.e. refers to real world/historical situation - modernism rejects the typical (relate to others/whole), so each detail is just a particularity 3

in Modernist art, detail in allegory can be anything (transferable), so becomes “abstract function” 1230 o ex) Kafka’s “aim is to raise the individual detail in its immediate particularity (without generalizing its content) to the level of abstraction” (1231) o

QUESTIONs & COMMENTs: On p. 1232, in discussing abstraction of allegory in modernism in general and Kafka in particular, Lukács writes, “Specific subject matter and stylistic variation do not matter; what matters is the basic ideological determination of form and content.” - Couldn’t we use Lukács own words’ to defend avant-garde art? - see Bertolt Brecht, “The Popular and the Realistic” & “Against George Lukács”– charges Lukács with formalism for using form as litmus test for capturing reality; Brecht argues that realism & political valence of a text should be determined by its relationship to reality At the same time, we have to that many of us are reading Lukács from a poststructuralist (even if we don’t realize it), postmodernist, cultural pluralist world that privileges difference, perspective, relativism, etc., as a matter of course. He may sound dogmatic sometimes, but his critiques of modernism are important in several ways: - against the Cold War cultural privileging of High Modernism as proof of the superiority of the First World (Western artists have freedom in contrast to Soviet socialist realism and Zhdanovism) - against the Left’s sometimes too-easy celebration of disruption of form as disruption of political life; whereas the Italian Futurists leaned right-ward, the Russian constructivists, the Surrealists and other avant-garde types touted (with varying degrees of rigor and convincing-ness) formal experimentation as political disruption Sources for more info on avant-garde art, politics, and history include: -

Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (1986) – For Huyssen, the “great divide” between modernism and postmodernism is the attitude towards mass culture (modernism disdains, postmodernism is inseparable from). His book is a great historical overview of the development of twentieth-century experimental art, including the “historical avantgarde” (surrealists, Dadaists, constructivists, etc.).

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Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984) – Bürger argues that in their debate on avant-garde art, Lukács, Benjamin, Adorno, and others are two sides of the same failing: they treat works of art as individual, discrete object within society as a totality, whereas a materialist analysis of the historical avant-garde (and this is what Brecht argues too) requires an analysis of the “institutions of art.” In other words, there are levels of mediation between the “totality” of society and the individual work of art, and literary critics need to understand the unique development of these institutions (including publishing houses and markets, literary critical institutions, and schools of art) in between the work itself and the various parts of society in general.

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David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (1990) –Harvey argues that we’re not ALL in a condition of postmodernity, whether you define it as a mode of production (late capitalism, decentralized, flexible accumulation) or a state of being (fragmented, uncertain of reality, etc.). He argues that different historical modes-of-being coexist right now, including modern, postmodern, and premodern (although I don’t think he actually uses the term “premodern”). He then explores this through different modes of production, types of social organization, and art and culture. Harvey is also very readable. 4