Hopeless Desperation Can Be Fun. This Quite Untheoretical Experience Is the Impetus For

INTRODUCTION

Hopeless desperation can be fun. This quite untheoretical experience is the impetus for my exploration of a selection of novels by Kafka, Beckett, and Handke: KafkaÕs Der Proze§and Das Schlo§, BeckettÕs trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, and HandkeÕs Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter and Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung. A first reading of any of these novels should leave an average reader marvelling at the thoroughness and unconventionality with which the desperate misery of the protagonists is represented: thoroughness because if there is ever a moment of respite, it is swiftly exposed as deceptive, or at best fleeting; unconventionality because even when the protagonistsÕ misery can be related to ÒnormalÓ causes such as hunger, disease, or injustice, their reactions seem quite out of proportion. The extremes here are Handke, whose protagonists seem constantly to become enraged for no reason at all, and even more strikingly Beckett, who, in the trilogy, achieves the remarkable feat of making his protagonists seem unreasonably miserable even as they suffer almost amusingly absurd extremes of physical decay and deprivation. And yet this hopelessness is fun: reading these books about misery is not a miserable experienceÑthey are imaginative, funny, exuberant, and memorable.

This dissertation examines the above-mentioned novels in the light of the Marxist concept of hegemony. The quite untheoretical paradox I have described cannot be a source of rigorous arguments, but it provides the ÒemotionÓ behind the argument I will make, in a way that I hope to make apparent before devoting the remainder of this introduction to a discussion of the concept of hegemony and its history. According to this concept, power relations in society go far beyond physical force and conscious propaganda. Rather, relations of domination and subordination pervade the entire social process, to such an extent that they are often able to produce themselves as common sense. This is not in principle a hopeless theory, since its inflationary expansion of the locus of domination is accompanied by a corresponding expansion of the locus of resistance: all areas of social practice and of discourse become sites of contestation in which hegemonic practices and discourses can be opposed either by conscious effort or by oppositional structures arising ÒautomaticallyÓ from the the contradictions and repressions of the hegemonic order. In fact, though challenging in the depth of domination it reveals, the concept of hegemony should be a particularly hopeful one especially in an academic context, since it suggests that not just revolution and propaganda in the broader public sphere, but also to some extent intellectual production and debate in the academy, can contribute to material social progress. In the years since Gramsci developed the concept of hegemony, however, historical events seem to have exposed this hope as illusory. There have been no successful socialist revolutions in any Western country. Instead, as technology and the media develop, hegemony is becoming ever more pervasive. Thus, when the concept of hegemony is contemplated in the light of recent history, one is tempted to be demoralized by the pervasiveness of hegemony, and to dismiss the possibilities of resistance. The novels I have chosen speak to this apparent hopelessness.

Of the theorists I will discuss in this introduction, Raymond Williams in particular argues insistently that any attempt to describe the operation of hegemony must describe the social process as a whole, and not just focus on a limited set of institutions or Òformations.Ó Such a demand for complete context must be seen as a warning against oversimplification rather than a practical recipe, since it cannot be satisfied. One practical approach would be to try to combine the results from a variety of smaller, more manageable models. I want to argue that the novels I am discussing are instructive models of important aspects of hegemonic processes. In particular, this will require, especially in the cases of Kafka and Beckett, but also for Handke, an argument as to whether (and how) their novels can be seen as ÒreferentialÓ in a useful way despite the apparent absurdity and abstraction of their subject matter.

The models of hegemony in these novels also include models of resistance, and the pattern that these models (seem to) fall into is the basis for my selection of authors: they represent the three logical possibilities of working for change from within the system, trying simply to stop participating, or trying to step outside the system. An abstract formulation of the misery of the protagonists of these novels is to say that for them, hegemony is no longer identified with common sense. As a result, they experience the pervasiveness of hegemony, which goes unnoticed by ÒordinaryÓ people, as an intolerable, omnipresent agony. In Der Proze§and Das Schlo§, the K.s try to resolve this conflict from within the hegemonic order: they are trying to iron out the contradictions inherent in the hegemonic orders dominated by the court and the castle. In BeckettÕs trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable, one sees increasingly determined attempts to escape from the operations of hegemony by refusing to participate in it: language is a fundamental component of hegemony, and so the desire (never, of course, unambiguous) of BeckettÕs characters to remain silent as well as inactive is a correspondingly fundamental refusal. Whereas both Kafka and Beckett place their protagonists in situations which are, at least at the literal level, entertainingly absurd, HandkeÕs protagonists in Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter and Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung, despite their unpredictable reactions to their environment, live in a recognizably real world, so their confrontation with hegemony can be read more literally. Bloch and Keuschnig are both remarkable for their heightened, but unconventional and highly variable powers of perception: individual objects and events stand out to them with an occasionally exhilarating, but more often oppressive clarity that makes it impossible for them to observe the usual connections between things.

Of the novels I am discussing, Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung is the most explicitly hopeful: Keuschnig, in his Òmoment of true feelingÓ seems to find a way to step outside the hegemonic order by discovering a new way of seeing things and the connections between themÑbut I will suggest that it would be hasty to see this as a resolution of the problem of how to cope with the oppressiveness of hegemonic limitations and contradictions. In Kafka and Beckett, the struggle against hegemony appears to be hopeless: the K.s die, and BeckettÕs protagonists cannot fall silentÑthe latter mode of escape not being particularly appealing even if it could succeed. But encouraged by the not at all miserable experience of reading these books, and by the hopeful logic of the concept of hegemony (as opposed to the discouraging results of its application to recent history), I will examine the novels more closely in order to see beyond this apparent despair. I hope thereby to allow the novels and the notion of hegemony to illuminate each other, gaining on the one hand a clearer view of the nature of the superficially absurd struggles of the protagonists of these novels, and of how these texts provide a hopeful perspective on these struggles that goes beyond the protagonistsÕ apparent failure (or, in the case of Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung, beyond KeuschnigÕs deceptive success), and gaining on the other hand some insight into the variety of ways in which hegemony, no matter how pervasive, may be opposed. The three chapters of the dissertation are devoted to the readings of the novels; in the remainder of this introduction, I want to discuss the concept of hegemony and outline its history. This outline will not be complete; rather, I have focussed on whether and how it is possible in theory to envisage an escape from capitalist hegemony, and on the role of social and cultural (as opposed to economic) factors in such an escape.

Definitions

The concept of hegemony calls for description rather than definition, so a more accurate but unwieldy title for this section would be Òattempts at defining the concept of hegemony that will be clarified by more thorough discussions in the following sections.Ó Although the concept of hegemony as I will use it was originally developed by Gramsci[1], the ÒdefinitionÓ given by Raymond Williams in Marxism and Literature, which he explicitly bases on GramsciÕs work (ML 108), is most useful for my purposes because of its explicit emphasis on the pervasiveness of the hegemonic order, and on its ability to produce itself as common sense:

The concept of hegemonyÉsees the relations of domination and subordination, in their forms as practical consciousness, as in effect a saturation of the whole process of livingÑnot only of political and economic activity, nor only of manifest social activity, but of the whole substance of lived identities and relationships, to such a depth that the pressures and limits of what can ultimately be seen as a specific economic, political, and cultural system seem to most of us the pressures and limits of simple experience and common sense. Hegemony is then not only the articulate upper level of 'ideology,' nor are its forms of control only those ordinarily seen as 'manipulation' or 'indoctrination.' It is a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of living: our senses and assignments of energy, our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world. It is a lived system of meanings and valuesÑconstitutive and constitutingÑwhich as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives. (ML 109-10)

Some passages from Gramsci give a more concrete idea of what constitutes this pervasive presence of hegemony:

the Ôspontaneous philosophyÕ which is proper to everybodyÉis contained in: 1. language itself, which is a totality of determined notions and concepts and not just of words grammatically devoid of content; 2. Ôcommon senseÕ and Ôgood sense,Õ 3. popular religion and, therefore, also in the entire system of beliefs, superstitions, ways of seeing things and of acting, which are collectively bundled together under the name of Ôfolklore.Õ

Éeveryone is a philosopher, though in his own way and unconsciously, since even in the slightest manifestation of any intellectual activity whatever, in Ôlanguage,Õ there is contained a specific conception of the worldÉ. (SPN 323)[2]

The school as positive education function, and the courts as a repressive and negative education function, are the most important state activities in this sense: but, in reality, a multitude of other so-called private initiatives and activities tend to the same endÑinitiatives and activities which form the apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes. (SPN 258)

civil societyÉoperates without ÔsanctionsÕ or compulsory Ôobligations,Õ but nevertheless exerts a collective pressure and obtains objective results in the form of an evolution of customs, ways of thinking and acting, morality, etc. (SPN 242)

I will now discuss how this concept has been used and developed by Gramsci and a number of more recent theorists, focussing particularly on what these theorists have to say about the possibility of escape from the hegemonic order they describe.

Gramsci

In accordance with this focus on the possibilities of escape from the hegemonic order, my discussion of Gramsci will begin with a fundamental aspect of his thought that was present well before his formulation of the concept of hegemony. This is his break with a central tenet of the Marxist orthodoxy of his time, an orthodoxy based on the later works of Marx and Engels, and ÒcanonizedÓ by the Second International, namely, the belief in the inevitable establishment of a utopian socialist society as the culmination of a deterministic economic process. One can distinguish two aspects or ÒlayersÓ of this belief, both of which Gramsci rejects: the basic idea that the economic base determines the superstructure of culture and politics, so that the course of history can be predicted on the basis of economic laws, independently of any subjective variables (I will refer to this idea as economic determinism), and, built upon it, the faith that the development of the economic base must lead to the collapse of capitalism and to proletarian revolution. I have intentionally chosen the religious terminology of Òbelief,Ó Òfaith,Ó and Òcanonized,Ó in line with GramsciÕs argument that Òthe mechanicist conception has been a religion of the subalternÓ (SPN 337, italics added), a ÒreligionÓ which he consistently dismisses in the strongest terms, e.g.:

The claim, presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism, that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism. (SPN 407)

Gramsci recognizes that such a deterministic faith can be a source of hope in desperate situations:

When you donÕt have the initiative in the struggle and the struggle itself comes eventually to be identified with a series of defeats, mechanical determinism becomes a tremendous force of moral resistance, of cohesion and of patient and obstinate perseverance. ÒI have been defeated for the moment, but the tide of history is working for me in the long term.Ó Real will takes on the garments of an act of faith in a certain rationality of history and in a primitive and empirical form of impassioned finalism which appears in a role of a substitute for the Predestination or Providence of confessional religions. It should be emphasized, though, that a strong activity of the will is present even hereÉ. (SPN 336)

Nevertheless, as the end of the quotation suggests, this ÒprimitiveÓ faith is misguided, and eventually becomes an impediment to effective resistance. Gramsci makes the obvious argument:

it is essential at all times to demonstrate the futility of mechanical determinism: for, although it is explicable as a na•ve philosophy of the mass and as such, but only as such, can be an intrinsic element of strength, nevertheless when it is adopted as a thought-out and coherent philosophy on the part of the intellectuals, it becomes a cause of passivity, of idiotic self-sufficiency. (SPN 337)

Martin Jay describes the general agreement among ÒwesternÓ Marxists that this is exactly what happened historically:

The scientistic, determinist economistic theory of Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov et al. had contributed to the bureaucratic, non-revolutionary, and ultimately impotent politics of the Second InternationalÕs mass parties, most notably the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). (7)

Well before he formulated his theory of hegemony, Gramsci gave a Òcommon senseÓ argument for the impossibility of using economics to explain away the impact of subjectivity:

In life no act remains without consequence, and to believe in one theory rather than another has its own particular impact on action. Even an error leaves traces of itself, to the extent that its acceptance and promulgation can delay (but certainly not prevent) the attainment of an end.

This is a proof that it is not the economic structure which directly determines political activity, but rather the way in which that structure and the so-called laws which govern its development are interpreted. (GR 46)

Gramsci believed that Òall truths must be proved in practiceÓ (Adamson, 235), and he did not see the empirical evidence bearing out the claims of economic determinism. The prime evidence presented for it was the success of the Russian Revolution, which Gramsci saw as proving precisely the opposite point, since MarxÕs economic theory predicted proletarian revolutions in advanced capitalist societies as the climax of the historical development of relations of production, not in economically backward societies such as Russia. Gramsci called the Bolshevik revolution a Òrevolution against Capital,Ó and wrote:

The Bolsheviks have renounced Karl Marx and they have shown, with the backing of real actions, actual achievements, that the canons of historical materialism are not as iron-clad as it might be thought, as it has been thoughtÉ. that does not mean that they renounce the deeper message which is its lifeblood. All that it means is that they are not ÒMarxistsÓ; they have not used the MasterÕs works to compile a rigid doctrine, made up of dogmatic and unquestionable claims. They are living out Marxist thoughtÉ. (PPW, 39-40)

The distaste for dogmatism evident here and in much of GramsciÕs writing will be important to my argument later. The rise of fascism was often taken as more empirical evidence that capitalism was in the final stages of the decomposition predicted by Capital, and here too Gramsci disagreed. To begin with, it was clear to him that Italy had not reached the final stages of capitalist development. The Russian revolution initially made Gramsci hopeful that a similar revolution might be achieved in Italy, even though he did not see it as evidence for orthodox Marxist determinism, because in 1917 he saw objective conditions in Italy as rather similar to those of Russia:

Italy and Russia shared class structures and socioeconomic backgrounds similar enough to allow their revolutions to be waged in the same terms. Both countries had large peasant masses preserved from the feudal era for lack of commercial development linking town and country. Moreover, both peasantries had been profoundly radicalized by the war and were ready for a tactical alliance with the proletariat. AndÉwhile both these proletariats were relatively small, each had produced or attracted intellectual classes which were potentially revolutionary since, unlike the developed states of Western Europe, neither Russia nor Italy had a bureaucracy strong enough to co-opt them. (Adamson, 47)[3]

Furthermore, he recognized the heterogeneity of the fascist movement, so that, in particular, it could not simply be seen as representing the class interests of the bourgeoisie, as is evident in the following quotation from an article written in 1921, two years before the fascists came to power:

It has by now become evident that fascism can only partly be assumed to be a class phenomenon, a movement of political forces conscious of a real goal; it has overflowed, it has broken loose from every organizational frameworkÉit has become an unleashing of elemental forces which cannot be restrained within the bourgeois system of economic and political governance. Fascism is the name for the profound decomposition of Italian society which could not but accompany the profound decomposition of the state and which can today be explained only with reference to the low level of civilization which the Italian nation has reached in sixty years of unitary administration. (qtd. in Adamson 78)

Thus, if fascism was a sign of the decay of the state, then this was not the result of capitalism entering its inevitable final stages, but rather of a lack of economic and political development in Italy.[4] From a contemporary perspective, GramsciÕs empirical argument could be continued by noting how difficult it is to explain the continuing vigor of (late?) capitalism on the basis of economic determinism.