UC Santa Cruz

"Freedom and Form: Marxist Hermeneutics and the Spinozist Turn"

Marxist cultural and literary criticism has long been preoccupied with determining the position and relative power of cultural production within the base/superstructure analogy. Beginning with the Second International, a particular brand of orthodox Marxism relegated the artifacts of cultural production to the superstructure, thereby considering cultural modes of production impotent in effecting any practical, material and political change. While this debate was largely put to rest by the Marxist cultural criticism of the Frankfurt School and beyond, a legacy of this problematic remains. It is arguably an implicit limit obtaining in even the greatest examples of contemporary Marxist literary theory, specifically playing out with regard to the fundamental representational issue of form and content. Several Marxist theorists have looked to the practical philosophy of the 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, in an effort to resolve the contradictions of the base/superstructure analogy, particularly as they occur within the socio-political register. In light of the considerable theoretical power tapped by this return to Spinoza, his influence on Marxist literary theory is conspicuously absent. Thus, the headway made in resolving antinomies that obtain in the encounter of Marxism with political life remain at an impasse with regard to Marxist cultural criticism, especially with regards to the purchase and power of literary production over and within political life. This paper puts several major figures of Marxist political and literary theory, including Louis Althusser, Antonio Negri and Fredric Jameson respectively, into conversation with one another. I gauge what benefit may be had from synthesizing Spinoza's practical philosophy, including his revolutionary hermeneutics as developed in the Theologico-Political Treatise, with a contemporary understanding of Marxist hermeneutics, as developed primarily by Fredric Jameson.