Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 00:53:18 -0500 From: Howie Chodos <howie-AT-magi.com> Subject: Re: determination, Williams, & literature Guy Yasko had many interesting things to say about Williams. Though I had intended my earlier comment about the difficulties with the concept of totality to be general, I can see that by framing it in a discussion of Williams it would appear that I was criticising him. I am not really familiar enough with Williams to do that and I should have made that clear. That said, however, I still have trouble understanding the place of totality. The excerpts that Guy cites seem to me to be cogent arguments against considering culture to be superstructural. They raise for me additional questions concerning of the use of term "superstructure". If culture is not superstructural, what is? If the cultural is part of the "basic processes of the formation itself", what isn't? And lurking in the background is the question of totality. As I understand him in History and Class Consciousness (and I do not know Lukacs the literary critic) Lukacs still had a notion of a cognizable totality. For him, the point of view of totality was available as a vantage point that could be mastered, and had to be mastered for the revolution to be successful. For example, despite the many valuable insights in this work, I would still want to take exception to such assertions as the following: "the superiority of the proletariat must lie exclusively in its ability to see society from the centre, as a coherent whole." (p. 69) Guy says that Williams is critical of Lukacs the literary theorist. I would appreciate some clarification on the nature of the relationship between Lukacs' and Williams' notions of totality, if there is one (from Guy or anyone else). Howie Chodos --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005