INTRODUCING

Critical Theory

Stuart Sim • Borin Van Loon

Edited by Richard Appignanesi

Icon Books UK 0 Totem Books USA

 This edition published in the UK
. in 2004 by Icon Books Ltd.,
The Old Dairy, Brook Road,
Thriplow.i.~oyston: SG8 7RG
email: - info~@ iconb6oks.coJik
wWw.iconbooks.co.uk
. , . '
This edition published in the USA
in 2005 by Totem Books
Inquiries to: Icon Books Ltd.,
.~ The\Q'd' DairY,,~Brook Road,
Th-riplow, Royston "
'SGB '7 RG, U,K.

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa Distributed 'to the trade in the USA by
and Asia by Faber and Faber Ltd., National Book Network Inc.,
3 Queen Square, London WC1 N 3AU 4720 Boston Way, Lanham,
or their agents Maryland 20706

Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Distributed in Canada by

Africa and Asia by TBS ,L~d,. , Frating Penguin ~<>oks Canada,
Distribution Centre, OolchesterBoad, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Suite 300,
Frating Green, Colchester C07 7DW Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2

This edition published in Australia in ISBN 1 84046 588 3

2004 by Allen and Unwin Pty. Ltd.,
POBox 8500, 83 Alexander Street,
Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Previously published in the UK and

Australia in 2001

Text copyright © 2001 Stuart Sim

Illustrations copyright © 2001 Borin Van Loon

The author and artist have asserted their moral rights.

Origin~ting editor: Ricbard Appignanesi

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means,

without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed and bound in Singapore

by Tien Wah Press Ltd.
~ The Theory of Everything
Theory has become one of the great growth areas in cultural analysis and
academic life over the last few decades. It is now taken for granted that
theoretical tools can be applied to the study of, for example, texts, societies,
or gender relations.
The phenomenon of "cultural
studies" in general, one of the major
success stories of interdisciplinary enquiry,
is based on just that assumption.

The further assumption

is being made that the application
of such theories will lead to a
significant increase in understanding
of how our culture works.
~ The Grand Narrative of Marxism
The motivation for this development can be traced backto the rise of
Marxism. ·Ka rl Marx (1818-83) and his followers bequeathed us an all-
embracing theory, or "grand narrative" as it is morecommonly referred to
nowadays. ~

~~~~
rr

.
4It
..-...f
~

~_.

4
Entire cultures can be put under the microscope of Marxist theory. It forms a
paradigm of the way in which any critical theory in general works. Cultural
artefacts are tested against the given projection of the world as it is, or
should be, constructed.

The Politics of
Criticism
One criticism levelled
against critical theory
says that it is an
"alternative
metaphysics",
promoting a particular
world view, and, at
least implicitly, a
particular politics.
There is nothing
intrinsically wrong
with such a
procedure, as long as
it is made clear what
that metaphysics
entails. What is it
trying to achieve?
One can then accept
or reject its A great deal of its
programme. value stems from its
ability to remain
politically engaged.
Being critical is being
political: it represents
an intervention into a
much wider debate
than the aesthetic
alone, and that is
surely something to
be encouraged. We
live in politically
interesting times,
after all.
 The Synthetic or Magpie Approach
The 20th century saw the development of a wide
range of analytical theories

6
The cultural analyst can pick or mix from the catalogue of theories to put
together synthetic models for whatever the task may happen to be.

Except for the most committed

enthusiasts of particular movements,
most critics tend to operate in
magpie fashion these days, selecting
a bit of this theory and a bit of that
for their own personalized approach.
~-----------
~ Bringing Theory to the Surface
To be a critic now, especially in academic life, is also to be a theorist- as
any studentin the humanities and socialsciences will be only too painfully
aware. One I no anger
sfudies "literature", but
literature plus the full range of
cri~cal fheories used to
. ThI same fhing
comtrud"readingsof pi for.~ history, media
narratives. .
studies,.sO$iology - and so on
HVough the humanities
and·social sciences.

How we arrive at value

judgements, and, indeed,
whetherwe can arrive at
valuejudgements, are
now at least as
important considerations
as what the actual
valuejudgements
themselves are.

8
Hidden Agendas and Ideologies
Of course, theories have alwaysoperated "underthe surface", prior to the
development of the term "critical theory" itself, butthey were generally implicit
rather than explicit. It f
was acase 0
assumptions that were taken
for granted rather than used in a
self·conscious way.
~ Theoretical Reflexivity
Self-consciousness, or -reflexivity" as we now call it, in the ~application of ~
theory is what defines the currentstate-of PlaY In the variousdisciplines of
the humanities and social sciences. A student preparing a dissertation or
thesis will nonnaIly be advised to outlinethe theoretical modelbeing used,
first of all, beforegoingon to undertake the actual task of analysis itself.

The last thing one wants-tobe accusedof in such situationsis-being

"undertheorlzed" -that way, low marks lie. The successful studentin higher
education reaches theoretically-informed conclusions in essays
and exams,
and can show precisely how the theory informed those conclusions.
10
Science Studies: the Paradigm Model
But it is not only in-the humanities and social sciences that criticaltheory is
deployed. Even the hard scienceshave been infiltrated to some extent.
Scienceas a social phenomenon is most certainly a target for criticaltheory.
One well-known founder of "science studies" is the historianand philosopher
of science Thomas Kuhn (b. 1922).
 Postmodernism and Sciencf
Postmodemism and poststructuralism, for example, hav
drawnfreelyon recent developments in physics to reinforc
their world-view, with its emphasison undecidability, gap
in our knowledge, the
pervasive factorof
difference and the
Ii~itations of our
:understanding.

Science and critical theoryseem,

this case to be mutuallysupportive
but all is not well in this relationshi
he Sokal Scandal
1996, an article by Alan 50kal (b. 1955), a professor
physics at New York University, appeared in the respected
itical theory journal Social Text. This article, "Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a
Transformative Hermeneutics
of Quantum Gravity",
arguing for a
postmode m
'iberatory"
science,

)kal at once revealed

) hoax to the press and
e scandal became international front-page news.
hat was Sokal trying to do?
 In Defence of Big Science
Sokal tells us in a book publishedwith Jean Bricmont,
Intellectual Impostures: Postmodem Philosophers'
Abuse of Science (1997). The hoax served to expose ~.~
the pretentious and amateurish misuse of recent physics
by leading French theorists, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard . }.~\
\~
, /Jl
~A
r
and Kristeva. Sokal provided deadly ammunition to the ~ -?'
fundamentalists of "Big Science" who reject any hint that ~~
science might be "socially constructed". ..~
~~
~

Science cannot
c' be appropriated to the
relativist views of critical .
theory. The issue remains - is
science purely autonomous or
constructed" like everything
\1

Misappropriations else cultural?

" of scientific concepts have
H occurred in critical theory, thafs
_ \. tru,e;but is it also true, as Big Science
> defenders argue, that postmodem
theorists are deeplyhostileto

~~
~ genuinescientific methods
') and progress itself?

~ .' f '
· 0)~ ~~~~

How did we arrive

,at this situationwhere
theory plays such a critical role?
And what theories do we need to be
most aware of in our approach to cultural
stUdy nowadays? Let's start with the "grand
narrative" known as Marxism, which has always
aspired to be a universal explanatory theory.
14
 1- .
, , ..

S0l15
Sea
Marxism analyses
all phenomena in terms
(
Ii - ~~)
\: )
theo~ o~
of its dioledical
materialISm ... ;~ \
I \
JJ
~
•
...

/ J J })
0~"'\~0)

We might think of Marxism

as a "theory for all seasons",
prepared to comment on anything and
everything, at all times and in all places.
~----------
LsgJ Origins of Marxism
The immediate source of Marxian dialectical materialism is found in the
idealistphilosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1no-1831). Hegel enriched theory
with the crucial term, alienation, which explains the interrelation of logic to
history. In logic, it specifies the contradiction latent in all thinking, meaning
that one idea will inevitably provoke its opposite. Hegel'saim was to
resolve this in and by consciousness itself ...

.
, II
.

•
Alienation in this scheme is dialectical, that is, the inadequacy of one form
of consciousness turns into another, again and again, untila "proper
science" is achieved.
16
Absolute Spirit: the Logic of History
Alienation is a process by which mind - as the consciousness of a
subject (thesis) - becomesan object of thoughtfor itself (antithesis).
And therebythe human mind constantly progresses to the next
higherstage of synthesis and self-consciousness.

oo
•
\\ '
~/~ ~
\
~~, ~
L...../ Historyis the journey of the 'World
Spirit' in its progress through a seriesof
stagesuntil it reaches the highestform of self-realization, Absolute Spirit.
That form had been attained in Hegel's view by the Prussian state in which
he served as a public official (i.e. as professorof philosophy at the
University of Berlin.)
17
~ The Communist Manifesto
o
o Hegel'sdialectic is idealist. Marx gave it a materialist foundation, that is,
o he shifted alienation away from "mindcontemplating itself" to the class
----struggle as the real historyof consciousness in progress.
Our task is to
contemplate the process of
consciousness from the vantage
point that itwiII attain only
atthe end of its journey - but
not to interfere ...
quote from Marx, "11th Thesis on Feuerbach" (1845)
The realization of philosophy - literallyits end- is for Marxthe defeat of
bourgeois capitalism by the.industrial working class, and the establishment
of a Communist societywhichfinally abolishes the "latentcontradiction" of
exploiter and exploited.

And this is the programme that Marx sets out in

The Communist Manifesto (1848).
18
The struggle is reduced to the private
ownership of the meansof production
versusthe workers who sell their
labourto this capitalist
system of production.

19
~---------­
~

20
Infra- and Super-structures
Thereis a third hiddenstructure which is general and fundamental to all
societies, including the capitalist. Societyalwaysconsists of an economic
baseor Infrastructure, and a superstructure. The superstructure
comprises everything cultural- religion, politics, law,education, the arts, etc.

,
- which is determined by a specificeconomy(slave-based, feudal,
mercantile, capitalist etc.). -'- .~ _-- ~:.
f ."..
"C""-
,

,.
'\}
Understand the superstrudur~. .~ ... <. ~ .

as ideology..- ways of ,7 ;- -'

thinking charaderistiC . ..t.,,;;,'"
of class behaviour J~ r..
(what we "take for ~ .
granted" as
natural).
'~,

Whatideology,J,
is literally. V' .f;',.i
basedon IS '. ~ IlJA
the economic ~ 'Ii " , ' ; :
infrastructure - d"'
'N

the means ..I '

by which {;
it produces
itself, its wealth,
and who owns those
meansof production.

Onceagain, we noticeMarx'scritical insistence on the hidden: religion,

politics, law, etc. - everything culturalthat we "live by" - disguisesand
renders perfectly natural an economic meansof production that is unnatural.

21
 Economic Determinism
In the strict, or what is often called the "crude",view of Marxism,
the ideologies of culture (like art) are by-products
~----..... determined by the economic base.
How m.u.cb, to what dlglD, is
culture eco mically determined?
This has been a considerable source of debate in Marxist circles. Some
theoristsconjecturethat certain activitiesin the superstructure - most notably
the arts - might have a "relative autonomy" from the base.

, Not quite
so simply.lt·is only \tin
the last instance" ,that the economy
didates superstructural
activity.. .

But what exactly does "relative autonomy" or "in the last instance" mean?
Such debates in critical theory are important in deciding whether or not we
can simply "read off" events in the superstructure from events in the
economic infrastructure.
22
The Hidden Text

alienation alienation
(as conscious process) (as unconscious, hiddenor estranged process)

!
idealism
!
materialism
("in your head") ("really existing")

1
culture ----....., P-------socio-economics
1
the site of both

~ "Text" does not

TEXT
simply mean "paper with
writing on it", but an
encoded produdion".
\I

Note, first, that Marx gave a new meaning to alienation - not as the
Hegelian .process of self-consciousness but as an unconscious
estrangement from oneselfdetermined by one's class condition
(= false consciousness).

The inheritances of Marxism in critical theoryare:

1. Tension of idealism versusmaterialism (the autonomy versussocial

construction of a text).
2. A hiddenor camouflaged unconscious.
3. Interventionism: a sensethat critical theory can makea difference.
 ·Mapping the Origins of Critical.}Theory

The Enlightenment
· (1640 - 1789)

French Revolution
(1789 - 99) .
Industrial Revolution
(c.1750 - 1880)
Utopian Socialism
(1796 - 1848)

:&~\fW\ctAAel
I<d.~t;
J'". ~ .Hen(e.r
(17~4- ('104) (t'14+--.,o3)

* Single namesgiven-in the tableare 'representative figures"

24
SCIENCE Physics

I
I
I
t
 for all its
apparently
monolithic
charader...

...Marxism has managed to generate several distinctand opposed schools

of critical theory. The question of how economic baseand superstructure
interact is oftenat the root of suchdisagreements.

Oftencriticized for its academic bias, Western MarXism (which has many
variants) has evinced a particular interest in the superstrucrure, most notably
the arts. In its earliest pre-Westem Marxist form, however, Marxist critical
theory tendedto assumethat everything that happened in the
superstructure, including the arts, was a mere reflection of what happened in
the base.
26
 •
Reflection Theory
.• v~

.
..

".
..
.; ;,. ; - ..
' ,.

. -- -.........:
-
'~"
:.~; ~ • ., .. ..
.. . ~;:
~.
..

Anything categorized
as following that line,
as Cubism (1910-14)
was by Plekhanov,
must be condemned.

From such a perspective, critical theory became a relatively straightforward

exercise, with clearly delineated paths of inquiry. The point wasto determine
what the artreflected about its society. "Reflection theory" hasexercised a
powerful hold over Marxist critical practice eversince.
27
-------@
Art, in this formula, had to be presented in a form accessible to the wider
public. This strictly ruled out experiment. Art was no longerto be considered
the preserveof "an elite with specialized interestsseparatefrom the lives of
ordinary individuals.

Avant-garde modernism was the

dominantaesthetic of the 20th-
century capitalist West. Even the
mere suggestion of such
modernism in one's art was
enough to bring down the full might
of the state machine on your head
- as composers such as Dmitri
Shostakovitch (1906-75) were to
discover to their cost.
29
 The Battle for Class Consciousness
Westem Marxism is generally taken to
begin with the work of Georg Lukacs
(1885-1971), whose early writingson
philosophy and literature exerted a huge
influence on several generations of
Western European theorists. Lukacs's
Historyand Class Consciousness (1923)
preached a more humanistapproach to
class struggle, in comparison to the
authoritarian Soviet Union model. Unlike
manySovietthinkers of the time, Lukacs
did not believe in the "inevitability" of
revolution - it had to be consciously striven
for through the combined efforts of the
working class and the Communist Party in
a creative ratherthan a dogmatic manner.

The glorious struggle of

the people's revolution
will triumph over the
.ruMing dogs of
bourgeois capitalism.
It says here.

Thisamounted to a rejection of the deterministic interpretations of Marxist

thoughtso popularin the Party at the time.
30
To orthodoxMarxistslike V.I. Lenin (1870-1924), who alreadyexercised
dictatorial powers- extended even further under Joseph Stalin (1879-
1953)- such views were considered dangerous to the socialistcause.

This was far too metaphysical a conception for the Comintern. Lukacs was
.accordingly disciplined and forcedto offera publicrecantation of the work.
History and Class Consciousness was later to resurface as a favoured text
amongst the student revolutionaries of the 1960s(notably in the 1968
eve~ements in Paris).
 · 0 f the Novel
Lukacslan Theories

LUkacs's Hegelian roots are also evident in his early

work on lite,Tature, Theory of the Novel (1920). This is
stilt a WidelY studied text tOd8y, and its linking of the
novel to the rise of bourgeois CUlture in Europe has
een 6Cheea.in various other studies since.
t~ k~~~
or.s ,a~
to/Itt·Jhj tIo\W;mih
.. larlieslPhase af.~,
as an ..sJioftOf
~svalues ...

32
Luk8CS was later to develop a highly controversial theory
of novelistic realism, "critical realism", based on the practice
of his favourite 19th-centUry novelists, such as

SirWa.ter scott~~
(~)("f)11
(1771-1832),
f [IJ \)~ ~)
'.,Ce- {~'f;
Honore de BalzaC
}, ~ {(1799-1850), -----
( ~\l\\ . "r-
r<e:
/'\' , . '\
\. ~ ./J <:-: ,-,,~
LJ \
~"3 (.~I I

-"~ ~ ~
anotably conservative,
~\~~ '--(-:I'
"~S ({, ~ )) and count Leo Tolstoy
establishment-supporting e
~ ~
q

figure. \..
e ;i!:"'il~~,-;; 1910).

), /( t-;"]S
(1828-

C'So&}'1(l -> ~r/;~

J /~~~~
j rjl '\.1\ ~
YI1
I
f-,
t C\/(
. .
r»~ l 1ol~t·t"
J ) I ~ {t
Regardless of
their polifical outlook, What are the
novelisfs musf reveal fhe constrainfs placed on us
pressures working within their as individuals within a
sociefy #hat led fo the given social class
developmenf of its at a given historical
particular mafrix of point?
social relations. 33
 A Critical Realist View of Alienation
r

"Franz K~f~~;or Thomas Mann", a

chapter title" Jf~om The Meaning of
,ContemporarYRealism (1958),
was to become.something of a
battlecry for . Luk~cs - a political
rather .~han strictly'literary choice for
the;individuaLto make, whetheras
author or reader.
34
Lukacs was eventually tocondemn modernism in general as presenting a
distorted picture ofreality which inhibited political action. This viewpoint
brought him into dispute with the modernist experimental dramatist and
Marxist, Bertolt Brecht -(1898-1956). ~ ._J .
Brecht, backed upby . .
~(;...- ~.', ~ the Marxist critic Walter ~_..:'
·.V ·1. r',
(
t

~J
Benjamin (1892-1940),

'(;;;;:.\
complained that
Lukacs's conception of
~}
~ -> \.\ ~. realism was fartoo
narrow.

~. (,5:-1
!l ..e c 1.,
' \ ----
- I Creative artists must
t: ~ be left free to experiment
{ lIkcfc asthe culfurearound , ·t· th JJe.. . J~ill'
o~ "'~78iol1
~<l8 lJ.11/"s them changei. tvl 0 f~9thn fu
~ s e0 -cen ry
O<1el1)/8, Ofre:;:I1/Clt}l realism would be to
'11} <l8,,;811) 1I11/le Co . cease being a
~_~-...e.s ",1/lhe '"'I1//l1l1ect realist g.
°Yes sJy ell toattack .
(188<. rt Of his mOdernIsm and defend his
. . . 7947a career. Such stalwarts of
/, ?
~1~({~f~) Samuel Beckett
~~)~'ldt;lfj (1906-89)
(I /:;::: ~~ t:\ ~

35
~
.3 - The Theory of Hegemony
Marxists have always found it difficult to explain two problems. Both
concern the failure of predicting revolution in capitalist societies.

These have been vexed questions within the Marxist movement. The
concept of hegemony was developed to explain away such
discrepancies. In the hands of the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-
1937), this concept became a sophisticated tool for cultural analysis.
36
Gramsci rejected the crudedetenninistic notion that the exploited
working classes must inevitably recognize revolution as "in
their best interests". Marxism had failed to consider how
ideologyactuallyworks to make itself unrecognizable
as such (another"disguise"). This is the trick of
hegemony ...

We will see later how

Michel Foucault's "archaeology"
of knowledge digs under the apparent layer of
hegemonic "consenf'to uncoverthe workings of cultural
empowerment - a way already signposted by Gramsci.
!IJ Cultural Criticism
Capitalist societies are adept at disseminating their ideological beliefswithout
havingto resortto force. Ideologyis passed on at the level of ideas, as
much as by economic pressures (oftenunwittingly
by the indMduaisinvolved).

Such ideas were later to be

developed further by the structural
Marxistmovement. Some criticsbegan
to wonder how we could ever break
out of hegemony's embrace, so
successful did it seem in maintaining
the political status quo and defusing
dissentat source.

38
The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory
Perhaps the most important strand of cultural criticism in Western Marxism
was the Frankfurt School. It developed a rigorous approach to cultural
analysis, particularly as seen in the work of its majorfigures,
Theodor Adorno (1903-69),

Max Horkhelmer (1895-1973),

r
and H rbert Marcuse (1898-1979).
-=-/ ~~ )
~.~ ~. J
».,
~ ~~
~~ ,/
~
~t
d':l
-~ , jli/ I

"Critical theory" is an amalgam of philosophical and social-scientific

;'-techniques (oftenmaking extensive use of statistical questionnaires in its
inquiries) that had wide-ranging applications. Established as a research
institute at the University of Frankfurt in the early1920s, the School fled from
Germany on the Nazi takeoverin 1933and subsequently relocated in New
York(returning to Frankfurt afterthe Second World War).
39
~--------
~ The Progress of Irrationalism
Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcusechallenged entrenched aspectsof
orthodoxMarxist thought- such as the role of the CommunistParty and the
conceptof class. Adomo and Horkheimer's jointly authored Dialectic of
Enlightenment (1944)even questioned the validityof the Enlightenment
projectitself, of which Marxism is regarded as a constituent part.

We will retum laterto Jean-Francois Lyotard's verdicton "grandnarratives",

but, in the meantime ...
40
--------C§)
Looking round, as the SecondWorld War came to a terrifyingsavage end,
amid the ruins of civilization East and West, Adornoand Horkheimer could
see only deeply repressive "administered societies" on each side of the
ideological divide - the West being no less culpable in this respectthan the
Stalinist SovietUnion.

Hegemony in Western civilization had all but destroyed the possibilityof

political dissent under a glossy appearance of mass culture "consent", This
was a theme explored in the work of Marcuse.
~. One-dimensional or "Non-oppositional" Societ~
Writing in the 1960s, Marcuse recognized a "one-dimensionar society in
which the forces of advanced capitalism seemed triumphant overthose of
the traditional left. Political opposition to capitalism, especially in America /
where Marcuse remained afterthe war, had all but been eradicated.

42
Marcuse felt that the Marxistcategory of class had broken down in this
situation.

The traditional working class was also in decline, giventhe speedand

scopeof technological changenow creating a post-Industrial society, very
different to anything that Marxor his immediate disciples couldever have
envisaged.
43
~C1~
~ The Alternative or "New Left"
Undersuch advanced
technological
circumstances, Marxist
thinking couldno
longer relyon the
working class as the
saviour of mankind.
New constituencies of
individuals had to be
found to maintain the
struggle against
capitalism in the name
.
,
of human liberation. I

\
c

Marcuse moved away from traditional Marxistnotionsof how revolution was

supposed to come about.
44
 s»
Hisenthusiastic espousal of the American counter-culture (rock'n' roll, jazz ::s
e,
O'"
C-
CD
In
~
s»
....
::1
cO
s»
aCD
s»
arn
cO·
::1
~
CD
c-
s»
sc.
~
0'"
~
s»
"
~
:r
~

st
CD
o
~
zr
8-
~
i
=
~

45
ri!J The Politics of Avant-garde Art
Adorno, too, was an articulate theoretical champion of the artisticavant-
garde. He was a composerhimselfand defended the twelve-tone music of
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and his disciples, ~

V",.. ,
and then later the newGerman cinema of the 1960s. / ' "
And he did so for reasons similarto Marcuse. ~

~~~~

,
~ ~,)~j
'\(I'X~/
~a""c!J
S~ .. ~ ...

Although their aesthetic tastes markedly differed (Adorno hatedjazz and

popularmusic in general), both Adorno and Marcusesupported the cause
of artisticexperiment, which put them at variance with orthodox Marxist
thoughtand the Soviettheory of Socialist Realism.
46
Of Adorno'sworks, the mostcritical of the Marxisttradition of thought- and
arguably the most influential on laterdevelopments in critical theory- is
Negative Dialectics {1966}. Here, it was arguedthat the notionof the dialectic
as a way of resolving conflict and contradiction (a standard view that pre-
dates Hegel and Marx, in Adorno's reading) was misguided.

What dialectics revealed, according to Adorno, was "the untruth of identity,

the fact that the concept does not exhaustthe thing conceived".

47
 Against Totality - and Totalitarianism

From such a perspective, everything is always in a state of "becoming"

ratherthan fully-fledged "being". And when that is so, Marxism soon runs
intodifficulties.
48
Theory of the Aura
Thecriticand cultural theorist Walter
Benjamin was a maverickfigure on
the fringes of the Frankfurt School.
But his work shares at least some
of their preconceptions. Although he
died well before the School'smost
influential period(the later 1940s
through to the 1960s),Benjamin's
work nevertheless has been
instrumental in helping to define
what we mean by critical theory.
Benjamin is perhaps best known for
his theory that what marks out
worksof art is their "aura". This
"aura" is what cannot be captured
in any reproduction, as Benjamin
pointsout in his highlyinfluential
essay, "The Work of Art in an Age
of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936).
The ability to reproduce
works of art mechanically,
especially in quantity, is a
relatively new
phenomenon ...

49
fij In Combat with Tradition
But a print of a Vincent van Gogh, no matterhow high quality,its,
reproduction, is not the real thing. In Benjamin's words, the print~lacks the
original's "presence in time and space, its unique existence 'at the place
where it happens to be"; or, as he proceeds to call it, its "aura".
Butthere is a positive sideto mechanical reproduction.

51
~ Brecht's Epic Theatre
Benjamin was also one of the first
champions of the German Marxist
playwright BertoltBrechtand his
concept of "epictheatre". The great
virtueof epic theatrefor Benjamin was
a clearly-defined political agendathat
it self-consciously drew to the ~
audience's attention. It
"does not reproduce
conditions, but, rather,
reveals them", showing
us the way in which the
ruling classes exploit and
keep us in a state of
subjection to their ideology.
Russian Formalism
Although not strictlyspeaking a Marxist "school", the Russian Formalists
were activejust beforeand after the SovietRevolution of 1917,and merit
someconsideration beforemoving off the topic of Marxist critical theory.
Although a casualtyof Stalinism and its brutallydoctrinaire SocialistRealist
aesthetic in 1932,Formalist ideas resurfaced in the West in the 1960sto
inspire new generations of theorists in the structuralist movement. Formalist
critics, such as those associated with the Moscow Linguistic Circle,
concentrated theirattention on literary form and literary language.
!Jj-T-h-e-G-ra-m-m-a-r-O-f-N-a-rr-a-ti-v-e---------
Formalist influence can be detected in the work of such later theorists as
Roland Barthes (1915-80), who shares the Russians' concern with
"literariness" - those elements, such as the self-conscious use of literary
devices, that signal that we are in the presence of "literature" as opposedto
otherforms of discourse.

o
o

54
Shklovsky's Defamiliarization

Vlktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) contributed the concept of "defamiliarization"

to his analysis of literary language- the "makingstrange" of everyday
events and objects so that they appear to us in a new light.

The technique of
art is to make objects
"unfamiliar", to make forms
difficult, to increase the difficulty
and length of perception because the
process of perception is an aesthetic
end in itself and must
be rolonged.

Brechfs "alienation effecf' is anotherversion of this process which forces us

to recognize, by drawing attention to stylistic devices, what lies behind
actionsand behaviourthat we take for granted (their hidden ideological
connotations). Note how both Marxism and Formalism emphasize the
'11idden" elements behindthe textualsurface.
 Bakhtin's Plural or Dialogic Meanings
Anotherfigure from this era whose work made a belated appearancein the
West was Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). His innovativeapproachto literary
analysisalso sufferedfrom Stalinistrepression - despite his attemptto
devise a Marxist philosophy of language. Bakhtin's researcheson the novel
strikingly prefigure poststructuralism in many ways, particularly in his .
insistence on the plural qualityof meaning.

\
l
u»:
~ '!Ii~Jt£
~~(

There is no fixed meaningto any narrative, therefore, and it is always open

to multipleinterpretation. There is a pluralqualityto Bakhtin'sown writings,
too, in that he may have published work in the 1920s under a variety of
names- most notably, Valentin Voloshinov(an issue still being debated
among Bakhtin commentators).
56
Intertextuality or Heteroglossia
Bakhtinsaw novels as intensely"intertextual" - a concept further developed
by the structuralist-feministtheorist Julia Kristeva. Novelsare not independent
unitarycreations, but products that rely on "intertextuality", that is, on
references to an entire complex web of past and present discourses within
their culture. This processBakhtin dubbed"heteroglossia". Heteroglossia
works against the unifyingtendencieswithin a culture, as generally
advocated by the ruling establishment.

Bakhtin identifies a similarly disruptive influence within the institution of the

carnival, with its love of uncontrolled parody, whereby socia-political authority
is mercilessly mockedand "made strange". The wildly satirical work of
Rabelais (1494-1553) is for Bakhtina prime example of this camivalesque
approach to authority(sadly lackingin the SocialistRealistenterprise).
57
 Jakobson's Semiotic Linguistics
Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) provides a direct bridge between Russian
formalist semiotics and later poststructuralist developments in critical theory.
He began as a member of the Moscow LinguisticCircle, then, in exile, the
PragueLinguistic Circle (1920), until his
arrival in America (1941) where he
collaborated with the seminal
structuralist anthropologist
Claude levi-Strauss
(b. 1908).

Jakobson analysed literary aesthetics ("poetics") as a sub-branch of

systematic linguistics: "The object of study in literary science is not literature
but literariness." He meansthe pattems
of linguistic devicesthat The addressee _
specifyliterarydiscourse. de 's !L_
or rea r - I TIll
source of aesthetic
value.

referential
-Onto this map of
features I superimpose emotive poetic conative
corresponding functions...
phatic

metallngual

58
Jakobson's interestin aphasia (a language disorderdue to brain injury)
alerted him to a fundamental linguistic pattern of oppositions: metaphor and
metonymy. Metaphor is a deviceof comparison ("strong as a lion") or
imaginative unliteral description ("a glaring error'). Metonymy worksby
substituting an associative part for a whole ("sails" for "ships"), as follows ...

:£,000 keels ploughed the deeps ...

metaphoric pole metonymic pole

Romantic poetry heroic epics

lyrical songs Realist fiction
filmic metaphor film montage
Surrealism joumalism
 The Psychoanalytic Unconscious
After Marx,we can name Sigmund Freud (185~1~39) and his pioneering
psychoanalysis as the next biggest influence on the'evolution'of critical
theory. Indeed, there is a parallel between them ...

\
conscious
,perception

Bothare also therapists. Marx soughta cure for

"econqmic illness" in the historical process of classstruggle
and revolution~ :Fr~ud, circa 1900, brokeawayfrom
neurological psychiatry to pursue a curefor neurotic
disorders by a process of self-knowledge. For both of them"
humanity's "structural defects" are real, serious but not
inescapable. There is a margin of freedom to be gainedby
activeself-knowledge.
60
----------------®
Marxiandialectics and Freudian psychoanalysis equally emphasizea
hidden agenda beneathour surface dimension - things are not what they
seem. Criticaltheory followsthem in attempting to tease out that agenda.
Freudposits a discrepancy between our conscious "surfacelife" and the
unconscious depth which is the unseen, unacknowledged controlling force.
"Drives"at an instinctual level dictate much of what we say and do at a
conscious level. Dreams, sexual abnormalities, neurotic pathologies will
breakthrough the disguises of conscious normality. Drivesmay be frustrated
or displaced for a time - but not indefinitely.
Eventually, we
have the "return of
the repressed" ... usually an
unwelcome onel
 Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory
Critical theoristshave adopted the psychoanalytic idea of a "sub-text" to
human activityand applied it to a variety of cultural phenomena - literature,
film and media, and indeed society itself, as in the case of the Frankfurt
School which married psychoanalysis to Marxism. The essential idea for
critical theory is that there is nothing accidental in a text - in the widestsense
of text as production. Everyindication of what is hidden, repressed or
.displaced in its structure can be traced back to the 'extual unconscious".

62
Freud himself in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) suggested that Hamlet
had a secret"Oedipal" desireto murderhis own father (and marryhis
mother), hencehis difficulty in taking action against the usurper Claudius.
Detractors of psychoanalytic criticism objectthat viewing Hamlet like this is to
confuse literature with reality - the "textuality of texts" is ignored in favourof
"psychical analysis".

~" .,-;/
Psychoanalysis does indeed owe muchto literature. Freud's central dogma
of the "OedipusComplex" derivesfrom Oedipus Rex by the Greek
dramatist Sophocles (c. 496-406 BC). Psychoanalytic criticism oftenfalls
back on the analysis of fictional characterization. And Freud'sclassiccase-
studies, Little Hans, Dora,The Rat Man etc., whatever value they may
haveas "science", are certainly greatexamples of story-telling.
 .Struct uralism and Critical Theory
We'now arrive"af a'thlrdinfluei1fialmodel'ofthe
, unco~,~ci~us 'whi(h is rep~esen~td."~y struduralism.
c

Structuraiism has its'origin'in the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure

(1857-1·913)..r SauS8ure aimed to reveal the universal struct~re of language
as a constructed system of rules. His key idea is the relation of't~e islgn"ier
to the signified. The connection between the linguistic signifier c/aIfJ and the
signified concept "cat' is entirely arb~

ID
:ti\:~.,c
~'1 ••~~­
) ,
J!r/:~:'.: ~J

~,~

Anottlf;:t( Sa~ss~rean _principl~ Is th~t,'mean~ng ,iJ:l-I~nguage is.thePfoductof

incr~ment~~, ~nlt dlffere~ces along,a c~airi_ ot signifiers: . ,

, "' ~. ", ,
c / a / t / : c / u I t / : c I.u / P/ :' p / u / pl. .. 'etc.

64
 • Co
STRUCTURALISTS
IN THE 1950s AND
60S PROCEEDED
TO TAKE
SEMIOLOGY FROM
LINGUISTICS AND
·A P P L Y IT TO ALL
MANNER OF
SOCIAL "SIGN-
SYSTEMS".
·!I!J- The Structuralist Unconscious " J"

66
Lacan and Structuralist Psychoanalysis

!!a~.aJ::L~acan~ (190l-81 )
. Ideathat the
.Quage".
~* " ly ever
but
 Laean's ,Imaginary and Symbolic .Realms
Lacan's work is notoriously difficult to interpret. But,as one participant in his
famous seriesof seminars in Parisin the 1950sremarked, no matterhow
obscure he may be, Lacannevertheless "produces resonances". This has
proven especially the case among f$minist~ il1t~ late 1960s,and 70s
attracted to Lacan's conception'of the:lm_glnarY and~'SymbOllc realms.

Thefirststageis identified ~with the mother; the second with the'f~~er,or, in a

wit!er sen~, the "masculine":world.~j~t~order ,and aUtholjty fhat" .~~'~J~fla~~as
adults. This is the Symbolic realm ofpre-establishedlanguagEl , SY~t~rris~
which in'the ~Narrae of'the Father', as Lacan puts it, oppresses 'women.
68
Lacanhimself was originally inspired by avant-garde Surrealism of the
1930s, chieflytheorized by the poet and former psychiatrist Andre Breton
(1896-1966). Lacanian-inspired criticsare likelyto be most interested in
works that self-consciously challenge the Symbolicworld in some way - as
Surrealism manifestly does with its reliance on dreamimagery and the
unconscio~_ """"'-.....

- _ . _- . . . - - - - - - t

Surrealism itself was deeplyinfluenced by Freudian analysis. And, in

general, modernism's rejection of orderly "realisf' stylesis likelyto appeal to
followers of Lacan. )£t>
69~
 Barthes and the Empire of Signs
Structuralism's task of identifying the "grammar'that
underlieswhateversystem is being studied is perhaps
best exemplified (and most accessible) in the work of the
cultural semiologist Roland Barthes (1915-80). For him,
structuralism is not limited to literature and art, but can
equally well apply itself to the "sign-worlds" of fashion,
advertising and the media- or even wrestling, football
'. and a restaurant menu ...

Structuralism in the 1950sand 60s becamea theory

applicableto any and every cultural phenomenon, as
Barthesshows, and little escaped its attention.
70
The Common Structure of Narratives

Once again, we note the assumption of an unconscious

"deep structure" to cultural phenomena, detennining their
overall fonn.
 The Death of the Author

72
~--------------
Readerly versus Writerly Texts
Barthes suggestsin S/Z(1970) that narratives can be divided into "readerly"
and "writerly" categories. The latterdemands the activeparticipation of the
reader; the formeran attitude of passivity. ,Modernist novels, and indeed
anything at all experimental in.form - such as,the novel Tristram Shandy
(1759-67) by Laurence Sterne (1713-68) - are "writerly". Most 19th-
century -realist novels are "readerly".

I prefer writerly
texts to readerly, since in
the latter the author is trying
to impose a RQrticular reading
on the reader ...

~~
(~~ ~~~:~
~~ I " '.. ~
By implicat~on, readerly texts are authoritarian. In the rebellious climate of the
1960s,'when the concept of the "death of the author"was developed, this
was a grave charge to make. Critical theory since that date has had a
distinctly anti-authoritarian, and oftencounter-eultural, edgeto it.
74
The "Death of Man"
Structuralism also helped to promote the notion of the "death of man" (or ''the
subjecf') which has been so influential in recent critical theory. The idea here
is that our traditional Enlightenment notion of "man" as the centre of cultural
process - a creature able to exert domination over its environment through
the exercise of reason - is a delusion. In real terms, we are controlled by
systems ...

. ......

Language speaks
through us, deep strudures
work through us, and we have
only very limited control
over our destiny.

To "reconsider" is to challenge an entirecultural tradition basedon a

commitment to individual self-realization and self-expression (whether in the
artistic or economic domains).
 Intertextuality and the Symbolic Order
Semiotic theory was developed furtherby later poststructuralists, notably
Julia Krlsteva (b. 1941).One of her key conceptsis Intertextuallty, which
can simply mean that narratives are woven of echoes and traces·of other
texts, a web or "mosaicof quotations". Kristeva complexifies this basic
semiotic idea by admixtures of Marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism. She
agrees with Lacan's view of an unconscious that can never itself be
"spoken", but departsfrom him with her idea of its continuity even after the
subjectentersthe Symbolic orderof language.

Evidence of such "disruptions" is provided by poetry and narratives which

destabilize the repressive domain of lawfulSymbolic order. It is therefore also
possible for Kristeva to rejectthe category of "essential woman"or gender
as constituted by the Symbolic order.
76
Eco's Labyrinth
Umberto Eco (b. 1932) offers anothersemioticview of intertextuality. One of
the characters in his novel The Name afthe Rose (1980) remarksthat: "A
book is made up of signs that speak of other signs."

My own semiotic
theory is strudured on
the ideas of the "net" and
the "labYrinth".
Systems are like nets. There is an infinitenumberof ways of traversing the
distance between any two points on their surfaces. A net, for Eco, is "an
unlimited territory". We mightalso see this as a labyrinth with no one "correct"
way of journeying through it. Texts, as indeed systems as a whole, offer
themselves up to multiple interpretations - "endlesssemiosis", as Eco says.
77
 The Structuralist Marxism ,>of~~,.iAlth.u8ser

The' su~e~ , ~f. st~9turalist ~ought, in Franceled,to.a variantof Marxism

called '"struclu~~ ~al?<ism", represented,by its leading th9Qrist,·the
philosoph~rt:ci~18;~I~usser (191~~)~ , ,
 ~;'

Following on from
Gramsci's "hegemony"
theory, Althusser also believed
that ideology worked most effectively at
the level of ideas - as enshrined in the Ideological
State Apparatuses. The duty of the cultural critic is to
identify where, and how, these ideas serve the cause of the
ruling elite - as well as to identify the contradictions that reveal the gaps and
flaws in the ideology in question.
deology"interpellates"
or "hoils" us, and we respond
to its "signs" in reflex-like fashion,
ading as they require us to do to remain
captive to ideology.

Marxism is the "science of society" that enables us to see through the

manipulations of the dominant ideology, and thus develop a revolutionary
class consciousness.

79~
 Structuralist Marxism and Literary Criticism
The implications of Althusser's ideaswereturnedintocritical theory by his
disciple PI rre 'Mach rey (b. 1939). In his book A Theoryof Literary
PrOduction (1966),
Macherey states ...

Macherey is saying
that criticism mustget
beneath the surfaceof a text's
ideological assumptions by asking of it what it does not say~ · Exposing its
silences and evasions is itself a political criticism - and, we note, an
"unconscious" is onceagain identified.
80
 In the critical theory of Macherey, structural Marxism becomes a "science of.
texts"- in effect, a sub-branch of Althusser's "science of society" - whose
findings are always to be turned to political account. Literarytexts have a
particular abilityto reveal ideological contradictions to us, which turns literary
stUd~}gtoa politically subversive act.

.:i(Hi::'::::.: . ~
f:;~~:::: :S~
' : ~ ' ; ;: ~7: ' ; ;~· · ': :

: /:~::;::{; : '::::.:' ::; :

:.. +~.:...~: .:': ' ''''. '~~:: :..~ ., .
..: .
..
'. ~ ' : ' : :..
. . . .....

.. ,,:.~ narratives ~=~=~.L====7::!J

disclose, when read "against
the grain", are the "false resolutions"
to the "real debates" that
ideology constantly tries to
hide from us.

The novel Jane Eyre

(1847) by Charlotte
Bronte (1816-55)
does not set out to be
a discourse on the
power of patriarchy,
but the "madwoman
in the attic" motif
starklyreveals it
nonetheless.
fIJ--------------------
Genetic Structuralism
A related development to structural Marxism is "genetic structuralism", the
approach devisedby the Franco-Romanian theorist Lucl n Gldmann
(1913-70). Geneticstructuralism
positsthe existence of
parallels - or "homologies"
in Goldmann's terminology -
between literaryworks and
certain influential social
group~ .operating at the
time of"those works'
production.

. In my study,
The Hidden:God (955), Iestablished
such paf~lIels ' between th~ philosophy of
Blaise Pascal 0623-62) and the
plays of Jean Racine
(1639-99) ...

82
Rather than beingjust a reflection of the views of such groups, the greatest
literature mightbe seen as a coherent articulation of what was otherwise
"vague and confused" and contradicted by innumerable othertendencies"
within the particular groupin question.

The novel form, too, argued Goldmann, featured such homologies. He

followed his majorsource of Marxist critical influence, Lukacs, in tyingthe
novel closelyto the rise of bourgeois culture and the spreadof the capitalist
economic system.
~o#:..
W Reader-Response Theory
Before goingon to consider the reaction to structuralism in the latterdecades
of the 20th century, we shall take a brief sideways detourto consider
anotherform of theory which, like Barthes', emphasized the reader's role:
reader-response, or reception theory as it is sometimes called. Key
figureshere are the German theorist Wolfgang lser (b. 1926)and the
American Stanley Fish (b. 1938).
,r,

Iser assumesa greatersense of interaction between text and reader,

whereby the text pushesthe readerin certain directions and the readerfills in
any gaps left in the text.
84
Even Fish's ostensibly more radical approach is tempered by the insistence
that the reader is a memberof an "interpretive community" whose shared
values inform individual readings, as well as providing a criterion for
assessing their validity. Reader-response or reception theory is not a
particularly contentious form of critical theory.

/1
/ '
/ ..I! .
; ,//,y
/ . ,
If .l " . .-1./.
_, II "
#' ~~ .'
... r .
In that world, we can no longer take our everyday assumptions about the
self, language and meaning for granted. From poststructuralism onwards,
critical theory becomes muchmoreself-consciously counter-cultural, and, lefs
admitit, difficult. Timeto takethe plunge ...
 Poststructuralism: the Breakdown of Sign- UJ
'<
Structuralism went too far as an all-embracing form of analysis, !
apparentlyable to explain anything and everythingabout human CD
affairs and the world around us. Everything became a sign-system - 3
in fact, nothingcould escape being part of a sign-system. In

86
Poststructuralism arose in the late 1960s and covers a wide range of
positions. All of them are agreedthat the system-building side of structuralist
analysis has many critical flaws. Systems only
explain everything by
frequent recourse to
suppression or omission
.of "rogue" elements.
Whatever does
not fit the system is
either discorded as
irrelevant or recoded
to force itto fit.

To the poststructuralist
mind, this was
authoritarianism in
action. It set out to
undermine this
position, introducing a
note of radical
scepticism intocritical
theory. It has been a
noteworthy
characteristic of critical
theory, as it develops,
to find authoritarianism
in the methodsof its
immediate
predecessors.
Uberation from
oppressive regimes,
intellectual and
political, is increasingly
what we are being
offered.
 Poststructuralist Deconstruction
Arguably the most influential branch of poststructuralism, and definitely one of
its most sceptic, has been deconstruction, as practised by its leading
exponent Jacques Derrida (b. 1930). Derrida's early work constitutes a
sustained attack on the structuralist founders - Saussure and Levi-Strauss
in particular. To his mind, structuralism is both authoritarian in manner and
based on questionable philosophical premises.

Derrida argues that the standard conception of meaning in the West

depends on an assumption of a "metaphysics of presence", ~at is, ~the full
meaning of a word is held to be "present" to the speaker, or writer,-in their
mind, as they use it. He has named this assumption log-ocentrism (logos in
Greek has the sense both of "word" and "reason").
88
Differance and Meaning
Such transparent presence of meaning can never be achieved, according to
Derrida, because of the action of ditierence. He made up this word in French
to describe the process by which meaning "slips" in the act of transmission.
Words aJways contain within themselves traces of other meanings than their
assumed primal)' one. It would probably be better to talk of a field of
meaning rather than a precise one-to-one correspondence between word
and meaning.
Afield that,
critically enough, can never
be bounded - because there is
always a "surplus" of meaning
atany one point.

In deconstruction, we move from system-building to systern-dlsmannlnq.

Derrida's major concem is to direct our attention to the many gaps in our
systems of discourse which, try as we may, we can never quite disguise.
Deconstruction is a philosophy which very self-consciously sets out to
deflate phUosophical pretensions about our ability to order the world.
89~
 The Order of Things
Michel Foucault (1926-84) is another French thinkerwho reacted
against the formal rigidity of structuralism and its insistence
that everything be neatlyclassified in terms of its
system-bound role. Foucault deepened Gramsci's
inquiry intothe problem of hegemony.

For him,the creation of such systems implied the

marginalization and exclusion of certain vulnerable social
groupsin the"nameof "order". The fate of such groups
became the central concem of Foucault's historical inquiries:
the hiddenagendahe was determined to bring to the
surface. He delved into the "unconscious" of power.

knowledge -----.. classification

power - - - - - - . . marginalization

order - - - - - . . . . systemized control

 -The Rise of Scientific Discipline
Foucault's ,Madnessand,Civilization (1961) describes how the mentally 81,
wereremoved to asylunlS'thatfonnerly housed lepers. From the 17thcenfury
onwards, this was the "GreatConfinement".

.. ~~'..
r6! ••
.~

•
. ~. .. ..
~h~
flf,.
~

DIscipline and F!L!nish (1975) traced the rise'of the modem prison service;
The Birthofths 'Clinic -(1963) of modem-rnedlcine.ln all three ~, -we
arewitnessing the rise of "scientific" fonnsof.social control byth8 authorities.
Thelivesof indMduaisareto be strictly regimented.
92
Foucaulfs three-volume Historyof Sexuality (1976-84) examined the
process by which homosexuality (an unexceptionable form of sexual
behaviour in classical Greece) was gradually outlawed by Christianity, until
it was turned into a criminal activity.

Heterosexuality became the norm (and is still largely perceived to be so to

this day), with all other forms of sexual expression being treated as
deviations from that norm.
 Uncovering the Hidden Di'scourse
Foucault·descri.bed his historical researches'as'''archaeologies'' or.
"genealogies~, designed,tobringto lightsuppressed discourses 'ln
Western .society~

What weare studying in each case of knowledge,.power and order is a

particular "dlscourse"which~ ' at base" is structured'on~power;relatiQns~'As we
shallsee,new historicism and cultural materialism hav9.proosdd to··draw
heavily on that notion.
94
The End of Humanism
There is no such thing as a universal "human essence" for Foucault.
Behaviour, ethics, discourses and societies can - and all do - change over
time. Nor is there any pattem to human history, no sense in which we are
progressing - for example, to some Marxist utopia. (Foucault rejected
Ma.rxism after dabbling with it earlieron.) Indeed, Foucault regarded our
conception of "man"- that is, the liberal humanist vision of the individual as
the possessorof certain inalienable
natural rights- as a very
recent invention.

0
0 / )

:r\) -c:
~ ..
'~( :.:.::::.
... I"~

..."
~

~ "' ~o

Foucault's vision of the human race was one that stressed difference rather
than common elements. He continued to campaign for marginalized social
groups - homosexuals, prisoners and ethnicminorities, for example - until
the very end of his life.
95
~
~-------------------------

Postmodemism is a reaction to the

ideology of modernity - the belief that
reason can dominate the environment
around us and by so doing guarantee us
material progress stretching on into the
indefinite future. Modernity as a cultural
phenomenon is usually traced back to the
Enlightenment period in 18th-century
European history, often referred to as
"the Enlightenment projed".

96
Lyotard's "Differends"
'.Jean-Fran90Is Lyotard (1924-99) defined the postmodernist outlookas
~ characterized by an attitude of "incredulity towards metanarratives". He
Imeantopenly expressed disbelief in the ideology or grand narrative
un~erpinning modernity andthe Enlightenment project. Modernity tended to

,; .
. Drtfer~ are . . ~,
" I
involvethe suppression of what Lyotard called "differends".
for example, first
nation inhabitanh disputing
.'rreso~vable ~ISputes In . ~ ~ the property claims of their
which neither Side can accept \~ territory's colonizers without
the terms of reference surrendering their own claims
of the other. in the process.

1 ~
)~~~
~~/!)
~ £.f
'~
\\\
Unlessthese differends are respected, Lyotard contends, we drift into an
\\ ,,\"

authoritarian society in which many voices are simply silenced by the

superiorforce of their opponents - as in the case of most first nation
inhabitants in the "New World" who have found themselves marginalized
and ignored by their colonizers.
97
~-------------
The Postmodern Condition
Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition (1979) might be regarded as the bible
of postmodernism as a critical theory. Its attackon grand narrative - and
championship of marginalized "littlenarrative" - inspired a wholegeneration

,• .
of theorists and has been instrumental in setting the agendafor the
postmodem movement in general.

Narrative only becomesproblematical when it is worked up into a "grar:-d"

fonn that claimsauthoritarian or eventotalitarian precedence overthe
multitude of "little" narratives (individual or smalllocalgroup) that any society
contains. We note here the kinshipbetween Lyotard's idea of "differends"
and the emphasis on difference in Derridaand Foucault. So also his idea of
"constructed narrative" allieshim to Barthes and otherpoststructuralists.
98
Postmodern Science
Lyotard also arguedthat what he called "postmodern science" (quantum
mechanics, catastrophe theory and chaos theory) providesa modelfor us in
our intellectual inquiries. Suchscience was "producing not the known, but the
unknown" - that is, more problems than solutions, as scientists delved
deeperinto the bizarreworldof "anti-particles", "strange attractors" and

/
"deterministic chaos".

~it lrl!'
··: · :::·: ::ii~(>: :~~

In each case, we are confronted with counter-intuitive notionswhich

challenge both our ordinary experience and our concept of logic.
 The Enlightenment, "Unfinished Project"
Manycriticshavetaken issuewiththis rejection of the Enlightenment project.
The German philosopher JOrgen Habermas (b. 1929), himselfa productof
the Frankfurt School of critical theory, is in the forefront. For Habermas,
Enlightenment ideals are still worth pursuing: modernity is an "unfinished
projeer which, for all its flaws, should not be jettisoned.

(ff
~

~r'
'~~~-;\.
~

french poststruduralist ~
~
,-,y )
\ • --...l--
~
\'
\
C°--, ~/yf
i
)~4

thinkers Derrida, faucault and \ f ~ ~'4

Lyotard come in for particular .. r ()
criticism from him on ~
that score.

Habennas defends the notion of consensus which postmodemist theorists

havetumed their back on in their obsession with difference or "dissensus".
The latteris politically suspect in his opinion, promoting division in our culture
ratherthan a pragmatic approach to socio-political problems.
102
The Problem of Value Judgement
Poststructuralist and
postmodemist critical
theory sets many
unresolved problems
regarding value
judgement. Lyotard is
one of the few figures
from that camp to
engage with this issue
in some detail. Value
judgement becomes
problematical in any
system of thought

,,
which questionsthe
validity of our
foundations of
discourse, sincethis
tends to lead to a self-
defeating relativism ...

... if all trufh is

relative, then does that
statement itseK become
relative in its tum?
 Paganism or
Benthamism
Paganism demands
that we make each
judgement on a
"case-by-case"
basis with no
over-arching
system of rules
to guide - or in
any way constrain -
our deliberations.
"Thejudge worthy
of his name has no
true modelto guide
his,judgements",
Lyotard argues.
"Thetrue nature
of the judge'is to
pronounce judgements,
and therefore prescriptions,
just so, without criteria."

Bentham's ''felicific calculus" prescribes alwaysperforming the.action that

leadsto "the greatesthappiness of the 'greatest number". The Ten
Commandments (''thou shalf or "thou shalt nof', regardless of consequences
or happiness) are out.
104
Postmodernism in the Service of Capitalism
Fredric Jameson (b. 1934) argues that postmodemism'sswing
away from generalizing "grand narrative" theory serves the cause
of capitalism. For Jameson, postmodemism is less a theory in its
own right than a symptom of our currentcultural impasse, in which
all opposition to capitalism is being systematically eradicated.

The old order's commitment to

competing grand narratives -
socialism versus capitalism, for
~ example - can now be
~ Jdiscarded. As Jameson points
out, this simply leaves us
defenceless against the power of
globalcapitalism. Jamesonstill
believes that the Marxist analysis
of historyis the correctone, and
that a "new international
proletariar will eventually emerge
to overcome late capitalism and
its postmodem theories.
The "Case-by-Case" Event
My refusal to adopt a set ...can also be seen atwork
system of belief... in my concept of
the "event".

There is no underlying
paHem or purpose to
existence ...

. What we should reject is any

scheme such as the Marxist -
~------
W Techno-science and the Inhuman
In Lyotard's view, ~
the future is always
"open". He is deeply
opposedto all
attempts to foreclose
this openness in any
way. The
"openness" in
Derrida's
"deconstructionist"
criticism is verysimilar
in this respect. Hence
Lyotard's break with
Marxism, and hence Lyotarddubbed this
alsohis criticism in process a move
laterlifeof the forces towards "the
of 'echno-science", inhuman". He called
the new technology on humanity to resist
as appropriated by this latestattemptto
the multinationals. eliminate difference
fromthe world.
Computers - unlike
human beings - are
entirely predictable
and controllable -
and not much given
to revolution against
the authorities either!

Strangely enough,
however, certain
feminist theorists - most
notably Donna Haraway
(b. 1944) and Sadie Plant '
(b. 1964) - have welcomed
the new technologyas
a means of redrawing
the gender map and
breaking the pattem of male
superiority in our culture.
 o

"I'd rather be a 0
o
~ll;! 'I'·
·,II!'ill'f
cyborg than a 0 ~. l~'t,:
goddess", as ~\
Haraway .~ .
provocatively •
declares. sOmeCriti.C.,SCS
. ../ ....
from within the ~~
feminist movements
have been just
as unhappy
as Lyotard
about such a
move away
fromthe realm
of the human.
One might
see a "new humanism"
developing at such points,
to replacethe old
discredited one with its
emphasis on competitive
individualism.
 The Sociology of Seduction
In a move similar to Lyotard's, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
encourages us to use "seduction" on systems as a method of undermining
their "masculinisf assumption of authority.

- ...=-....-..--The notion is
that systems are
inheren~y brittle and
retain authority only
as long as we treat
them as having
t authority.
Once you lose your-fear of systems, they lose any hold they had over you -I
systems can be "beguiled". It would be nice if it were that simple, although in ,
practice it rarely is. One wonders how one would go about "beguiling" the
police forcel
110
Against the Marxist Fetishism of Production
Baudrillard'swork has been just as harsh as Lyotard's on the grand
narratives of our time. Marxism is dismissed, for example, for having an
obsession with production that rivalsthat of capitalism at its worst.
 A World of Hyperreal Simulacra
Baudrillard contends that we now inhabita world of hyperreal simulacra.

He is attracted insteadto "signswithoutreferents, empty, senseless, absurd

and elliptical signs". The future is not so much open here, one might say, as
empty.
112
Disneyworld America
To seek out "signs without referents" is to reject discoursessuch as Marxism
and to render value judgements, politicalas well as aesthetic, more or less
pointless. That does seem to be the message coming out of Baudrillard's
later work. Value judgement is criticized in his study America (1986) as an
essentially European preoccupation that belongs to the past.

))

Any nostalgia we
-...
feel for this is misplaced.
The attradion of America
is that ithas left such
considerations behind.

Postmodern America has gone beyond meaning into the realm of the
"hyperreal". Baudrillard even speaks of the desirability of the "extermination of
meaning" by means of "theoretical violence" - which certainly brings the
nihilism of his thoughtto the fore. Unless, of course, his rhetorical
exaggerations are meant to provoke our reactions.
113
 When Did Postmodernism Begin?
Postmodemism has also drawn extensively on the work of the American
architectural theorist Charles Jencks (b. 1939), who provocatively argued
that modemism died at the precisetime that an award-winning example of
modernist architecture, the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St Louis, Missouri
(a fairly typical "new brutallsr' project of tower blocks), was demolished.
The Double-Coding of Postmodernism
Jencks is a notablecritic of this modernist new brutalism who claimsthat
architecture should be able to work on several levelssimultaneously,
appealing to the generalpublic no less than to the architectural profession.

The aim was to satisfy both one's peers and the public by mixing together
past and present styles in .a synthetic fashion. That has since become a
very widespread architectural practice, as a glance around almost any
Westem city today will readily reveal.
~
W Postmodern Pastiche and Irony
Much of postmodemist art and literature hasadopted Jencks's principle of
double coding. The ideaisto "mix-and-match" familiar forms indeliberate
pastiche quotation rather than experiment formally inthe manner ofthe
modernist movement. Painters have gone back to representational art,
authors to"realisf'-style novels - often consciously imitating the linguistic
register ofthe past, as in the novels of Peter Ackroyd .)" )' "..".-~:

that one d~~~;:~:th~e;:~~in amount (b. 1949). \~ .~i9,·:;_5.;~..,/:_~

of irony.which acknowledges the difference
between the cultural contexts of the
past and the present.

.,.(\
..
Cti ..J
; ~

Even inthe realm of postmodern theory we can see such principles at wOl1<:
The new historicists - coming shortly - tryto establish a sense of dialogue
with older forms of historicist thought.
116
 Anti-Oedipus and Schizoanalysis
On the wilder shores of postmodernism we find Gilles Deleuze (1925-95)
and Felix Guattari (1930-92), whose Anti-Oedipus (1972) is an attack on
the conceptof authorityin general and the allegedly authoritarian theories of
Marxism and Freudianism in particular. Psychoanalysis for them is a
repressive systemwhichforces individuals to conform to restrictive social
norms of behaviour. Deleuze and Guattariput their faith instead in
"schizoanalysis". .

:: " :.~"

"Oedipus" becomes Deleuze and Guattari's shorthand name for the

complex of social and institutional pressures by which psychoanalysis tries
to make us conform and repress our desires. NeitherFreud nor Lacan comes
out of this exercise particularly well. ~
~ 117
 Anti-Oedipal Networks -of Co'mmunication
In Anti-Dedipus and
its sequel,: A
Thousand'Plateaus
(1980), Deleuzeand
Guattariunleash a
seriesof strange
concepts designedto
undenn"ne our
standardworld-view-
"desiring-machines",
"bodJes.without
orgari$", "rhizomes"
and"nomadic
thoughf, f~r example"

"Bodjeswithout
organs" are part of the
process by which
d~si~ is repressed.
'Capital, forinS1ance,
constitutes ~8",body
wlthoutorgan§'of
,capitalism: thetis, its
'sterile and-· .
unproductiveI

component. ~
118
 "Rhizomatic structures"
are put forward as the
basis for developing
new networks of
communication. Their
attraction for Deleuze
and Guattari is that
they operate in a non-
hierarchical manner.

This opens up exciting

creative possibilities in
the way that itbypasses
established hierarchies.
The Internetis viewed
by its enthusiasts as
having a similar
rhizomatic formof
operation. We also
find echoes of the
rhizome conceptin ..
Eco'ssemiotic"nef
r" and "labyrinth".
,iI•
~
•W.lHllllU,- Rhizomes were also
/ the favoured model of

~~
c. .~
,I.'. , thinking for the

~
,,- philosopher LUdwig
:;"It Wlttgensteln

~ t "-
l ~ ~ (1889-1951).

119
 ....
~-----------------------
~ ~~~
"Nomadic thoughf becomes the idealfor Deleuze and Guattari. It is tied to
no particular system or sourceof authority. Authority for them is inherently
territorial and thus is the enemy of desire, which does not respect the concept
of boundaries.

Which is to say that nomads simply·ignore authority- much in the way that
Lyotard is exhorting us to do in The Postmodem Condition by ceasingto
pay any attention to fixed.grand narrative territories.
120
Post-Marxism: The Breakdown of Marxism
By the later 20th century, Marxismbegan to lose support in the West. The
brutal legacy of Communisttyranny in the Eastern bloc and Asia constituted
an increasing source of embarrassment to the Western left. A position
known as "post-Marxism" was gradually developed. In practice, it involved
a rejection of most of the
tenets of orthodox
Marxism ...

''There is
no need to
criticize Marx,
and even if
we do criticize
him, it must
be understood
that it is in no
way a critique ...
we laugh at
critique", as Lyotard
dismissively
noted in Libidinal
Economy (1974).
Thereis not
much nostalgia
in the attitudes
of Foucault or
Baudrillard either.
121
 A Post-Marxist Answer to Capitalism
Post-Marxist theorists such as Ernesto Laclau (b. 1935) and Chantal
Mouffe (b. 1943), on the other hand, deliberatelydraw on a wide range of
poststructuralist, postmodernist and feminist thought-to'attackthe evils of
capitalistsociety. They adopt a very pragmaticattitude towards the
construction of a new theoretical synthesis that builds on the liberationist
idealsof Marxism.
New social movements
around the globe - ecological, ethnic,
sexual, feminist - indicate that Marxism
has been bypassed.

A fresh approach was desperately needed if the onward march of

capitalism was to be countered at all.
122
Laclau and Mouffe'scontroversial study Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
(1985) constituted a rallying cry on behalfof these new social movements,
more worthy of supportby the left than the out-of-date socialist programme
of orthodox Marxism committed to centralized parties and trades unions.
 The Failures of Marxian Theory

124
 Beyond Doctrinaire Marxism
Post-Marxists in general rejectthe doctrinaire qualityof orthodox Marxism
which demands unswerving unity of thought and belief - as symbolized by
the Communist Party - and almost pathological dislike of spontaneity and
individualism. The call is for a much more pragmatic approach to cultural
problems, free of the preconceptions of orthodox Marxistthoughtwhich
refuses to countenance any tinkering with its basic philosophical categories.

Such ideas, floated by many post-Marxist thinkers, have outrageddoctrinaire

Marxists. Post-Marxists, on the other hand, want to retain the spirit of
Marxism without any of its messy historyof failure (to most of them) or
authoritarian bias.
126
 The Spectre of Marx

'Marx has himself become a

"spectre" we cannot expelfrom our
consciousness or our culture. His
legacycontinues to hold important
lessonsfor us. Derridaarguesthat
there will be "no future withoutMarx" .

.. the multinationals are verY much in control. Political oppression is still rifetoo.
~. Its continued existence callsfor.principled resistance from the left,just as it did
in Marx's day.
127
 A Plural Marx

.
1

But this is to be a much looserformation than the Communist parties of old.

• Derridadismissesall the works of the Party"dogma machine"for having
I distorted Marx's originalmessage of liberation.

128
The "End of History"
 Oneof the mostthought-provoking figures in post-MarXism the .is
Slove~'lian cultural criticSlavoj Zlzek (b. 1949). He challenges the
assumption that ideology is a "conspiracy" by counter-proposing that
we are all as individuals complicit in the operation of ideology. Zizek's
idea is that we are well awareof the gaps and contradictions in our
. id~~ogy. We just turn a blind eye to them mostof the time.
Rather like Lyotard, it becomes a case of withdrawing one's support
and waiting- or at least hoping- for the systemto collapse, Again, it
would be nice if it really were that simple. Zizek's criticism does at least
havethe merit of "empowering" ordinarypeoplewho are otherwise
seen as helplessly in the control of a political elite.
 The New Historicism
Poststructuralism and postmodemism are essentially anti-historicist theories.
They deny the existenceof any "grand" patternto history regarded as ~
steady progresstowards some distant goal. But there was a return of sorts
to historicist thoughtin the latterdecades of the 20thcenturywhichtook the
fonn of "newhistoricism".

Historical periods are treated as powerstruggles that leavetheir "imprinf on

allthe artistic production of theirtime. Thereis an echoof Marxist "reflection
theory" here, discussed earlier, although of a muchmore sophisticated variety
than Plekhanov's crudelymaterialistic one.
132
The leading American new historicistcritic Stephen Greenblatt (b. 1937),
with his books Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980) and Shakespearean
Negotiations (1988), influenced the development of critical .theory in the Anglo-
American world. Greenblatt'swork on Renaissance literatureemphasizes
that such material is caught up in the power strugglesof its time.

A much-imitated aspect of Greenblatt's analytical method

is the juxtaposition of literaryand non-literary texts in order
to exposethe power strugglesof the time: a police report
alongside a Shakespeare play, for example.
133~
~--------­
~Cultural Materialism

Both Sinfield and Dollimore have also been very active in Shakespeare
studi~. They argue stronglyfor a politicized reading of the plays, as
opposed to the more conservative notion of Shakespeare as a universal
geniusfar abovethe mere concerns of ideology (still a very prevalent notion
in Britain).
134
 A Politicized Shakespeare
~
~
Foucault is a clearsource of influence in suchstudies.
 The Theory of Postcolonialism

This is an area "beyond", where normal Western moralityand rationality

cease to apply. A desire for decadencecan be indulged. But there is also
something to be feared in this "uncontrolled" area.
136
The West has deliberately "infantilized" the East. It has done so not only
ideologically but as an excuse precisely to exert political control over the
East. "Orientalism is a Westem stylefor dominating, restructuring and having
authority overthe Orient."

" .,
, ~.~i. ,i
A Palestinian himself, Said has been a leadingvoice in the movement for
Palestinian self-determination, and a severe critic of Israeli state policy
towardsthe Palestinian people.
 Fanon's Anti-Colonialism
Said has drawn on the pioneerwork of the psychiatrist and politicaltheorist
Frantz Fanon (1925-61). Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952)explored
the ways in which the black colonized races internalized the ideas of their
whitecolonizers.

Fanon's Wretched of the Earth (1961) uncompromisingly defendsviolencein

the cause of overthrowing colonialism. The revolution in Algeriaagainstthe
French in the 1950s and 60s became exemplary of what was needed.
Fanonwas an active member of the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN)
at the time.
138
Poststructuralist Hybridity

That notion of "something else besides', with its anti-essentialist overtones,

indicates the poststructurallst influences on Bhabha's thought.
 Subaltern Studies
Gayatrl Chakravorty Spivak (b. 1941) is'a leading member.of the Subaltem
Studies group at Delhi University. She is best known for havingintroduced
poststructuralist theories - especially Derrida's deconstruction - into
postcolonial debate.

...... .~.ilJ1'tI.fIl'"~,~~~ ~
~\:\
•..~~ . ,,:i.~~I~~'
.. , '7JAJ Iy J•
• . ~!;! J'. ' 'Jf'~
. .~ hj '!J''''
•
~ .. ~
As one of Spivak's essays puts it, "Can the subaltem 'speak?~ The
concept"subaltem" was first definedby Gramsci in 1934; the New Delhi
groupuse it for the Indianpeasantry doublyoppressed; first by colonialism,
then by India'sown political elite.
140
Ithas demonstrated
awell-honed ability to
absorb what it wants from
awhole range of other
theories - Marxism,
deconstruction,
postmodemism, etc. -
while still pursuing a
clearly-defined agenda
of its own.

And, in critical
terms, the challenge '
that can be created to
male domination in
areas such as the arts
by the construdion of
afemale "canon"
of works.
~-------
A Feminist Literary Canon
Literary "canons" of Great Workshave generally been weighted in the past
towards malefigure$. Feminism's challenge has led to the recovery and
subsequent republication - often for the firsttimesince the original edition - of
a series of novels by hitherto neglected female aUthors of ·t~e 18thand 19th
centuries. Two such works of recovery are Dale Spender's (b. 1943)
'Mothers of the Novel: 100Good Women Novelists beforeJaneAusten
(1986) and Elaine Showalter's (b. 1941) A Literature of their Own:British
Women Novelists fromBronte to Lessing (19n).
This campaigning
zeal reclaims women's
J·
tv

It. 01 \ tJ "forgotten" past •..

142
 Feminism and Marxism
So-called"second wave" feminism from the 1960s and 70s onwards has
adopted a significantly more militantstancetowards patriarchy than the "first
wave"did. Such militancyhas often involved heavy criticism of Marxism,
heldto be in league with patriarchy, if only unwittingly. The American feminist
Heidi Hartmann (b. 1945) famously spoke of ''the unhappy marriage
fe~ between Marxism and feminism".

~~
(A~)
nnn ~;.-~
., 0
-J oP

Although Hartmannwas still hopingthat an accommodation could be

reached, somehow or other, Marxismhaving its positivepoints, several of
her contemporaries act as if the divorce has already taken place - and not
before time!
143
~o
J::.
~
Post-Marxist Feminism
Marxistfeministsthemselveshave become increasingly critical of Marxism in
the last few decades, and, while acknowledging the theory's scope and
power, have come to regard it as a bastion of patriarchal attitudes holding
back the cause of women.

Marxism's tendency
is to subordinate gender issues
to what itsees as the most important
socia-political considermion overall -
the class sbugg!c.

Feministthought now generally has a "post-Marxist" bias. It is no longer

willingto wait until the "revolution" comes about for gender issuesto be
addressed seriously. Some feminists have even gone so far as to argue
that the revolution is unlikely to happen at all unless gender issues are
resolved first.
144
The Theory of Gynocriticism
Amongthe significant theoristsof second-wave Anglo-American feminism, as
far as the development of criticaltheory is concerned, we might instance
Elaine Showalter, Kate Millett (b. 1934), the team of Sandra Gilbert (b.
1936) and Susan Gubar (b. 1944), and Ellen Moers (b. 1928).

£~~

f(
)j~2«~~ ~, )
rl! ~\ t~ ..
( l .....
~

(!()~6~~rb

"Gynotexts" should be
the subject of our attention -
narratives which deal specifically
with women's exp.erience.

The main concern of the gynocritic is to trace "the evolution or laws of a

female literary tradition". The clear intention is to revise cultural historysuch
that women are brought in from the marginsof discourse where patriarchy
historically has tended to banishthem.
145
~---------­
Against Patriarchy
~

, I ~
~

,
I

.~

'i, r
~
~ i
The work of Juliet Mitchell (b. 1940), Psychoanalysis and Feminism
(1974), is a particularly notable"return to Freud"from a critical
theory perspective.
146
Freud remains something of a battleground in feminist theory. It is still very
mucha live issuewhetherhe furthers or retards the cause of women. Millett
also emphasized the patriarchalist role played in literature by such novelists
as D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Norman Mailer (b. 1923).
Su'ch writers
fypically presenf negative
images of women as necessarily_
subordinate to
the male.'

Literature has in fact becomeone of the prime sites of secondwave feminist

research, and the representation of women one of its key concerns.
147
~ The Surplus Woman
The team of Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in theAttic (1979)takes
as an image of "subordinate woman" the"case-history" of Bertha Rochester
in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre (1847). She issymbolic ofwomen's
vulnerability ina patriarchal society: a vulnerability felt no less byfemale
authors than bytheir readers. ._..,,.,..."',.. ,... ~.~ ...---- - ~_.HlIZi
"· : ·_ · ~...-.~
.- .;;:-~;::~~~._.. ~.~.:. ~~;~ ;z7:~~~~~~" .:.~~ . :~.~'d.':.:..-; ~_ -

The madwoman intheattic comes to stand forfemale experience ingeneral

under thedominion of male power.
148
Against the Male Canon
Ellen Moers's study Literary Women (1978) is also representative of the
growing desire in Anglo-American feminism to construct a canon around
women authors. Her concern - as with Showalterand Spender- is to
establish a specifically female literarytradition that breaksthe male

,. .
stranglehold on the canon.
The differences between the sexes
are such, it would seem, that they can
hardly talk to each other any more.
Cixous does allow that certain male
writers - Jean Genet (1910-86) most
notably - may aspire to the condition
of ecriture feminine.
151
 The Undecidable of ecriture feminine
Adifficulty with (ixous's conception of ecriture
feminine is the sheer vagueness of the term itself. It is impossible to
define afeminine practice
of writing, for this practice can
never be theorized.

152
Does Difference Lead to Separatism?
Luce Irigaray (b. 1932) has been a particular proponent of difference
feminism. Women's identity is for lrigaray, unlike men's, very diffuse~._-.I
Ecrirure feminine
~-~~~~----./ is designed to capture
It is useless, then, to trap women in this diffuseness and
the exad definition of what they mean. difference.
And the same goes for ecriture feminine.

~;,

i ,J.t \~ J ', . tYlt .'. ( ~1. ~

The most logical conclusion to such a belief is separatism from men, which
did indeed become a very powerful movement within feminism in the last
decades of the 20th century (with Irigaray being one of its most vocal
champions), although its influence is of late on the wane.
 Two Champions of Modern Feminism
A classic pioneering work, The Second Sex (1949) by Simone de
Beauvoir (1908-86), set much of the agendafor modemfeminism.
Existentialism and Marxism combine in her challenge to societywhich
demands ''feminine'' behaviour from women and "constructs" them in
opposition to men as the assumeddominantsex. There is no biological or
psychological necessityfor this. Becoming a woman means being
indoctrinated into a certain code of behaviour that can be resisted.
 Some feminists, for instance Rosalind Coward,
complain of what they call "womanism": the assumption
that the female perspective is by definition the only correct
one, and thus completely beyond any possible criticism.

The anti-womanisf argument

is a plea for a more inclusive feminism
that does not simply discount the male
perspective altogether.
. . ..... ".-.
.....

I accuse difference
feminism of having allowed
itself to sink into an essentialist
cult of Woman, whereas I want it
to speak for both sexes.
 Postfeminism and Positive Womanhood
We can now even speak of postfeminism. It stands in relation to feminism
much in the way that post-Marxism does to Marxism. The attack on
womanism might be seen as an instance of this phenomenon in action.

Postfeminism represents
a move away from the culture of
vidimhood that has so often been
cultivated by second-wave
feminism ...
A Parallel with Post-Marxism
Although it is at best a loose term, postfeminism represents something of a
backlash against the more doctrinaire forms of feminist thought. But it has
been attacked in its tum for being anti-feminist.
Tania Modleski (b. 1949), for
example, has accused postfeminists of
"negating the critiques and undermining
the goals of feminism - in effect
delivering us back to a
prefeminist world",

The critique of orthodox feminist thought constitutes yet another rejection of

"grand narrative" - in this instance, of second-wave feminism with its
essentialist bias and separatist sympathies. Postfeminists share the
tendency of their post-Marxist, postmodernist and poststructuralist
counterparts to view their predecessors as authoritarian.
 --~~--I: er 'F';Ielry and Sexual Identity
It addresses itselfto the natureof sexualidentity. In
Judith Butler's (b. 'f 956) words.jt attempts"to
destabilize the entiresystem of sex regulation", and
"binaryoppositions such as gay/straighr. Butler.herself
has promoted the idea of genderas "performance": "a
kind of lmpersonanon",
as she puts it. > ' • •

158
Queer theory can be seen as an attempt to break away from the
essentialist arguments of much feminist thought. In fact, it deliberately sets
out to cultivate dialogue, and a sense of common interests, between
lesbians and gay men. -
 Ji.
~a
~
Black Criticism
Blackcriticism is another recent development in critical ~eory witha specific
political agenda to pursue. Likefeminist criticism, it is muchconcemed to
create an alternative canonof writing~ this time basedon blackwriters.

160
One of the most influen~ial figures in this movement has been Henry Louis _
Gates, Jr. (b. 1950). He draws extensively on poststructuralism and
postmodemism in his writings on the African-American literarytradition. In The
Signifying Monkey (1988), Gates argues that there is often a hidden
discourse within black writing itself.

Itis often a case

of authors "saying one
thing" to mean "something
quite other".
 Black Feminist Criticism
Another theoristto make use of poststructuralist-postmodemist thought in this
critical area of discourse has been the black feminist bell hooks (b. 1952).In
her best-known book, Ain't I a Woman (1981), hooks points out that black
women are doubly discriminated againstculturally.

162
Black female experience is seen to be yet another suppressed discourse
which needs to be teased out by the critic. Taking inspiration from
postmodem theory, hookscalls for the construction of a "politics of difference"
in which "multiple black ldentlnes" can be allowed to express themselves.
 Theory is

•
There is a notablyoppositional qualityto both past and recentcriticaltheory
which renders it potentially quite subversive, cUlturally speaking. The
emphasis is on the "critical". A libertarian political agendaof someform or .
Recent critica .other has always been a force behind the scenes.
theory aims very much . ~:: It
to put our culture "under T
the microscope" ...

Rather, it constitutes a principled intervention intocultural politics. Arguably,

the more''theorized'' we are, the more impactour interventions will have. It is
often remarked that "knowledge is power", but we might just as easily say
that "theory is power" too, once you know your way around it.
164
Critical Theory and a Pluralist World

... argues against

the development
of any over-arching
'\.: grand narrative for the
~\,. _ time being.
In that sense, critical theory helps to promote the cause of democratic
pluralism, and is therefore an integral part of the current political scene.
Theory is power. This is not merely an academic exercise for "intellectual
mandarins", but a perspective on awareness and a talent well worth
developing for all of us.
~ Further Reading
00 The
.
. list,below comprises some general introductions to criticaltheoryand to key

~.~ movements within the field.

'-: - .
Barry~ Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to literary and Cultural Theory

00
~ (Manehester: ManchesterUniversityPress, 1995).A well-or.ganiZ8d. user-friendly survey
of the majormovements, with the emphasis on the literaryside of things.

Culler. JOnath.n.'. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Lin. 9. uist

.. Ica and .the
, Study

~ Eagl~to~.
• ~ of .....ratur. (Londonand Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1~75). Cor:np~~hensive
'0 study of structuralism that still holds up well overa quarterof a centurylater." ';',
'-: " :: '

~arxlsm Crltl.~~~m· J~ndO. eth~~.1.

\X1
Terry. a.nd Literary . . n: M
. 97.6).• Solid-and
• • conase Introduction to the field's mostImportant figuresand debates. . ,

;g . Gamble,Sarah, ed., The leen Critic I DIctionary of Feminism and ~Inl.m

(Cambridge:' Icon Books. 1999; shortly to be republished ~y 'Routledge) : < '- . "

~• ~ Comprehensive studyof the ~e.V!I.o~ment o~ feniiniSIthOU9tit,~nd, its~impaCt. ~n . .

'-: contemporary c~lture. completewith extensive glos~ry of key themes and flgu.res..
. .

\X1
Moi. Toril. Sex~allrextual Politics: Feminist Llt~rary,TheolY'~(London: Methuen•
• _0• 1985).One of the first attempts'(i~,'English to captu're,the",fUltrangEi:offemi'nistliterary
c;::. theory. with coverage of both A~glo-American and Fre~ch approach~.

~ Norris,Christopher, The Deconst,:"e:tlye T.u~n O~'~~h: ~~~.' ~, 1~).

.<L
... .. ·ue.' . Spirited
'<.) defence of the value of deconstruction. In pa.rticular the work of Demda. '. . , '.-
'-: , .' . ",' .~:;, .

Sarup. Madan. An Introductory Guide to,~ost~truCtu~II.·rn'.~~d -P981modernl . m

\XJ
~ (Hemel Hem~tead: ~arvester, 1988). Clearexpos!tfon~fttie1n~rp~.~:)O. ,·.c. . e,m.~,·~;'!hese
movements, WIth parbcular reference to the thoughtof Lacan, D8iTJd8~ .foucaUIt. .."

~
- Selden, Raman, and Widdowson, Peter. A Reader'8 GUIc:ht16 Corit' ,'~PorarY· ... .
• ~ Literary Theory (Harvester: Hemel Hempste~d. · 1~~.'~J(reVised· 8dlti~~»;'Hlghly ·regarded
'0 general introduction. muchusedin literature degrees~ ' , " "
'-: ' - . ' " . .

Sim, Stuart. ed.• The Icon Critical Dictl~n~ry of ~Cistinodem Thought'(Carrtbridge:

\X1
••
;g
-
Icon Books, 1998; shortly to be republishedb.Y . o,·~t1edg.e).•,.c. o.. mp~,ehen'. sive ,~tudy of the
., .R
impactof postmodernism on the majordiscourses,of W~ste~tculture. with an extensive
glossaryof the major concepts and figures'involyed'ln pOstmodemism's development.

~
'-: ranging accountof the development of dissenting'
,".. ~.on: Routledge, 2000). Wide-
Slm, Stuart, Post-Marxism: An IntellectuaU:tisto,y (Lon
from the

\X1.
trends ·wi~in~Marxism.

:e::s.:::::: ::U:::s:::::~::f.=::m~etics" in
~. . Oswald Hanfling. ed.• Philosophical Aesthetics: An Intr~ductlon (Oxford:'Blackweli.
1992),pp. 405-39 and 441-71. Two historically-based essaysoutlining ~ . r:t:lajor
~ concepts and concemsin structuralist, poststructuralist and Marxistcritical theOry.

166
Glossary of Terms
Alienation: Many modemthinkers and artistshave claimed that a senseof
®
@~
alienation from otherhuman beings is the natural human condition. Marx, on the other
hand, arguedthat individuals were alienated from eachotherby the dehumanizing ~
processes of industrial labour. ..

ArchaeolOgy: Michel Foucault's termfor his historical researches intothe hidden ®.Q

@
discourses of Western society (such as its suppressed historyof homosexuality). U
The aim of these archaeologies was to showthat Western culturewas basedon ~
powerrelations rather thansuchidealistic notions as truth or natural justice.

Aura: According to WalterBenjamin, the uniquequalitywhichdifferentiates a work of ~

artfrom its reproduction. A critical factorin the development of this aurais the cultural
historyof the artefact itself- its senseof belonging to a certain tradition. ~
BaselSuperstrueture: In classical Marxisttheory, society is made up of an
ecdnomic baseor infrastructure and a superstructure which comprises all otherhuman @
~

®
social and cultural activities. The baseis heldto dictate the formthatthosevarious
activities - religion, the law,politics, education, the media, the arts,etc.- willtake. ~
Body-without-organs: The term used by Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari to
de~c~b~ the co~plex of.forces in our soc~ety which striveto repre~ the expression G)Q
of IndiVidual desire.Capital, for example, IS treatedas the body-without-organs of U
thecapitalist. . ~

@~
®
carnival: Mikhail Bakhtin sawthe institution of carnival as a modelfor subversion of
socio-political authority in the way that it parodied the ruling class. The comicgenius ~
Rabelais was for Bakhtin an excellent example of the application of the carnival spirit
to literary narrative.
G)Q
Chaos theory: Chaos theory emphasizeshow sensitive systems are to changes u~
in their initial conditions, and how unpredictable this makestheirbehaviour. One of
the most disturbing aspects of the theoryis that it allows for the simultaneous ~..

®
presence of randomness and determinism within systems. ~

Class consciousness: The sense of belonging to a specificsocial class, whose

common interestscreate a sense of solidarity in its members. Marxists believethat
whenthe proletariat, for example, reaches an awareness of its exploited status, then q,Q.~

@
thereis the basisfor a social revolution. ..

®
Complexity theory: Complexity theory argues that physical systems can evolve
to higherlevels of development throughspontaneous self-organization. This ~
phenomenon can be seen at work in organisms as diverse as humanconsciousness ..
or the entire universe- possiblyeven withinthe more sophisticated computer
~~ ~
CompUlsory heterosexuality: The contention that heterosexuality is viewed as
the sexualnorm in Western societies, with all othersexual practices beingtreated as
deviations. MichelFoucault, JudithButlerand the queertheorymovement have
~

~~ )-
@
argued that this inhibits the full expression of our sexual natures. ~

167
Lt
Critical realism: GeorgLukacs's.termfor literary narratives that demonstrate how
'61>" the economic system formshuman character. In the caseof capitalism, this is
~ assumed to encouragethe development of competitiveness and self-interest.

£
Lukacs did not require the authorto condemn this practice, merelymakeit apparent
to the reader.
~
~ Cyborg: The combination of human and machine (theterm is a contraction of

Lt
"cybernetic organism"). In the work of DonnaHaraway, this notionis celebrated as a
'61>" way of escaping human, and mostparticulariy gender, limitations.

~ Death of the author: A concept devised by Roland Barthes to describe the

£
process by whichtexts take on a life of their own afterthey leavethe author.
~Lt Henceforth, they becomethe province of the reader, who is in no way bound by
~ whatever the author'sintentions may have been.

Lt
Deep structure: In structuralist theory, systemsare held to have deep structures
'61>" whichdictatehow they operate. Roland Barthes, for example, asslimed an
~ . under1ying structure of rulesto narrative. Another way of thinking of deepstructure is
as something similarto a geneticprogramme.

~ Defamlliarlzation: The processby which literarylanguage rendersthe everyday

~ unfamiliar to the reader. By "making strange" the aspects of our wol1d, authors force

Lt
us to noticewhat we normally take for granted. The concept was coinedby Viktor
Shklovsky.
'61>"
~ Desiring machine: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari see individual humanbeings

£
as motivate.d by the needto find an outletfor their libidinal energy: in their
~ tenninology, as "desiring-machines". Muchof modemsociety, in their view, is
~ dedicated to suppressing this drive.

Lt
Deterritorialization: Gilles Deleuze and FelixGuattari regard institutional authority
'61>" as inherently territorial in mentality. Attempts to contest the boundaries that
~ institutions set therefore countas acts of deterritorialization. Nomadic thought (q.v.) is
~ an example of such transgressive behaviour.

~ Dialectical materialism: In the ~egelian dialectic, thesisgeneratesantithesis, with

~ the conflict between the two resolving itselfintothe creation of a new thesisor
synthesis. Marxtook over this scheme, but located it in the material wortd where it

Lt
manifested itselfin the struggle of one classagainstanother. Resolution wouldcome
'61>" aboutin our own era whenthe proletariat overcame the bourgeoisie.
~

£
Dialogism: Mikhail Bakhtin conceived of meaning as in a constant process of
negotiation between individuals in a givensociety; that is, as "dialogic". Ratherthan
~ beingfixed, meaningis plural and alwaysopento reinterpretation - and the same
~ can be said of any narrative.

Lt~
~
~
Dlff8rance: The neologism coined by Jacques Derridato describethe way in
whichwordsfail to achievefixed meaning at anyone point. Meaningis always
indetenninate to Derrida - both "differed" and "deferred" - and differance is the
movement within language that preventsit from being otherwise.

~ Difference: In poststructuralist and postmodemist thought, difference is always

emphasized over unity,and is takento be an inescapable aspectof humanaffairs.
168
Systems, and texts, are held to be intemallymarkedby difference and incapable of
achieving unity: rather, they lendthemselves to multiple interpretations.

Dlfferend: Jean-Francois Lyotard's tenn for an irresolvable dispute, in whicheach

side starts from incommensurable premises. An employerand an employee
debatingemploymentrights would be one example; colonizer and colonized
debating propertyrightsanother. Traditionally, what happens is that the stronger
side imposesits will on the weaker.

Discourse: In the work of Michel Foucault, discourse constitutes a socialpractice

govemedby an agreed set of conventions. Medicine is a discourse, as is law, or
any academic discipline. Discourses are founded on powerrelations, and function
something like paradigms (q.v.) in ThomasKuhn.

Double coding: CharlesJencks'stenn to describe how postmodem architecture

oughtto work;that is, to appeal to both a specialist and a general audience.
Modernist architecture had signally failed to do so, in his opinion, restricting its appeal
to specialist practitioners only.

Ecriture feminine: French feminists such as HeleneCixousand Luce lrigaray

have arguedthat women shoulddevelopa style of writing uniquely their own, self-
consciously distancing themselves from patriarchal modesof expression. Otherthan
a certain fluidity of meaning, however, it is difficult to specify whatthe styleactually
involves.

Enlightenment project: The cultural movement, datingfrom the Enlightenment

period in the 18thcentury, that emphasizes the roleof reason in human affairsand is
committed to material progress and the liberation of humankind from political
servitude. Modem culture is based on these premises.

Epic theatre: A theory of drama developedby the playwrightBertolt Brecht which

demanded that, ratherthan providing an illusion of real life,theatre should makeits
artifice visibleby "alienation effecf' to the audience. Theatre that did so, Brecht
thought, wouldthen become a critique of the dominant valuesof its society.

Grand narrative: In the workof Jean-Franccls Lyotard, a grandnarrative

constitutes a universal explanatory theorywhich admitsno substantial opposition to
its principles. Marxism is one such example, liberal humanism another, with
ideology in general tending to operate in suchan authoritarian manner.

Gynocriticism: According to ElaineShowalter, the properobject of feministcritics

is textsthat concentrate on femaleexperience, or "gynotexts". The concernof
gynocriticism is to tracethe development of a specifically female literary tradition,
thuschallenging patriarchal accounts of literary history.

Hegemony: In Marxisttheory (particularly the work of AntonioGramsci), hegemony

explains how the ruling class exertsdomination over all other classesby a varietyof
apparent "consensus" means, including the use of the mediato transmitits system
of values.

Heroinism: Literature by female authors in whichthe femaleprotagonists are

placed in situations whichtesttheircharacters and require themto display heroic
169
',
®
beh~vio~r in order to survive. The term was devised by EI~en Moers, for whom
ct,G>. ; 18th~ntury Gothic novels were an exampleof "travelling heroinism".
.~ .

~
~ H_ogl.qss .: tin's ~enn
. 18.: Mikh.ail Bakh , to deSC.ribe. t.he intertextual (q.v.)natu,re of
~ novels~Then~vel ls.avery flexible and open form, capable of~fening t~ a

.
~ multitud~ of cultural discourses. Bakhtin ~w this as subversive sinceit resisted the
-- unify~ng - (that is, conservative) forcesoperating withinmostcultures. .

® G> ; Homology: Lucien Goldmann'swork exploresthe way in which literarytexts can

U. express the~o~d view of certaininfluential social groupscontemporary those
texts. There IS, In other words, a "homology" betweentext and group, with the
~ith

®
iI

fonner a~ulating' 'the latter's beliefs moreclearlythantheycan.

~ Hybridity: The concept of hybridityfigures large in postcolonial theory. For Homi K.

®
. Bhabha,.it representsa condition betweenstates (som~where ~tween working-
Class,.' identityand gender,for example) whose Virtu~ is that it eScapes the controlof
~ eithe~. As such, it has considerable subversive potential.
, ~

®
Hyperreallty: Jean Baudrillard's conceptto describethe conditionbeyond meaning
~ that, forhim, .sums
. up postmodem life. A culturalphenomenon like Disneyland no
~ longer-means at:'Ything: it is neitherthe realthing nor a representation of the past.
-- Rather, it is hyperreal- beyondmeaningor analysis. :

® U
G>
. ~
Ideological Stat. .8 Apparatus: Louis Althusser'sterm for all those institutions, such
as the legaland educational systems, the arts and the media, which serveto transmit
and reinforce the values of the dominantideology.

®
~ Imaginary: In Lacaniantheory., the pre-selfconscious state.~f
young babies ~ged
'-L:I" up to six monthsor so. Lacan identifies this state with the mother,and'we leave it
when we move into the symbolic(q.v.) realm of languageand social existenceat

®
the age of around eighteen months.
G)G)
U.
Inhuman: For Jean-Fran~is Lyotard, all those processes which conspireto
marginalize the humandimen'sion in our world. Exarrlples would includ~ -the growth
iI

~ of computerization, and particularly the development of sophisticated,' and

~ eventually autonomous, systemsof Artificial Intelligence an~ Artificial Life. ,

Interpellation: The process by which ideologymanipulatesus to conform to its

®
values. For LouisAlthusser, it was a case of,ideology"hailing" us::almo~Ji~~ a
~ : policeman callingus to attention. We respond tosuch signs'in reflexfashion, thus
~ revealing how successfully ideologyhas conditioned us.

~
., . Interpretive co~munity: F<>.r Sta~l~y Fi~h,. a~ in.terp~eti~e'~~~"1~nity ~onfJ.t.~utes
.~ the body of scholars workingIn a cntlcal dlsc~plln~ whosecollectIVe practices set the
. -- criteria for interpretation. Thesepractices can changeovertime, and the community

®
might be thought of as similarto Thomas Kuhn'sconceptof paradigm (q.v.).

~. IritertextUalll)': ":- term which~esc~bes t~e way in ~ic~ all texts ~?othertexts,
and are,'as'theonsts sueh'as Mikhail Bakhtln and Julia Kristeva have POlnted.out,

®
iI

"mosaics of quotations" and references from an extensive variety of sources.

~ Linguistic model: Ferdinand de Saussure'smodel of how languageworks'-a.·

systemwith its own internallyconsistent rules or grammar- was appropriated by
170
the structuralist movement which applied it to any and all phenomena. The main
concem of structuralist analysis then became to isolate and catalogue the grammar of
whatever system was being studied.

Literariness: The qualitythat differentiates literary language from otherforms of

language-use. This qualitylargelyderives fromthe highlyself-conscious use of
literary devicesin literarytexts, and according to Roman Jakobson is the proper
objectof studyof literary critics.

Uttle narrative: The oppositeto grand narrative (q.v.), little narratives comprise
groupsof like-minded individuals who attemptto subvertthe power of grand
narratives. Littlenarratives remain at an oppositional leveland refuse to allow
themselves to be turned intoauthoritarian ideologies of the kindthey are rejecting.

Metanarratlve: Another namefor grand narrative (q.v.). Jean-Fran90is Lyotard

usesthe terms interchangeably in his best-known work, ThePostmodem Condition
(19.79).

Metaphysics of presence: JacquesDerridaarguesthat all discourse in Westem

culture is basedon the assumption that the full meanings of wordsare immediately
"presenr to us, in our minds, as we use them. For Derrida, this "metaphysics of
presence" is illusory: meaning is alwaysindeterminate.

Narratology: The study of how narrative works in terms of the relations betweenits ~
structural elements. Structuralists likeBarthes, in theirdesire to establish a general ~
grammarof narrative, reduced narrative to a set of functions, specifying how these q

applied in each literarygenre. ~

Negative dialectics: Both the Hegelian and Marxistdialectic featurea conflict ~

between thesisand antithesis which resolves itselfintothe creation of a new thesis.
ForTheodorAdorno, however, the dialectic failedto resolve its internal
contradictions, with newtheses simplystarting anothercycleof conflict. Dialectics
were negative ratherthan positive in quality.

Nomadism: Thought which does not follow established patternsor respect

traditional boundaries (suchas disciplinary ones). For GillesDeleuze and Felix
Guattari, nomadism is a transgressive activity which challenges institutional authority,
giventhat the latteris invariably committed to protecting its own particular "territory".

Orientalism: EdwardSaid'sterm for the way in whichthe Middle East has been
constructed (by writersand artists, for example) as the "other" to Westemculture. In
the process, the "Orienf' is presented as mysterious, sensuous and irrational:
qualities which tend to be lookeddown upon in the West.

Paganism: Jean-Francoie Lyotard argued that paganism was the state in which
judgements were reached without reference to pre-existing rulesand conventions,
but on a "case by case" basis instead. Judgement in anyone case established no
precedent for another.

Paradigm: A framework of thoughtwhichdictates whatcountsas acceptable inquiry

in an intellectual field. Thomas Kuhnsawscientific history as consisting of a series of
paradigms, each incommensurable with its predecessor, with periodic revolutions
whenone paradigm replaced another.
171
~
00 Pluralism: The commitment to multiple interpretations and the rejection of the notion
of an unquestionable central authority, whether in critical or political matters. Pluralists

~
refuse to privilegeanyone interpretation of a text or ideological position, and
atf encourage diversity.

•0. '
'-:- . .

\Xl
Reaclerly fiction: Roland Barthes's term for fiction which imposes a particular
reading of the text on the reader, and attempts to closeoff altemative interpretations.
19th-eentury novelistic realism, with its carefully worked-out plotsand explicit moral
c;:. messaqes, is a prime exampleof this style of writing.

~ Reception theory: Reception theorists concentrate on the interaction of readerand

,-"0 text (reader-response being anothername for the approach). Textualmeaning is
• seento emergefrom the reader's engagement with the text, with sometheorists

il
••
claiming-thatthe reader is almostentirely responsible for the creation of that meaning.

;g Reflection theory: Reflection theorists assume that artistic artefacts reflect the
ideology of their culture. Thus,for the Marxist GeorgiPlekhanov, the art of a

~
bourgeois culture couldnot helpbut reveal the character of that culture. Art has a
atf
'-:-
ratherpassivecultural rolefrom this perspective.

il
Repressive State Apparatus: Louis Althusser's term for those forces, such as the
police and,thearmy, whichthe ruling classrelies on to enforce its control overa
~ society- by violent means if necessary.

Rhizome: For Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the rhizome becamea modelfor

~a~
'()
'-:-
how systemsidea.11y shoulddevelop. Rhizomatic structures (suchas tubersor
_moss)can make connections between any two pointson their surface; a process
which thesethinkers considered to be inherently creative arid anti-authoritarian.

\Xl
~
Schizoanalysis: Gilles Deleuze and FelixGuattari's attackon Freudian
.psychoanalysis led them to developthe conceptof schizoanalysis. in which
schizophrenia was taken as a modelof howto resistthe methodsof the
~ psychoanalyst. The multiple personalities of the schizophrenic frustrated the
~ psychoanalytic desireto tum us intosocially conformist individuals.

Seduction: Jean Baudrillard's methodfor SUbverting systems is based on the

fJ
notion of "seducing" or "beguiling" them into submission, ratherthan resorting to the
• • moreusualmeansof overtpolitical action or revolution. _

;g . Semiology: Ferdinand de Saussure predictedthe developmentof semiology-

"the science of signs"- in his Course in General Linguistics (1916). Language itself,

~ atf in Saussure's formulation, was a system of signs (q.v.) whichoperated according to

f1
'-:- an underlying grammar. All sign-systems were assumed to work on this linguistic
model.

Semiotics: Although it is sometimesused interchangeably with semiology(q.v.) to

c;:. mean"the scienceof signs", semiotics has also cometo referto the operation of
signsin a given system. Thus, one speaks of the semiotics of film or fashion.

~
atf
'-:-
Sign/Signified/Signifier: For Ferdinand de Saussure, language is made up of
signs, whichconsist of an arbitrary signifier (word) and a signified (concept) joinedin
172
an act of understanding in the individual's mind. The signcommunicates meaning,
which in Saussurean linguistics is heldto be a relatively stable entity.
&
£
Simulacra: According to Jean Baudrillard, signs no longerrepresent some deeper
or hiddenmeaning(such as the classstruggle), but only themselves. We live now in
a world of simulations which have no deepermeaning to be discovered. Disneyland &~
"-

£
is a good exampleof such a simulation. ~ ..
. ~
Socialist realism: An aesthetictheory imposedon artists in the Soviet Union from ~
the early 1930sonwards. This demanded that works of art appealto a popular

&..,
audience and,wherepossible (as in the visual and literary arts), contain an explicit ~
socialist message. ~

Strange attractor: In chaostheory, the underlying force whichcontrolsany given

sy$tem. The weather, for example, is assumed to havea strange attractorwhich --
dictates its patterns. The mostextreme example of a strange attractor is a black ~
hole, whichabsorbs all matterwithwhich it comesintocontact. 9\'
Subaltern: To be in the subaltern ·position is to be in an inferiorposition culturally,
thus subjectto oppression by groups more powerfully placedwithin the dominant
ideology(as women so often are by men, or the colonized by their colonizers). &
~

Symbolic: In Lacanian theory, the statethat succeeds the imaginary (q.v.)at around
eighteen monthsin a child'slife.The symbolic is the realm of language and social
existence. Lacanidentifies it with the "masculine" worldof adulthood. Feminists see £~
~

&
this as the entry into repression. ~
~

Womanlsm: Theorieswhich assumethe superiority of women. The term suggests

a reverse kind of sexism in whichthe prejudice always lies withthe woman's
position. ~ ..

Writerly fiction: Roland Barthes's term for fiction whichdoes not imposea particular
reading of a text on the reader, and which invites altemative interpretations. In
Barthes's canon, modemism is the styleof writingthat best achieves this desirable
objective. .
£~

~Lt
~

The Author The IDustrator

Stuart Sim is Professor of English
Studies at the University of
Sunderland. His books include
Derrida and the End ofHistory and
Lyotard and the Inhuman in Icon's
'Postmodem Encounters' series.
Borin Van Loon has illustrated more
hot dinners than you have eaten
books. He has given physical form to
Darwin and Evolution, Genetics,
Buddha, Eastern Philosophy,
Sociology, Cultural Studies,
Mathematics and Media Studies in
Icon's 'Introducing' series.

173
 Index Coward, Rosalind 155
critical
Guattari.Felix 117-20
Gubar,Susan. 145, 148
. realism 33 gynoeriticism 145·'
AbsoluteSpirit, the ,17 theorydefined39
'academic study 8, 10' criticism. politicsof 5 Habermas. JOrgen .1 02
Ackroyd, Peter 1.16 cultural Hamlet·analys." 62-3
Adomo:,Theodor'39-41, materialism 134 HarawaY" .QQfl~a' 1.0~9
46-8 studies3 Hartrriann, fleidi143
,'alienation 1~ 17, 23, 34, 52, Hege,~ ,9 .W.F. 1 6~ 17, 3~ '
55 Dali. Salvador 69 ' hegemony36-8~ 41, 91', 124
Althusser, Louis 78-9 deconstruction 48, 88-90 heroinism150
;''" _ s18"59 ,,,' , ' 'defamiliarization 55 heterogloSsia 57
architecture 115 Deleuze, Gilles 117-20 historicism~ new 132-3
art 49-51 , Derrida, Jacques 88-90. history
'and Communism 26-9 127-9 ofldeas 2~5
defamiliarization 55 desire 118 and logic 16-17
and formalism 53 dialectical materialism homosexuality 93
and pos~~~ism116 1&:-16 hooks,l)e1l162-3
aurs. theoryof'~9::"51 dialectics 47~8 Horkheimer, Max 39-41
author, the 72~, 74 dlfferance 89 humanism95 '
authoritarianism 87 differends97 human~ies 8-10
avant-garde 45-6 Collimore, Jonathan 134 hybridltf 139 ,
double'coding 115-16 hyp~e8lltf 112-13
Bakhtln,- M~khail 56'
BarrQW,J,ohn Q. ,100 Eco, UmbertoTJ ideas. histOry of 24-5
Bai1hes~ Roland 54. 70-4~ economic determinism 22
ideology9,21,37-8. 78-9
98 , Enlightenment project.the
130
Baudrillard, Jean 110-13 96-102 '
imagi".ry, the (Lacan) 68
BeaUvoir.,SimOne de 154 epic theatre52
,'"'seckett, Samuel35 infrasttucture21
intertextUalltf'76. rt
~njamin. Walter 35, 49-51 Fanon, Frantz 138 lrigaray, ,Luce 153'
Bentham, Jeremy 104-5 Faulkner, William35
Iser, W~~fgan~ 84
"c·Bhabha. Homi K. 139 ' feminism 108-9,.141-57
bin8ry;opposi~ions 90 162-3 Jakobson.Roman 58
black Fish, Stanley84 Jameson.Fredric 106
criticism160-1 formalism 53 Jencks,Chartes 114-15
feminism 162-3 Foucault, Michel37, 91-5. Joyce, James 35
bOurg~isie19 ' , ' , 134 justice 1 ,~5 _
Brecht,'Bertolt 35, 52 FrankfurtSchool39, 49
. SretOn~ Andre 69 Frenchfeminism 151-4 Kafka, Franz34
Bronte. Chartotte81 Freud,Sigmund 60-3, Kristeva.Julia 57, 155
Butler,Judith 158-9 146-7 Kuhn,Thomas 11, 101
FUkuyama, Francis 129
capitalism 18-21 Lacan,Jacques67-9, 76
attacked122 ,.Gates,Henry Louis 161-2 Laclau,Emesto 122-4 -
ideplogy38 ' genetic structuralism 82-3 language·75,,76
Mareuse 42..;;5 :'Gilbert. Sandra145. 148 and'structuralism'64-9
and postmodemism 106, Goldmann, Lucien82-3 'Lenin, VJ. 31
chaostheory 12 ~orz. Andre 125 .,. Levi-Strauss, Claude ~-9,
Cixous,Helene 151-~ grammarof narrative54 - 71
class Gramsci,Antonio36-7 linguistics 65
and Marxism43-4 'grand narrative4,40•.101; : literaryanalysis
struggle.1,~ 1 9. 144 . 106 aesthetics.58-9
Communist Manifesto, 'The see Slso'narrative d8familiarimtion55 '
, 18-21 Greenblatt, Stephen133 formalism53-4
complexity theory 12 ,Greer,Germaine154 plurality of meaning56-7
consensus 102 Greimas. A.J. 54
.' ',':' ....
_~

1'14
literary feminism 150
literature
grammar of narrative 54
see also reader response-
logic 16-17
logocentrism 88
Lukacs, Georg 30-3, 83
Lyotard, Jean-Fran~is
97-101,103,107-8,
120,121
Macherey, Pierre 80-1
Mann, Thomas 34
Marcuse, Herbert 39, 41-6
Marxism 4, 15-59, 107
breakdown of 121
reasons for failure 124-5
and feminism 143-4
inheritances from 23
rejecting 111, 113
schools of 26ft
structural 78-81
Western 26
materialism see cultural
materialism
metaphor 59
metaphysics 5
metonymy 59
Millett, Kate 145,146-7
models, synthetic 6-7
modemism
and Lukacs 30-5
banned in Russia 29
modemity96
Habermas 102
Modleski, Tania 157
Moers, Ellen 145, 149-50
Moscow Unguistic Circle 58
Mouffe, Chantal 122-4
narrative 54,71,74,96-8
scientific 100-1
negative dialectics 48
new historicism 132-3
New Left, the 44
nomadism 120
novel, the 56-7
Lukacs on 32-5
Orientalism 136-7
paganism 103
Plant, sadie 108-9
Plekhanov, Georgi 27
pluralism 165
politics of criticism 5
postcolonialism 136
postfeminism 156-7
post-industrial society 43
post-Marxism 121, 157
posfmodem science 99
postmodemism 114-20
black identity 163
and capitalism 106
grand narratives 96
and postfeminism 157
and science 12
poststructuralism 12, 85-7
deconstruction 88
Prague Unguistic Circle 58
proletariat 19
psychoanalysis 60-1, 117
and critical theory 62-3,
67-9
quantum mechanics 12
queer theory 90,158-9
Rabelais, FranQois 57
reader-response 84-5
reception theory 84
reflectionism 27-8
reflexivity 10
relatMsm 12, 100
revolution 36-7
and capitalism 42
rhizomatic structures 119
Russian formalism 53
Said, Edward 136-7
Saussure, Ferdinand de 64
schizoanalysis 117
Schoenberg, Arnold 46
science 11-14
autonomous or
constructed? 14
postmodern 100
scientific narrative 1 00
Scott, Sir Walter 33
Second World War 40-1
self-consciousness 10
self-realization 16-17
semiology, semiotics 58,65
Barthes 70
Ec077
Kristeva 76
separatism 153
sexual identity 158-9
Shakespeare, William 73,
133
Shklovsky, Viktor 55
Shostakovich, Dmitri 29
Showalter, Elaine 142
sign systems 86
signified/signifier 64-6
signs, science of 65
simulacra 112
Sinfield, Alan 134
social
control 91-2
sciences 8-10
totality 48
Socialist Realism 28
Sokal, Alan 13
Spender, Dale 142
Spivak, Gayatri C. 140
Stalin, Joseph 31
structural Marxism 78-81
structuralism 53,64-83
student protest 44-5
superstructures 21, 26
surplus value 20
Surrealism 69
Symbolic, the (Lacan) 68-9
synthetic models 6-7
systems 75, rt, 110, 131
deconstruction 88
social 91
technoscience 108
texts, analysis of 62
theory of everything 3
Todorov, Tzvetan 54
totality 48
unconscious, the 76
Utilitarianism 104-5
value judgements 4, 8, 103
rendered pointless 113
Western Marxism 26
Williams, Raymond 134
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 119
women, suppression of 140
World Spirit, the 17, 31
Zhdanov, A.A. 28
lizek, Slavoj 130-1
175
Related Introducing Titles
Icon Books
Philosophy
publish a wide
Introducing Derrida ISBN 1 84046118 7
range of titles in Introducing the Enlightenment ISBN 1 840461179
the Introducing Introducing Existentialism ISBN 1 84046 266 3
series which are Introducing Foucault ISBN 1 84046 086 5
directly relevant Introducing Hegel ISBN 1 84046111 X
to the field of Introducing Heidegger ISBN 1 84046 088 1
critical theory: Introducing Kant ISBN 1 84046 081 4
Introducing Marx ISBN 1 84046 055 5
Introducing Modernism ISBN 1 84046 229 9
Introducing Nietzsche ISBN 1 84046 075 X
Introducing Philosophy ISBN 1 84046 053 9
Introducing Postmodernism ISBN 1 84046 056 3
Introducing Romanticism ISBN 1 84046 009 1
Introducing Sartre ISBN 1 84046 066 0
Introducing WalterBenjamin ISBN 1 84046 165 9
Introducing Wittgenstein ISBN 1 84046 118 7

Semiotics and Linguistics

Introducing Barthes ISBN 1 84046 061 X
Introducing Chomsky ISBN 1 840461128
Introducing Unguistics ISBN 1 84046 169 1
Introducing Semiotics ISBN 1 84046 073 3

Sociology and Cultural Studies

Introducing Baudrillard ISBN 1 84046 087 3
Introducing CulturalStudies ISBN 1 84046074 1
Introducing Media Studies ISBN 1 840461144
Introducing Sociology ISBN 1 84046 067 9

Uterature
Introducing Joyce ISBN 1 840461195
Introducing Kafka ISBN 1 84046 122 5
Introducing Shakespeare ISBN 1 84046 262 0

Psychology
IntrodUcing Freud ISBN 1 84046 054 7
Introducing Lacan ISBN 1 84046 168 3
Introducing Psychoanalysis ISBN 1 84046 176 4
Introducing Psychology ISBN 1 84046 059 8

Women's Studies
Introducing Feminism ISBN 1 84046 058 X
Introducing Postfeminism ISBN 1 84046 010 5

Anthropology
Introducing Levi-Strauss ISBN 1 840461470
176