Modernism and Hegemony: A Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies

175 Pages·1990·9.6 MB·English

by  Neil Larsen

Modernism and Hegemony
Theory and History of Literature
Edited by Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse
Volume 71. Neil Larsen Modernism and Hegemony
Volume 70. Paul Zumthor Oral Poetry: An Introduction
Volume 69. Giorgio Agamben Stanzas: Speech and Phantasm in Western
Culture
Volume 68. Hans Robert Jauss Question and Answer: Forms of Dialogical
Understanding
Volume 67. Umberto Eco On the Concept of the Sign
Volume 66. Paul de Man Critical Writings, 1953-1978
Volume 65. Paul de Man Aesthetic Ideology
Volume 64. Didier Coste Narrative as Communication
Volume 63. Renato Barilli Rhetoric
Volume 62. Daniel Cottom Text and Culture
Volume 61. Theodor W. Adorno Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic
Volume 60. Kristin Ross The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the
Paris Commune
Volume 59. Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich Reading De Man Reading
Volume 58. F.W.J. Schelling The Philosophy of Art
Volume 57. Louis Marin Portrait of the King
Volume 56. Peter Sloterdijk Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism
Volume 55. Paul Smith Discerning the Subject
Volume 54. Reda Bensmaia The Barthes Effect
Volume 53. Edmond Cros Theory and Practice of Sociocriticism
Volume 52. Philippe Lejeune On Autobiography
Volume 51. Thierry de Duve Pictorial Nominalism: Marcel Duchamp,
Painting, and Modernity
Volume 50. Luiz Costa Lima The Control of the Imaginary
Volume 49. Fredric Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986,
Volume 2
Volume 48. Fredric Jameson The Ideologies of Theory: Essays, 1971-1986,
Volume 1
Volume 47. Eugene Vance From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the
Middle Ages
Volume 46. Jean-Frangois Lyotard The Differend
Volume 45. Manfred Frank What is Neostructuralism?
Volume 44. Daniel Cottom Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History,
and Literary Representation
Volume 43. Michael Nerlich The Ideology of Adventure, Volume 2.
Volume 42. Michael Nerlich The Ideology of Adventure, Volume 1.
Volume 41. Denis Hollier The College of Sociology
For other books in the series, see p. 126.
ii
Modernism and
Hegemony
A Materialist Critique of
Aesthetic Agencies
Neil Larsen
Foreword by Jaime Concha
Theory and History of Literature, Volume 71
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Copyright © 1990 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larsen, Neil.
Modernism and hegemony : a materialist critique of aesthetic
agencies / Neil Larsen.
p. cm.—(Theory and history of literature ; v. 71)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8166-1784-8 ISBN 0-8166-1785-6 (pbk.)
I. Modernism (Art)—Controversial literature. 2. Ideology.
3. Aesthetics, Modern—20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
BH301.M54L37 1990
Iir.85'0904-dc20 89-30475
CIP
The University of Minnesota
is an equal-opportunity
educator and employer.
For Bea, Leonard, and Emma
"May this for which we dread to lose
Our privacy, need no excuse."
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Contents
Foreword: From the Modernism of Adorno to the
Contemporaneity of Marx Jaime Concha ix
Introduction xxii
1. From Adorno to Marx: De-Aestheticizing the Modern 3
2. Modernism, Manet, and the Maximilian: Executing Negation 32
3. Juan Rulfo: Modernism as Cultural Agency 49
4. Modernism as Cultura Brasileira: Eating the "Torn Halves" 72
Notes 101
Index 115
vii
Acknowledgments
Wlad Godzich, Ron Sousa, Bob Krueger, Doris Sommer, Roger Zapata, and
Roman de la Campa all helped guide Modernism and Hegemony to completion,
providing both inspiration and invaluable criticisms. My sincere thanks to them.
I am also deeply and especially grateful to Holbrook Robinson of Northeastern
University, whose support at a critical time assured completion of the present
work.
viii
Foreword
From the Modernism of Adorno to the
Contemporaneity of Marx
Jaime Concha
Translated by Kitty Millet
Readers of the Theory and History of Literature series of the University of Min-
nesota Press are perhaps acquainted with Neil Larsen's foreword to Fredric
Jameson's essays (vol. 48 of the series). There, in a lucid presentation, Larsen
points out a central paradox about Jameson, author of Marxism and Form and
The Political Unconscious: a Marxism without political practice and, as a con-
sequence, a critical method that, because of its tendency to unify synthetically
heterogeneous points of view, at times fails to criticize other methods that offer
incompatible concepts of literature. Jamesonian metacommentary seems to situ-
ate itself far from real political life and beyond the polemical pugnaciousness one
usually associates with Marxism. As early as his Jena Dissertation (1841), Marx
writes,
It's a psychological law that the theoretical mind, once liberated in
itself, turns into a practical energy . . . but the practice of philosophy is
itself theoretical. It's the critique that measures the individual existence
by the essence.1
In Jameson's case, and in accordance with his procedure, structuralism and crit-
ical theory, for example, can conceive of themselves as moments of a micro-
Hegelian process, which ends by subsuming them under a superior, interpretive
code.2 It is difficult to avoid verifying that, within this intellectual project, two of
its complementary aspects are a purely theoretical Marxism and a somewhat om-
nivorous Hegelianism.
With a fairness and equanimity free from condemnation and the crude accep-
ix