marxism ppp

key terms

modes of production

class conflict

base and superstructure

ideology

false consciousness

literature & conflict

• neither innocent entertainment nor independent of social forces

• they play a significant role in transmitting ideology

• however, ideological orientations can be complicated: supportive of hegemonic as well as counter hegemonic images, suggesting liberators possibilities and a socially critical undertone

marxist literary theory

division between the overt and covert content of literary work, and then relate the covert subject matter to basic Marxist themes, such as class struggle or progression of society through historical stages (e.g. from feudalism to industrial capitalism)

relate the context to the class status of the author

politicisation of literary forms - marxist literary theory

•Explain literary texts or literary genres in terms of the social period which produced them.

•Emphasise the politicisation of literary form: how literary forms are determined by political circumstance

•Analyse the politicization of literature as a field or discipline, including the co-optation of the market and the media of every form of resistance in the arts

key marxist critics

•Gyorgy Lukacs - History and Class Consciousness (1923)

•Walter Benjamin – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935)

•Marx Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno – Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)

•Theodor W. Adorno - Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (1951)

Louis Althusser

•Main problem: how society reproduces its basic social relations to ensure its continuing existence

•Main argument: that dominant social systems and institutions subtly mold human subjects through ideology, thus reproducing the system

labor power

•Labor Power: the capacity to do work (Labor: the act of working itself)

•Reproduction of labor power takes place through institutions that allow subjects to acquire skills and rules of behavior

•For instance: education systems teach workers submission to ruling ideology and agents of exploitation the ability to manipulate ruling ideology correctly

•Therefore, institutions teach rules of behavior that ”ensure subjection to [and perpetuation of] the ruling ideology”

base & superstructure

•Economic Base (or infrastructure): productive forces and relations of production

•Superstructure: contains two levels, the politico-legal (law and the State) and ideology (religious, ethical, political) 

•There is ‘relative autonomy’ of the superstructure with respect to the base

•There is a ‘reciprocal action’ of the superstructure on the base

ISAs & RSAs

•Repressive State Apparatus: formations such as the police or the army that function predominantly by violence and repression, and secondarily by ideology

•Ideological State Apparatus: institutions like church, schools, family, and political parties that function predominantly by ideology and secondarily by repression

•The RSA is an organized whole whose parts are centralized beneath a commanding unity: that of class struggle applied by the political representatives of the ruling class in possession of state power

•ISAs are multiple, distinct, ‘relatively autonomous’ and express the effects of the clashes between the capitalist and the proletarian class struggle

Whereas the unity of RSA is secured by the representatives of the classes in power, the unity of ISAs is secured by the ruling ideology.

ISAs

1. the religious ISA (the system of the different churches)

2. the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’)

3. the family ISA

4. the legal ISA

5. the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties)

6. the trade-union ISA

7. the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.)

8. the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).

ideology

•Ideology: the “imaginaryrelationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”.

•Ideology has a material existence.

•Ideology has the function of constituting individuals as subjects. Based on ideological recognition.

•Interpellation or hailing: becoming a subject.

•“All Ideology hails or interpellatesconcrete individuals as concrete subjects”

subject

•Freedom or subjugation?

•“individuals are always-already subjects”

•“The individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection iein order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection ‘all by himself’.

contemporary marxist theory critics

•Terry Eagleton

•Frederick Jameson

The Warwick Collective