Terry Eagleton

Criticism and IdeologyGeorge Hsieh, 2002/12/3

Categories for a Materialist Criticism General mode of Production (GMP)

the dominant mode of a unity of certain forces and social relation of material production.

Literary mode of Production (LMP)A unity of certain forces and social relations of

literary production in a particular social formation.

LMP

Different or conflictual LMPs may coexist within a particular social formation.

Ex. “oral” and “written” LMPs

The internal complexity of LMP are constituted by production, distribution, exchange, and consumption, all of which will be function of its modes of articulation with other LMPs

Relations of GMP and LMP

the forces of production of the LMP are naturally provided by the GMP itself, of which the LMP is a particular substructure

the relation between LMP and GMP are dialectical the social relations of the LMP are determined by the

social relations of GMP the social relations of literary production which reprod

uce the social relations of “general” production is historically variable and determinate

Categories for a Materialist Criticism General Ideology (GI)

a dominant ideological formation produced by GMP.

Relations of GI and LMP

GI typically contains certain general elements or structures, which may at a particular historical stage bear significantly on the character of the LMP. Three general structures are linguistic, political, and the ‘cultural’

A literary text is related to GI not only by how it deploys language but by the particular language it deploys

Relations of GI and LMP

Different LMPs may reproduce the same ideological formation. Conversely, the same LMP may reproduce mutually antagonistic ideological formations

The direct control of GI on the literary text is censorship

Categories for a Materialist Criticism Authorial Ideology (AuI)

the effect of the author’s specific mode of biographical insertion into GI. It is never to be treated in isolation from GI, but must be studied in its articulation with it

It is not a simply matter to specify the historical period to which a writer belongs; nor does a writer necessarily belong only to one ‘history’

Categories for a Materialist Criticism Aesthetic Ideology (AI)

a specific region of GI. AI is an internally complex formation, including a number of sub-sectors, of which the literary is one

Relations of AI, GI, and LMP

A GMP produces a GI which contributes to reproducing it; it also produces a (dominant) LMP which in general reproduces and is reproduced by the GMP, but which also reproduces and is reproduced by the GI

GMP

GI LMP

Relations of AI, GI and LMP

The ideology of LMP is itself encoded within AI; it is the effect of a conjuncture between AI and GI.

Reading is an ideological decipherment of an ideological product

LMP

GI AI

Relation of GI, AI and AuI

Authorial ideology may be an important determinant of both the type of LMP and the aesthetic ideology within which an author works

The relation between AuI and GI may be transformed by their mediation in terms of AI

Categories for a Materialist Criticism Text

the product of a specific overdetermined conjuncture of the elements or formations set out schematically above

Towards a Science of the Text

What is the literary text?The text is a production of ideology

Ex. A dramatic production does not ‘express’, ‘reflect’ or ‘reproduce’ the dramatic text on which it is based

The relation between text and production is a relation of labour

Towards a Science of the Text

in what sense is it correct to maintain that ideology, rather than history, is the object of the text? Ideology is not just the bad dream of the infra

structure (false consciousness). It is more like a mesh, which filters other real in order to present the real it carries.

Towards a Science of the Text

For what would it mean to claim that a text was directly related to its history? A text may speak of real history, but even if it

maintains empirical historical accuracy this is always a fictive treatment

History ‘enters’ the text precisely as ideology, as a presence determined and distorted by its measurable absences

Towards a Science of the Text

What is the precise object of literary text? What doest the text ‘denote’? The literary text produces its own object, and

presents itself as its own product. The text’s means of production would include the a

esthetic categories (genres, forms, conventions and so on).

The text’s product would encompass particular themes, plots, character, ‘situations’

Towards a Science of the Text

How does text “concretize” the “abstract”? The text strikes us with the arresting immediacy of a p

hysical gesture which turns out to have no precise object because its fictiveness

Fiction (text) does not trade in imaginary history as a way of presenting real history; its ‘history’ is imaginary because it negotiates a particular ideological experience of real history

Towards a Science of the Text

How does text become “poetic”? Fictiveness is a certain dominance of the signifying

practiced over the signified—so that as the signified becomes more ‘abstract’, putative or virtual, the signifying process is correspondingly thrown into certain relief. The ‘poetic’ discourse is characterized by such a ‘disturbance’ of the normative relation between signifier and the signified.

Towards a Science of the Text

To what precisely constitutes the literary work’s ‘signified’? The signified within the text is its ‘pseudo-real’

—the imaginary situations which the text is ‘about’

Towards a Science of the Text

Criticism on AlthusserAlthusser’s view: Art does not replace

knowledge. What art makes us see is the ideology from which it is born, in which it bathes, from which it detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes

Eagleton’s counterargument: Ideology is not knowledge, it is not pure fantasy either

Towards a Science of the Text

Criticism on AlthusserAlthusser’s Consumer-centredness: it is the

reader who is the final guarantor of the validity of the text

Eagleton’s view: every text can be seen as a ‘problem’ to which a ‘solution’ is to be found; and the process of the text is the process of problem solving

Towards a Science of the text

The tasks of criticism to examine the distortion-mechanism which produc

e that ruptured discourse, to reconstruct the work-process whereby the text suffers an internal displacement by virtue of its relations to its conditions of possibility

its task is not to study the laws of ideological formations, but the laws of the production of ideological discourses as literature

Animal Farm

Regardless Orwell’s personal statement, nonetheless, Animal Farm is not Orwell’s political advocate, rather, it is a product of the anti-soviet ideology. Moreover, being determined by this ideology, a pseudo-reality is created in Animal Farm to present an anti-utopian ideology.

Animal Farm

GMP: Economics recovering after WWII. GI: Avoiding conflict to USSR, and conceal

ing information related to her. LMP: Censored by the British government AuI: To reveal the evil side of Soviet gov. AI: Journalism=>to reveal the truth, and cl

aims for the freedom of the press.

Animal Farm

In relations to the anti-soviet ideology given by AI and AuI, the text acts against GMP, LMP, and GI.

Animal Farm

Real History:Russian Revolution: October 25, 1917.Antagonism between Trosky and Stalin.Economics transformation of USSR.German Invasion in WWII.Postwar arrangement.

Animal Farm

Pseudo-reality in Animal Farm Inversion of the chronological order of the

events.Real history has been simplified. History enters as an ideology.

Animal Farm

Anti-utopian Ideology:Power corrupts

Seven Commandments=>single rule Oblivion of the ‘glorious past’. Reconciliation between men and pigs. Everything returns to the past.