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

Chapter 3: On the Poetics and Politics of Voice

t h r e e On the Poetics and Politics of Voice Only by virtue of a differentiation taken so far that it can no longer bear its own difference, can no longer bear anything but the universal, freed from the humiliation of isolation, in the particular does lyrical language represent language’s intrinsic being as opposed to its service in the realm of ends. — t h e o d o r w . a d o r n o , ‘‘On Lyric Poetry and Society’’ And so I say to all of you here, let us resolve to reform our politics so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. — w i l l i a m j e f f e r s o n c l i n t o n , 1993 Inaugural Address The vision of the self that emerges from Kleist’s reading of Kantian ethics differs sharply from the figure of specular self-determination generally associated with Idealist thought. In forcing us to reconsider the assumption that language can be a medium of rational activity, Kleist seems to part company from those inheritors of Kant who accord ultimate primacy to the authority of reason. At the same time, one could argue that Kleist shares with both Kant and the Idealists a sense of the volatile power of literary language and a more general concern with the historical dimensions of artistic creation. It is precisely these problems that come to the forefront in the work of Friedrich Hölderlin. Like Kleist, Hölderlin is routinely celebrated for the innovative character of his writings, a judgment usually accompanied by the label of ‘‘difficult’’ or ‘‘obscure.’’ Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Hölderlin’s oeuvre is its unique account of the relationship between literature and history. Exploring the role that the experience of the past must play in any paradigm of agency, Hölderlin’s poetry proves to be historical 75 76 Labors of Imagination not because it offers a record of what has happened or constitutes a process by which an ideal subject produces and destroys itself, but because it articulates singular events of linguistic violence. In the last decade, scholarship on British and German literature has broadened our picture of the social, religious, and political environment of the early nineteenth century. In trying to understand the writers of this period and their ideas through references to regime changes, technological innovations, or shifting economic forces, we must remember, however, that their works suggest that an historical event is as much something that happens in language as in the streets. Friedrich Schlegel’s announcement that ‘‘the French Revolution, Fichte’s philosophy, and Goethe’s [Wilhelm] Meister are the greatest tendencies of the age’’ is the most familiar expression of the belief that the advent of a new book is no less an occasion than a war or an election.1 Schlegel goes on to state, ‘‘Whoever is offended by this juxtaposition [Zusammenstellung], whoever cannot take any revolution seriously that is not noisy and materialistic, has not yet achieved a lofty, broad perspective on the history of mankind.’’2 To grasp the full implications of this argument is no small undertaking. For Schlegel, to achieve a broad ‘‘perspective’’ on revolution is to achieve a perspective on juxtaposition (Zusammenstellung) or syntax, which is derived from the Greek syntassein : ‘‘to bring together, to arrange, or to construct.’’ At issue is not merely the notion that the overthrow of a government might be comparable to the overthrow of a philosophical or literary system—be it French literary convention or Cartesian rationalism—but also the idea that anything that is truly revolutionary must constitute a transformation in what it means to have things in order, whether neatly in a sequence or conveniently under one’s thumb. Revolution is not just a change in the status quo, however conceived, but a shattering of the principles by which the event of revolution itself could be put into some kind of perspective. Although it may be that any change worthy of being considered revolutionary should ‘‘also’’ be a revolution in syntax, to speak in terms of a revolutionary syntax may be to miss the point. As one of the oldest metatropes of classical rhetoric, syntax implies that words or things can be put in their proper places. As such, its reign may commence after a revolution, when those who thought they had changed the world turn out to have become...