Dr Sukriti Ghosal

MUC Women’s College,

Burdwan
 The University of  Genealogy and
Burdwan definition: 3-6
 Semester VI  Scope and relevance:
 DSE –3 A: Literary  7-8
Theory  Key Terms: 9-14
 Section A 1. Marxism
 Literary Theory: 15-22
Genealogy and definition
Scope and relevance in  Interpretation: 23-26
textual reading  Major Critics: 27-34
Major theorists
Key terms : Class, Base
and Superstructure,
Dialectics, Interpellation
A modern meta-narrative that has survived
postmodern blow (incredulity)
 A philosophy inspired by the principle of
equality of all people
 An ideology that questions the exploitative social
structure and stresses the need and outlines the
strategies for its destruction
 A positive philosophy that envisions the
liberation of the proletariat and the emancipation
of women from patriarchal straitjacket
 Not a ‘petrified doctrine,” but an “integrated
world outlook” - Lenin
 It is a materialist, not idealist, philosophy that ideas
are derived from the world of matter, not vice versa:
‘Life is not determined by consciousness, but
consciousness by life.’ The German Ideology (1846)
 It is based on the principle of economic determinism;
that is, the final causes of all changes can be traced to
‘the economics of each epoch’
 It is a philosophy of social transformation; that is, it is
application oriented. Marx says: ‘Philosophers have
hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it’ (Thesis on Feuerbach, 1845)
 It admits the importance of recognizing the social
context in literary interpretation
 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776):
Although driven by self-interest , Govt. interference
is not required in Capitalist production and trade, for
man is capable of self-regulation (a rational action)
 Hegelian Dialectics: Thesis conflicting with Antithesis
leading to Synthesis (A transcendental force, the
Absolute, sets the wheels in motion)
 The materialism of Feuerbach which looks upon
God as illusion and human being as passive recipient
of impressions of outside world of objects
 Utopian Socialists (Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier,
Robert Owen) who, inspired by the French
Revolution, talked about a just egalitarian society.
Socialism would be attained through persuasion
(cooperation) without class-war & revolution
 Greed of the Capitalists is infinite. As in the present
system one group (Class) appropriates all wealth, the
system must be dismantled for the benefit of the majority
 Dialectical Change is not the expression of the will of any
World Spirit, it is materially induced (accumulation of
wealth, destitution and consequent social change through
mass movement). Change is inevitable as the presence of
two interacting opposite forces is a reality.
 Marx faulted Feuerbach’s materialism because he held
that man can also react upon external conditions and
change them: ‘it is men that change circumstances and
that the educator himself needs educating’
 Social justice is to be ensured by application of force, for
those who are the beneficiary of the present system will
try to protect it unto the last
 Inequality persists: Society yet to inscribe on its
banners: ”From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs” – Marx, Critique of the Gotha
Programme, (1875)..
 Why? Capitalist Economy is propelled by profiteering and
ignores the question of distribution: “the costs and risks…of
the industrial economy were (are) to be socialized, with
eventual profits privatized ...”― Noam Chomsky, Failed
States.
 Emancipation of women unachieved: ‘possible only when
women are enabled to take part in production on a large,
social, scale’ reducing their domestic load – Engels, The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
 Imperialist exploitation despite liberal humanist preaching:
Liberal Humanism (that looks upon man divested of class
status/ social origin) is not critical of imperialism which
dehumanizes people
 Marxist theory can
 Explain the role culture and ideology play in society (Why
created – to sensitize or to blindfold)
 Shed light on the process of interpellation in society
 Probe which values are enforced/ challenged in a text & why
 Enlighten us about the class dimension of values and ideas Cf.
‘We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class
concepts’- Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues (1920)
 Sensitize minds to the process of commodification of (people/
nature)
 Help understand why economic implications are suppressed or
peripheralized in some texts
 Make us recognize the potential of art in social transformation
 Promote critical resistant reading of literature
 Give us insight for explaining modus operandi and inter-
relation of other exploitative structures (Gender/ Class/ Race)
 Class is a loaded term signifying position in social
hierarchy determined by possession of wealth
 Exploitation creates class by polarizing the people
(bourgeois/ proletariat), ownership (private property)
sustains it
 ‘Classes have split the society … there will be love of
all humanity when classes are eliminated’ – Mao
 Objective of class-struggle is economic emancipation of
the exploited working class
 ‘Every class struggle is a political struggle’ (Communist
Manifesto,1848), for it alters the power equation
 Challenge in class-war : How to transform the ‘working
class from a class in itself to a class for itself’
 ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains’
(CM), so if they ‘unite’ , they will certainly win the war
 Marx (in Critique of Political Economy ,1859) notes that
the totality of economic relations constitutes the base
(‘the economic structure of society’), and all institutions
of ideology (religion, culture etc.) stand upon it
 ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their
consciousness’ – Marx
 Example, God is imagined in agricultural society as a
shepherd, in capitalist society as a king on golden throne
 But Base-SupStr relation is not mechanical & uni-causal .
Greek art flourished when Greek economy was
underdeveloped.
 Superstructure can also influence the Base (as clear from
presence of Progressive art in feudal/ bourgeois society)
 ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the
ruling ideas’ (Marx , The German Ideology, 1845)
 Ideology supports & sustains the base; it legitimizes and
naturalizes social reality
 It is a site of conflict of ideologies - between the old, the
prevailing and the one that is rising - Raymond Williams
 But it is dominant ideology that decides how much of
tradition (residual ideology) and new thoughts
(emergent ideology) to be allowed in a cultural system
 Gramsci explains how cultural hegemony (a form of
class-dominance) is secured through Consent (consensus
built by exposure to homogenizing ideas) & Coercion
(application of force)
 Althusser: Social institutions, collectively called ISA,
ideologically condition human mind in favour of
dominant ideology; RSA Police, army etc. work as its
disciplinary (repressive) agents
 Term popular since use by Plekhanov in 1891
 Truth is immutable (Plato), nothing is immutable (Marx)
 "With him (Hegel) it (dialectics) is standing on its head. It
must be turned right side up again” -Marx. He purged it of
idealism.
 Engels (Preface to Anti-Dühring): ‘The relation of Hegelian
dialectics to rational dialectics is the same as that of the
caloric theory to the mechanical theory of heat’
 DM Sheds light on the process and inevitability of change,
that is, the impossibility of securing any social system
 Contrariety is the secret of transformation and as Capitalism
has inherent contradiction, it is destined to perish
 It follows the principle of Negation of the Negation (Seed
destroys tree, tree destroys seed)
 ‘There is no ideology except by the subject and for the subject’ –
Althusser
 He uses the term to describe how Ideology turns individuals into
subjects
 Derived from Latin term interpellatus (meaning "to interrupt”) it
has been used to describe the process of becoming subject in
respect of an idea
 The idea which comes to us from an external source is internalized
and absorbed so perfectly that it becomes mine.
 Ideas are culturally transmitted and unconsciously internalized; X’s
ideas become Y’s ideas
 As we automatically respond whenever our name is called out
(identity fused with a sound), so when we are interpellated, we
become carriers of ideology
 When we are interpellated , we lose agency over our life
 Not to be interpellated is to be critical, to question the values
available for imbibing
 Marxist literary theory exposes how one is interpellated and how
this invisible control can be withstood by critical, resistant reading
 Surplus Value: unpaid part of labour; it is created by
exploitation, by depriving the work force of the exact
wage (i.e. the value of their labour)
 Commodity: Something that has been produced by
labour and has Use Value as well as Exchange Value
 Alienation: Separation from the fruits of one’s labour; it
depersonalizes the workforce
 Revolution: Radical, Qualitative Change of a system due
to inherent tension (Cooling Quantitative change; Icing is
Qualitative, a big leap from one state to another)
 Historical Materialism: History is the outcome of material
conditions and causes. Marx maps its evolution from
Primitive Communism through Feudalism and Capitalism)
Communism
Motto: Judge the quality of art not in terms of
internal (aesthetic) criteria but its social role (i.e.
by taking into account the social context)
Issues:
 Art & its Place
 Art as Instrument (not mere Entertainment)
 Socialist Realism/ Critical Realism
 Question of Commitment/ Aesthetic Freedom
 Primacy of Content (not Form)
 Accessibility/ Intelligibility (Not Elitist but
Populist Art)
 Marx on man as producer: While other creatures produce
driven by physical need, ‘man produces even when he is free
from physical need and only truly produces in freedom
therefrom’ . ‘Man therefore also forms things in accordance
with the laws of beauty’: Marx, Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844
 Art is a creation delinked from physical need
 Its place is on the Superstructure but it can exert influence
upon the Base
 It is not useless in a society where basic physical needs (food
etc.) are yet to be fulfilled, for it can be used as an instrument
for social transformation. Nor is it useless in a classless society,
for the ‘final aim’ is ‘heightening of human life’ (Alick West).
Note two phrases of West: ‘culture is a weapon in the fight for
socialism’, ‘socialism is a weapon in the fight for culture’
 The beneficiaries of a system want to maintain status quo – they
want art to be mere entertainment. Others want to use it as a
weapon in class-war
 Literature to Lenin is a ‘cog’ in the wheel of socialist revolution
 Despite its location in the Superstructure, art can also subvert the
ideology determined by the Base (Cf. Gorky voiced concerns
about Tsarist misrule, Shakespeare about feudalism, Tagore about
imperialism)
 How possible? ‘Man’s consciousness not only reflects the
objective world but creates it’ (Lenin, ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s
Science of Logic’)
 Creativity is ability to abstract (from society) and ability to enrich
(represent in a newer form)
 When promoting a noble cause (challenging dominant ideology),
art is ‘progressive’; it is ‘reactionary’ if an ‘escapist entertainment’
 (idle time-pass, a passive un-critical consumption)
 Popular in Russia since the 1920’s, it replaced the Critical Realism of
19th century with a realism oriented towards socialist ideals
 Three stipulations: 1) Commitment (partinost), 2) Class-bias
(klassovost), 3) Mass-accessibility of the artifact (narodnost)
 It is shallow, for it is formulaic (Character of the master always
stigmatized, that of the worker always idealized)
 Engels disapproved City Girl and contrasted its realism with that of
Balzac which is better despite explicit aristocrat-sympathy. Also
recall his sarcastic comment on a tendenzroman (tendentious
novel): ’Look at your heroine with her dialectical materialist eyes,
and her economic determinist nose and her surplus value mouth.
You take her in your arms and you kiss her. …I wouldn’t want to’
 ‘The more the opinions of the author remain hidden, the better for
the work of art’, Engels (Letter to Harkness, 1888)
 Lenin described slogan-stuffed work from proletkult mint (work
without any vision) as ‘fatal’
 Marxist theory supports unambiguous commitment of the artist to
proletariat causes
 Commitment can be overt or covert (in a class-divided society, no
one is a-political)
 But commitment not to betray liberal vision of life
 Marxism recognizes the value of aesthetic freedom required for
creation of significant works of art
 But it also holds that this aesthetic freedom cannot be absolute
 In a capitalist society, absolute freedom is unattainable, it is but a
‘masked dependence on the money sack’. Hence Lenin throws a
pertinent question at its advocates: ‘What freedom do you have
from your bourgeois publishers …from your bourgeois public who
demand from you pornography in picture??’ (‘The Party
Organization and Party Literature’, 1905)
 Man being a social animal, no artist should have freedom to create
what is detrimental to majority interest. The music of Nero’s fiddle
sounds obscene when Rome burns
 So Marxism judges aesthetic freedom from the class point of view
 As Marxism expects art to promote a cause, in Marxist
theory Content has ascendency over Form
 So message carries greater value than stylistic
sophistication
 Even when real, ihuman experience un-processed by the
creative imagination, is valueless
 Hence message minus aesthetic property is propaganda
 Mao Tse Tung therefore wants to combine the political
and the aesthetic criteria in the evaluation of art: ‘Works
of art, which lack artistic quality, have no force, however
progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose
both works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and
the tendency towards the "poster and slogan style" which
is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic
power.’ ("Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and
Art“, 1942)
 Even progressive art, when it is a form of refined entertainment,
appeals to a limited circle of connoisseurs, not to the masses
 But Marxism has professed non-elitist sympathy
 Hence it recognizes the point that the masses should have free
access to works of art
 Popular Culture, therefore, holds a pride of place in Marxist literary
theory
 But Marxist critics distinguish between popular art (say, folk art)
created by the masses and art created in bourgeois art-workshops to
drown the masses in ‘escapist entertainment’
 But it also admits that the line is porous, for often such works can
subvert mainstream culture
 On the issue of refined art of limited appeal, Mao votes for quality
through quantity: ‘With us raising of standards is based on
popularization, while popularization is guided by raising of standard’
 Cf. “Art respects the masses, by confronting them as that which
they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded
state” - Adorno (Aesthetic Theory)
 Art is to be weapon without being propaganda
 Artist should have class-sympathy (preferably
implicit)
 Artists to have freedom but this cannot be
absolute
 Art to be realistic, but this realism is not
unenlightened reflection but a ‘revelation’ of life
 Message (content) is central to Art but it loses
value if unmarked by aesthetic refinement
 Art must be accessible to the masses, but refined
form of art not to be discarded as elitist, for this
also plays a role in up-grading mass-taste
 Wordsworth’s poem on ‘golden daffodils’:
‘I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought
 One aspect of Romanticism is ‘return to Nature’,
unwillingness to engage with society which is the root of
evils. But one cannot escape from society, for our
consciousness is the result of our engagement with
society. Mark how Wordsworth evaluates the impact of
the scenery on his mind. It makes him ecstatic and to
express his mood he uses the word ‘wealth’ in the sense
of happiness. The metaphorical equation of happiness
and wealth is due to the fact that Wordsworth inhabited
a capitalist society. The poet in a Feudal society would
probably write ‘harvest’ in the context.
 In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff’s morbidity has
a class origin. He has suffered discriminatory
treatment in Wuthering Heights. He challenges
his adversaries and sets out to destroy all
associated with them. But he too has contracted
bourgeois vices (the source of his wealth is
unknown and he looks upon the young Linton
and Hareton as his property). Besides, as his
struggle is singlehanded and not inspired by any
noble motive of altering the system responsible
for social injustice, he fails to dismantle the
structure he fights against.
 Anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice has
a class character. Shylock represents Capitalist
values , for he can relate to the world only
through ducats, his Lord. So when his
daughter elopes with bags of coins, in
Shylock’s laments daughter and ducats
interchange places:
“My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!”
 Antipathy to Shylock is also an expression of
feudal skepticism about commodity fetishism
of the emerging economic order.
 In a capitalist society, the so called values like
culture, education have connection with wealth
and riches. In The Importance of Being Earnest
Lady Bracknell strongly objects to the marriage
of Algernon and Cecily assuming that Cecily has
no ‘fortune’. The moment she comes to know
that Cecily has a fabulous inheritance (£130000),
she changes her stand and is eager to marry
Algernon to Cecily ignoring all other issues that
stand in the way of the union. Also mark that in
contemporary Capitalist system, ‘fortune’ which means
luck has also come to signify riches / wealth).
 Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Literature & Revolution
(1924)
 He is critical of the craze to “be pals with socialism
and with the Revolution”. He asserts that art can
become ‘a strong ally of revolution’ only by
remaining ‘faithful to itself.’

 Georgi Plekhanov (1856-1918) Art and Social Life

(1912)
The claim of aesthetic autonomy, in certain social
phases, is a protest against the repressive theory of
art. Aesthetic judgment requires both historical
knowledge and social insight. In art, Form is as
important as Content
 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) Aesthetic Theory
(posthumously published in 1970)
Adorno is Key-figure of the Frankfurt School of Marxist
thinkers. He critiques the question of aesthetic realism and
argues that the representation of reality in art is oblique and
hence "Art is the negative knowledge of the actual world."

 Walter Benjamin (1892-1940): "The Work of Art in the Age

of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935)
Benjamin gauges the impact of technology on art.
Technology has freed art from the elite clutches and reaches
it out to the masses. Mass production has plucked art from
the glorified throne of time and place and removed its aura.
The loss of halo is no decay but “only a concomitant of the
secular productive forces of history…”
 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): “A Little Organum for the Theatre”
(1949)
 German playwright cum theorist to whom art is a potential
tool for fighting against bourgeois ideology. He was opposed
to the idea of art as a source of idle entertainment. While
Marxist theory always supports realism in art, Brecht argues
that represented realism is an illusion. He therefore pleads
for, and also uses, alienation effect (verfremdungseffekt)
which creates illusionist realism only to shatter it when it is
most intense so as to enable the audience to distance
themselves from stage characters and think critically of the
presented slice of life. It is effective in breaking down the
transparent fourth wall separating the stage from the
audience and redeeming the audience from a state of passive
consumer to a state of active creator of meaning. So art for
Brecht is not a reflection of but a reflection on reality.
 Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) History and Class
Consciousness : Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923)
Lukacs examines the author-world interrelation: author
bears the pressure of society and also acts upon it.
He is famous for his theory of reification, literally
meaning making material (what is abstract). This term
sheds light on the capitalist process of de-
personification of human beings on the one hand and
subjectification of things or objects on the other.
Consequently social relations change from ‘relations
between persons to relations between things’. Man is
robbed of his role as creator and mechanically
performs the ready-made social role thrust upon him.
 Antonio Gramsci: (1891-1937)
Prison Notebooks (written between 1929-1935)
 Commentator on the intricate nature of the
Superstructure. He maintains that Cultural hegemony
supports the base and operates through Consent and
Coercion. Civil Society and Political Society, both
operating at the level of Superstructure, play a
part in it. He questions the application of aesthetic
principles in determining the value of a work of art.
Defining a work in terms of inner logic (aesthetic
principle) is to ignore what it reflects, where it is
rooted, for whom it is meant
 Louis Althusser (1918-1990): Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses (1970)
 French Marxist theorist who, following the line of
Gramsci, further elucidates the mode of operation
of dominant ideology
 Ideology, described as ‘false consciousness’ by
Engels, impedes historical perception and stands as
a wall between man and history
 Due to the operation of ideology the Working class
people are under the control of their masters not
only at workplaces but even at home.
 Althusser shows how ideology is produced and how
it functions through two State Apparatuses
 Ideological State Apparatuses are use persuasive
mode to promote the dominant ideology. Family,
school, place of worship are examples of ISAs.
These wash our brain even in our private domain
and make us subscribe to dominant ideology.
 Repressive State Apparatuses use disciplinary
measures against non-conformists to secure
dominant ideology. The police, the army, the
legal machinery are some RSAs of a state. These
operate in the public domain to silence dissenting
voices.
 While ISAs are invisible and manipulative, RSAs
are tangible and authoritative
 Christopher Caudwell (1907-1937) Illusion & Reality (1937)
 Pleads for changing the parameters of aesthetic evaluation. The
value of art is not to be judged in terms of Beauty/ Universal
Truth, but how successfully it embodies the working of
historical forces. In Illusion & Reality he tries to trace major
aesthetic developments to changes in the economic relation in
the age in which these were produced
 Terry Eagleton (1943 - ) Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976);
Criticism and Ideology (1976)
 Most influential among contemporary theorists, Eagleton raises
certain basic questions like the relation between text and
ideology. He thinks that art is held within ideology, can
distance itself from it, for makes us to “feel” and “perceive”
the ideology from which it springs. ‘Each element of a
society’s Supstr…has its own tempo of development’ (M&LC )