Abstract
In this chapter, Schulenberg advances the idea that a discussion of the dialectics of narrative and totality is not only crucial regarding one’s understanding of the relation between Marxism and pragmatism; it also helps one to fully grasp the implications of the notion of a postmetaphysical or poeticized culture. In the first part, Schulenberg discusses Georg Lukács’s notion of narrative, as well as Fredric Jameson’s interpretation of this Lukácsian notion. After that, Schulenberg compares this Marxist understanding of the function of narrative with Richard Rorty’s idea of a sentimental education. In the second part, Schulenberg analyzes why the concept of totality is so central to the theoretical frameworks of Lukács and Jameson, and how narrative and totality are linked in their texts. Finally, he briefly discusses John Dewey’s critique of Marxism, and he focuses on Rorty’s nominalist critique of the idea of a coherent dramatic narrative.
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Notes
- 1.
How difficult the dialogue is between Jameson, as a “theorist,” and Rorty, as a pragmatist “cultural critic,” becomes obvious in the former’s “How Not to Historicize Theory.” This piece is an answer to Ian Hunter’s attack on theory in “The History of Theory,” Critical Inquiry 33 (2006) 78–112. However, Jameson’s essay also contains a critique of Rorty’s cultural politics, which, in Jameson’s opinion, urges one to abandon “political activism (read Marxism, communism or socialism, and other forms of bad Utopian politics),” and which eventually culminates in “political resignation” (2008: 292).
- 2.
For a suggestive discussion of how the early Lukács’s idea of form developed into his category of totality, see Katie Terezakis, “Afterword: The Legacy of Form,” Georg Lukács, Soul and Form, ed. John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis (New York: Columbia UP, 2010), 215–234. For an interesting discussion of the Lukácsian notion of form, see Yoon Sun Lee, “Temporalized Invariance: Lukács and the Work of Form,” and my discussion of this piece in Chap. 3. In this context, see also Jay M. Bernstein, The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukács, Marxism, and the Dialectics of Form (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
- 3.
In this context, see Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, Chapter I.3., “The Epic and the Novel.” See also Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel, trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), Chapter 3, “The Historical Novel and the Crisis of Bourgeois Realism.” Concerning the notion of “Erfahrungsschwund,” see Walter Benjamin, “Der Erzähler: Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows,” Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. II (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 438–465; and Theodor W. Adorno, “Standort des Erzählers im zeitgenössischen Roman,” Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 41–48. See also part IV (“Erzählen in der Moderne”) in Peter Bürger, Prosa der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992).
- 4.
This dialectics of totality and narrative would become of central importance to Jameson when he sought to theorize his notion of cognitive mapping in the context of the debate on postmodernism (see the second part of this chapter). See the Conclusion (especially “XI. How to Map a Totality”) in Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 399–418.
- 5.
In this context, see Christopher Pawling, “The American Lukács? Fredric Jameson and Dialectical Thought,” Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, ed. Douglas Kellner and Sean Homer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 22–41. For Jameson’s reading of Lukács, see also Sean Homer, Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 152–164; Robert T. Tally, Jr., Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism (London: Pluto Press, 2014), 47–49, 131–134; and Phillip E. Wegner, Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2014), 27–37.
- 6.
In this context, see Lukács’s pieces “Balzac: The Peasants,” “Balzac: Lost Illusions,” and “Balzac and Stendhal” in his Studies in European Realism: Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Zola, Gorky, trans. Edith Bone (New York: Howard Fertig, 2002), 21–84. See also Lukács, Writer and Critic, 83–84.
- 7.
For a stimulating reading of Rorty’s understanding of the function of literature, see David L. Hall, Richard Rorty: Poet and Prophet of the New Pragmatism (Albany; NY: SUNY Press, 1994). In addition, see Matthias Buschmeier and Espen Hammer, ed., Pragmatismus und Hermeneutik: Beiträge zu Richard Rortys Kulturpolitik (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2011).
- 8.
In order to make his interpretation of Kundera’s theory of the novel convincing, Rorty has to ignore its darker aspects. These can be detected in Kundera’s The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts (New York: Harper, 2007).
- 9.
In this context, see also Bernstein, “Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Healing of Wounds,” The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 323–340; and Bernstein, “Prologue,” The Pragmatic Turn (Malden, MA: Polity, 2010), 1–31.
- 10.
In this context, see the chapter “Georg Lukács and the Origins of the Western Marxist Paradigm” in Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 81–127.
- 11.
Radha Radhakrishnan, “Poststructuralist Politics: Towards a Theory of Coalition,” Postmodernism/Jameson/Critique, ed. Douglas Kellner (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1989), 301–332; Aijaz Ahmad, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory’,” In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (New York: Verso, 1992), 95–122; Cornel West, “Fredric Jameson’s American Marxism,” Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1993), 165–191.
- 12.
Theorizing this new realism or “new aesthetic” (2008: 447), as Jameson emphasizes, would primarily be a question of form. From his pieces on realism to “Hegels Ästhetik” (1951) and his late aesthetic theory, Lukács always made clear that as far as the form-content dialectics of the work of art was concerned, he strove to counterbalance the modernist hypostatization of form with an emphasis on the significance of content (see my discussion in Chap. 3). This is a problem that Jameson does not directly address. It is crucial to see that in his latest texts the idea of a new realism no longer plays a role, or rather, it has been replaced by the following question: “The Historical Novel Today, or, Is It Still Possible?” That is the title of the final chapter of Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism (New York: Verso, 2013). It should be noted that the idea of a revitalization of the historical novel already preoccupied Jameson in the early 1980s; see his Preface to Lukács’s The Historical Novel, trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 1–8.
- 13.
For a discussion of Dewey’s understanding of Marxism, see Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1991), 465–476.
- 14.
In this context, see Richard Rorty, “Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism,” A Companion to Pragmatism, ed. Shook and Margolis, 257–266.
- 15.
See Jacques Rancière, “The Thinking of Dissensus: Politics and Aesthetics,” Reading Rancière, ed. Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp (New York: Continuum, 2011), 1–17. In addition, see Rancière, “The People or the Multitudes?,” Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steven Corcoran (New York: Continuum, 2010), 84–90.
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Schulenberg, U. (2019). Marxism, Pragmatism, and Narrative. In: Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postmetaphysics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11560-9_6
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