Labors of Imagination: Aesthetics and Political Economy from Kant to Althusser

Chapter 5: Ideology, Obviously

f i v e Ideology, Obviously But to restore to ‘‘ideology’’ this complex way of dealing with its roots in its own social reality would mean reinventing the dialectic, something every generation fails in its own way to do. — f r e d r i c j a m e s o n , ‘‘Postmodernism and the Market’’ For a theoretical account of the category of progress it is necessary to scrutinize the category so closely that it loses its semblance of obviousness, both in its positive and its negative uses. — t h e o d o r w . a d o r n o , Critical Models (emphasis added) What Paul Ricœur called the ‘‘hermeneutics of suspicion’’ has become the sine qua non of literary and cultural studies. Whether one thinks in terms of an unconscious, a superstructure, or a subtext, the analysis of intellectual and social phenomena begins from the assumption that things may not be what they seem, even where our most tangible intuitions and deeply held beliefs are concerned. From a methodological perspective, this has led to the emergence of what we might call ‘‘an archaeology of the presupposition .’’ An argument demonstrates its rigor by rendering its own aims and procedures as explicit and transparent as possible, thereby protecting itself against the charge of harboring ulterior motives or falling prey to latent ideological error. With everything out in the open, we still may not be able to avoid essentialist thinking, but at least we will be clear on where our mistakes lie. The question is whether such clarity about presuppositions is really cause for celebration. In a passage from the 1844 manuscripts, Marx writes: ‘‘The147 148 Labors of Imagination ory is capable of seizing [ergreifen] the masses as soon as its proofs are ad hominem and its proofs are ad hominem as soon as it is radical. To be radical is to grasp [fassen] the matter by the root. But for man, the root is man himself. A radical revolution can [thus] only be a revolution of radical needs, the presuppositions and birthplaces of which appear precisely to be lacking .’’1 In this paradoxical humanism, we grasp ourselves by taking hold of something for which the ‘‘presuppositions and birthplaces’’ do not yet exist. The radicality of the ad hominem proof is the radicality of a project according to which ‘‘man’’ grasps ‘‘himself’’ as impossible, and theory becomes radical by enjoining us to establish a relation to ourselves as the connection between what is and what cannot yet be. These lapidary pronouncements are the kernel of everything that has been called ‘‘utopian’’ and ‘‘messianic,’’ not to mention apocalyptic, in Marx. The radical grasp of a radical theory, the recognition that human beings do not yet have themselves in hand to grasp, is ad hominem as ad inhumanum—the proof of humanity’s inhumanity and of the need for another humanity whose very preconditions are not yet conceivable. In these terms, the work of theory—the labor often derided as the most domesticated, impotent, or ineffectual of human undertakings —is something extremely powerful, not to mention dangerous. Far from a mere negation, it is a violent rending, a tearing of its subject matter (itself) from itself before there can be a model with which to explain from whence this subject emerged, much less what should be done with it. A radical theory of humanity radicalizes its subject by irrevocably dividing it from the safety of its own self-image, self-understanding, or self-development . It is in this sense that such a theory becomes revolutionary. Since the above passage and others like it seem to take for granted that the root of man is man, the Marx of 1844 is often called a philosophical anthropologist. A year later, he opens The German Ideology with a discussion of this presupposition of presuppositions, the existence of human beings: ‘‘The presuppositions [Voraussetzungen] with which we begin [our process of inquiry] are not arbitrary, they are not dogma, they are real presuppositions . . . . The first presupposition of human history is the existence of living human individuals.’’2 Initially, these announcements may not appear to be part of a radical theory. Far from staging a revolution in the need for presuppositions, Marx begins by presupposing human existence itself. In fact, he is concerned with what it means to ‘‘begin’’ a demonstration. Is a pre-sup-position (Vor-aus-setzung) a form of positing (Setzung)? Does it give [3.149.229.253] Project MUSE (2024-04...