Identity in Progress E-Book

Cihan Yazgı

• Herausgeber: WiSa
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 227

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Why do we believe what we believe in? Where are the values that we take for granted in constructing our identity coming from? Do we know how we came to be the person that is us? Identity in Progress is a book that tries to trace the value construction processes by way of analysing Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro’s two top novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. The former shows an old butler now sceptical about his unshakeable loyalty to whatever he once believed to constitute ‘dignity;’ the latter shows a young woman on a journey, both literally and metaphorically, to find out who or what she is. With Fredric Jameson’s words on “the propaedeutic value of art” in mind, Identity in Progress provides a refreshing reading of the two novels with a Marxist perspective, revealing, as Jameson says, the historical and social essence of what we believe to be individual experiences.

Leseprobe

WiSa, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

PREFACE

1 INTRODUCTION

2 MARXIST THEORY OF CULTURE

3 THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

4 NEVER LET ME GO

5 CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE

This work was originally a thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Social Sciences of Middle East Technical University, Türkiye, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of science in English Literature. It analyses the hegemonic processes that are maintained by traditions, institutions and formations by discussing over the process of value construction the characters in Kazuo Ishiguro’s two novels are engaged in. A Marxist approach is used along the way and the discussions over the novels were taken as an opportunity of underlining the necessity of a Marxist approach towards art in order to make use of its propaedeutic value and extract the hegemonic substance the artwork inheres. This work seeks to use the propaedeutic value of Ishiguro’s novels to point out to the hegemony that is prevailing over our actual lives.

Cihan YAZGI, PhD

Ankara, 2022

1INTRODUCTION

Why analyse an art work? And what’s more than this, why analyse an art work with a Marxist approach?

Fredric Jameson states his idea on art’s value as follows: “the propaedeutic value of art lies in the way in which it permits us to grasp the essentially historical and social value of what we had otherwise taken to be a question of individual experience” (Towards 63). Living out the days within the horizon of one’s individual existence, any member of society can easily comprehend the meanings, values and practices one experiences through their daily activities as belonging to their very own individual existence. This leads to an understanding of society as a collection of separate individual experiences. Indeed, as Jameson declares, art’s value lies in its ability of providing an introduction to a further study on man’s experience which is, in Jameson’s view, actually a social and historical experience. Kazuo Ishiguro says in his interview with Graham Swift that he is attempting to use the butler figure in his The Remains of the Day (1989) as a metaphor exactly for this purpose: showing the relationship of ordinary people to whole social practice (Shorts 37). He says elsewhere that “[o]ften we just don’t know enough about what’s going on out there and I felt that that’s what we’re like. We’re like butlers” (Ishiguro An Interview by Vorda and Herzinger 87). As usual with any artwork, Ishiguro is aware of the fact that his work is also a tool for understanding man’s experience. Thus, the reason to analyse an art work lies in its ‘propaedeutic’ value of providing an opportunity to go beyond the individual experience and have a better sense of the historico-social content of that experience.

However, making use of this propaedeutic value seems to be possible only by a theory of analysis which would be able to penetrate into the art work and extract that historico-social content from it. The real essence of an art work can be perceived only when set against a historico-social background. Ishiguro’s novels are quite ready for such a contextualization as Ishiguro himself admits it. He sets Remains at around the Suez Crisis, Summer of 1959. While the date at the extradiegetic level is 1959, a time when British Empire was undergoing a power crisis, the diegetic story that is being narrated belongs to the inter-war period. And Ishiguro authors the novel in the late 1980s when the Thatcherite conservatism is reigning in England. Similarly, Never Let Me Go (2005) is set in a utopia in terms of both time and space. Authored in an age when neo-liberalism announces the end of history, when genetic cloning news were spreading all over the world with bioethics prevailing over all the debates as a burning topic, and when consumerism and originality are shaping civilization’s values; Never is a story about clones who are being harvested for their internal organs. All these issues that inhere in these novels can be interpreted fruitfully in their social and historical backgrounds only. Extracting them and trying to analyse them by themselves produces a static view of them, and such an analysis ends up in an infertile description, the ‘propaedeutic’ value being missed.

Dialectic is a necessary tool here in overcoming this stasis. Dialectical perception of universe teaches us the transient nature of any phenomena; matter is in a continuous action towards its negation and then towards the negation of that negation. This gives any phenomena, including society and social forms, a historical identity. Hence Jameson’s slogan: “Always historicise!” (The Political 9). According to Eagleton, “[t]he originality of Marxist criticism … lies … in its revolutionary understanding of history” (Marxism 2). Thus the reason of analysing Ishiguro’s work with a Marxist approach. Hobsbawm confirms that “[t]he immense strength of Marx has always lain in his insistence on both the existence of social structure and its historicity, or in other words its internal dynamic of change” (Karl Marx’s 274).

What can be the benefit of these processes? Thanks to art’s propaedeutic value and to dialectic and historical approach of Marxist criticism that the essence of social formations can be identified through an analysis of art (and an analysis of Ishiguro and his work in this case), which is always an essence of class substance in class societies as Marxism has it. Marxist criticism has the ability of identifying and declaring this class substance which is dominating the social formation. Eagleton proposes that “Marxist criticism is not just an alternative technique for interpreting Paradise Lost (1668) or Middlemarch (1871). It is part of our liberation from oppression” (Eagleton Marxism 35). This is liberation from class domination; or at least liberation from the ideological barriers that block our perception of that class domination. Such a liberation starts with identifying the hegemonic substance in society and this identification can be possible through an analysis of art since art works “are forms of perception, particular ways of seeing the world; and as such they have a relation to that dominant way of seeing the world which is the ‘social mentality’ or ideology of an age” (Eagleton Marxism 3).

This study aims at analysing two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro with such a Marxist approach; namely, The Remains of the Day (1989) and Never Let Me Go (2005). The aim of this study is to show how a social construction of meanings, identities, ideas and values happen within a social formation through an analysis of the protagonists of these novels, and an analysis of the novels themselves as social constructs and works by a certain author, Kazuo Ishiguro.

Yet before discussing the novels, it is necessary to account for the notions and concepts that Marxism makes use of. Chapter two aims at discussing these notions and concepts starting from the basics of Marxist social interpretations to more contemporary discussions of Marxism and meanwhile goes through concepts of ideology, praxis, totality, hegemony, tradition, institutions and formations, art and Marxist Literary Criticism. The chapter will begin with a presentation of the basics of Marxist theory of culture which are rooted mainly in Marx’s famous Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). The structure-superstructure formulation will be mentioned along with the necessary critical discussions on the formulation’s validity. This will be followed by the presentation of the concepts of ideology, praxis, totality and hegemony; all of which are more contemporary interpretations of culture and society, and which are still rooted in the structure-superstructure formula although being upgraded with an act of transferring

the formula from a mere-theoretical basis to a position which deals with the phenomena directly in its actuality in the real world experiences of humanity. After that, a Marxist understanding of art and artwork will be presented. The chapter will close with a short definition of the use of Marxist Criticism. The chapter, as a whole, will work for setting the Marxist background of this study, and for representing why and what kind of a Marxist approach is important.

Chapter three will present a literature review of the existing major works on The Remains of the Day and locate the necessity of this study within that literature. Then, the chapter will present the discussion on The Remains of the Day. First, a discussion will be made over the protagonist Stevens, which scrutinises his busy construction of a self around certain ideas and values, and the workings of the hegemonic processes on this construction process. Then, the construction of the values of the novel itself will be discussed together with the effects of the historico-social moment on Ishiguro’s writing process.

Chapter four will begin with a review of literature on Never Let Me Go. After that, the discussion on Never Let Me Go will be presented. The discussion will take place over the protagonist Kathy H. and her close friends Tommy and Ruth, the other two major characters of the novel. It will be discussed how they are shaped into the values and meanings which the hegemonic processes of the historico-social moment designate as the tradition to be disseminated through certain institutions.

Chapter five will summarize the findings and state the concluding remarks of this study. It will try to suggest further study.

2MARXIST THEORY OF CULTURE

2.1 Basics of Marxist Interpretations of ‘Society’

In his one of the most quoted writings, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx makes these statements:

My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel … embraces within the term “civil society”; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. (20)

What Marx does here is to create a definition of society or, more precisely, a definition of the workings of the society. This is mainly a rejection of the idealist comprehensions of society or life in general which presuppose a developing human mind (or the idea), as Marx also states above, as a core generator of any dynamism in life. Marx makes this rejection mainly through an explanation of workings of politics and law in any social formation. After a critical study on especially Hegel’s works, Marx comes up with a conclusion that follows as:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. (Marx Preface 20; emphasis added)

According to the formula stated above, as simple as it is, two main constitutive parts can be observed in any analysis of society; a structure (which can also be called as the base or the infrastructure), which is related to economic activity and made up of relations of production that humans are engaged in; a superstructure, which is related to consciousness and, roughly speaking, to mental work and which is determined by the structure since it arises upon that very structure. The structure plays the role of the determinant. It conditions, shapes and acts as the foundation in men’s life. The superstructure plays the role of the determined. It arises upon the foundation the structure creates for it. Superstructure is more or less passive. This formula of Marx was challenged by the later Marxists of the twentieth century and condemned as reductive mechanical materialism. And those who keep passionately acknowledging this formula as summarized above were to be called Orthodox Marxists.

Whether it was Orthodox Marxism or not, Marx describes mode of production, material forces of production and relations of production to be within the structure. And what is in the superstructure, as Eagleton also notes, are “certain forms of law and politics, a certain kind of state, whose essential function is to legitimate the power of the social class which owns the means of economic production” (Marxism 3). Society itself is also in the superstructure, especially in the sense that, as Marx conceives of it, it is made up of “the relations of production in their totality” (Wage 19-20). To explain this, Marx gives an example of how social being is determined. “A Negro is a Negro”, Marx says, and “[h]e only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton-spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relationships it is no more capital than gold in itself is money or sugar the price of sugar” (Wage 19). Marx’s diagnostic statement is crucial in the sense that it indicates the influence of relations of production on individuals and other material constituents of any social formation. There seems to be no given and immanent a being or identity. Nothing is inherently in the objects of society. All is constructed by and within that society.

What is important here is the position of the ‘individual’. Marx discusses how “[i]n production, men not only act on nature but also on one another” (Wage 19) and how “[c]onsciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product” (Marx The German 74). Raymond Williams similarly observes that if “all social process is activity between real individuals, so individuality … is the active constitution, within distinct physical beings, of the social capacity which is the means of realization of an individual life. Consciousness, in this precise sense, is social being” (Marxism 41). These interpretations of society and individuality challenge the previous views on ‘human’ and ‘human mind’ propounded by idealist world views. Instead of the idealist school which starts off the universe from the idea and the human as its bearer, Marxism starts off the universe from the material and material activity. Louis Dupré notices this and states how, with Marxist thought, “human nature has ceased to be an abstract, ideal a priori: [and] develops with the social-economic praxis” (Objectivism 71). While the school of idealism that Marx objects to elevates human nature and human mind to an abstract independence and sovereignty, Marx describes them within the superstructural forms of consciousness and social being. Marx portrays the individual not as all-equipped and by himself but within his social being and within his relation to society. By this, as Dupré indicates elsewhere, “against the increasing tendency of Western culture to isolate the individual subject as the sole source of meaning and value, Marx, both in practice and in theory, placed the social agent at the origin of the humanization process” (Marx’s Social 276). Consequently, what Marxist understanding of society puts forward is that all individual activity happens only in relation to society and the society at hand is the sum of the ‘relations of production’.

From the Orthodox Marxist point of view, however, these previously mentioned interpretations seem to be indicating a one-way interaction. Yet, criticism against this concrete one-way interaction comes up quite early. Upon criticism against this formula of ultimate determination, Frederic Engels makes some comments in one of his letters, mentioning an interactive relationship between the structure and the superstructure. In his lettertoBorgius, Engels states this again as “[p]olitical, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But ... [i]t is not that the economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else is only a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity” (549). Here, Engels elaborates on the cause-effect relationship between the two and underlines an interaction between structure and superstructure. This, Engels says, still happens on the basis of economic necessity but at least the structure’s role of being the sole active agent and cause was taken away. The superstructure is also an agent now; affecting the structure here and there. What makes this interaction possible is the human agency which appears to be the denominator between structure and superstructure. How Marx describes human labour in Capital is like an explanation of this agency: “what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement” (1: 257). Human consciousness gains its power back that it lost with the mechanical determinist formulas. Material social activity is affected by the human agent. As can be drawn from Marx’s statement, what is important here is the fact that although the individual is a product of society, society in turn is made up of these individuals. Williams’ analysis helps for a better understanding of the argument. Williams declares that “‘society’, or ‘the historical event’, can never … be categorically abstracted from ‘individuals’ and ‘individual wills’. Such a separation leads straight to an alienated, objectivist ‘society’, working ‘unconsciously’, and to comprehension of individuals as ‘pre-social’ or even anti-social” (Marxism 87).

On this, Marx says elsewhere that “[m]an himself is the basis of his material production, as of any production that he carries on. All circumstances, therefore, which affect man, the subject of production more or less modify all his functions and activities as the creator of material wealth” (Theories 1: 288; emphasis original). Here the idea gets clearer; superstructure influences structure back through the agency of human which happens to be the subject of material production besides being the object at the same time. Dupré explains this situation as follows: “The ‘superstructure’ also affects the structure. Man conceives of his economic activity as he conceives of himself, and this all the more so as he progresses culturally. His practical activity increasingly reflects his cultural image” (Marx’s Social 89). In these statements, a progressive interaction is detectable in which both structure and superstructure build on each other in a continuous cause-effect relationship. And this updates the one-way interaction pattern to an orderly progressive one.

After all these interpretations and re-interpretations one thing does not change. It is the secondary nature of the superstructure. Most neo-Marxists like Fredric Jameson, Louis Althusser or Raymond Williams argue that as long as there is a distinction of preliminary – secondary, Marxism will not be able to comprehend and interpret culture (which belongs to the secondary polar) in an appropriate way. Raymond Williams is one of these scholars who, first of all, disagrees with the idea that thought and imagination can be considered secondary in nature. Williams points out that “‘thinking’ and ‘imagining’ are from the beginning social processes … and that they become accessible only in arguably physical and material ways: in voices, in sounds made by instruments, in penned or printed writing” (Marxism 62). Hence, Williams thinks that “[t]o exclude these material social processes from the material social process is the same error as to reduce all material social processes to mere technical means for some other abstract ‘life’” (Marxism 62). The suggestion here is the incorporation of mental processes with the material processes from which they were separated as secondary. Although thinking and imagining are spiritual forms, as Marx has it in their definition, they get involved in the social formation in material ways; language, writing, or other kinds of performance.

In fact, Williams’ approach to structure – superstructure formula is much more profound than this. He says in another work of his that “for my own part I have always opposed the formula of base and superstructure: not primarily because of its methodological weaknesses but because of its rigid, abstract and static character” (Williams Culture 20). As clear in his statements, what he opposes the most is the long lasting tradition of reading the terms in static ways. It is true as can be understood even from the short discussion of the formula’s interpretations that the most common way of seeing it results in that; there is a structure there and there is a superstructure over there and we are here as the observer – the philosopher or the scholar – watching how they influence each other. This understanding, as Williams argues, is a highly static one. Instead of this, he proposes using Antonio Gramsci’s idea of hegemony which is to be discussed later in this chapter. But before that, Williams underscores how this understanding of the formula and its terms is against Marx’s own beliefs about history of humanity. Williams expresses that “while a particular stage of the development of production can be discovered and made precise by analysis, it is never in practice either uniform or static. It is indeed one of the central propositions of Marx’s sense of history that there are deep contradictions … [and] the continual possibility of the dynamic variation” (Williams Culture 33). Marx’s sense of history which is mentioned here, stems from his dialectical understanding.

Marx’s statements in his afterword to Capital’s second German edition approves Williams’ stance. In the Afterword, Marx sets out to describe his understanding of dialectic by putting it in contrast with Hegel’s dialectic. He defines Hegel’s version as a ‘mystified’ version and to be in full accordance with bourgeois thinking. However, Marx indicates that his version is the ‘rational’ version and is in full opposition to bourgeoisie: “In its rational form [dialectic] is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors … because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence” (Marx Afterword 37). As can be understood from the statement, what makes Marx’s rational version an enemy to bourgeois doctrinaire thought is how it comprehends historicity and society in a fluid movement and transient nature. As Williams says, therefore, reading the structure-superstructure formula in a static and uniform way is fundamentally against Marx’s dialectic.

Sean Creaven defends dialectic as follows:

If reality is not dialectical there can be no impulse towards change in either nature or society; without contradictions as well as complementarities built into the structures of reality there can only be cyclical processes of simple reproduction or repetition at work in the world …. Thus a non-dialectical worldview and method of cognition reduces the world to a dead collection of facts, devoid of life or movement; and it is this which is the basis of empiricist and theological views of unchanging ‘things-in-themselves’ as constitutive of the universe. (15)

As is clear, without this dialectical view, any reading of structure – superstructure formula would lead to a static understanding of the society. And in the more practical consequence of a non-dialectical understanding, “relationships, institutions and formations in which we are still actively involved are converted … into formed wholes rather than forming and formative processes” (Marxism 128). As a consequence of this, certain social constructs as relationships, institutions or formations are considered to be stable, unchanging and everlasting just as it is in empiricist and theological worldviews. This, of course, leads to distorted ideas and conceptualizations among the oppressed classes about their position in society, which is mostly discussed around the term ‘ideology’. Understanding of literature and arts is not exempt from this distortion either.

2.2 Ideology, Praxis, Hegemony, and Tradition

Raymond Williams has summarized the versions of the concept of ‘ideology’ under three entries; three versions which are used throughout Marxist writing:

(i) a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group;

(ii) a system of illusory beliefs – false ideas or false consciousness – which can be contrasted with true or scientific knowledge;

(iii) the general process of the production of meanings and ideas; (Marxism 55)

Williams spends a long chapter on ideology in his Marxism and Literature and gives very good examples of how Marx himself uses the term with these three different senses. Williams concludes that we would be unable to establish a single correct Marxist definition of ideology. Among these senses, sense (ii) is the most controversial one and the most common uses of ideology by public belongs here. When it is used, it is mostly used in contrast to scientific knowledge to make the illusory nature of ideology more apparent. Sense (i) is the one most famously adopted by Lenin and Lukács. ‘Ideology’ can be similar to ‘class interest’ or ‘class outlook’ in class societies when used in this sense.

Jorge Larrain discusses that Marx had never meant to use ideology in the sense of false consciousness or illusory ideas (sense (ii) above). According to Larrain, what Marx did was using it only in a negative fashion to point to a distorted kind of consciousness “which conceals contradictions in the interest of the ruling class”; contradictions “whose reproduction guarantees the domination” of that ruling class (Larrain Lukács’ 52). Nonetheless, although the sense of ‘false consciousness’ is underestimated to mere ‘negativity’ by Larrain here, this statement is still sufficiently able to create an image of ideology as ‘something bad and harmful’. Later Marxists must have realized how this notorious image of ideology may block their way to extending Socialism, the ‘ideology’ of the proletariat which Marxism so eagerly declares triumphant, that later with Lenin and Lukács, Larrain continues to explain, ideology is to lose its negative meaning and get to suggest the doctrines and ideas of all classes in struggle: “If a particular ideology is erroneous, this is not due to its being an ideology, but to the character of the class interests represented by it. … socialist ideology is supposed to be true, while bourgeois ideology is deemed to be false; but both are equally ideological” (Lukács’ 54).

This sense of ideology seems to be a more appropriate way of interpreting the term for an analysis of class societies. Any ruling class necessarily uses its own ideological tools to safeguard the reproduction of its domination over other classes. Any struggle against the ruling class happens mostly on a basis of battling these ideological tools then, with other ideological tools surely. Thus, indicating ideology to be ‘false consciousness’ undercuts any such struggle against the ruling class in the eyes of the masses as in using one harmful thing to get rid of another one. Therefore, just as candidates in any democratic parliamentary system say ‘our party policies are better than the other parties’’, Lenin tries to take away the negativity from the term ideology itself and put it on the ideology of certain groups by proposing ‘our ideology is better than others’ ideologies’. Or else, it would be possible to refute him by declaring any Socialist idea he is putting forward is made up of ‘false and illusory ideas’. Lenin should be highly aware of this since he knows how much ideological production is important for the proletariat: “In the class struggle of the proletariat which develops spontaneously, as an elemental force, on the basis of capitalist relations, socialism is introduced by the ideologists” (qtd. inWilliams Marxism