n w o Promotor: Prof. P. Horn Evert le Roux T Course: M.A.(Literary Studies) 1 5 November 1989 e p a C f o y t i s r *****************e************************************* v REALISMi AND ANTI-REALISM n U I IN THE WORK OF GEORG LUKACS ****************************************************** n w The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No o T quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgeement of the source. p The thesis is to be used for private study or non- a C commercial research purposes only. f o Published by the Universit y of Cape Town (UCT) in terms y t of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. i s r e v i n U - 1 - ABSTRACT / This essay sets out to explore Lukacs's views on realism and its polar opposite. anti-realism, in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature. As a Marxist, l , . Lu kacs s v1ews on literature are closely interwoven with his views of society and and social development. This necessitates first looking at Luk~cs's theory of society and history as expressed in the epochal History and Class Consciousness. The essay firstly attempts to present and criticize the central Luka'csian concept of concrete totality. Totality, for Luklcs, is not a static concept but a dynamically evolving, ever-changing idea. However, he tends to view totality as simply a concept of contemplation. Luklcs indicates the proletariat as the subject-object of Western European history. The proletariat is both the object of history, in the sense of being a reified, powerless entity, but must ultimately emerge as the triumphant subject of a historical revolution. The essay then looks at the process of reification to which both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are subjected. Workers are reduced to things and commodities in capitalist society. Man's labour becomes an object which is estranged from him. Luk,cs sees the Communist Party as the embodiment of revolutionary \ class consciousness for the proletariat. The essay then - 2 - turns to the various criticisms of History and Class Consciousness, both by Luk,cs himself and by structuralist critics. One main problem is the possibly totalitarian character of the Marxist state envisaged by Luka' cs. I Lukacs's views on realism in literature dovetail with his notion of the concrete totality. The realist writer transcends the fetishized surface of reality to penetrate to the deep, underlying core of social processes and antagonisms.'The writer creates a moment of totality in his work, a moment when the full complexity of society emerges clearly into view. There is thus a parallel between the procedure of the Marxist scientist and the realist writer: both try to open up a view of totality in a world resistant to such a perspective. Realism unites social essence and appearance in a new, immediate vision • of reality. The essay balances Lukics's traditional concept of realism against Brecht's concern with realism and the alienation effect. Realistic partisanship, for I Lukacs, means a knowledge of the real driving forces of . soc1ety. Luka/ cs repeatedly uses the image of a writer who has penetrated the social "essence" and who has depicted the inner motivating forces of society. Luk~cs's aesthetic demands that negation and critique in great works of art should simultaneously be balanced by an awareness of real positivity and real meaningfulness. - 3 - The essay then points out similarities between Luk{cs's aesthetic and modern idealist literary criticism. Luk,cs's views on reality and the subject are contrasted with Lacan's view on human ontogenesis. / Lukacs's views on anti-realism stand in direct opposition to the function of realism. Anti-realism remains fixated at the level of social appearances, instead of uncovering the essence of the social totality. Luk,cs refuses to see the ways in which modernism might be seen as a penetrating expression of the modern experience of society and history. Modernism fails to represent movements of resistance immanent in capitalism, and the progressive movement of history itself. As a result of the tendency to systematise in his work, Luk£cs negates the modern experience of society and of history. His work can / be criticized for its inability to give historical weight to the experience of alienation in the twentieth century. - 1 - Introduction Realism and anti-realism This essay sets out to explore Lukacs's vie~s of an immanent truth content in literature. The traditional Marxist approach to literature emphasizes that literature is a form of ideology or false consciousness. Ho~ever, the initial aim of this essay is to try to pinpoint the value , that Lukacs finds in literature, its cognitive ~orth inside a frame~ork of capitalist ideology. Literature works against or transcends ideology to penetrate to the essence hidden by a facade of social appearances. An emphasis on the truth content of literature does not mean that literature is hypostatized as inhabiting a timeless, ahistorical continuum of literary autonomy.The particular ~orth of each individual ~ork emerges from its specific position in a socio-historical totality. Although / literature has potential truth value for Lukacs,thus transcending ideology, it cannot transcend its positionality in a particular socio-historical conjuncture of forces and scissions. For Luk~cs, truth value also implies its diametrical opposite - the existence of ideological decadence in literature. This aspect of Lukacs's work falls in line - 2 - with the traditional Marxist view of literature as false consciousness. The second aim of this essay is-to explore Luk~cs's views on "untruth"or "anti-realism"in modernist and naturalistic streams of literature. As a Marxist, Lukacs's views on truth and untruth in literature are closely interrelated with his views of society and social , development. This necessitates first looking at Lukacs's theory of society and history as expressed in the epochal History and Class Consciousness. totality Conc~ete Luk~cs's category of the concrete totality is an essential, intrinsic constituent of orthodox Marxism as a method of dialectics. "This absolute primacy of the wholeJ its unity over and above the abstract isolation of its parts -such is the essence of Marx's conception of society and of the dialectical method''(TE, p.27) A conception of the whole of social interconnections is superior to any factual understanding of its parts , or any bourgeois positivism or empiricism which isolates and atomizes parts of the whole into independent "facts". " . .. der Totalitatsbegriff . .. wird in den spateren Arbeiten Lukacs's- konsequent- verengt auf die Totalitat der gesellschaftlichen Lebenszusammenha.nge. "(Ludz, p. 53) Totality can thus be seen as a specific way or method of - 3 - looking at society - as a particular epistemological position. Facts are not the final reality, but are artificially isolated aspects or moments of the whole: the only effective superiority of the proletariat~ its only decisive weapon is its ability to see the social totality as a concrete historical totality : to see the reified forms as processes between -'"-"·'·"J to see the immanent meaning of history that only appears negatively in the contradictions of abstract forms, to raise its positive side to consciousness and to put it into practice." (RCP~ p.197) Luka/ cs worked against the fetishistic predominance of isolated, empirically viable facts in favour of a vision of the dynamic, complex social whole:" Only in this context - which integrates (facts) into a totality~ can knowledge of facts become knowledge of reality. " (HCC, p.8) The totality has a diachronic and synchronic dimension: it is not only the synchronic whole or all the - 4 - particulars of reality at a given moment, but also a dynamic progression involving a particular trend, its teleology and its results. Luk~cs defines totality briefly as "a total social situation caught up in the process of historical change"(RCP, p,162).It is past and present history : "11arx perceived world history as a homogeneous process, as an uninterrupted process of liberation " I (Lukacs, in Jay, p.105) A global view of totality exposes capitalism itself as a historical and transient phenomenon, and is therefore the vehicle of revolutionary consciousness. "For every genuine 11arxist, there is always a reality more real and therefore more important than isolated facts and tendencies - namely, the reality of the total process, the totality of social development. " (Lukfcs, in Jay, p.122) A static view of Lukacs's totality can be opposed to a concept of totality as a dialectical process of fitting facts into an observed whole, but continually - 5 - changing the whole to encompass new aspects of reality as they come into view. The whole _is continually altered to fit new observations, so that totality arises from a process - it is not as if totality simply existed as a ' , concept of contemplation, in a Lukacsian view. Lukacs tends to hypostatize the totality of history as a given entity in itself, while it is in fact a process which reflexively changes itself. The subject-object of history Marxism is not a of the si~ply ~ere descriptic~ world which is extraneous to its object, but is the manifestation and self-knowledge of a social process inherent in history by which the world is revolutionized. Lukacs hypostatizes the concept ~f totality as a historical agent in an essentially Hegelian manoeuvre. "The totality of history is itself a real historical power - even though one that has not hitherto become conscious and has therefore gone unrecognized ( RCP, p .152) The social process, the immanent meaning of historical development Fhich realizes itself for Lukics is the class conscious proletariat: