Frederic Jameson's "The Political Unconscious" (Book Note)

 

     Frederic Jameson's "The Political Unconscious" emphasizes the primacy of a political interpretation of literary texts. Rather than viewing the political perspective as an optional or supplementary method alongside other current interpretive approaches like psychoanalytic, myth-critical, stylistic, ethical, or structural analyses, Jameson contends that it should be seen as the fundamental framework for all reading and interpretation.

 

Jameson acknowledges that his thesis represents an "extreme position," not only within the broader context of literary criticism but also within the realm of Marxist criticism. He rejects pluralism in favor of political interpretation as the singular, non-negotiable approach. He opposes reader relativism, asserting that the political is not just his own preferred interpretation, nor is it the sole "true" interpretation. Instead, it is the very condition, the foundational "absolute horizon" that precedes any act of interpretation. According to Jameson, any interpretation or literary work that fails to acknowledge that "everything is 'in the last analysis' political" (20) is fundamentally misguided from the outset.

 

Jameson's use of the term "political" is flexible, allowing for a range of interpretations. At times, it equates to "social," as reflected in the subtitle of his book. In other instances, it encompasses the broader concept of "historical." When Jameson speaks of the "priority of the political," he means, firstly, the logical precedence of the society, community, or group over the individual person, emphasizing that the private sphere emerges from the public. Secondly, he emphasizes the precedence of the historical over the instantaneous (or the eternal), highlighting that place is a pivotal dimension within the broader scope of direction and meaning. These assertions are not unique to Marxism, and they demand thoughtful consideration rather than immediate dismissal. Jameson's argument challenges conventional perspectives, inviting readers to grapple with the profound implications of prioritizing the political in the interpretation of literary works.

 

Jameson challenges traditional modes of interpretation by asserting the primacy of the political and the historical over individual experiences and meanings within literary works. Jameson contends that neither the social nor the historical aspects of the political belong to the realm of potential meanings within a work. For example, he argues that novels like "Nostromo" are not fundamentally about political upheaval, nor is "Lord Jim" primarily a tale of courage and cowardice, a moral lesson, or an exploration of existential heroism.

 

Jameson is critical of attempts to uncover a singular, hidden meaning within a work, labeling them as attempts to impose a master code or Ur-narrative onto the text. He sees such efforts as diminishing the richness and complexity of the original narrative. He further criticizes various critical "isms" that identify a specific category of meaning as the ultimate signified of all expressive systems. This absoluteness leads to predictable and uninspiring interpretations, such as Freudian analysis reducing everything to psychological symbolism or structuralist criticism declaring that a work is fundamentally about language.

 

Jameson takes issue with traditional Marxist criticism, which tends to allegorize culture to the point where every artifact is seen as a reflection of class domination or economic production. He argues that this approach negates the need for interpretation, as the ultimate truth is already assumed. For Jameson, the political is not a specific content within a work, but rather a structural framework of social and historical relationships. This framework is composed of relations, not tangible objects, and it is the condition for representation but cannot itself be represented.

 

Jameson introduces the concept of the "absent cause," drawing on Althusser's terminology, to describe how society and history function as untheorized, beyond storytelling, and unthinkable structures that are absent from conscious awareness. He challenges the notion of a cure or a moment of conscious realization, emphasizing that structural domination remains beyond conscious apprehension. This raises questions about how Jameson can assert the existence of the political unconscious when it is, by definition, beyond conscious grasp. This aspect of Jameson's argument may be seen as challenging and provocative, prompting readers to grapple with the nature of interpretation and the limits of consciousness in understanding political and historical structures within literary works.

 

The concept of structure and relation is actually quite easily comprehended, represented, and interpreted. This is something that Jameson acknowledges, but it is also a capacity inherent in every infant. The very first word a child utters, "mama," signifies not an object, but a relationship. The idea that relations are somehow less tangible or present than the objects they connect is ironically a remnant of the very tradition that Jameson rejects. This notion, known as nominalism, traces back to the debate between William of Ockam and Duns Scotus. Its more recent iteration was seen in positivism. Nominalism posits that all things exist as distinct particulars in themselves, fundamentally unrelated. It also asserts that thought, comprised of individual mental images, does not grasp relations. The nominalist tradition, with its emphasis on discrete images of separate objects in isolated entities, stands in stark contrast to the essential Marxist understanding of the primacy of the collective and the historical.

 

 

Jameson, like other Marxist critics, delves into crucial questions surrounding class dynamics, the perpetuation of culture in the context of capitalist exploitation, the inherent contradictions within the works of bourgeois writers, the significance of reading as a privileged activity, and the intricate complexities of ideology and utopia. He approaches these issues by challenging the narrow viewpoint of positivist and "normative critical illusion" when it comes to shifts in style, form, and genre. Instead, he reexamines them  through the critical lens of Althusserian theory, scrutinizing not only the literary radicalism of figures like Lukacs and Benjamin but also capitalism itself.

 

Jameson's analysis of modernism and literary history is characterized by an emphasis on discontinuities, viewing them as successive revolutionary ruptures leading up to a final transformative moment. He also incorporates Lacanian psychoanalysis into his framework, examining texts through the lens of unconscious contradictions—the roots of what he terms the "political unconscious." This approach involves using Lacanian concepts to uncover hidden structures that cha  llenge conventional consciousness and personal ideologies, which may not necessarily be directly tied to the text, the author's life, or their psyche. It's an exploration into the writer's fantasy world, posited to exist beyond the confines of the symbolic order, operating on both "real" and "imagined" planes of relation. This endeavor, however, is inherently complex and may yield elusive results.

 

In the theoretical chapter titled "On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act," Jameson presents a unique development of Marxism, drawing from various Marxist thinkers such as Gramsci, Lukács, Althusser, and Sartre. He addresses common objections to Marxism, demonstrating how they often misrepresent or oversimplify its tenets. According to Jameson, Marxism does not reduce culture to economics, blindly assume the reality of the referent, or totalize without considering the specificities of the superstructure. He asserts that Marxism is not at odds with textualism or formalism, nor is it solely a theory of productivism. Instead, Jameson contends that Marxism is essential to literary interpretation and can benefit from genuine non-Marxist insights.

 

He argues that Marxism has the capacity to encompass and enhance other interpretive modes or systems through a radical historicization of their operations. This means that not only the content of analysis, but also the very method and the analyst become integral parts of the "text" or phenomenon to be explained.

 

Jameson provides a compelling account of how Greimas's structuralism finds its place within Marxist criticism, exemplifying the inclusive nature of Marxism. He outlines a three-tiered approach to literary analysis: the political, which involves studying the symbolic act; the social, which delves into "class discourse" and "ideologemes"; and the historical, centered on the mode of production. The latter serves as the overarching code that encompasses and transcends the others. However, Jameson places particular emphasis on "ideologemes" in the subsequent sections of the book. These are the tactics employed by a text to simultaneously contain and reveal social reality, representing the smallest units of class discourse.

 

While Jameson's theorizing offers significant critical potential, there are some reservations worth noting. For instance, his use of Marxism at times may seem discordant to historians. He makes references to historical epochs or events in a manner that deviates from traditional Marxist approaches. For example, his characterization of "the Medieval system" and the reference to "Thomas More on enclosure" may raise eyebrows among historians and historical materialists. These instances suggest a potential gap in Jameson's grasp of Marxist historical analysis. These anomalies recur throughout the text, prompting questions about Jameson's nuanced understanding of Marxism in a historical context.

 

According to Jameson, Marxist theory stands out as the only radical framework capable of approaching literature in a way that renders it politically relevant, socially contextualized, and historically adequate. He asserts that critics must engage with the world and formulate theories in reference to it. However, Jameson employs a particularly robust use of theory, akin to Marxism, where it serves as an encompassing master code. This, the author argues, is a misstep stemming from an unwarranted assumption about the all-encompassing capacity of reason. No cultural code or social practice, let alone its theoretical representation, can be truly comprehensive.

 

While class struggles and modes of production play significant roles in history, it is a mistake to assume, as Marx does, that all of history can be reduced to class struggle. Similarly, Jameson errs in thinking that the issue is resolved by redefining totalization, following an Althusserian approach, into an "absent cause."

According to Jameson, every cultural text simultaneously fulfills an ideological strategy and a utopian impulse. Even the most manipulative gestures, he argues, contain an attempt to attain universality and envision a better future. By placing culture within the context of the class struggle, Marxism should unveil the ideological content while also recognizing the affirming element. In this sense, thinkers like Northrop Frye and Émile Durkheim, who emphasize the utopian aspect of culture, have valuable insights for radical critics. Jameson contends that the element of collective celebration or festival, inherently utopian, underlies all cultural production, anticipating a classless society. This, he believes, justifies a non-functionalistic Marxist perspective on culture. Jameson aligns with Herbert Marcuse's view in "The Aesthetic Dimension," which posits culture as containing a vision of future happiness that counters the present miseries.

 

Jameson also acknowledges a deficiency in the Marxist concept of ideology related to an outdated notion of subjectivity. The concept of class, burdened with an obsolete view of consciousness, poses a challenge addressed by post-structuralist criticism. Althusser's structuralist correction, Jameson argues, only serves a limited critical function. According to Jameson, a central task for Marxist theory is to reconstruct a "logic of collective dynamics" or a theory of the class subject. Surprisingly, he does not mention the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau, which moves in this direction. Nevertheless, Jameson underscores the need for Marxism to account for the active dimension of class action on a basis beyond "rationality," as Marx may have too optimistically assumed. The experiences of the past century challenge this assumption.

 

 

 

 

Jameson's familiar emphasis on the theological as an ideological model and a source for thinking about technique, he also highlights the importance of continuous reexamination of Hegel. He offers a flexible assessment of authorial strategies of containment and advocates for a range of working methods, as long as they are accompanied by an acknowledgment of historical limitations.

 

However, Jameson would be quick to acknowledge that cultural criticism cannot rely solely on admiration and cautious paraphrasing. The notion of "the construction of the bourgeois subject in emergent capitalism and its schizophrenic disintegration in our own time" is a flawed, albeit prevalent, slogan. A historically accurate interpretation would reveal signs of disintegration from Defoe to the Gothic within the eighteenth century, with references to a form of schizophrenia as an underlying subtext suppressed by the pressure to engage in synthetic rewriting.

 

While Jameson embraces Althusser's emphasis on the totality of structure as a replacement for simplistic homologies, he cannot entirely avoid "expressive causality." This is evident in his adaptations of Hjelmslev, and especially in his commentary on Conrad's use of the visual as an alternative to the Jamesian concept of "point of view" (pp. 99, 231). His process of historicizing cultural categories may, out of necessity, be incomplete. For instance, in his analysis of "magical" narrative, he stops short at the formalist concept of the "donor" as a crucial narrative position (p. 126), without acknowledging the economic content of the hypocrisy and deceit often associated with the "gifts" in fairy tales and legends.

 

A central argument of the book is that narrative is not mere reflection but a symbolic act, a transformation of preexisting materials. While this emphasis is valuable, Jameson occasionally slips into asserting that the specific act in question always aims to resolve contradiction. While this may often be the case, there is a risk of essentializing and rigidly defining the "literary" within a specific location within a revised "total structure." The functions assigned to the literary may in fact be more diverse than that. This suspicion appears to underlie the concluding remarks on the relationship between ideological and Utopian function.

 

The conclusion of Jameson's argument challenges forms of Marxism that rely on the concept of ideology for demystifying criticism. Instead, he advocates for an approach that combines this strategy with a contrasting "utopian" inclination. Jameson acknowledges the valid criticism that the traditional concept of ideology can be overly functionalist. While Marxism often asserts that culture serves the interests of the ruling class and that ideology distorts social reality, Jameson insists on the partial validity of this notion. He suggests supplementing it with a less instrumental understanding of culture.