[lit-ideas] Re: Marxism and Political Correctness
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:09:44 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 2/28/2012 11:22:32 P.M. UTC-02,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I used what Wilson wrote about Marxism to infer that literary excellence
cannot be made to order by a system (or an ism). Marx, Engels and Lenin
(Wilson tells us) knew better than to try and force Political Correctness down
the throats of Russian artists, but Stalin hadn’t the sensitivity or
cultural acumen to follow suit. Stalin and the critics that answered to him,
having the power, mandated political correctness and the result, Wilson tells
us, was ludicrous. Mandated Political Correctness didn’t produce great
literature in Stalinist Russia nor the Third Reich. It isn’t likely that it
will do any better in 21st Century America.
Perhaps the keyword is:
PROPAGANDA, then?
When it comes to visual arts, one thinks of Malevitch, "White on white" --
vs. the later attempts for a a social 'realism'.
But it may do to abstract from 'Marxism' and think of other places, other
times, when art _WAS_ a successful propaganda of some sort.
Just because Marxist art did not fare well, according to Wilson (or most),
that does not yield that all propaganda-induced pieces (or objects) of art
are?
It may be argued that Virgil's "Aeneid" was propagandistic.
Virgil's motivation and the Roman intelligentsia:
The Greeks had their sublime anonymous "Homer", which gave them an
'identity'. The Romans, on the other hand, were in need of the construction of
an
artificial entity. The Etruscans had to be 'defeated' literalily, as it
were. Enter Virgil. The "Roman", on top of that, gets defined in antithesis to
the "Greek" (Aeneas is a Trojan). This is a simplistic explanation, but it
may work.
It may be argued that some bits of English literature (old Elizabethan, new
Elizabthean, post-colonial?) are propagandistic in some sort of similar
way?
On top of that, there's the political role or status an artist enjoys under
this or that regime. So these are difficult questions.
Manifestos and propaganda can be variable in their aesthetic vs. political
scope.
It may be argued that "good" Italian futuristic paintings just follow the
criterion or canons of the 'manifesto' of Futurism by Marinetti.
While some political propaganda WAS involved (the attack on tradition), the
manifesto of Futurism was narrower than a strict political manifesto.
Similarly, V. Hugo's "Hernani" is judged to be the result of Hugo's
neo-romantic views on drama against the Aristotelian unities of time and space.
The Battle of "Hernani" resulted. The rationalists who followed Corneille and
Racine were outraged. Again, Hugo's "manifesto" and its propaganda,
"Hernani", do not relate, strictly, to politics as such. They are not meant as
conducive to political action, in the way an explicit political proclamation,
by this or that political group, would. And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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