On the Radical Historicity of Literature: Althusser versus Bhaskar

Abstract

The present article takes as its point of departure the recent tributes to Bhaskar published on the occasion of the latter's death. Laudable and understandable though it was to prioritize the career trajectories of younger scholars, one of the unforeseen consequences was to marginalize those of their more mature colleagues. The latter perforce arrive upon the scene of critical realism already burdened with their own overdetermined legacies, which demand rather more in the way of complex renegotiation. Taking as exemplary his own career path, from a traditional ‘lit crit’ of empiricist and Hegelian extraction, through psychoanalysis, to structural marxism, the author of the present article focuses upon his own ‘Bhaskarian moment’, upon the benefits accrued therefrom, but finally upon the difficulty in reconciling structural marxism with critical realism, insofar as the former prioritizes the notion of a social formation, structured on the basis of a mode of production, the latter the individual/structure dichotomy. Bhaskar's subsequent spiritual turn, it is argued, further aggravated the paradigmatic incommensurabilities, with damaging consequences for those younger scholars attempting to steer a course between both traditions.

KEYWORDS:

• agency/structure dichotomy
• mode of production
• radical historicity
• social formation
• structural marxism
• Louis Althusser
• Roy Bhaskar
• Juan Carlos Rodríguez

Notes

1 Groff et al. 2015.

2 Anderson 1968.

3 Althusser 1990, 63–4, original emphasis.

4 Althusser 1990, 69.

5 Resch 1992, 376–7 n. 1.

6 Quoted from Read 1981, 64.

7 Chomsky 1968, 9.

8 Read 1983.

9 Poema de Mio Cid, lines 1–4.

10 Translations throughout, unless otherwise stated, are my own.

11 Poema de Mio Cid, lines 11–14.

12 Read 1983, 8–9.

13 Dean et al. 2006, 39.

14 I have criticized Bhaskar elsewhere for a similar indulgence in the ‘history of ideas’ (Read 2013, 466–7).

15 Brown 1968, 26.

16 Brown 1968, 26.

17 Brown 1968, 27.

18 Quoted from Read 1990, 66.

19 Quoted from Read 1990, 66.

20 Quoted from Read 1990, 79.

21 Quoted from Read 1990, 79.

22 See Read 2010, 163ff.

23 See Read 2004a.

24 Read 2002 for 1990, 54–74.

25 Vega 1989, 58–9.

26 As throughout, my translations of the poetry are of the most literal kind, the aim being to facilitate an engagement with the original Spanish.

27 Read 1992 for 2004, 31.

28 Read 1992 for 2004, 31.

29 Rodríguez 2002, 140.

30 For substantialism, forms cannot be changed in their essence. The one significant exception is the Eucharist, the miracle whereby the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

31 Rodríguez 2002, 122.

32 Rodríguez 2002, 123.

33 For an application of Rodríguez's ideas to the ideology of pre-capitalist formations, see Read 2003 and 2004b.

34 de Villalón 1966, 204.

35 Animism, let us note parenthetically, opens up for the first time the distinction between the public/private spheres, a distinction unknown to substantialism. Animists such as Juan de Valdés (c.1500–1541) will retreat into the private sphere to conduct their Bible readings, until, that is, they are driven into exile.

36 de Villalón 1966, 205.

37 For an extended discussion, see Read 1999.

38 Rodríguez 2002, 123.

39 See Read 2013.

40 Rodríguez 2002, 21.

41 It almost goes without saying that Montengón wrote in exile and that his novel would quickly appear on the Inquisition's list of prohibited texts.

42 Montengón 1984, 174.

43 Montengón 1984, 329.

44 Montengón 1984, 502.

45 Montengón 1984, 210.

46 For an extended analysis, see Read 1998, 146–60.

47 Rodríguez 2002, 126–7.

48 Resch 1992, 4–5.

49 Resch 1992, 24.

50 Resch 1992, 27.

51 Resch 1992, 27.

52 Resch 1992, 197–8.

53 Resch 1992, 377–8 n. 1.

54 Although in all fairness, it should be noted that Resch himself was less than totally committed: ‘I dissent from the stronger claims made by Bhaskar for his “transcendental realism”’ (Resch 1992, 378 n. 1).

55 Bhaskar 1989b, 143.

56 Sprinker 1992, 133.

57 Bhaskar 1989b, 188.

58 Bhaskar 2002, 63.

59 Eagleton 1986, 3.

60 Sprinker 1992, 129.

61 Althusser and Balibar 1970, 41, original emphasis.

62 Althusser and Balibar 1970, 42, original emphasis.

63 Ruben 1977, 153.

64 For a discussion of the subtle terminological developments in Althusser from For Marx to Reading Capital, see Geras 1986, 102.

65 Brown at al. 2002, 19.

66 Dean et al. 2006.

67 Dean et al. 2006, 124.

68 Dean et al. 2006, 125.

69 Dean et al. 2006, 126.

70 Dean et al. 2006, 152.

71 Althusser 1990, 227.

72 Althusser and Balibar 1970, 180.

73 Dean et al. 2006, 128–30.

74 Dean et al. 2006, 133.

75 Dean et al. 2006, 133.

76 Dean et al. 2006, 134.

77 In the words of Jameson, ‘ideology’ functions as a ‘declaration of allegiance’ to the Marxist problematic (Jameson 2010, 316).

78 Dean et al. 2006, 182 n. 29.

79 Rodríguez 2013, 46–51. I confess to having been instrumental, at the personal level, in recommending Bhaskar's work to Rodríguez, who, in the absence of Spanish translations, strove valiantly to wrestle with the English original.

80 Rodríguez 2013, 48–9.

81 Rodríguez 2013, 49.

82 Read 2013.

83 ‘We don't find your structural super-determinism coherent or convincing either in itself or in relation to Althusser.’

84 Sprinker 1992, 129.

85 Creaven 2015, 23, italics added.

86 Althusser 1990, 233, original emphasis.

87 Creaven 2007, 361 n. 209.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Malcolm K. Read

Malcolm K. Read is Emeritus Professor at the State University of New York (Stony Brook). He has taught in the University of Wales, the University of the West Indies, and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His books include Borges and his Predecessors (1993), Educating the Educators: Hispanism and its Institutions (2003), Latin American Colonial Studies: A Marxist Critique (2010) and The Matrix Effect: Hispanism and the Ideological Unconscious (2010). He is also the author of numerous articles on Hispanic culture in academic journals.