Assignment on Paper 204

 Assignment on Contemporary Western   Theories and Film Studies                              

Paper Name: Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Paper Code: 20409

Topic Name: Marxist Criticism

Name: Divya Sheta 

Roll No.:06

Enrollment No.:4069206420210033

Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com

Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-III

Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavanagar University.  

 

 

Literary criticism can be defined as the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. In general, literary criticism answers two main questions: what was good or bad about the work and why that particular aspect is bad or good.  Literary criticism is similar to a literary analysis in the sense that it analyses different aspects of the text and brings them together to evaluate whether the author has been successful in achieving his purpose. But, literary criticism goes a step further and evaluates the work in relation to outside theories.

Marxist theory or Marxist criticism is one of the theories that can be used in literary criticism. This theory is based on the ideologies of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who criticized the inherent injustice in the European class/capitalist system of economics operating in the 19th Century.  Marx viewed history as a series of struggles between classes, in other words, the oppressed and the oppressors.

It is a materialist philosophy which tried to interpret the world based on the concrete, natural world around us and the society we live in. It is opposed to idealist philosophy which conceptualizes a spiritual world elsewhere that influences and controls the material world. In one sense it tried to put people’s thoughts into reverse gear as it was a total deviation from the philosophies that came before it. Karl Marx himself has commented on this revolutionary nature of Marxism, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” It is true that while other philosophies tried to understand the world, Marxism tried to change it.

Marxist Criticism is

·         a research method, a type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts

·         a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts.

Key Terms: Dialectic; Hermeneutics; Semiotics; Text & Intertextuality; Tone

 

Key Terms	Definitions
Class	a classification or grouping typically based on income and education
Alienation	a condition Karl Heinrich Marx ascribed to individuals in a capitalist economy who lack a sense of identification with their labor and products
Base	the means (e.g., tools, machines, factories, natural resources) and relations (e.g., Proletariat, Bourgeoisie) or production that shape and are shaped by the superstructure (the dominant aspect in society)
Superstructure	the social institutions such as systems of law, morality, education, and their related ideologies, that shape and are shaped by the base

Another important concept used by Marx was the dialectic which was originally developed by the 18th century German philosopher Hegel. Hegel was an idealist philosopher who used this term to refer to the process of emergence of new ideas through the confrontation of opposing ideas. He believed that the world is governed by thought and material existence is the expression of an immaterial spiritual essence. But Marx used the same concept to interpret the progress of the material world. According to him Hegel put the world upside down by giving primacy to ideas whereas Marx’s attempt was to reverse it. So Marx’s dialectic is known as dialectical materialism. Marx argued that all mental( ideological) systems are products of real social and economic existence. For example, the legal system reflects the interests of the dominant class in particular historical periods rather than the manifestation of divine reason. Marxist dialectic can be understood as the science of the general and abstract laws of development of nature, society and thoughts. It considers the universe as an integral whole in which things are interdependent, rather than a mixture of things isolated from each other. All things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change and development in the world. Dialectical materialism was an effective tool in the hands of Marxists, in revealing the secrets behind the social processes and their future course of development.

Marxism borrows some concepts from the nineteenth-century writings of Karl Heinrich Marx, though many of Marx’s ideas gained popularity in the twentieth century. A premise of Marxist criticism is that literature can be viewed as ideological, and that it can be analyzed in terms of a Base/Superstructure model.  Marx argues that the economic means of production in a society account for its base. A base determines its superstructure. Human institutions and ideologies that produce art and literary texts comprise the superstructure. Marxist criticism thus emphasizes class, socioeconomic status, and power relations among various segments of society.

• Classical Marxism: Basic Principles

According to Marxism, society progresses through the struggle between opposing forces. It is this struggle between opposing classes that result in social transformation. History progresses through this class struggle. Class struggle originates out of the exploitation of one class by another throughout history. During the feudal period the tension was between the feudal lords and the peasants, and in the Industrial age the struggle was between the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) and the industrial working class (the proletariat). Classes have common interests. In a capitalist system the proletariat is always in conflict with the capitalist class. This confrontation, according to Marx, will finally result in replacing the system by socialism.

• Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism took shape as the official aesthetic principle of the new communist society. It was mainly informed by the 19th century aesthetics and revolutionary politics. Raymond Williams identifies three principles as the founding principles of Socialist realism. They are Partinost or commitment to the working class cause of the party, Narodnost of popularity and Klassovost or writer’s commitment to the class interests. The idea of Partinost is based onVladmir Lenin‘s essay, Party Organisation and Party Literature (1905) which reiterates the commitment of the writer to the aim of the party to liberate the working class from exploitation. Narodnost refers to the popular simplicity of the work of art. Marx, in Paris Manuscripts, refers to the alienation that originates out of the separation of the mental and manual in the capitalist society. Earlier under feudalism the workers engaged in cottage industries produced various items on their own, all activities related to the production happening at the same place under the supervision of the same people. But under capitalism the workers lost control over their products they were engaged in the production of various parts and were alienated from their own work. So, only folk art survived as people’s art. The concept Narodnost reiterates this quality of popular art which is accessible to the masses and wanted to restore their lost wholeness of being. Klassovost refers to the commitment of the writer to the interests of the working class. It is not related to the explicit allegiance of a writer to a particular class but the writer’s inherent ability to portray the social transformation.

For example, Balzac, a supporter of the Bourbon dynasty, provides a penetrating account of the French society than all the historians. Though Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, was an aristocrat by birth and had no affiliation to the revolutionary movements in Russia, Lenin called Tolstoy the “mirror of Russian revolution” as he was successful in revealing the transformation in Russian society that led to the revolution through his novels. Lenin’s position regarding art and literature was harder than that of Marx and Friedrich Engels. He argued that literature must become an instrument of the party. In the 1934 congress of Soviet Writers, Socialist Realism was accepted as the official aesthetic principle of Soviet Union. It was accepted as a dogma by communists all over the world.

 

• Developments in Marxist Aesthetics

Marxist criticism flourished outside the official line in various European countries. Russian Formalism emerged as a new perspective informed by Marxism in the 1920s. It was disbanded by the Communist party as it did not conform to the official theoretical perspective of the party. The prominent members of this group were Victor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky and Boris Eichenbaum, who published their ideas originally in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, edited by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J Reis. Though suppressed in Soviet Union, the Formalists emerged in various forms in the USA, Germany and Prague. One of the members of this group, Mikhail Bakhtin remained in Soviet Union and continued his critical practice. His concept of Dialogism affirmed plurality and variety. It was an argument against the hegemony of absolute authorial control. He affirmed the need to take others and otherness into account. In one sense, it was an argument against the increasing homogenization of cultural and political life in Soviet Union. Many others belonging to the same perspective went into exile and continued their work abroad. It was the beginning of a new form of Marxist criticism. Roman Jakobson founded the Prague Linguistic Circle along with Rene Wellek and a few others. In Germany the Frankfurt School of Marxist aesthetics was founded in 1923 as a political research institute attached to the University of Frankfurt. Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were some of the important figures attached with this school. They tried to combine aspects of Formalism with the theories of Marx and Freud. They produced for the first time studies on mass culture and communication and their role in social reproduction and domination. The Frankfurt School also generated one of the first models of a critical cultural studies that analyzes the processes of cultural production and political economy, the politics of cultural texts, and audience reception and use of cultural artifacts. Marxist scholars like Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht considered art as a social production. Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Author as Producer (1934) addresses the question, “What is the literary work’s position within the relations of production of its time?” Benjamin tries to argue that artistic production depends upon certain techniques of production which are part of the productive forces of art like the publishing, theatrical presentation and so on. A 5 revolutionary artist should not uncritically accept the existing forces of artistic production, but should develop and revolutionize those forces. It helps in the creation of new social relations between artist and audience. In this process, authors, readers and spectators become collaborators. The experimental theatre developed by Brecht is a realization of Benjamin’s concept. Bertolt Brecht, a close friend of Benjamin, developed the concept of Epic Theatre which dismantled the traditional naturalistic theatre and produced a new kind of theatre altering the functional relations between stage and audience, text and producer, and producer and actor. Bourgeois theatre is based on illusionism. The audience is the passive consumer. The play does not stimulate them to think constructively. According to Brecht this is based on the assumption that the world is fixed, given and unchangeable and the duty of art is to provide escapist entertainment. Brecht’s famous contribution is alienation effect. The technique is to alienate the spectators from the performance and to prevent them from emotionally identifying with the play. It presents the familiar experience in unfamiliar light forcing the audience to question the attitudes which was considered to be natural and unchanging. He employed techniques like back projection, song choreography cutting and disrupting the action rather than blending it smoothly.

 

 Works Cited

 

Hasa. “How to Apply Marxist Theory to Literature: Marxist Theory, Marxist Literary Criticism.” Pediaa.Com, 27 Oct. 2016, https://pediaa.com/how-to-apply-marxist-theory-to-literature/.

Hasa. “How to Write a Literary Criticism: Literary Theories, Steps to Follow, Tips.” Pediaa.Com, 4 Oct. 2016, https://pediaa.com/how-to-write-a-literary-criticism/.

“Intro to Marxist Literary Theory.” The Nature of Writing, 2 Oct. 2021, https://natureofwriting.com/courses/writing-about-literature/lessons/marxist-literary-theory/.

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Marxism and Literary Theory.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 2 July 2020, https://literariness.org/2016/04/12/marxism-and-literary-theory/.

“Marxist Criticism.” Writing Commons, 7 Nov. 2020, https://writingcommons.org/section/research/research-methods/textual-methods/literary-criticism/marxist-criticism/.

“Study Material - English: R.D.S. College, Muzaffarpur, Bihar - 645.” Study Material - English | R.D.S. College, Muzaffarpur, Bihar - 645, https://rdscollege.ac.in/cc-pdf.php?ref=645&dept=English.

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