Fredric Jameson Interview 2

8/13/2019 Fredric Jameson Interview 2

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INT RVI W

FREDRICAMESON

L. GREEN:What do you take to be the political significance of books likeFablesof Aggressionor The PoliticalUnconscious? As a Marxist,do you see themain function of such works as critical and interpretative?I am thinking ofMarx'sEleventhThesis on Feuerbach:'The philosophers have only interpretedthe world, in various ways; the point is to change it." I am also thinking of arecent article by TerryEagleton,in which he raises the following issue:"For hequestion irresistiblyraisedfor the Marxistreaderof Jameson is simplythis: howis a Marxist-structuralistnalysis of a minor novel of Balzac to help shake thefoundations of capitalism?" 'The Idealism of American Criticism,"New LeftReview, 127 (1981), 65].F. JAMESON:Read carefully, Terry'squestion is not so much a critiqueaddressed to my own work as such, as rather he expression of an anxietywhicheveryone working in the area of Marxistculturalstudies must feel, particularlywhen it is a matterof studyingthe past. The anxiety is a significantone, whichshould be looked at in some detail.It would be too facile (but not wrong) to returnthe compliment by reply-ing that Balzac, of all writers,has a privilegedand symbolic position in the tradi-tional debates of Marxistaesthetics: so that to propose a new readingof Balzacis to modify those debates (symbolicallymuch more central in Marxism han inother ones, and involving political and epistemological consequences which itmight be best to spell out more substantively in my response to your secondquestion). So one type of political consequence that emerges from work likethis can be located within Marxism,as partof its redefinition, its self-definition,and so forth, something which may not particularly nterestyour readers.On another level, however, such studies of "classical" exts are to betaken - to use the fruitfulAlthusserianconcept - as an intervention in the stan-dard university eaching of what is called the "canon."So at this point the ques-tion opens up into the more general problem of a Marxist pedagogy. I'mtempted to sketch a position on this last in terms of something like a practicaldouble-standard, since I tend to make a rough distinction between the func-tions of graduate and undergraduate teaching in this respect. The formerinvolves something like laboratory experiments in the study of culturaldynamics and, insofaras this is loosely analogous to "scientificresearch,"needsno particular ustificationin terms of immediate "relevance" but we can comeback to this type of study lateron). But such graduate research could be des-cribed (going fast)as a pedagogy of form, as opposed to some more properlyundergraduateorientation towards content.Let me explain this last briefly:the opposition is not really that of theoryversus practicalcriticism, although that is the stereotype that comes to mind.

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Rather, in undergraduatework one does not reallyconfront the "text" t all, one's primaryobject of work is the interpretation of the text, and it is about interpretationsthat thepedagogical struggle in undergraduate teaching must turn. The presupposition here is thatundergraduates as more naive or unreflexive readers(which the rest of us arealso much ofthe time)- never confront a text in all its materialfreshness; rather,they bringto it a wholeset of previously acquired and culturallysanctioned interpretiveschemes, of which they areunaware, and throughwhich they read the texts that are proposed to them. Thisis not a par-ticularlyindividual matter,and it does not make much difference whether one locates suchinterpretivestereotypes in the mind of the student, in the general culturalatmosphere, or onthe text itself, as a sedimentation of its previous readings and its accumulated institutionalinterpretations: he task is to make those interpretationsvisible, as an object, as an obstaclerather than a transparency,and thereby to encourage the student's self-consciousness as tothe operative power of such unwittingschemes, which our traditioncalls ideologies. The stu-dent's firstconfrontationwith a classic, therefore- with Heartof Darkness,with Jane Austen,with Vonnegut or with Hemingway-will never really involve unmediated contact with theobject itself,but only an illusionof contact, whose terminus turns out to be a whole rangeofinterpretive options, from the existential one (the absurdityof the human condition), acrossmythcriticismand its more psychological form (the integrationof the Self)all the way to eth-ics (choices and values, the maturingof the protagonist,the apprenticeship of good and evil).These various liberal ideologies (and they obviously do not exhaust the field) all find theirfunctional utilityin the repressionof the social and the historical,and in the perpetuation ofsome timeless and ahistorical view of human life and social relations. To challenge them istherefore a politicalact of some productiveness. The readingof novels is to be sure a special-ized and even an elite activity;the point is however that the ideologies in which people aretrained when they read and interpretnovels are not specialized at all, but rather he workingattitudes and forms of the conceptual legitimationof this society. One may of course come atthese ideologies in other, more specifically political (or economic) situations; but they canjust as effectively and sometimes even more strikinglybe detected and confronted in thatarea seemingly so distant from and immune to politics which is the teaching of culture.This would then be a more general description and defense of the political uses of anintervention in the realm of teaching and studying the literaryand cultural classics of thepast.To be sure, ifthat were what Imyselfwas primarily ngaged in, the choice of Balzac is asingularly neffective one for an Anglo-American public, where different kinds of school clas-sics or specimens of the canon would be obviously a far more important strategicterrain.But,to speak the language of reification and specialization, I'm n French,and that particularmission, while very important, interests me personally less than some others. This answerhas already been too long, but let me brieflyspell out what those might be.I happen to think that no real systemic change in this country will be possible withoutthe minimalfirststep of the achievement of a social democratic movement; and in my opin-ion even that firststep will not be possible without two other preconditions (which are essen-tially the same thing): namely the creation of a Marxist ntelligentsia,and that of a Marxistculture, a Marxist ntellectual presence, which is to say, the legitimationof Marxistdiscourseas that of a "realistic"ocial and political alternative in a country which (unlike most of theother countries in the world) has never recognized itas such. Thisis the perspective in whichI would want my own efforts to be understood, and I suppose my own particularcontribu-tion to such a development would mainly lie in showing the capacity of Marxism o engagethe most advanced currents of "bourgeois" hinking and theory; but that is only one taskamong others.A final remark on the problem of the "canon":European radicals, particularly n themid-60s, with the increasing emphasis on the Universityas an "ideologicalstate apparatus,"came to formulate a view of political intervention in which Literaturetself,as an institution,was an appropriate target for critique and occasion for consciousness-raising. Something ofthis developed over here, but was absorbed into an old American tradition of anti-intellectualism or Know-nothingism,which paradoxicallywas never really left-wing at all,but simply replicated the general attitudeof a business society to culture generally. I think itmay be worth pointingout that in the frameworkof the classical nation-state,culture and thenational "canon"does play a centrally legitimizing role which surely cannot have an exactdiacritics / fall 1982 73



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aware of the "omnipresence of culture"?Iwould have believed the contrary,that the mostresistance would be in the willingness to accept the omnipresence of the "political,"par-ticularly in a Marxian sense of the political.F. JAMESON:My problem with this question and the preceding one turns on thepresuppositions which inform both and which seem to me misguided. In both questionsthere is taken for granted a conception of the political and of political action (let alone "theMarxiansense of the political")which is not so evident to me; and in the present question, acertain notion of culture is advanced which the very passage you quote is concerned tochallenge. As far as "the political" s concerned, any single-shot, single-functiondefinition ofit is worse than misleading, it is paralyzing.We are, afterall, fragmented beings, living in ahost of separate reality-compartments imultaneously; in each one of those a certain kind ofpolitics is possible, and if we have enough energy, itwould be desirableto conduct all thoseforms of political activity simultaneously. So the "metaphysical" question: what ispolitics-the seizure of power? taking to the street?organizing? talking socialism? resistinghierarchy and authority? demonstrating for disarmament or trying to save yourneighborhood? fighting city hall?-this question is worthwhile only when it leads toenumeration of all the possible options, and not when it luresyou into following the mirageof the single great strategic idea. Still,we have to talk about each of these forms of politicalinterventionseparately, so that there is a supreme misunderstanding o be avoided: namely,the misconception that when one modestly outlines a certainform of politicalactivity- suchas thatwhich intellectuals in the universitycan engage in- this"program"s meant to suggestthat that is the only kind of politicsone should do. Iwould not want anyone to suppose thatwhen above Isuggested a certain kind of political interventionin the teaching of literature,Imeant that this was all we should ever do. On the other hand, it is worth asking ourselveswhat the mirageof the great single-function political"line" r strategydraws its power from;and I think, particularlyfor intellectuals, this mirage comes from impatience with themediated, with the long-term; it gets its power from the desire (quite proper to a businesssociety, by the way) to show immediate results,feel some ego satisfaction,make the tangiblemark right now. That is a pleasant luxury, a wonderful gratification,but it is not for us.The tendency to think politics univocally (or monotheistically, as a more theologicallyminded left might put it) then reproduces itself elsewhere, as in the feeling that the word"culture" as a fixed meaning assigned in advance. ButIwould point out that the point of thetext quoted was to suggest that we needed a new conception of culture and of its space orfunction in this society. More modestly, my feeling was that for people in literary tudies, thesuggestion that we call our object of exploration"culture" ather han "literature" as alreadya subversive and a liberatingdisplacement: not only the masterpieces of high culture, butalso mass culture, and not only printedor verbaltexts but culturalproductiongenerally, andfinally not only the formal characteristicsof such cultural production but its relationshiptosocial reproduction as a whole. Raymond Williams has systematicallydefended this par-ticular move, this particular displacement, and I would think it might have even moreresonance in the United States where "culture" oes not yet even have that legitimacy as aconcept which it has in Britain.On the other hand, ifthe term"culture"ails to convey such ashift, if I am wrong about the effects of this terminological substitution, if your reading ischaracteristic of most people's reactions to what I wrote, then one must perhaps concludethat the slogan has misfired,that all this is to be said in another way and that we should aban-don the word culture altogether for some other, sharperformulation.Yet, to dwell on the term a little longer, its effectiveness ought really to lie in its veryambiguity (or "polysemousness").We can separate out three distinct meanings at once,although there are probably any number of other ones: 1. The anthropological concept,according to which a specific and systemic culturalorganization (a"pattern," "style," nd/ora characterologicalconfiguration)has as its function the bindingtogether and practicalinter-relation of the variouselements of a particular ocial formation. The concept seems generallyto have been reservedforsimpleror precapitalistor organic and tribalsocieties, although westill find degraded remnantsapplied to "advanced" nes, as in notions of the German or theRussian national character, present-day America's"cultureof narcissism,"and the like. Butsince the problem of the economic determination of a society ariseswith particular orce inconnection with so-called primitivesocieties, and since "culture,"where they are concerned,diacritics / fall 1982 75



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always very centrally includes religion,this conception of culture is a systemic one, in whichthe cultural instance is not only grasped in a far more all pervasive way than in modernsocieties but also becomes the central mechanism of social reproduction itself.2. The specific use of the term "cultural"n a certain Marxist radition,most notablytheSoviet: here "culture" esignates daily life and daily practices in general (or, ifyou like, the"superstructural"n general). This is of course an immediately central political area for anypost-revolutionary society, since what is now designated is a level of collective con-sciousness, issues of education and social reproduction, and most significantlywhat wemight be tempted to call ideological attitudes: literacy, the relationshipof the peasant toindustrial and technological phenomena, the relationshipof hitherto dominated classes toimages of authority, sexual politics and gender attitudes including the place of the family,and so forth. This brief listis enough to suggestthat when Leninand others termed this or thatproblem a "cultural ssue," hey did not thereby intend to marginalizeor trivializesuch prob-lems but on the contraryto designate them as a crucial area for which some enlarged con-ception of politicalwork and collective reeducation had to be invented. Gramsci'snotion ofa struggle for hegemony, or more precisely, for the construction of a counter-hegemony,seems to me very obviously to designate this same area, whose problematic has now beenwidened to include "cultural"trugglesthat must precede and prepare a social revolution;while the Chinese conception of "culturalrevolution"obviously also develops very squarelyin this tradition,although to discuss it (andto show the originalityof this conception, whichcan now be distinguished from its limited historical experience in revolutionary China)would take too much time here.3. The narrowestconception of "culture,"inally, in the spiritof the remark of Shaw'scharacter (aswell, I'mafraid,as in the spiritof your question), "Life s not all playsand poems,Octavius." It is a historical fact that other Marxisttraditions (Marxand Engelsthemselves,Lenin in his appreciation of Tolstoy, Lukacs,Mao tse-tung, and even, a contrario, by thelengths to which he went to control or repressit, Stalinhimself)gave a value to culture, evenin this narrowestof senses, which is farfrom being ours ina business society. Butthe pointofthe remarksyou quoted had nothing to do with some nostalgic revivalof this older Marxian"respect" or high or elite culture; rather, I meant there to suggest the possibilityof a fun-damental historical and systemic transformationof culture and its place in contemporarysociety. Although the scheme is a relativelyabstract or dogmatic one, and although it cer-tainly merits the characterizationof "historicist"r "teleological" see below), I have found ituseful to insiston the conception of stages in modern capital, and most particularlyon thenotion that the very organization of FirstWorld society today must be thought of as a newand originalmoment of capitalism, ifyou like a thirdmoment, beyond those conventionallydesignated as "classical" r marketcapitalism,and the "ageof imperialism" r the monopolystage of capitalism. Without entering into this debate in detail, it should be observed that aspecificallyMarxistreappropriation inworks like ErnestMandel's LateCapitalism)s possibleof a periodizing concept which began, against Marxism, to suggest that modern orpostcontemporary society no longer obeyed the classical laws of capital, production, socialclasses and their struggleand the like (concepts like the affluentsociety, Daniel Bell's"postin-dustrialsociety," notions like media society, informationsociety, even quasi-existentialbutMarxianconcepts like Debord's society of the spectacle might be given as examples of thislast move). What people like Mandel have shown is that very far from amounting to anuntheorized deviation from the analysis in Marx'sCapitalitself,this new or thirdmoment ofcapital can on the contrarybe theorized as its purest realization,as a moment in which theMarxiandynamics are more global and operate in a farmore classical fashion than in any ofthe earlier stages.What follows, forthe realm of culture, is something that can be described in two distinctformulations. We could say, following the initial FrankfurtSchool account of the "CultureIndustry," hat capital is in the process of colonizing the last part of the mind-theaesthetic - that traditionallyseemed to resist its logic (being governed, as classical aestheticstaught us, by "unfinalizable inalities"): n Mandel'saccount, then, consumer society wouldbe a thoroughgoing push into this area of the mind- culture, the Unconscious, whateveryou want to call it-and a final rationalizing, modernizing, industrializing,commodifyingcolonizing, of the non- or pre-capitalistenclave left survivingthere.76



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F.JAMESON:The question could also have been raised about other figures,most obvi-ously Lukacs,and perhaps I'll ake this occasion to addressthe LukAcsssue too.* The pream-ble, however, would be the expression of a real sense of exasperation with the terms inwhich our relationshipto such theorists (mostlycontinental) is generally staged. Leave asidethe parochial American mesmerization with Europeantheoretical products; it seems theythemselves are now developing a similar mesmerization with things American, Californian,etc., so that we can now carryon our transatlanticdiscourse via the appropriatedistortingmirrors(supplied, no doubt, directly from the lumberrooms of the Lacanian mirrorstage).What bothers me, when we have to do with the Marxisttradition, is the transformationofthese various thinkers-and not only Althusser or Lukacs, but also: Gramsci, Benjamin,Brecht, Williams, Thompson, etc., etc.- into brand-names for autonomous philosophicalsystems. In this the Marxisttradition has itself been infected by the logic of commodityculture in general:where the organizationof consumption around brand-namesdeterminesa quasi-religiousconversion, first o the great modern artists- you convert to Proust,or to D.H. Lawrence, or to Faulkner,or to Sartre,etc.-all incompatible, but every so often oneswitches religions-and then in a laterstage to the theorists, so that one now converts toHeidegger, or Ricoeur, or Derrida, or Wayne Booth, or Gadamer, or De Man. Now thesocial content of these "adherences" s perhaps a little more marked than in ordinarycom-modity consumption, and is a realityand not only an ideology: that is to say, your libidinalcommitment to a certain make of automobile does not reallydetermine a collective solidar-ity with the other consumers of that vehicle; but your culturalcommitment to a "theorist"does really become a badge of small-groupaffiliation;and here we touch a social dynamicinto which the political then begins again to rush and flow. In a privatized and atomizedsociety of this type, small-group formation (with the attendant phenomena of belief,fanaticism, puritanism, theoretical asceticism, polemic self-definition against the variousenemies, and so forth)is a very attractiveway in which the pull of the collective is felt, andpromises some salvation from the isolation of the monad. Nowhere is this kind of thingclearer than in the Althusserianschool itself, one of the most triumphalisticand aggressivesmall group formationson the left in recent times (but let'snot forget Tel Quel, Screen, andother successful theoretical small-groupformations;in this country, those impulses seem tohave been mainly absorbed into more traditionalsectarian small groups, Trotskyist,Maoist,etc.).Now to begin an answer to your question Iwas never very attractedto that feature ofthe Althusserianphenomenon, but it can be said to have ended for all practicalpurposes in1968-1969 anyway. The Althusserwho has meant something to me is not the rallyingpointof a small "fusedgroup"or theoretical guerrillaband, nor the brand-namefor a whole newtheory in its own right; but rather an interesting, fragmentary,sporadic commentator onMarx. None of his published works is really systematic; most are ad hoc interventions orsummariesof on-going work in seminars, the latterseeming to have been the principalformthroughwhich histhinkinghas been expressed. This is not therefore a rigorousphilosophical"system"n any sense of the word; it must be approached through Marx,throughthe Marxisttradition, to which it represents an ensemble of contributions, some importantand somemore controversial. But to approach Althusseras a philosopher in his own right,that is, asthe builder of yet one more new philosophical system, is a little bit like approaching Lacanwithout passing through Freud:grotesque and illusory pseudo-systems are the result,and anunnecessary multiplication of intellectual entities. This said, it is certain that Althusser'swork- which draws together in an explosive synthesis many of the great themes and preoc-cupations of "high structuralism"-has been neglected here precisely because of itssometimes strident foregrounding of the Marxisttradition. We have enough contact withFreudianism n the air to entertaina fitfulpracticeof Lacan(althoughthe problems in readingLacan'sown texts are even greater, owing to theirsimilarly ragmentaryor oral nature);but inthe absence of any Marxistculture at all, Althusser'spreoccupations seem remote. This is notthe place to enter into details;but one would thinkthatamong the most interestingcontribu-

*/ never did: suffice it to say that my Lukacs s a theoretician of "realism"n terms of the category of"totality"ather than of "reflection"let alone of rationality/irrationality);nd this is a somewhat differentLukacs han the usual stereotypes, one would think.78



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tions of Althusser and his school are to be numbered an inquiry into the relationshipbetween the "levels"of social life (sometimes called "structural ausality"or "structure ndominance"),a whole new theory of ideology (drawing significantlyon Lacan),a meditationon the relationshipbetween social institutions and ideology (the so-called "ideologicalstateapparatuses"),a new conceptuality, including notions like that of "intervention" nd "prob-lematic,"and finally, for Marxology, a provocative conception of the relationshipbetweenearly and late Marx, which is based on a complicated but significantdistinction betweenideology (what he calls"humanism,"hat is an anthropologywhich includes a presuppositionabout "humannature") nd "science" namely a discourse so organized- it is a question hereof Capital itself- as to exclude ideological propositions; and here too the conception of"science"has many resonances in common with Lacan'sown rich meditations on that sub-ject). We might also mention Althusser'sratherstrikinguse of the materialsof the historyofscience (in particular the very important modern French historians of science): this ishowever for me the most doubtful segment of the Althusserian egacy, and I myself tend tofind the whole Althusserian epistemology ("theoretical practice," "the production ofknowledge") problematical and unsatisfactory.But I also happen to be Hegelian enough to think that one does not simply refuse athought like this in toto (as E. P. Thompson does in The Povertyof Theory,thereby turning"Althusserianism" ack into a system, and in the process endowing it with something of ademonic prestige),but that one goes all the way through it so as to emerge on the other side.If "Althusserianism" ere a system, then my own procedure could readily be taxed witheclecticism. If it is a moment of Marxism (along with its "enemy brothers," he work ofLukacs, say, or of existential Marxism),then a more selective approach is perhaps author-ized.The problem can perhaps be put in another way; namely that for Marxismthere is nopurely autonomous "historyof ideas"or "historyof philosophy."Conceptual works are also,implicitly,responses to concrete situationsand conjunctures, of which the national situationremains, even in our multinational age, a very significant framework. UnderstandingAlthussertherefore means first and foremost understandingthe sense and function of hisconceptual moves in the France of the 1960s; but when one does that, then the transferabil-ity of those formerthoughts, now situational responses, to other national situationssuch asour own, in the United States of the 1980s, becomes a problematical undertaking.Perhapsthis is a good transition to your next question.To be sure, Imay have spoken about one "singlegreatcollective story";but this will be arathermythic notion unless the accompanying stress on the primacyof the conjuncture, theconcrete uniqueness of the historicalsituation, is also maintained -the latterthen seemingto break"History"nto a series of discontinuous moments. Inmy opinion, the problem is bet-ter focused in terms of the natureof the dialectic itself than in those of this or that (represen-tational or narrative)vision of history. Indeed, it might best be discussed in terms of dialec-tical language, which is an attempt to stretch terminology so that it registersdifference aswell as identity.The most banal example would be that of the terminology of social class: ina strictsense, forMarxism here is only one social formationin which social classes appear assuch (capitalism)and in that exceedingly strict sense also, there are really only two socialclasses, namely the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.What are often designated as socialclasses in other modes of production - as for example aristocracy and peasantry underfeudalism- are in realitysomething closer to castes. And yet the Manifestoaffirmsall historyas class struggle: the point of this terminological slippage then is to affirm the analogousdynamic of other modes of production, while leaving room fora redefinitionof the term on adifferent historical basis when we come to modern society. Dialectical terminology istherefore never stable in some older analyticalor Cartesiansense: it buildson itsown uses inthe process of development of the dialectical text, using its initialprovisoryformulationsas aladderwhich can either be kicked away or drawn up behind you in later"moments"of thetext. Taken this way, then, the dialectical "narrative"f history is a good deal more com-plicated and reflexive than my own slogan may have suggested.But what about teleology? Oh, yes, I had forgotten that interestingfeature of periodAlthusserianismthe "rigorous," uasi-religiousexamen de conscience, what may be calledthe Ideological New Year's Resolution ("Ipromise to extirpate from myself all traces ofdiacritics / fall 1982 79



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teleology, historicism, humanism, representational thought, etc., etc., but especially todenounce them whenever they are observed in other people").The issue of teleology is, Itake it, intimatelybound up with that of historicism;and much depends on how narrowlythe target is construed. "Historicism"s on this view, if I understand it correctly, meant todesignate any belief in a "stages"heory of history, generally itselfgrasped as having fatallyDarwinian or evolutionist overtones or undertones. I'veexplained myself at some length onthis and won't do so again right now, except to say that the qualitative and systemic dif-ferences between historicalmoments which a "stages"heory implies seem to me to be obvi-ous (Iam a historicist, n other words). Iwould go on to say that for purposes of action, onemust probably try to forget that this is so; were it not for one signal political advantage to astages theory (and in particular o the Marxianone, sometimes called the theory of "modesofproduction"),namelythat it incites us to imaginewhat a radicallydifferentsocial formationofthe future might be like:an effortof the imaginationIhave tended to call, following Marcuseand Bloch, the Utopian impulse, without which politicalaction seems to me impossible (andI might add that the failure of the Utopian imaginationon the Lefttoday, the nervousnesswith which people skirt he question of the nature of some possible and desirable "socialism"or "communism," eems to me a very great failure indeed).But something else has to be said about the past, in order to correct whatever facileassimilation may be made between a "Marxisthistoricism" nd the older idealist and Ger-manic variety, for which the human past and the immense variety of human cultures was(withintheir libraries)an invigoratingand exhilarating perspective. ForMarxism,however,history is in Joyce's phrase a long "nightmare," nd the past- in particular he textual andarchivalpast,with its heaps of ideological potsherds- cannot be confronted without nausea.The "cultural" ast (taking he term now in a narrowaesthetic sense) is most apt for a recep-tion in which this affectivecomponent is reduced: one's strongest apprehension of it can befound, perhaps, in the contemplation of the remains of dead legal systems, with theirideological prolongation in the "visions"and "values"of archaic political systems. Yet thisodor of death that"sears" s with a kind of "greyhorror"when we reopen the coffinsof thesepastsdoes not spare the past of our own system either, and surely has something to do withthe immense gap between the universalizingovertones of such political visions (includingthose of the bourgeois Enlightenment)and the masses of people forwhom those slogans arenot "ideas"at all but empty signs of exclusion and of authority, boundary lines, "no tres-passing"warnings. For all those people -the vast majorityof the human beings who havelived on the earth- such "ideas" re indeed ideology in the sense of false consciousness: andit might be well to stressthe positive side even of this very narrow and negative conception,namely, in itsvery revulsionforsuch dead languages a certainvision of what livingideas anddiscourse might be, in some genuinely human society in which as Gramsciput it, everyonewould be an "intellectual"n that sense, and everyone would be at the center of the "produc-tion" of "ideas,"because everyone would feel some control and productive power over thesituations those ideas attempted to address or to analyze.As for teleology, I imagine that it is generally understood to designate either a belief inhistorical predictability(Popper forbids it) or, what amounts to the same thing, a belief inhistorical inevitability.I must say that Ithink no one has ever believed such things and thatthey are an ideological straw- or bogey-man. (Hegelianism, it is true, includes the peculiaroperation of considering the past to have been "inevitable" fter the fact; but that is a way offraming historiography.)Marxistshave been optimistic or pessimisticdepending on the cir-cumstances, but to attributeto them some peculiar"faith" f this kind is to project a thoughtof Otherness onto them in a peculiarlydishonest mirage. As a citation of authority, it mightbe well to ponder the concluding clause of the Manifesto'sdescription of historyas classstruggle:"anuninterrupted,now hidden, now open fight,a fightthat each time ended, eitherin a revolutionaryreconstitutionof society at large,or in the common ruin of the contendingclasses."What is "teleological" n Marxismmight better be termed "anti-teleological"n thefollowing sense: inevitable is not the triumphantemergence from capitalismof "socialism"(about which we have just observed that nobody today seems to have any clear notion ofwhat it might be), but rathersimplythe self-destructionof capitalism(asof preceding modesof production) under its own internalcontradictions. A lot of people do "believe" his, andthey are obviously not all Marxists(indeed many of them are businessmen). But I will add a80



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remark on the concept of contradiction itself, since that may allow us to pinpoint theweakest element in Althusserianismproper: the junking of the Hegelian dialectic had theambiguous effect of seeming to discredit the materialistdialectic, so that many of thefollowers of Althussergraduated directly into post-Marxism.Althusserhimself never went sofaras to denounce the concept of "contradiction" s being fundamentallyidealistic (after hefashion of, say, Lucio Colletti);but one understands from personal testimony that he wasmoving in this direction. I must therefore registermy own feeling that no Marxism s possiblewithout a conception of contradiction (thatis, without a conception of the dialectic), justasno Marxismis possible without a vision of a radicallydifferent future.But now Iwant to answer your question in yet a thirdway, at the riskof Ptolemaic orscholastic subtleties;and this will be a methodological answer, designed to mark the properuse of a "macro-narrative"uch as the Marxian"visionof history," nd to demarcate that fromthe "archetypes"of a Jung or a Frye. I think a distinction must be made here between adiachronic framework (that is, a narrative of "universalhistory"), n which the essentialcategories of analysis- notably those of the modes of production- are laid out and articu-lated; and the moment of analysis of the text itself,which is synchronic and in which such"narrative"ategories are called into play in the form of synchronic overlap, tension, con-tradiction, and the like. If these two moments in the operation are not separated, whatresults is a typologizing and classificatoryaffair, n which our principalbusiness seems to bethat of dropping a text into the appropriatebox or historical"stage":his last seems to me oflittle interest at all, and if that is what people mean by "historicism,"hen historicism cancheerfully be abandoned.

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R. KLEIN: n the first chapter of The Political Unconscious, "On Interpretation," ouwrite:To imagine that, sheltered from the omnipresence of historyand the implacableinfluence of the social, therealreadyexistsa realm of freedom- whether it be that ofthe microscopic experience of words in a text or the ecstasies and intensitiesof thevarious private religions is only to strengthen the grip of Necessity over all suchblind zones in which the individualsubject seeks refuge, in pursuitof a purely indi-vidual, a merely psychological, project of salvation. [p. 20]

On the preceding page in a footnote, there is a lengthy quotation from Marx on Necessity,the realm of "the blind forces of Nature," hat concludes: "Beyond it (the realm of necessitythat includes both Nature and Man's social interchange with Nature) begins that develop-ment of human energy which is an end in itself,the true realmof freedom, which, however,can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis."A) How do you understand the possibilityof Marx's magininga "truerealmof freedom,"which "havingan end in itself"entails the sort of autonomy and independence that is nor-mallyassociated with the aesthetic doctrines you identifywith bourgeois, individualistblind-ness?diacritics/ fall 1982 81



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B) What do you mean by the "semi-autonomy" f structural evels (pp. 40-41) "whichhas to relate as much as it separates"?C) In order to argue against the organic continuity of expressive causality, you need topostulate, following Althusser,an interrelatednessbetween elements of all the elements in asocial formationwhich is not that of identityor homology but one of difference. "Differenceis then here understood as a relationalconcept, ratherthan as the mere inert inventoryofunrelated diversity."How can difference be thought of as being relationalwithout losingtheforce of separation, detachment, and independence which is contained in the very notion?F.JAMESON: feel that it is misleadingto framethis discussion in terms of the "individ-ual subject."We have latelybeen caught in a double bind, inwhich two distinctconceptionsof the individualsubject have seemed to exhaust the possibilities: he one is the old FrankfurtSchool notion of the autonomous subject, the strong ego or personality (alienated andreifiedby late capitalism,but presumablyalive and well in classicalcapitalism),and the post-structuralistdeal of the decentered subject, the "manwithout qualities" Musil), he Reichiansubject without "characterarmor," the Deleuzian schizophrenic subject. One can beattractedto either of these conceptions on the appropriateoccasion and also be repelled byeither; but everything changes, I would think, when a third term is introduced, namely thereinvention of genuine collective life, in which, if one likes, the subject is therapeutically"decentered"by other people, but which amounts to a whole new mode of being on whichpeople can live. The Marxianrealm of freedom, designated by the quote at issue here, is acollective realm, inwhich a whole community is able to master"necessity" nd to set its owncollective priorities.Let me go a little further than this, and propose a philosophical (and thereforeideological) proposition which is nowhere in Marx, but which seems to me in the spiritofcertain contemporary Marxistthinkers with whom I feel some kinship (most notably Ray-mond Williams and ErnstBloch, in differentways, but also certain featuresof Sartre'swork):this involves that currentlyvery unfashionableand stigmatized thing called "ontology." feel,in other words, that it may be productive to think in terms of a genuine transformationofbeing which takes place when the individualsubject shiftsfrom purely individualrelationstothat very differentdynamic which is that of groups, collectives and communities. Sartrewasmoving in this direction in his Critiqueof DialecticalReason, without, however, ever propos-ing any definitive formulation of this speculative conclusion. The transformationof being,however, is something that can be empirically experienced (I hesitate to say, "verified") yparticipationin any kind of group praxis-an experience no longer as rare as it was beforethe 1960s, but still rareenough to convey a genuine ontological shock, and the momentaryrestructurationand placing in a whole new perspective of the kinds of privateanxieties thatdominate the monadized existence of the individualsubject (still,essentially, our predomi-nant experience in this society). LikeSartre butfor somewhat differentreasons) I hesitatetoassimilate this new form of group being to the category of social class (which remains ananalytic category); but it seems at least minimally importantto recapturethe affirmationofthe collective from its more notorious right-wingappropriations.But unlike the previous question, this one (on difference) does very much concernaesthetics, or is at least best approached by way of the aesthetic, and most notably theaesthetic of post-modernism, about which I would argue that relationship by way of dif-ference is one of the constitutive features. To put it this way is to realize that the questionasked in C is its own answer; the characteristicsoutlined thereby become an imperative:"thinkor perceive difference in such a way that it is relational without losing the force ofseparation,"etc. This is obviously a difficult and unstable position to maintain: one has toavoid a kindof imperceptible high modernistassimilation of surfacedifference to underlyingidentity, at the same time that the relaxationof "relationaldifference"into simple inert dif-ferentiation and random heterogeneity is prevented. We forgot the words "totality" nd"totalization"n the check-list of stigmatizedconcepts of an earlierquestion: it is arguable, Isuppose, that earlierconceptions of totalization or totality (such as that of LukAcs) imed atsome massive high-modernistunificationof a disparatefield. Ithinkthat in LukAcs' ase thatprobablywasn'tso, but in any case an equally strong argument might be made fora differentconception of totalityin our time (Althussercalled it "structuralotality,"among other things)whose distinguishingmark is the overcoming of reificationand fragmentation,not by way of82



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the latter'stylistic bliteration, ut by means of a conceptualor aesthetic ensionable toholdfragmentsogether, n their radicaldifference,n a singlementalact. Threeexamplesmightbe given,one beingthe current nterestnthe allegorical,which,anexplicitrepudia-tion of theaestheticof the"symbol,"ith tsorganicunity, eeksadesignationoraformableto hold radical iscontinuitiesnd incommensurabilitiesogetherwithoutannulling reciselythose"differences."moregraphic mblemof sucha processcan be foundin the recentNamJune Paikretrospective t the WhitneyMuseum,in which hostsof closed frames(stacksof "discontinuous"v sets with their "autonomous"mages)are broughtto lifesimultaneously. uch"texts"husprojectan impossiblenewtypeof perception: oucannotsimply ollowone video imageand ignore he others,nor canyou watchthem all at once(like David Bowie in The Man Who Fellto Earth) something likethe impossible synthesisofboththoseperspectivesswhatthe textdemandsandwithholds, nd thiscanfittinglytandas an allegorical mblemfor the motto,Difference elates.The third llustrationhatcomesto mindis the practicalpolitical ssue of micropolitics ndalliancepoliticson the Left,heproblemof the relationshipby differencebetween a host of groupsorganizedaroundradicallydifferent oncerns and slogans,which cannot be subsumedunderany unifiedpolitical"line"f the oldertype,andyetwhich seekaconjunction fenergiesandwhicharepalpably elated n spirit o one another.Butas this maystrikesome readersas some rathermodishendorsementof currentformsof post-modernism,would alsoliketo sayitin a verydifferentanguage,hatofa textwhich hasalwaysbeen veryimportanto me, namelyHeidegger'sssayon the "Originsfthe Workof Art."Heideggerheredescribes heeffectandfunction f the "authentic"orkofart as the inaugurationf a "rift"etweenwhat he calls Worldand Earth whatwe canrewrite n other languageas the dimensionsof History nd the socialprojecton the onehand,and Nature r matter n theother,rangingromgeographicalrecologicalconstraintall the way to the individualbody.Theforceof Heidegger's escriptionies in the way inwhichthe gap betweenthesetwo dimensions s maintained:he implications thatwe alllive in bothdimensionsatonce, insome irreconcilableimultaneityandIwouldthink hathisdistinction othincludesandlargelyranscendsmoretraditionalategories ikethoseofthe"public"ndthe"private").e areat all moments nhistory ndinmatter;we areat oneand the sametime historical eingsand"natural"nes, living nthe meaning-endowmentfthe historicalprojectand the meaninglessnessof organic life, without any ultimate"synthesis"etweenthese two dimensions verbeing possibleorconceivable.TheHeideg-gerian ormula husfirstrepudiates ny such conceptionof a possiblesynthesisbetweenHistory ndNature suchsynthesesare called"metaphysics"),ndat one andthe sametimerepudiates conceptionofthe workof artwhich wouldaimat reuniting othsymbolically,undersome repressionf Historyby Nature,or the reverse.The workof artcan thereforeneverhealthisfundamentaldistance";ut t cando something lse, andbetter- itcanstagetheverytensionbetweenthetwodimensions n sucha waythatwe are madeto livewithinthat tensionandto affirmtsreality.Thishasalwaysseemedto me an extraordinarilyug-gestiveconceptionof the inaugural poetic"ct, which Heidegger oes on to assimilateothe comparablephilosophical ct (thedeconcealmentof Being)andto the act of politicalrevolutiontheinaugurationf a new society,the production r invention f radically ewsocialrelations).Hisexamplesaretraditionalnes (theGreek emple,theM6rikepoem,theVanGoghpainting), ut allowforveryunexpectedmodernequivalentsn a fallensociety:ourown greatAmerican oem,WilliamCarlosWilliams' aterson,nacts he Heideggerianprojectnegatively, producinghe concept" f the inaugural merican pic bya systematicdemonstrationf the latter'smpossibility. till, think hatthismaybe finally moreusefulframeworkn which to graspsome of the morestimulatingndenablingconsequencesofthe notionthat difference an relate.L.GREEN:hosewho mighthavedoubtsaboutthe unityandsinglenessyou sense inthe historical arrativemightwell harbor imilar uspicionsof anothercentralcategory nyourcritical cheme- the "Real." ouldyoutalkabout he necessityandimportancef thiscategory oyour hinking? gain,Lacan ndAlthussereemto becentrally ehindyour nsis-tence of thinkinghe "Real"s a materialistategory.A)One clearcriticism f the "Real"erives roma mistrustf transcendentalignifieds.Even f the"Real"s an "absentause,"hatwhich"resistsymbolizationbsolutely"nd mustdiacritics/ fall 1982 83



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be apprehendedhroughtstextualeffects, s it notopento the criticism f belonging o anostalgiaor hings implyastheyare,things nthemselves,of historybefore hetext,historyas plenitude?B)From notherperspective, our ayering f the realand thetextual,of history nditsnarratives,asmet withcriticismromanotherquarter.s heresomethingdangerouslyon-venientaboutholding he"Real"n reserveas"absentause"? neffect,does such a deferralof the historical referent,"he "Real,"llow the intricacies f the latestrhetoricalriticismwhile holding he materialistReal"n perpetual eserve?F.JAMESON:he two questionscancelone anotherout, one wouldthink.Thefirstconfrontsme withtheclassicpost-structuralistbjection the"referent"oes notexist),whilethe second accusesme ofdangerous omplacencypreciselywithrespect o thatsamepost-structuralistosition. n act, he "model"ere sthatof theanalyticituation, sthesourceofthisterminologyn Lacanmightsuggest.The"real"s the momentof truth, he momentofanxiety, n whichthe analysand pproacheshe painfuland unwanted ruthof his or hersituation not becausehe or she suddenlyglimpsesor "discovers"he truth n some fullrepresentationalay, but ratherbecauseof the gradualweakeningof defenses,characterarmor,"mauvaiseoi,"rationalizationnd the like. Thisprocesshas its equivalent n thepoliticalrealm, n the realmof ideologies,where a conjunctureandat the outer limitapolarizing, evolutionaryituation)auses he (usuallyiberal)deological ystemofdefensesto crumbleandconfrontsuswith the anxietyof choice andcommitment. t is thisprocesswhichis meantbythe imperfectanguage f an"asymptoticpproacho the Real";ndjustas the analyst an describe tabstractlyor"scientifically"),o can the historian r politicalanalyst,providedt isunderstoodhat here s avastgapbetween hatconceptualorabstractshort-hand nd the experienceof the processitself(andalso, of course,that the abstractanalysis an be wrongor incomplete).

L.GREEN: etme raisea questionaboutyetanotherof yourcentral hemes,the Uto-pian. How do you respond o those who question,as questionthey must,the apparenttranscendentalismf whatseemsto be a recuperationf history s History, transparence,""cure,"nd"plenitude"?s he Utopianyetone moretranscendentalision, he resting laceof materialistheterogeneity,Collectiveunityand self-transparence?iven the reigningtheoreticalmistrustorthe safetyoforigins rtheirmirroredulfillments, hydoesthe Uto-pianremain ucha vital hemein yourwork.Whaturgencydoes it satisfy?A)Iwould ike ogetatthisquestion roma slightly ifferentngle.Youseem to mistrustthe Althusserianichotomyof science andideology.But s itpossible hat,whileyou ques-tionAlthusser'sotionof science,you introduce ourownepistemologicalnchor,a sortofepistemological uarantee,n the formof the Utopian?

Itis in detecting the tracesof that uninterruptednarrative, n restoring o the surfaceof the text the repressedand buried realityof this fundamentalhistory,that the doc-trine of the political unconscious finds its function and its necessity. [The PoliticalUnconscious, p. 20]B) Perhapsmore practically,what space does Utopianunity leave for culturaldif-ference?Whattolerancemight herebe in the totalizedvision forracial, exual,or ethnicdiversity?

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And afterthe historyof our own devastating epoch, of all that we associate with nameslike Stalinor Pol Pot, one might stronglyargue that if there is a Utopian aspect to revolution,it is powerfully sustained by its own negative, a death instinct and will to domination. Whatsustainsyour will to believe in the romance of Utopia?Some would argue, in this light,thatMarxism s a relicof an impossible politics, that we can no longer believe in the unityof suchcategories as "mode of production"and "class conflict."F.JAMESON: 've made a beginning with this question above, in a previous answer. Letme resume that more programmatically by saying that the fashionable current sloganof a "crisis n Marxism"s generally misdirected. Idon't mind using the language of "science"and "ideology"in something like an Althusserian sense (although I don't always feel hisaccount of "science" s as powerful or persuasiveas his account of"ideology"):I bringthis upin order to suggest that contraryto conventional wisdom (even the conventional wisdom ofyourquestion which raises some doubt as to the viabilityof categories like"mode of produc-tion" or "class struggle"), he "scientific" ide of Marxism has never been richer or morecreative. "Scientific" ere designates the analysis, after the fact, of existing or past conjunc-tures; it involves the explanatory power of Marxism as an analytical instrument (veryspecifically including class analysis);and today, in the midst of a world-wide and nationaleconomic crisis, and with the almost complete collapse of "liberalism" s an ideology, itshould not seem necessary laboriouslyto defend this proposition. Iwould guess that manymore people today are willing to entertain specificallyMarxianexplanations for the currentcrisisthan would have been the case ten years ago, say. Togive you an example which drawson your own question, there exist properly Marxistanalyses of Stalinism, as well as ofpremature or abortive revolutions such as those in Kampuchea or Afghanistan. (On theformer, Iwould recommend you to the on-going historyof the Soviet revolution by CharlesBettelheim.) These analyses are more powerful than any liberalanalyses, since they do notrely on LordActon'sdictum, on theological conceptions of the sinfulnessof human nature,or on reifications of phenomena like "power"or "bureaucracy,"but are rather totalizingmodels of the social formationas a whole, in which the objective conditions of possibilityofthe enormities of Stalinismare located in the economic base. The "crisis n Marxism" s thusnot a matterof the loss or discreditingof its instrumentsof analysisand of its unique explana-tory power; it is rathera matter of a crisis in Marxist deology, a crisisin the properlyUtopianconception of what a radicallydifferentsociety should be and of the natureof the new socialrelations that might be imagined in such a system.This is the effortfor which I have reserved the term "Utopian,"not in Marxand Engels'original debunking sense, but in the sense of a properly Marxianeffort to debate alternateformsof social life- something being done farmore vigorouslyamong the feministsor in theenvironmental movement than among us, among other things because of excessive ner-vousness about "actuallyexistingsocialism"and excessive intimidationby the Gulag Industryand post-Marxismgenerally. On the other hand, if the term Utopian remains misleading,then let's replace it with something else. Yet some of the terms of your question imply thatsuch "Utopianthinking"has already been done, and that we mightconsult a secret blueprintsomewhere for its adequacy in terms of "racial,sexual or ethnic diversity,"say. But noblueprintexists, and it is obvious that such issues come at the very top of the agenda. I havethe feeling now that Ishould go on to say some very obvious things, namely that revolutionsin underdeveloped countries (whose results have been what Bahro calls "actuallyexistingsocialism")are obviously bound to have very different contradictions than what might beimagined for advanced industrialcountries (where such revolutionshave never taken place);and also that the violence of revolutionary movements has always historically been aresponse to counterrevolutionaryviolence, eitherfromwithin, or fromwithout, fromthe sur-roundingworld system in which such revolutionaryenclaves have developed (something astrue for the great bourgeois revolutions as for modern socialist ones). But perhaps I don'tneed to go on in this vein.What I would preferto stress here in conclusion is something which does not seem tome to have attractedvery much attention, namely the existence of something like a fear oran anxiety of Utopia which is common enough (and even very understandable) withinpresent-day society. I take the current attacks on Utopia (and "current" s a matter ofpoliteness, since the conceptuality of all this goes back to the hoariestCold War literatureofdiacritics / fall 1982 85



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the 1950s and even beyond) not so much as theoretical argument- in any case these posi-tions have become doxa and received opinion rather than thinking- but rather as theexpressions and the symptoms of some deeper terrorwhich must confront everyone on theoccasion of any fundamentally radicalchange or conversion. Justspeaking now on the levelof individual experience, it is clear that all of our habits and values have been developedwithin the constraints and the alienations of this society, even where the individual is con-cerned to resistthose constraints and perhapsespecially in this last case. We are indeed farmore vitally informed and defined by our anxieties than we like to think:they make up thevery texture of our lives, including everything that is most precious about our individualorprivateexistence (and this very specifically includes the very category of the "private"r the"personal" r of "experience" tself).To graspthis in its enormity means deepening analysessuch as those Benjamin made of the relationship between urban sensory shock andBaudelaire'smodernism; and coming to a more disturbingsense of the omnipresent sym-biosis in late capitalism between the destructive or negative stimulus and that culturaltransformation of it into "pleasure"or "thrill,"which is increasingly the way in which thehuman organismhas found it possible to survivein a forbiddingly nhuman environment andto make the latter livable. Getting rid of that environment therefore means getting rid also ofa whole rangeof intensities and gratifications n termsof which we individualsubjectsof latecapitalism have become accustomed to defining our own "identity."To imagine losing all these anxieties therefore places the imaginationbefore a frighten-ing stillness- what WilliamMorrismeant, Ithink,when to News from Nowhere he gave therevealing subtitle,"AnEpochof Rest."It is indeed hard to imagine how anythingwould sur-vive of our current passions in such a situation- whose radical differences rangeall the wayfrom the disappearance of material anxieties about money, unemployment, housing andmedical care all the way to the sudden and unaccountable absence of the commodity form,the abolition of the split between "public" nd "private"and between "work" nd "leisure"),and, no doubt, the libidinal transformationof the body itself."Utopia"must therefore necessarily be the occasion of great anxiety for the privatizedindividual subject: something that obviously needs to be taken into account, not merely inevaluating current anti-Utopian ideologies, but more practically in progressive politicalaction as well.L.GREEN:The theme of "reification"s indispensable in your work. Inyour postface toAesthetics and Politicsyou call reification"adisease of that mapping function whereby theindividualsubject projectsand models his or herown insertioninto the collectivity. .... Thereificationof late capitalism- the transformationof human relations into an appearance ofrelationshipsbetween things- renderssociety opaque: it is the lived source of the mystifica-tions on which ideology is based and by which domination and exploitation are legitimized"[1977, 212]. If reificationis a disease, the disease, which effects the opacities of ideology,what is the cure? Is it not the very inescapable representational nature of ideology whichrenders it infirm,incapable of transparent appropriationof the real, history,and truth?The question I am asking leads to this: Can you clarifyyour intentions in these twomoments?

Totality s not available to representation,any more than it is accessible in the formof some ultimate truth(ormoment of AbsoluteSpirit). ThePoliticalUnconscious, p.55]If the diagnosisiscorrect, the intensificationof class consciousness will be lessa mat-ter of populist or ouvrieristexaltation of a single class by itself, than of the forciblereopening of access to a sense of society as a totality, and the reinvention ofpossibilitiesof cognition and perception that allow social phenomena once againtobecome transparent,as moments of the struggle between classes. [AestheticsandPolitics, p. 212]F.JAMESON: use the word "reification"n a ratheridiosyncratic way, which may notbe clear. The term is generallyassociated with the LukAcs f Historyand ClassConsciousness,and can I think be interpretedas a far vastercategory than that designated by the same word

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in Marx himself (social relations coming to be felt as the relations between things);and inparticularas the place of a kind of synthesis between Lukacs'Weberian heritageand that ofMarxismproper.This is at least how Iuse the word, so that itstandsessentiallyfor social andpsychic fragmentation that of specialization, of the division of labor, of the labor processitself (Taylorism,Fordism),but also for the gridworkof Cartesianextension, for the abstrac-tion of Cartesianspace, as well as the kindsof perceptual specializations thataccompany thislast, for a new parcellizationof the psyche as well, and thereby of the body itselfand itssen-sorium, and a whole new dimension of conceptual abstraction (to all of which might beadded descriptions like that of Foucault of the infinitelydivisible gridworkof power, whichare also very consistent with this general process and enrich our understandingof it inthisorthat local direction).Thisprocess, which Ihave described in positiveterms, is also a negativeand violent one, being accompanied by the destruction of communal space and theemergence of private property, and the destruction of older forms of collective life (mostnotably the village), and the atomization of people thrown onto the market. Insofaras thedescription is a binary one, it corresponds to the old Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaftdistinction(which had its own influence on Weber and Lukacs),and may thus seem nostalgic or Uto-pian in the bad sense (so here I pick up, more concretely, an issue raised in the previousquestion as well). This would be the case only if itwere a question of two modes of produc-tion - that of capitalism,and the totalityof what preceded it (largely umped together as pre-capitalist). But the usefulness of the concept of mode of production is that it designates awhole variety of pre-capitalist orms, all different from one another, and with no particularUtopian privileges. Something can be learned from all of those modes of production aboutour own specific alienation and reification,our own loss of the collective; on the other hand,in themselves, the various pre-capitalistmodes of production were all far more immediatelyviolent, involving sheerly physical kindsof exploitation and repression,than capitalism itself(which has its own specific list of horrors, rom enclosure and imperialism o high-technologytorture). So the conception of "reification"n a general way does not, I think, involve thenostalgic reflex.I don't, if I follow the line of the question properly,feel that "representation"s the fun-damental key to ideology in general and the cardinal ideological sin. (Butto argue this outwould involve introducinganother issue, that of "narrative," hich is, Ithink, generallywhatpeople have in mind when they rehearse the usual post-structuralist critiqueof representa-tion.")The question is not so much as to whether representationis noxious but rather as towhether and under what conditions it is possible at all: and it was this issue that I sought toaddress in the passages you quote. Ina society colonized by reification- that is, by fragmen-tation, by an infinitedivisibilityof social relations,space, and consciousness (andthe Uncon-scious) itself- in a society whose mode of reification has become dialectically intensifiedandraised to a whole new level in the world of the media image and the simulacrum-theattempt either cognitively or imaginativelyto totalize becomes one of the preconditions forpolitical action, let alone aesthetic production or theoretical analysis. Such an attempt nodoubt involves the reconquest of certain forms of representation;on the other hand, myremarks on "difference" bove may suggest that I'm not exactly proposing a return to old-fashioned Lukacseanrealism as this is stereotypically understood.L.GREEN: don't think Iam alone in thisobservation;one cannot read Fablesof Aggres-sion or The Political Unconscious without noting a certain stubborndensity in your prose. Aswell, one feels at times to be pushing against an almost encyclopedic accumulation ofknowledge in your work. The combination makes for rewardingbut also difficult reading.What do you think the manner of your writing might reveal about your relationshipto theinstitutionsthat materiallysustain your work? What might it say about the nature of youraudience? I imagine we are back to our firstquestion on the politics of your work, having,however, opened the scope to include the politicalspace of the institutionswhich make thiswork possible.F.JAMESON: 'm n a poor position to judge the difficultyof my own work or to defendits stylisticqualities, particularlysince with more time and work no doubt even the mostcomplicated thoughts might have been made more accessible. If one defends difficultyapriori (as I have allowed myself to do occasionally), this can be taken as an ominous pretextfor all kinds of self-indulgence. Butin a general way (and leaving myselfout of it), it is alwaysdiacritics / fall 1982 87



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able. But undesirables can be fired for all kinds of administrative reasons whose politicalintent is hard to demonstrate (legally).The third parameter is however a great renewal ofinterestin Marxism n all fields, at least on the graduate level: this essentially reflects an impa-tience and a fatigue with a great many formalisms,and also the disintegrationof the domi-nant liberal ideology which has been with us since the New Deal. So many academicdepartments feel the pressureof student demands in this area (the famous academic market-place, afterall ),and the workingsolution seems to be a pattern n which you hirejunior pro-fessors to satisfythat student interest, but dismiss them at the moment of tenure; it is a solu-tion which is also financially attractive,for obvious reasons.I have mentioned the "legitimationcrisis"of our hitherto hegemonic ideology, namelyliberalism(somethingthat rangesfromthe exhaustion of Keynesianism o the political disar-rayof the New Deal coalition, and which dragsall kindsof hitherto unexamined presupposi-tions and values down with it in its ruin).This situation has clearly opened a space for thevigorous development of all kindsof right-wing deologies, fromwhich some revitalized cor-poratism may be expected to emerge: what must not be forgotten is that it opens up a verysignificantnew space for Marxism as well. But it is importantnot to confuse the critique ofliberalismwith attacks on liberal allies and what used to be called "progressiveelements inthe middle classes":there is a historical lag here, and people in this country-from govern-ment functionaries to voting Democrats of all kinds- have still largelybeen formed by theideals of the New Deal tradition,as is still clear in the kindsof popularfront alliances whichcontinue to be vital in disarmament or anti-nuclear movements, in feminism, in theresistance to American military nterventionabroad, and so forth. What one wants to showabout the persistence of such ideals is not that they are "wrong"and ideological, petty-bourgeois, and the like, but rather something very different, namely that they areunrealizable within multinationalcapitalism.Thissaid, Ithink it would be a mistake to defend the place of Marxism n the Americanuniversity system on the basis of (an otherwise admirable) liberaltolerance and pluralism.There is a far more powerful justification o be made forthe intellectual role of Marxism hanthis, and it has to do with what has been termed reification n an earliersection of this inter-view, namely with the increasing specialization and fragmentationof the disciplines. Manyintellectualsdeplore this irreversibledevelopment, by which increasinglysmall segments ofreality become the provinces of specialized codes or private languages (whose jargon andlexicon are perhaps not even so forbidding as the sedimentation in each of them ofvoluminous disciplinarytraditions- both key texts and a historyof key problems- which nolay person has the time to master). The mainstream academic "solution" o this crisis hasbeen, under whatever slogan, the notion of "interdisciplinary"rograms,whose results haveuntil now notoriously been disappointing indeed. Over against this, I think it is crucial toinsist on the fact that Marxism s the only livingphilosophy today which has a conception ofthe unityof knowledge and the unificationof the "disciplinary"ields in a way that cuts acrossthe older departmental and institutionalstructures and restores the notion of a universalobject of study underpinning the seemingly distinct inquiries into the economical, thepolitical, the cultural, the psychoanalytic, and so forth. This is not a dogmatic opinion butsimply an empirical fact: if middle-classthought can devise, I don't say a better, but simplyanother, vital ideal of the unity of knowledge, then fine, let it do so: but it has not done so,and its historic attempts in this direction- positivism was one, American pragmatismanother, semiotics only the latest in this series-have not finally been very impressive. Iremember an article by Stephen Toulmin a few years ago in the New YorkReview of Booksin which he had occasion to deplore the cosmetic excision of "Marxist"assagesfrom Englishtranslationsof the work of Vygotskyand other Soviet scientists: those passages, he said, werenot simply ideological lipservice to the regime, they formed an integralpartof the scientifictext. And then he observed this, which seems to me of the greatest relevance to the presentdiscussion: whether we like it or not, he said, we need to take into account the possibilitythat Marxismis a better working ideology and conceptual frameworkfor scientists to workand do research in than those generally available in the West. At any rate, some such posi-tion would seem to me to be a strongerand less defensive framework in which to argue theimportance of Marxism in the universitythan one which appeals to charity, tolerance orguilt.diacritics / fall 1982 89



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Your question on the "community"of Marxist intellectuals has a national and also aninternationaldimension; Isuppose the answer isthat such a community does not reallyexisthere yet, for many reasons of which I will note two. First,the intellectuals who identifythemselves as Marxistare only a small part of the more generally radical community as awhole, and there is no little tension between these two categories, not least because of thethings associated with "Marxism" nd "Marxism-Leninism"n the 1960s. Second, Marxistacademics are as fragmented, as vulnerable to the departmental specializations as anyoneelse, if not more so; so that, above and beyond the increasingdifficulties n gettinga graspofsomeone else's discipline, there is in operation a certaindisciplinaryrivalryor incomprehen-sion, which, coming back to ourselves, always thumps down hardeston "culture,"ince in abusiness society that is universallyagreed to be the most frivolousof the "disciplines,"romapolitical or any other standpoint.

i. CULLER:One might argue that the most politically effective movement in literarycriticismhas been that of feminist criticism,which has succeeded in opening up the literarycanon, introducing new sortsof courses-on women writers-to educational institutionsofthe most diverse sorts, and thus affecting thinking beyond that of specialists in researchuniversities. Three questions:A)What do you think about the actual and potential impactof feminist literary riticism?B) Is there a lesson here for other sorts of criticism that seek political impact?Feministcriticismhas, in its theoretical discourses, been extremely heterogeneous. Is this relatedto itsinstitutional success?C) Ifwe take feministcriticism as the example of criticalthought, with a Utopian dimen-sion which has affected the institutions within which it is lodged, can you envision com-parable effects that your own mode of criticism might achieve?F.JAMESON:Obviously we have learned many thingsfromfeminism, but people havealso been changed by the very changes in social temperature from which the feministmovements themselves sprang, so all this is hard to sort out. I have to say that much of thepolitical force of feminism comes from its collective dimension, its statusas the culture andthe ideology of a genuine social group;and this ties back in with some of the things Iwas say-ing earlier about the force of the collective as such, but also about the political problems

raised today by the dynamics of microgroups or small group politics. The weakness of aMarxist intelligentsiaover against these collective realities is the classical weakness of thewell-known "free-floating"ntellectual,defined "bydefinition"as someone who has no groupaffiliationor who has lost some initialgroup connection. Perhaps I could put it more pro-grammaticallyby asking with what organic social group the straightwhite male intellectualhas any particularaffinities;modify any of the qualifiersand you get minimallythe possibilityof being an intellectual and having a group identity (qua gay or black or woman orethnic)- although that does not reallycure the ancient malaise of the "intellectual"ither inthe long run. At any rate, the question of the effectiveness or power of an ideology (orphilosophy or method or whatever) can never be kept separatefrom the matter of its collec-90



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tive dynamics and underpinnings. (The other solution for such intellectuals is evidently toform small sectariangroups, organized around ideological "lines,"which then substitute forthe missing"knowable community.")I have myself been particularlyinterested in some of the new paradigms of culturalhistory projected by various feminisms;and also concerned that the rather tense "dialogue"between Marxismand certain of those feminisms not degenerate into a sterilequarrelaboutwhat the "real" ltimately determining instance is (classor sex?). Itseems to me very plausi-ble, for example, that certain moments of culturalhistoryare determined, at least in part, bya whole male backlash and instinctive defense of privilege, that is, by a fearof feminism andthe production of various new kinds of ideological defenses againstthat social threat (includ-ing of course new and more attractiveimages of what "women'splace"should be and whythey should be happy to stay put in it). Historicalparadigmsof this kind have alreadyshownus a great deal about the cultural past (and present) which we didn't see before (or didn'twant to see before, to limit the pronoun to men). All I would want to add to this is thereminder (Althusserianoverdetermination ) that these do not have to be single-shot ormonocausal models. Justas it seems very possible that at a given moment, culturalproduc-tion is dominated by an anxiety about the loss of gender privileges, so too it seems equallyplausible to me that such an anxiety-with its own fantasies, representations, symbolicexpressions or obsessions and the like-can be grasped as a multipurpose "apparatus,"through which many other anxieties equally find their own expression- and those wouldcontinue to include class anxieties, anxieties about the future, the unconscious "manage-ment"of class struggle,and so forth.At other historicalmoments, this hierarchyof the invest-ments of anxiety mightwell be arrangeddifferently,and class representationsmight well becalled on to articulate,at the same time, in an overdetermined fashion, the at that momentweaker gender anxieties which a dominant group also feels. What I have sometimes calledthe "politicalunconscious" demands the exploration of all these multipledeterminations onthe occasion of this or that unique historicalconjuncture; it was never meant to exclude anyof them (such as gender) or to limit itsexplorationsto the thematics of social class (do Ireallyhave to say this?).So the thematics of feminism do not have to be taken as an alternate inter-pretive code, provided we are united, if not by some achieved vision of a future Utopiancommunity, then at least by the necessity of developing one.

diacritics/ fall 1982 91

Documents

Fredric Jameson Interview 2