Recovering Reality

Author(s): CHRISTOPHER LASCH

Source: Salmagundi, No. 42, The Politics of Anti-Realism (Summer-Fall 1978), pp. 44-47
Published by: Skidmore College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40547137
Accessed: 24-01-2016 11:17 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Skidmore College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Salmagundi.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 11:17:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
RecoveringReality
BY CHRISTOPHER LASCH

Those positionsthat seem most radical- mostuncompromising in

theiroppositionto bourgeoisculturalhegemony - oftenturnout today
to renderthemosteffective reinforcement to thestatusquo. As Gerald
Graffshows so clearly,the problemgoes deeper than our society's
well-knowncapacityto absorb dangerousideas. The ideas associated
with the politics of "cultural revolution"have in fact ceased to be
dangerous.The culturalvanguardhas becomea rearguard. It attacks
bastions long since surrendered:the patriarchalfamily,repressive
sexual morality,the conventionsof literaryrealism.Proponentsof
"culturalrevolution"merelygivethesanctionofenlightened opinionto
changes already brought about by the corporation, the advertising
industry,the mass culture industry, and the propaganda of
commodities.
Yet the ideas in questionretainan appeal thatcannotbe altogether
explainedby pointingout thattheydo notthreatenor disturbfamiliar
habitsof thoughtand thereforerepresentthe line of least intellectual
resistance.That they make so few intellectualdemands certainly
guaranteesthema sympathetic hearing;butthisis notenoughto explain
whytheypersistin theworkofso profounda theoristas Marcuse,and
whytheypersistwithso littlemodification, moreover,fromone of his
books to the next.
At one time, the defense of the autonomyof art constituteda
necessaryand constructive, evena revolutionary politicalact. It served
as an indispensablecounter,notmerelyto themiddlebrowdemandfora
healthy-minded and morallyup-liftingart,butto thesocialistdemand
fora proletarianor "people's" art.The struggleagainstBabbitryin the
1920smergedin the 1930swiththestruggleagainst"socialistrealism."
Today theseare dead issues. It is important,however,to understand
how theyarose, if we want to understandwhy the idea of cultural
revolutionremainsattractiveto so manypeople on the left.

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 11:17:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Recovering Reality 45
In thethirties, members of theFrankfurt School,thewriters and
criticsassociated withPartisan Review, andotherleft-wing intellectuals
calledfora theoryof subjectivity, in thehopethatit wouldhelpto
explain both subjective resistance to socialism andsupport forfascism.
Objective conditions in advanced industrial countries had been ripefor
a socialistrevolution forsometime,yetthepeopleofthosecountries
hadshownlittleinterest insocialismandinseveralcaseshadturned to
dictators instead.The explanation ofthisdeeplyrootedresistance to
progress,according to Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Max
Horkheimer, and others,lay in thereproduction ofan authoritarian
personality typebytheauthoritarian bourgeois Theintellectual
family.
attackagainsta purelymechanical, positivistic Marxism thusallied
itselfwithpolitical criticism ofthefamily andofthebourgeois valuesit
allegedly transmitted to theyoung:respect forproperty, submission to
authority, sexualrepression. Menwouldneverbe free,itappeared -
even undersocialism - as long as authoritarian habitsof thought
implanted themselves so deeplyintheindividual unconscious. Without
a cultural revolution againstthefamily andtheauthoritarian culture it
transmitted, socialismitselfwouldmerely recapitulate thehistory of
capitalism. Witnesstheriseof Stalinismand itsreinstatement ofthe
family and ofrevolutionary puritanism in the SovietUnion.
Todaywe hearechoesoftheseearlierbattles, inwhichthedefense of
literary modernism went hand in hand with criticismof patriarchal
culture,in Barthes'sclaim that quotationmarks establishthe
"paternity" of ideas and that "multivalence" therefore subverts
intellectualauthoritarianism and bourgeois"propriety." Today,
however, an assaultagainstbourgeois ownership, bourgeois propriety,
property rights, and the authoritarian familyno longercarriesany
criticalweight.Advancedcapitalist societyhas collectivized property
undercorporate controland socializedthefunctions offatherhood in
thehandsofa professional and managerial elite.The individual now
suffers notfrom thestrength offamily tiesbutfrom their
weakness. The
"revolution inmanners andmorals,"whichtookshapeinthetwenties
whencapitalism begantooutgrow itsdependence ontheworkethic,has
erodedfamilial authority, undermined sexualrepression, andsetup in
theirplacea permissive, hedonistic morality tolerant ofself-expression
and thefulfillment of "creative potential." The samehistorical forces
thathavedestroyed outmodedrestraints on sexualexpression have
drastically altered ideas ofliterary propriety, abolishing conventional
prejudices againstexperimentation andmaking continuous innovation,
indeed, the most desirable attribute of art.

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 11:17:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
46 CHRISTOPHER LASCH

The collapseofbourgeoisculture,as Graffexplainsso eloquently,has

thus cut the groundout fromunderthe artisticavant garde; and in
retrospectit appears that the avant garde depended on and even
preservedmanyof the culturalconventionsin oppositionto whichit
defineditself.The antagonismof artistand philistineloses itsmeaning
in a post-bourgeoissocietyin which no one wants to appear old-
fashionedor out-of-dateand the demand for novelty,boldness,and
unconventionality shapes everyformof artisticproduction.Marcuse
himselfhas raisedthepossibility that"theculturalrevolution[is] falling
in linewiththecapitalistadjustmentand redefinition ofculture."Justas
Horkheimerand Fromm, having shown the connection between
politicalreactionand the authoritarianpersonality,were among the
firstto see theobsolescenceofthisanalysis,so Marcuse,withhistheory
of repressivedesublimation,called into question the subversive
potentialoftherebellionagainstan obsoletebourgeoismorality.Yet the
dawning awareness of the inadequacy of their early ideas about
authoritydid not preventthe membersof the FrankfurtSchool from
"operationalizing"them,in The AuthoritarianPersonality,withthe
help of all the latestmethodsand jargon of thesocial sciences;and the
reasoningthat led Marcuse to formulatethe theoryof repressive
desublimation, inEros-andCivilization,didnotbecomecentraleitherto
thatworkor to subsequentones. In thelatestreformulation ofhisideas
on art, The AestheticDimension, Marcuse has omittedeven the
qualificationsthat Graffhas pointed out in Counterrevolution and
Revolt.He repeatsthe argumentsforthe "criticalfunctionof art" in a
mechanicalfashion,withouttakingaccount of the criticismof those
argumentslaunchednotfromthepositionofsocialistrealismbutfroma
positionclose to his own. Many would agree that the "freedomand
happiness of the individual" remain the "ultimate goal of all
revolutions"and that "insistenceon a privatesphere"assumes a new
importancein "a societythat administersall dimensionsof human
existence."The question remains: How does art contributeto the
defenseof a "privatesphere"when it surrendersthe claim to make
statements about realityand retreatsintoa realmofpurefantasy?How
does art help the individualto resistthe administration of existence
whenit no longercompeteswiththe administrator's viewof theworld
on itsownterms,puttingforth itsownview,modestly, as another"mode
of truth"?"Fictioncreatesits own reality,"accordingto Marcuse.The
"truthofartliesinitspowerto breakthemonopolyofestablishedreality
(i.e. of those who establishedit) to definewhat is real." The artistic
affirmation of anti-reality,
however,leaves the administrative elite in
controlof theirchosenterrain,relegatingartto themarginsofsociety.

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 11:17:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Recovering Reality 47
Andthisverymarginality, as Graffso compellinglyargues, becomes the
basisofa newintegrationinwhicheventheguardians of"reality"admit
that existenceis an illusion,that distinctions betweentruthand
falsehoodhavelosttheirmeaning, andthatitisfutiletotrytochangethe
worldor evento tryto understand it.
The divorcebetweenartandexperience, theexaltation ofErosas a
are
separatesphere, precisely the conditions that underlie repressive
desublimation,whichfreeseroticexpressionfrom censorship onlywhen
it has banishedErosto themarginofexistence and deprived it ofits
transforming power.Defense ofthe "autonomy of art"no longerserves
any critical
purpose. An artthat"subverts the opposition between the
trueandthefalse,"inBarthes'swords,merely completes the work ofthe
advertisingand propagandaindustries, as does an artthat"liberates"
wordsfrom"signification"andsubstitutes imagesforconcepts. Itisnot
the"aesthetic dimension"we needto recoverbutthesenseofreality
itself.

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Sun, 24 Jan 2016 11:17:12 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions