The Marxism of the Marxist Literary Group

133 CORRESPONDENCE This is not to say that the three lecturers tried to present a homogeneous socialist position. On the contrary, each was thinking through his subject from the perspective of different strands within the Marxist tradition. For Aronowitz it was, as I see it, a Frankfort School strand featuring not Marcuse but Adorno; for Jameson, a HegeUan strand featuring Lukacs; and for Eagleton, a structuraUst one featuring Althusser. StiU, there were striking convergences, Uke, for example, the provocative opposition between Eagleton's and Aronowitz's methods of situating an isolated text. Eagleton provided painstakingly clear and detailed categories (available Ui his Criticism and Ideology ) that proceed with no gap from the all-embracing General Mode of Production to the specifically Literary Mode, and from the corresponding General Ideology to the text. The categories are vulnerable Ui their very clarity, but the approach offers the non-Marxist a clear map of much of what we've been trying to say. On the other hand, there is Aronowitz's chaUenge, tossed out in a lecture and to my knowledge not yet expounded in print, to identify the complex episteme (world-view or way of knowing ) of a text, and then pull the reader outward Ulto concentric rings of more texts (and by "trans-coding," into different discourses) and more historical data, until something resembUng Eagleton's General Mode of Production has been brought to the horizon . Obviously, the goal of dialectical and historical comprehension is the same in either direction, and one of these could, Ui Uterary study, perhaps chaUenge the New Critical "close reading" method that stiU dominates the fifty-minute hour of the coUege classroom. For me and I think for others, the problem at the Institute wasn't Ui having to confront varying perspectives, but in being caught unprepared for the level of the discourse , particularly some of the cutting-edge theorizing yet to see print. But this is a manageable problem. Harder ones are looming up. In Mediations, next year's planning committee has already resolved to "reach out to women, third world, Black and gay people," but without more funds (Uke the grant I received from my institution) this could be frustrating. And Gaylord LeRoy of Temple University has also Usted grave reservations including the charge that the Institute's was an unhistorical and nonLeninist "Marxism," more suited to the writing of articles than to changing the world. But I want to be there when the second Institute takes on these and other problems in the heartland of the United States. Patrick Story THE MARXISM OF THE MARXIST LITERARY GROUP I think of the remarks I am about to make as a contribution to an assessment of the route we have traveled and the point we have reached Ui the MLG; and towards the end I will say something about the direction Ui which we may possibly want to go. I planned this paper before the Summer Institute, but that proved so important that I will give it considerable space. As we look back on our work it now faUs into two periods-the period up to the Summer Institute, and then the Institute itself. To begin with the first period, the roots of our work lay Ui the New University Conference of the 60s. This included all the university discipUnes, but the separate discipUnes also had their own meetings and even publications. When the NUC collapsed, the same effort was continued in separate discipUnes, Ui the so-caUed radical caucuses. From the beginning there were some in our radical caucus who hoped to move Ui the direction of Marxist criticism, and for a number of years a struggle was carried on between what I think we can call "New Left" and Marxist tendencies. This eventually 134 THEMINNESOTA REVIEW led to a spUt, out of which came the Marxist Literary Group. For several years now we have had a fuU quota of meetings at the annual MLA conventions. We have a newsletter . And then this last summer we inaugurated our Summer Institute. So far as Uterary study was concerned, the goal from the beginning was to develop an alternative to the New Criticism. A sound enough...