“Rather, a genuine political literature would aim at the politicization of everything hitherto considered to be nonpolitical, of private life and psychology, perception and the emotions; it would imply an expansion of form and a refinement of the artistic fluoroscope such that the political character of the most remote and specialized areas of the experience stands revealed to the naked eye. Works like those of Brecht, or, more recently, of Godard, yield a glimpse of what such a fully political and fully conscious literature might be.” – Fredric Jameson
(via Jim Dooley)
I don't actually agree with this, for two reasons:
1/ I don't believe that every single aspect of existence is political. It can be politicized - anything can be. But it's not the case that every single aspect of an individual's existence, or indeed Existence with a capital E - E for Everything - is inherently political. Many things - conceivably most things - are apolitical, unpolitical, prepolitical, infrapolitical...
2/ Second disagreement is a question of strategy, the allocation of mental resources. What would be the political efficacy of exploring the micro-politics of this or that or the other? Does it really count as a political contribution? Well, you can see it play out all across the academy - critique as a displacement activity.
Am I the only one reminded of socialist realism? Replace the Brecht and Godard allusions with burly youths reaping wheat, and this idea of literature as solely a political delivery chute is pretty much what Stalin wanted.
ReplyDeleteOr is that just a cheap shot?
Neither Brecht nor Godard are socialist realism or even social realism.... Stalin would not have appreciated or tolerated either.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough - well, appropriately enough - Brecht and Godard both come up in my chapter on Gang of Four in Rip It Up. Brecht was fashionable again in the 1970s theatre world (one of the group was a theatre student) and Godard was someone that King and Gill scheduled when they ran the film society at university. There's one particular song, "Love Like Anthrax" that was directly inspired by a Godard film that uses split-screen.
But Gang of Four aren't socialist realist or even social realism. It's much cleverer than that. But they are definitely a group who would have agreed with Jameson's view that everything is political and the field of social life - down to our innermost thoughts dreams desires and all the pockets of private conduct - is riddled with micro-politics. "The personal is political" as the maxim went.
I'm not sure if there's anything on the UK postpunk scene that fits the socialist realist tag - the Redskins? Test Dept's heroic evocations of industrial worker masculinity, now being thrown on the scrapheap?
"The politicization of everything hitherto considered to be nonpolitical" has an oppressive, threatening ring, if Jameson meant it to be liberating. It sounds like the most hyper-judgmental elements of social media.
ReplyDeleteYes exactly - what was once a bracingly austere and rigorous way of processing reality, seeing how everything was linked and how ideology permeated everything and it was all "a layered mass of subtle props" (J. Lydon).... becomes a form of self-oppression and censure to others. Forms of political "action" so micro and inconsequential that they work as another displacement activity, a substitute for real power.
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