Ideology, Expression, and Mediation

Abstract

To combat romantic irrationalism in the name of art, to discredit the view that art gives access to a supersensible realm of truths in the very name of creative expression, to tear as under the platonizing tendencies of aesthetic formalisms in the cause of liberating the human sensibility, this is the historical mission of Marxist theory of art. But in undertaking this program Marxists have been far from unanimous in agreement as to the main theoretical category or categories which will yield a rich interpretation of art and aesthetic culture as a whole, and at once remain consistent with the principles of historical and dialectical materialism. Numerous concepts or categories have been proposed: particularity (Besonderheit) — Lukacs, labor-utility — Plekhanov, genotype — Caudwell, alienation-affect (Entfremdungs-Affekt) — Brecht, totality — Pascal, Form — Marcuse, and perhaps most frequently reflection (Widerspiegelung) — socialist realism in general, and Lichtheim on Lukacs. These are but a few. In this paper I will argue for the centrality and conceptual priority of ‘mediation’ (Vermittlung).¹ I will try to show that the category mediation is capable of providing conceptual order and unity to Marxist inquiry.