Gramsci's Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School 9781442675490

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Towards a Vernacular Materialism
Chapter One. Gramsci’s Linguistics
Chapter Two. The Dialogism of Hegemony? ‘Unity’ in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle
Chapter Three. Translating Revolution: Benjamin’s Language and Gramsci’s Politics
Chapter Four. Language and Reason: The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Citation preview

GRAMSCI'S POLITICS OF LANGUAGE: ENGAGING THE BAKHTIN CIRCLE AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony have permeated social and political theory, cultural studies, education studies, literary criticism, international relations, and post-colonial theory. The centrality of language and linguistics to Gramsci's thought, however, has been wholly neglected. In Gramscis Politics of Language, Peter Ives argues that a university education in linguistics and a preoccupation with Italian language politics were integral to the theorist's thought. Ives explores how the combination of Marxism and linguistics produced a unique and intellectually powerful approach to social and political analysis. To explicate Gramsci's writings on language, Ives compares them with other Marxist approaches to language, including those of the Bakhtin Circle, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School, including Jiirgen Habermas. From these comparisons, Ives elucidates the implications of Gramsci's writings, which, he argues, retained the explanatory power of the semiotic and dialogic insights of Bakhtin and the critical perspective of the Frankfurt School, while at the same time foreshadowing the key problems with both approaches that post-structuralist critiques would later reveal. Gramscis Politics of Language fills a crucial gap in scholarship, linking Gramsci's writings to current debates in social theory and providing a framework for a thoroughly historical-materialist approach to language. PETER IVES is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Winnipeg.

This page intentionally left blank

Peter Ives

Gramsci's Politics

of Language Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2004 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in paperback 2006 ISBN 0-8020-3756-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-9444-9 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ives, Peter R., 1968Gramsci s politics of language : engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School / Peter Ives. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-3756-9 (bound). ISBN 0-8020-9444-9 (pbk.) 1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937 - Contributions in political science. 2. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937 — Knowledge — Linguistics. 3. Communism and linguistics. 4. Bakhtin, M.M. (Mikhail Mikhailovich), 1895—1975 - Friends and associates. 5. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940. 6. Frankfurt school of sociology. I. Title. HX289.7.G73I84 2004

335.4'01'4

C2003-903298-1

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contentss

Acknowledgments

vii ix

Abbreviations

Introduction: Towards a Vernacular Materialism 1 Gramsci's Linguistics

3

16

2 The Dialogism of Hegemony? 'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

53

3 Translating Revolution Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

97

4 Language and Reason The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci Conclusion

172

Notes

179

Index

231

134

This page intentionally left blank

acknowledgments

The roots of this book stretch back to when I was an undergraduate at Reed College, and along the way I have collected more debts of gratitude than can be accounted for here. I was heading to Iceland to conduct research on the Women's Alliance for my BA thesis when my supervisor, Jon Goldberg-Hiller, pointed me towards Gramsci's writings to augment my enthusiasm for Jiirgen Habermas. In many ways this book is the result of that suggestion coupled with my fascination for language — a fascination due in large part to my parents, Jack and Pauline Ives, who instilled in me a love of travelling and who provided many of the resources required for it. From those beginnings, it took years of percolation in the Graduate Programme of Social and Political Thought at York University to complete the doctoral dissertation on which this book is based. My doctoral supervisor, Steve Hellman, provided vital and detailed attention to my many drafts and encouraged me to learn Italian and go to Italy in order to pursue the project. My other committee members, David McNally and Barbara Godard, were equally important to me. Barbara's expansive knowledge and interdisciplinary spirit pushed me to make connections and strive to see the bigger picture. David, whose own book on Marxism and language was in the works, was very patient and inspired me tremendously. Many others were invaluable teachers, most notably Judy Hellman, Ato Sekyi-Otu, Meg Luxton, Darius Rejali, and — precisely because of our differences in interpreting Gramsci — Esteve Morera. Academic research can often feel isolating, and without the community of students at York I would never have been able to carry out this project. Victoria Heftier, a consummate intellectual, besides essential friendship offered me much advice. She also read the entire dissertation before its initial submission and made copious corrections. Jeremy Stolow, Zoe Druick, Joel Schalit, and Timothy Banks helped me get excited about the entire process.

viii

Acknowledgments

The community of scholars working on Gramsci provided me with an essential base from which to proceed; in many cases they also extended warm personal connections that made this more than just an intellectual project. Renate Holub, my first e-mail friend, allowed me to present some of my initial research to her class at Berkeley and has been very supportive. Derek Boothman welcomed me in Perugia at a pivotal point in the project. Joseph Buttigieg, the external examiner on my doctorate, made valuable suggestions and also convinced me that a revised version could be a worthwhile book. Although it was only through written correspondence and readers reports, the input of James Martin, Steven Mansfield, Rob Garnett, and two anonymous reviewers proved very beneficial. I would also like to thank Virgil, Chris, and Siobhan at the University of Toronto Press. In the final stages of this work, my new colleagues and my students at the University of Winnipeg provided a very congenial environment. An earlier version of the last section of chapter 1 was published as 'A Grammatical Introduction to Gramsci's Political Theory' in Rethinking Marxism 10, no. 1 (1998): 34-51, and an abbreviated version of chapter 3 was published as 'Translating Revolution: Gramsci's Linguistic Metaphors' in Counter-Hegemony 3 (Spring 2000). My thanks to both journals for permitting me to include those sections here. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The Ontario Graduate Scholarship funded much of the research. Bringing this project to book form has been a long journey that I could not have completed without the companionship and support of Adele Perry, for which I am grateful. I dedicate this work to my daughter, Nell, for helping me keep my perspective and for filling my days with joy.

Abbreviations

M.M. Bakhtin, 'Discourse in the Novel,' in The Dialogic Imagination Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment M.M. Bakhtin and EN. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship FSPN Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks LP Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison LP\ Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 1 LP2 Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 2 MPL V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language ND Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics OLAS Walter Benjamin, 'On Language As Such and on the Language of Man,' in Reflections OMF Walter Benjamin, 'On the Mimetic Faculty,' in Reflections PDP Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems ofDostoevsky's Poetics PN\ Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 1 PN2 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 2 QC Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere RHW Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World SCW Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings SPN Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks SPW\ Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings (1910-1920) SPW1 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings (1921-1926) TCA\ Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1 TS Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama TT Walter Benjamin, 'The Task of the Translator,' in Illuminations DiN DoE FM

This page intentionally left blank

GRAMSCI'S POLITICS OF LANGUAGE

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction: Towards a Vernacular Materialism

Some of the most influential intellectual movements of the twentieth century including psychoanalysis, structuralism, postmodernism, deconstruction, and discourse analysis - have focused on language. The label 'the linguistic turn' has been employed in many fields, from analytic philosophy to history and literary criticism. Antonio Gramsci seems to have had little to say about such questions of language, or so it would seem from the expansive literature on him, which includes more than 13,000 books and articles. When his name is invoked by Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, or others in contexts where language is being discussed, his general perspective, his politics, and his social analysis are referenced, not his explicit discussion of language or linguistics. The impression is that Gramsci lived too early to engage significantly with the linguistic issues that came to captivate social and political theory after his death in 1937. Yet Gramsci's academic training was in linguistics, and he continually refers to the importance of the study of language throughout his well-known Prison Notebooks, the last of which is dedicated to grammar, and there is substantial evidence that the concept of hegemony - the most widely used Gramscian concept - is fundamentally rooted in Italian linguistics. In this book I aim to do more than fill a lacuna within Gramscian scholarship around linguistics. I also locate in Gramsci's writings the tenets of a historical materialist approach to language and a linguistically concerned theory of politics and society. This requires a re-examination of Gramsci's main concepts, including hegemony. To carry out this task I employ the writings of the Bakhtin Circle in chapter 2, Walter Benjamin in chapter 3, and Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jiirgen Habermas in chapter 4. These comparisons will help extrapolate from Gramsci's sometimes fragmentary comments a more complete theory of

4

Gramsci's Politics of Language

language; they will also underscore his unique approach to several key issues involving Marxism and language. To investigate the consistent importance of language to Gramsci's Marxism, I have coined the term Vernacular materialism.' This term highlights one area among many in which Gramsci's writings remain significant to contemporary political and social theory. In my exploration of vernacular materialism I will elaborate Gramsci's particular approach to language as a topic of social analysis, his specific historical context regarding the Italian questione della lingua (language question or problem), and his use of language as a metaphor for political analysis and as a source of concepts and terminology in his well-known political and cultural theory. Throughout Gramsci's life — as a Sardinian, a student of linguistics in Turin, a political actor, a prison writer, and a theorist - his development of the philosophy of praxis - a 'living philology' as he called it2 - involved language. 'Vernacular materialism' is taken from Gramsci's insights into the conflict between bourgeois popular views of the world as expressed in the vernacular and the aristocratic feudal world view of Latin - a conflict that remains significant to this day. As an introduction to this work, I will lay out the many levels at which vernacular materialism characterizes Gramsci's approach. These constitute the guiding threads of this book. The Vernacular Approach 'Vernacular materialism' is a play on the term Vulgar materialism.' While Vulgar' is nearly synonymous with Vernacular' — meaning the common or everyday language of a region or country — it has come to be attached to a version of Marxism that is deemed simplistically economic, overly mechanistic and overly influenced by positivism. Gramsci notes that although the word 'dis-aster' no longer means a misalignment of the stars, it still contains traces of astrology's historical importance to our language and world view.6 Following this example, the mutations of Vulgar' can illuminate the relationship between language and Marxism. 'Vulgar Marxism' privileges the economic realm (which some see as the material realm par excellence) over politics, culture, and religious or other social relationships. It also relegates language itself to the (superficial) 'superstructure.' But this vulgar opposition between the 'real' or natural world and language also permeates many non-economistic Marxist and non-Marxist perspectives. It has come to be a part of what Gramsci would call 'common sense. Ironically, then, vulgar Marxism sheds its etymological meanings of both language and popularization. Vernacular materialism is an attempt to recover these aspects. The synonymy between Vulgar' and Vernacular' also responds to certain postMarxist readings of Gramsci as launched in 1985 by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal

Introduction

5

Mouffe. Laclau and Mouffe contend that while Gramsci makes some of the most significant steps towards their own theory of 'democratic practice of hegemony' and away from Vulgar Marxism,' he ultimately retains his 'essentialist core,' which is too economistic.8 I do not seek to reinterpret Gramsci to show that he relinquished this economic essentialism. On the contrary, the vernacular approach to Gramscis writings shows that in separating economic factors from their 'discursive' theory, Laclau and Mouffe reverse the priority of the economy versus language. Yet they still retain the dichotomy. Gramsci s approach to language and 'matter' does not assume that these two things are inimical, nor does it privilege one at the other's expense. The trajectory that post-Marxists draw from economy to language presents a false opposition between the two; in the same vein, the work of Michel Foucault and the rise of'discourse analysis' have distanced considerations of discourse — or language more generally - from Marxism. Foucault s early work discusses Marxist economics while avoiding considerations of Marxism. This tends to reduce Marx's writings to mere examples of what Foucault analyses as the nineteenthcentury episteme? Foucault's rejection of the various Marxisms within France — including those of the French Communist Party and of its Marxist opponents adds to the tendency to see Marxism in general as incompatible with analyses of both discourse and language. Foucault's emphasis on language and criticism of Marxism have reinforced the separation of language and Marxism. Although Foucault's theorization of power has been compared to Gramscis hegemony, this has not led to substantial engagement with the question of Marxism and the theory of language. In this work I will not address Foucault directly. Instead, by reading Gramscis Marxism through his linguistics, I will provide an approach to language that does not succumb to Foucault's critical considerations of Marxism, whether 'Marxism' connotes the subject of his analysis in The Order of Things or Foucault's French Marxist contemporaries.10 For contextual reasons similar to Foucault's, Jacques Derrida also avoided Marxism until fairly recently.11 Language plays a central role in Derrida's work, and this seems to have pitted him and language on one side, against Marxism on the other. Derrida's more recent reading of Marx has done little to challenge this dynamic, except to show that his deconstruction of Marx's texts does not indicate an antagonism on his part towards Marxism as a political project.12 Some contend that Marxism is compatible with Derridean deconstruction,13 and others argue the opposite.14 This points to the need for a clearer investigation of possible Marxist approaches to language. With these theoretical contexts in mind, vernacular materialism as a version of linguistic materialism invokes a sense of oxymoron to illustrate the assumed opposition between language and the 'matter' of the 'real' world. How can

6

Gramsci's Politics of Language

there be a 'materialistic theory of language' if 'matter' or the 'real world' is perceived as distinct from language? Moreover, how can one approach Marx's notion of 'materialism' linguistically, since language is the medium of ideas and 'materialism' denotes Marxism's specific critique of'idealism'? This is the response of many Marxists to poststructuralism, and to structuralism before that. Perry Anderson, for example, contends that because of the unique nature of language, using linguistics as a paradigm for other social sciences is a flawed approach. His attack on structuralism hinges precisely on this argument. He makes three basic (unsubstantiated) claims for how language is different from all other social practices. First, language structures change very slowly relative to economic, political, and religious structures. Second, words are free,' 'cost nothing to produce,' and can be 'manipulated at will.' Third, speech is 'axiomatically individual,' in contrast to 'collective subjects such as nations, classes, castes, groups, and generations.161ndersonmobilizesthesepre-RE sumptions to criticize poststructuralism. The same three points often inform arguments for free speech, some education policies, and other 'common sense' notions of language. Chapter 1 addresses Gramsci's position on whether language is comparable to other social institutions and practices. It examines his views on whether language changes more slowly over time than other social institutions, whether it can be produced and manipulated freely, and to what extent it can be seen as individual. By investigating the processes of language 'standardization' in Italy and Gramsci's position in relation to various schools of linguistics at the time, chapter 1 presents the foundations of Gramsci's approach to language. It also introduces a historical materialist view of language that refutes each of Anderson's points. Yet scholars as thorough and meticulous as Ellen Meiksins Wood have followed Anderson in his unsupported concept of language and used it to 'defend' Marxism.17 Instead of protecting Marxism against the deluge of so-called postmodernism and all the apocalyptic visions this spectre seems to conjure up, this perspective has helped demote Marxism to an outmoded tradition that cannot speak to the realities of the present. Other responses to the question of how the study of language relates to Marxism implicitly or explicitly assume that language is an antonym to the 'matter' of materialism. This is perhaps best seen in the theories of Jiirgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu who fault Marx's philosophy for failing to account for communicative action or symbolic/linguistic interaction. Bourdieu contends that Marxist conceptions of class neglect symbolic and linguistic power. Similarly, Habermas contends that Marx's central concept of labour must be augmented with a concept of communicative action.19 Instead of expanding or reinterpreting Marx's framework, both these influential thinkers approach language as a topic that can-

Introduction 7 not be accounted for by Marx's basic concepts, most notably labour. Chapter 4 engages this argument with reference to Habermas, and locates Gramsci's political theory specifically in his anti-Habermasian approach to language. Given current developments in social theory, it is intriguing that Gramsci saw no tension between his linguistics and his development of Marxism. Chapter 1 examines how his linguistic concepts are tightly bound to his philosophy of praxis. Chapters 2 and 3 engage with the other two important thinkers for whom language and Marxism are copacetic rather than inimical - Valentin Volosinov, associated with the Bakhtin Circle, and Walter Benjamin. The Bakhtin Circle and Benjamin are crucial because they represent the two most important and influential Marxist discussions of language. My term Vernacular materialism' is clearly at odds with many other uses of the term 'materialism.' By materialism I do not mean realism (often called epistemological materialism), nor do I mean naturalism (ontological materialism). Esteve Morera has advanced an insightful interpretation of Gramsci as a realist who holds a correspondence theory of truth; as we shall see, however, his writings on language support the more common interpretation that for Gramsci, 'objectivity' means 'humanly objective' - that is, 'historically subjective' and not corresponding to some ontologically 'real' realm.20 My argument is that for Gramsci, starting from materiality does not posit two realms — material versus non-material, material versus ideal, extra-linguistic versus linguistic — between which there could be 'correspondence.' This does not rule out making pragmatic distinctions between ideas and objects or between words and thoughts. It does mean, however, that the philosophy of praxis cannot rest on divisions between subjectivity and objectivity, reality and thought, nor can it exacerbate them, nor can it equate them with the linguistic and non-linguistic. In this sense, I place Gramsci in line with Louis Dupre" and Raymond Williams, who emphasize a cultural reading of Marx - specifically, a conception that language is both material and the product of human activity, as opposed to rarified thought.21l For similar reasons, Gramsci is quite critical of notions - for example, the one held by Alex Callinicos - that systematic social inquiry should adopt the methods or perspective of the natural sciences (ontological materialism).22 Instead, by materialism I take Gramsci to mean, as Sean Sayers defines it, 'the theory that consciousness does not exist independent of matter and that all reality is ultimately material in nature,'23 with the proviso that Gramsci usually encloses 'matter' in scare-quotes and argues that it should be understood in terms neither of natural science nor of Various materialist metaphysics.' The qualities of matter should not be seen as transhistorical or eternal, but rather as historically dependent on the material forces of production.24Chapterwill explain and defendFEN this interpretation of Gramsci.

8

Gramsci's Politics of Language

I have chosen the term Vernacular' instead of 'linguistic' materialism for several reasons. The first is to emphasize Gramsci's attention to the historical shift in Europe - and especially Italy - from Latin to vernacular languages. The effects of this transformation were still being strongly felt in Gramsci's lifetime in the realms of culture (most notably in literature), education, and of course religion. The creation and dissemination of 'standard Italian' took place within the broader historical context of Latin losing its status in favour of vernacular languages. This was not just a question of which language was used and whether it was nationally based. More significantly, it was a move away from viewing language through a static model of classic literature exemplified by Dante, Petrarch, or Boccaccio. With the influence of German Romanticism, vernacular languages were elevated as prosaic, quotidian, living, and creative expressions of 'the people' or nation. This is central to Gramsci's engagement with the Italian novelist and language policy advisor Alessandro Manzoni, discussed in chapter 1. The historical transformation from Latin to the vernacular is intricately linked to the political negotiations between the Roman Catholic Church and secular leaders conducted while Italy was emerging as a nation-state in the nineteenth century, the implications of this have extended to the present. While political authority in Italy has been faced with the problem of the Vatican, all the nations of modern Europe have been affected by the shift from Latin to vernacular, secular, national languages. Tracing these dynamics farther back historically, we see important religious overtones in relation to the Vulgate and vernacular Bibles. This is a second reason to note the distinction between vernacular and linguistic materialism. Gramsci praises the intellectual advances of the Renaissance but also notes that it failed to bring about reform in any but the upper classes, and often only among traditional intellectuals. Benedetto Croce criticized Martin Luther and the Reformation for being primitive and crude; Gramsci defended both, insisting that unlike the Renaissance and Croce's Idealist philosophy, they had a greater impact on society at large. They were vulgarized — that is, popularized. It is no coincidence that this vulgarization required the vernacular. In this sense, vernacular gives us a more specific way to comprehend Gramsci's writings on subalternity, which have been so influential, especially in colonial and postcolonial studies. A focus on Gramsci's vernacular materialism brings his concerns into the ambit of the historical processes of popular languages that pervade high culture, as investigated by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World.26These dynamics are directly connected to the historical dimension of Gramsci's important distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals, a distinction examined in chapter 4. The question of religion and its opposition to science runs parallel to the dichotomy between 'matter' and language and raises a third way in which Ver-

Introduction 9 nacular' is distinct from 'linguistic.' Where Vulgar Marxism' is correctly seen as overly scientistic, both liberal and conservative critics often accuse Marxism of being a religion - occasionally no better than a fanatical religion. Gramsci approaches religion via several different concerns. He analyses religious institutions - most extensively the Roman Catholic Church - and their ability to create intellectuals, disseminate their world views, and attain political power. He also maintains that the philosophy of praxis must be able to replace religion as a world view and in so doing must be able to articulate faith. The role of faith in Gramsci's epistemology is central to chapters 3 and 4. Protestant Bibles spread because they were in vernacular languages; in the same way, Gramsci's philosophy of praxis needs to be vernacular. The fourth reason to emphasize Vernacular' is that language consists of more than formal elements - what Ferdinand de Saussure calls langue. It also includes language as it is spoken, written, and used — what Saussure calls parole and what Bakhtin more accurately analyses as 'utterances.' Gramsci addresses this distinction with the terms 'spontaneous' and 'normative' grammar. Both will be examined in the last section of chapter 1. There I will demonstrate that Gramsci uses these linguistic concepts to theorize hegemony. Thus I use the term Vernacular' to interrogate Gramsci's position relative to structuralist, poststructuralist, and semiotic approaches to language. But I also use it to emphasize that language played an important role in social philosophy and political theory long before the so-called linguistic turns of the twentieth century. What is most often being discussed under this term is actually 'the structuralist turn,' or alternatively, the Anglo-analytic turn toward the methods of ordinary language philosophy. The label 'linguistic turn' suggests that the 'turn' was toward language, and thus tends to obscure the various views of language from which twentieth century perspectives developed. The relationship, dichotomy, and dialectic between language and materialist analysis is a variation of the long history of tension between idealism and materialism. This history includes Marx's critique of Hegel and Hegel's critique of Kant, but it goes back to Plato. Commentators on Gramsci have examined in detail Gramsci's similarly motivated double-pronged critique of Croce's Idealism, on one hand, and Nikolai Bukharin's mechanical economism, on the other.27 I want to show how Gramsci's approach to language is a dialectical product of a double-pronged critique of overly idealistic views of language and overly positivistic and mechanical methods. For this reason, chapter 2 devotes considerable attention to drawing parallels between Gramsci's linguistics and Volosinov's dialectical critique of what he considers the two trends in linguistics in Europe in the 1920s. Gramsci was critical of both positivism and idealism. The latter was perhaps a

10

Gramsci's Politics of Language

more active force in Gramsci's Italy, partly as a result of Croce's prominence. Today, positivism has been discredited in many academic circles, but it is still very much alive in the realm of 'common sense.' In our capitalist societies, positivist and scientistic perspectives pervade policy decisions and public opinion. This is one reason why Gramsci's work is still central not only to academic debates around poststructuralism and Marxism, but also to a wide range of political debates. The fifth point I want to make by using Vernacular' rather than 'linguistic' to describe Gramsci's historical materialism has to do with the complexity of the terms 'philology' and 'linguistics.' As noted earlier, it is especially important that Gramsci described his philosophy of praxis as a 'living philology' in criticizing Bukharin's notion of'sociology' as overly schematic, positivistic, and elitist. By the 1920s and 1930s it was already difficult to maintain a technical distinction between linguistics as the study of language and philology as the study of texts, or literature. Historically, philology included the study of grammar and language as much as texts and literature. Moreover, philology was used by nineteenth-century European scholars to describe comparative and historical grammar and thus was almost interchangeable with the term linguistics. But it is important to note the general shift in terms whereby philology was 'narrowed' to make way for a 'science' of language with no particular reference to either individual written documents or 'living' utterances of speech. We may be able to distinguish Gramsci's philological method28 from the influences of his studies in linguistics; by the same token, his own desire to use language to connect the various aspects of his research project — as will be discussed in chapter 1 — would seem to warn against this. But more importantly, Gramsci uses 'philology' to engage subaltern experiences and world views against any elitist vanguardism, especially of the Marxist sort. It is worth a long quotation to emphasize how Gramsci connects this critique of positivist Marxism to the role he has assigned to organic intellectuals in overcoming the gap between 'leaders' and the masses: Knowledge and a judgement of the importance of this feeling on the part of the leaders is no longer a product of hunches backed up by the identification of statistical laws, which leaders then translate into ideas and words-as-force. (This is the rational and intellectual way and is all too often fallacious.) Rather it is acquired by the collective organism through 'active and conscious co-participation,' through 'compassionality,' through experience of immediate particulars, through a system which one could call 'living philology.' In this way a close link is formed between great mass, party and leading group; and the whole complex, thus articulated, can move together as 'collective-man.'29

tNTRODUCTION Statements about 'collective man' are often used to tar Marxism as totalitarian and anti-individual. This passage provides an alternative emphasis that foreshadows a major theme of this book. Gramsci raises 'philology' a few passages earlier as that which must be combined with philosophy or a general methodology. Here he describes philology as 'history in all its infinite variety and multiplicity.'30 Moreover, as Hoare and Nowell Smith point out, Gramsci is referencing Vice's equation of 'philology' with certainty and 'philosophy' with truth. Elsewhere, Gramsci uses this distinction between certainty and truth to describe the contradictory consciousness of working-class and peasant children in school. In a not so veiled attack on Croce and Gentile's distinction between instruction and education, Gramsci notes a divide between what most children know through experience and what they are taught in school. Because Gramsci is doubting Croce and Gentile's very distinction between instruction and education, it matters little that instruction is dogmatic and equated with certainty (which for Vico is analogous to philology), whereas education, like philosophy, is aimed at the true. The point is that without including experiences of pupils' lives outside school - that is, in their neighbourhoods and within their families - the problem of teaching will be 'conjured away by cardboard schemata' and will be inadequate.31 In this way, I want vernacular to remind us of Gramsci's 'living' philology that is not schematic. Yet just as Gramsci is critical of simplistic notions of 'spontaneity,' as will be discussed in chapter 1, his vernacular materialism is not merely an endorsement of the experiences of working-class or peasant children outside school, or of the common sense of the masses. Ultimately, this excursion into the topic of language allows a more intricate explanation of Gramsci's political understanding of coercion and consent. As many commentators on Gramsci have pointed out, one of the senses of 'hegemony' is that in modern societies, states do not maintain control solely through raw coercion. Rather, governing requires a combination of coercion and consent. Joseph Femia has gone further than this, interrogating Gramsci's notion of consent in its various forms and contending that the line separating coercion from consent is often very fine.32 I follow this lead, illustrating Gramsci's understanding of the dynamic processes that occur across the distinction between coercion and consent. When we investigate Gramsci's linguistics, we will see clearly his insistence that consent does not mean individually based agreement, as portrayed by naive and much simplified liberalism. On the contrary, consent like coercion is created, and the processes of its production cannot be characterized by an absence of coercion and constraint. When we focus on his model of language, it will be easier to see how Gramsci's political theory functions. We will understand why it is nearly

12

Gramsci's Politics of Language

impossible to find coercion free of any consent, and vice versa. Our experience of both depends on meanings and practices that are produced with language. Yet this realization does not mean we cannot make critical and moral judgments about which forms of hegemony are 'progressive' and which are 'regressive.' I hope to show that Gramsci does not simply equate 'progressive' with consent and 'regressive' with coercion. Coercion and consent are dialectically related; they are not mere antonyms. In this way, Gramsci's writings on language help clarify his political theory. Gramsci's View of Language What are the implications of Gramsci's insistence that language is a human institution and not a faculty of the mind or a biological capacity? What does it mean that Gramsci always sees languages as they exist in history? These are two of the guiding questions of this work. He never postulates a transcendental 'essence' or core of language outside of history. He has no concept of a meta-language or a universal grammar of all languages. From his perspective, any notion of languagein-general runs the risk of ahistorical abstraction and idealistic presupposition. These positions raise a question: Are these just negative positions from which it is impossible to articulate the relationship between language and political struggle? It might seem obvious that a historical approach to language would avoid presuppositions about language's inherent, atemporal characteristics. But my discussion in chapter 2 will show how modern-day interpretations of Bakhtin use his work to argue that language is inherently based on dialogue and that this presupposes some ethical relation among speakers. Likewise, Habermas's communicative action postulates a transcendental 'essence' of language, as will be discussed in chapter 4. These approaches to language, and many others as diverse as those of Noam Chomsky and Perry Anderson, assume non-historical and non-materialist views of what language is. Central to Gramsci's approach is his rejection of the idea that language is primarily a medium in which reality is reflected or re-presented. The simplest version of the theory of language as representation is the idea that language is nomenclature - that words are labels for either things or ideas. Gramsci is far from unique in rejecting this view, even though it is still a prevalent assumption of 'common sense,' just as it was during Gramsci's life. Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language, the pragmatics of C.S. Peirce, and (most influentially) Saussure's linguistics all, with important differences, reject this view of language as nomenclature. What is often forgotten when we focus on 'the linguistic turn' is that in linguistics and philosophy, language as nomenclature was not the dominant view by

Introduction

13

the time Peirce, Wittgenstein, and Saussure were writing.33 In their separate ways, Rousseau, Herder, the German Romanticists, and Wilhelm von Humboldt all challenged this notion. Nor did Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, or August Schleicher - some of the most influential nineteenth-century Indo-European historical linguists - conceive of language primarily as nomenclature. Analytic language philosophy has also rejected the theory that language is nomenclature. But as Charles Taylor argues, it retains - in a more sophisticated form - the theory that language is a medium of representation. Analytic language philosophy has shown that the word is not the unit from which meaning is produced. It asks instead whether a sentence or proposition corresponds to (or not) the reality it is to represent. Gottlob Frege started a tradition of language philosophy based on determining the truth content — and thus the meaning — of language propositions as opposed to individual words. But as Taylor persuasively argues, this tradition is still rooted in a theory of meaning understood in terms of propositions representing or corresponding to the 'real' world. Meaning is still understood as the relationship between 'things' or 'truth-content' and the language that represents them.34 Gramsci did not have an advanced analytic philosophy of language to comment on, and the fields of semiotics and structuralism did not exist at the time, so of course he does not directly confront these issues. But he does engage with his contemporary linguistic traditions, that is, positivism and the polemics against relativism or subjectivism. Chapters 2 and 3 examine his responses to such debates in order to relate his epistemology and linguistics to more recent issues in social theory. Rejecting language as nomenclature or as the medium of representation is concomitant with understanding that language is not merely an instrument of communication, nor is it merely a vehicle through which ideas, intentions, and feelings are transmitted. Rather, as Gramsci would say, language is culture and philosophy and is very much a substantial part of social reality. Or, as Wittgenstein argues, language cannot be disassociated from language games and forms of life.35 When we assume, explicitly or implicitly, that language is fundamentally nomenclature or a representational medium, we end up viewing language as nonmaterial. Many different approaches to language, from Anglo-analytic philosophy to post-Marxist discourse analysis, emphasize that language is different and separate from reality, whether that reality is conceived of as the natural world or includes social reality. The field of semiotics has perhaps been the most effective in its systematic argument that people use language to produce meaning not primarily by relating words, sentences, or utterances to objects, ideas, or some non-linguistic reality. Rather, meaning is produced through interrelations and differences between

14

Gramsci's Politics of Language

words, or signs. Saussure's famous notion, 'In the language itself, there are only differences^ expresses this notion. In what ways does Gramsci show that language is the historical production of meaning? And how does he integrate this perspective into his Marxism, or philosophy of praxis? While Gramsci does not use the semiotic terminology of signifier, signified, and referent, we shall see in chapter 1 that he does understand meaning as constructed by relationships within language. I contend that Gramsci views language as a system whereby meaning is created through signs (to use the semiological terminology) by their reference not to non-signs, but to other signs.37 Semioticians and poststructuralists have critiqued the structuralist notion that languages are not closed systems or static structures. How does Gramsci's view of language accord with such arguments? I explore this question by asking what he means when he describes language as historically metaphoric and by investigating his concepts of 'normative' and 'spontaneous' grammar. Preview Chapter 1 focuses on the continuity of Gramsci's approach to language. It provides the context of la questione della lingua in Italy in the first decades of the twentieth century. I also place Gramsci within the various schools of linguistics of the time. From these settings, I trace his ideas about language in his journalism, political writings, and Prison Notebooks. The chapter concludes with an in-depth reading of Quaderno 29, 'Notes for an Introduction to the Study of Grammar,' written in 1935, which relates Gramsci's concepts of'spontaneous' or 'immanent' and 'normative' grammar to his renowned theory of hegemony. Taking off from this framework, chapter 2 asks how Gramsci defines linguistic creativity, and what he means when he contends that language is not parthenogenetic - that is, does not reproduce on its own. This chapter explores in greater detail Gramsci's notion of 'unity,' which is central to his concept of a 'unified national language,' as well as his idea of creating a 'national popular collective will' on which the Communist Party should base itself and which it should foster. To carry out this investigation, I utilize the work of the Bakhtin Circle. By noting the close parallels between Gramsci's and Volosinov's critiques of the prevalent schools of linguistics, I flesh out the implications of some of Gramsci's more fragmentary comments. This aim is also supported with reference to Medvedev's analysis of formalism. This raises a question: If Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle have such similar responses to certain problems of linguistics, why do they arrive at such opposite positions with regard to unified national languages? To answer this question, the second part of chapter 2 turns to Bakhtin's analysis of Fra^ois Rabelais. In this context I clarify what Gramsci means by

Introduction

15

'unity' and the 'unifying' process of language, which ultimately depends on his notions of social creativity and communal generation. Chapter 2 focuses on the relationships within a unified language, or a hegemonic force; chapter 3 looks at relationships among different languages. Through a comparison with Walter Benjamin's writings on language and translation, I investigate Gramsci's use of 'translation' as key metaphor for revolution and sociopolitical analysis. This approach opens up an alternative to the classic tensions within the literature surrounding Gramsci's use of the Russian Revolution and his relationship to Lenin. The second part of chapter 3 uses the messianic and theological themes in Benjamin's work to address Gramsci's analysis of faith, religion, science, and objectivity. These epistemological foundations are decisive to Gramsci's political theory as well as to his linguistics. They also distinguish his approach not only from Benjamin's but also from persistent themes in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Jiirgen Habermas, who constitute the comparative framework of the final chapter. Drawing on the themes of epistemology and the critique of positivism developed in the earlier chapters, chapter 4 broaches questions of reason and rationality that are so central to debates about so-called postmodernism. The possibility of reasoned consent is often seen as one of the mainstays of distinguishing consent from coercion. This chapter asks: What is Gramsci's position in relation to Adorno's and Horkheimer's critiques of Enlightenment reason and bourgeois subjectivity? Language is not central to the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer, but it is central to the concept of mimesis. Language is fundamental to Habermas's critique of Adorno and Horkheimer and to his attempt to rescue Enlightenment reason as essential to the 'unfinished project' of modernity. By highlighting the importance of language for Gramsci, this chapter opens up many questions about the relationship between Gramsci and Habermas, especially regarding the relationship between language and reason. With Habermas's analysis of the public sphere as a realm in which deliberative communicative rationality can provide a democratic ground for continuing the Enlightenment Project, Gramsci's position with regard to such a sphere and its relation to reason and language becomes crucial. This final chapter illustrates why it is so important that Gramsci sees linguistic activity as praxis.

Chapter One

Gramsci's Linguistics

One of the great intellectual 'regrets' of my life is the deep wound I inflicted on my dear professor at the University of Turin, Bartoli, who was convinced I was the archangel sent to destroy the neo-grammarians once and for all... Antonio Gramsci1

In 1976, Perry Anderson complained that 'nothing reveals the lack of ordinary scholarship from which Gramsci's legacy has suffered more than this widespread illusion' that the concept of hegemony is 'an entirely new coinage — in effect, his own invention.'2 This is as true today as it was then, but not — as Anderson would have it - because of ignorance of this term's history in the Russian Social Democratic movement. Instead, it is due to the lack of attention paid to the connection between 'hegemony' and Gramsci's studies in linguistics. Franco Lo Piparo has demonstrated thoroughly how Gramsci developed 'hegemony' substantially from concepts and concerns that he first encountered in turn-of-the-century Italian linguistics. He argues convincingly that 'the early source of [Gramsci's] philosophy should not be searched for in Marx or Lenin or in any other Marxist, but in the science of language.'4 He documents the relatively matured nature of Gramsci's conceptualizations of hegemony, civil society, and intellectuals in the course of his academic studies in linguistics with his professor, Matteo Bartoli, in Turin, and in his journalism prior to 1918. We do not have to pit Gramsci's Marxism against his pre-Marxist preoccupations so dichotomously to realize that his studies in linguistics are central to his entire thought. The most widely read secondary literature in English cognizant of Lo Piparo's argument is David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's introduction to their section 'Language, Linguistics and Folklore' in Selections from Cultural Writings?

Gramsci's Linguistics

17

Important work that integrates Gramsci's writings on language with his political philosophy has also been done by Niels Helsloot, Leonardo Salamini, and Lucia Borghese. Anne Showstack Sassoon provides an intriguing analysis not of Gramsci's linguistics per se but rather of his more general 'subversive' use of language.7 Gramsci's concern with language has also been noted in discussions comparing him with the Bakhtin Circle (see chapter 2).8 But these are only article-length considerations; they do not constitute anything close to an adequate discussion of the topic, and they leave many questions unanswered. Moreover, the enormous industry devoted to Gramsci's legacy seems hardly affected by the insight that language was one of his guiding concerns. The literature in Italian has shown a more sustained recognition that Gramsci's study of language influenced his entire thought.9 More recently, the topic of translation has brought Gramsci's concern with language into view (see chapter 3).10 But to my knowledge, Lo Piparo's work is the only extensive investigation in any language. Moreover, little has been done to relate Gramsci's theory of language to other Marxist considerations on language. In the preface of Lo Piparo's book, Tullio De Mauro, one of Italy's leading linguists, forecast a reopening and rethinking of Gramsci's legacy based on Lo Piparo's insights. This does not seem to have occurred, at least not yet. This chapter expands on the arguments advanced in the works of Lo Piparo and the other scholars noted earlier. My two aims here are to demonstrate how Gramsci's linguistic theory can elucidate his political theory and to provide the basis for a Marxist theory of language that I will expand on in later chapters. The first is important because the many articles and books on Gramsci organized around 'hegemony' fail to consider that before he had read Lenin's work, before he was a self-conscious Marxist, he was studying linguistics with Bartoli and even planning to write a thesis on the history of language. In this context, he was studying linguists whose important concepts included, among others, prestigio (prestige), fascino (fascination, attraction, charm), and egemonia. (hegemony).121 Yet a commentator as thorough as Christine Buci-Glucksmann maintains that Gramsci's studies of linguistics 'were quickly jettisoned on his discovery and experience of the working class and of journalism.' This and similar notions are contradicted by much of the evidence cited repeatedly by Gramsci scholars. For example, Gramsci's famous letter to Tania Schucht of 19 March 1927 proposes four basic subjects for research while in prison, one of which is the study of comparative linguistics from Bartoli's perspective. In discussing this letter, BuciGlucksmann summarily neglects this point, lumping it in with 'other subjects.'14 Nor does she mention why, if Gramsci had 'jettisoned' his linguistic studies, he would choose to write his last notebook in prison on 'Notes for an Introduction to the Study of Grammar.' I use Buci-Glucksmann as an example precisely

18

Gramsci's Politics of Language

because far from being an exception, she is one of the scholars most attentive to his writing style, invoking sentiments of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes to suggest reading strategies.15 Yet in Gramscian scholarship, such lack of examination of Gramsci's own linguistic studies is the rule. The reasons for this are more telling of how disciplinary boundaries affect scholarship - specifically, about the relationship between Marxism and language - than they are of any particular study of Gramsci.16 I am not trying to locate the sole, or even the most important, source of Gramsci's 'hegemony' at the expense of other influences. I am less concerned with pure intellectual history or hagiography. As Gramsci himself points out, the search for origins, if it is a search for the essential cause of any phenomenon, has already been criticized by Marx in the Theses on Feuerbach. This is also true at the level of the origins of concepts. If the search for the origins of 'hegemony' is an attempt to get at its 'essence,' then, using Marx's language from the Sixth Thesis, 'hegemony' can only be comprehended as an 'internal dumb generality.'18 Struggles over the origin of 'hegemony' are more fundamentally struggles over what 'hegemony' means, how we use it, and what we can accomplish using it in the future. As I will show, Gramsci's approach to all language is that it produces meaning historically; thus, changes in meaning are as important as a term's origins, if not more important. More telling than a concept's origins are its vicissitudes. These are ultimately questions of political theory and political strategy. The difficulties of interpreting Gramsci's concepts are especially extreme given the unfinished and eclectic nature of his prison writings. Earlier debates over the extent to which Gramsci is Leninist or Crocean have now given way to comparable polemics that use different terminology and take place on different terrains. These have included the opposition of British cultural Marxists to the structuralism of Louis Althusser. 'Hegemony' has also been used on one hand to position Gramsci's writings as the passageway to various 'post-Marxisms,' and on the other to keep the political struggle of the working class at the forefront. Clearly, the argument that 'hegemony' has roots in linguistics has implications that are far from politically neutral, especially in the context of debates around poststructuralism or 'postmodernism,' in which language plays a significant role. My objective is not to make Gramsci out to be a non-Marxist; on the contrary, it is to show how he integrated the ideas of a certain school of linguistics (and in the case of Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, ideas that were certainly informed by socialist sympathies)20 into a Marxist framework. This integration of linguistics into Marxism does not leave that framework unaffected. Instead, it fundamentally changes what Gramsci's Marxism or 'philosophy of praxis' (the term Gramsci used for Marxism, which he appropriated from Antonio Labriola) is and what it must include. It does not mark a turn away from social analyses that have at their base

Gramsci's Linguistics

19

Marx's critique of capitalism as both an economic structure and a historical epoch. Nor does incorporating linguistic concepts and an analysis of language mean retreating from the Marxist concept of class. Only by understanding Gramsci's background in linguistics, his attacks on Esperanto and Alessandro Manzoni, and his concern with illiteracy can we really comprehend how his concept of hegemony is not only sociological but also moral and ethical. Gramscian scholarship often neglects the ethical distinction between what I call progressive hegemony (which Gramsci works to create through the proletariat) and regressive hegemony (which, Gramsci argues, allows the bourgeois State to maintain its power democratically)..21his is not surprising sincCE the ethical, epistemological, and philosophical roots of Gramsci's writings are less clear and obviously compelling than his notions of hegemony, organic intellectual, and civil society. An outline of Gramscian scholarship on 'hegemony' would constitute a vast project in itself, and so would an investigation of Marxism's treatment of language. While this chapter does not set out to accomplish either, it has implications for both. Throughout this chapter I illustrate how Gramsci's linguistics should be seen as part of his more general reaction against positivism and mechanistic social theory on the one hand, and Crocean Idealism on the other. On the linguistic terrain, the Neogrammarians represent to Gramsci positivism and overly mechanistic methodology. I argue that Gramsci's linguistics must also be understood as a critique of the primarily Crocean trend in linguistics that opposed the Neogrammarians. When we position Gramsci in this context, it is clear how his Marxism is related to structuralism that developed from linguistics. The two vital concepts for understanding this development are 'normative grammar' and 'spontaneous (or immanent) grammar' as articulated in Quaderno 29. Two main points guide this chapter. The first is that, as Helsloot, Salamini, and Lo Piparo argue, for Gramsci there is no firm demarcation between language and non-linguistic social structures. As we shall see, Gramsci made this argument against the Neogrammarians' attempts to divorce the science of language from all other sciences. Today it needs to be made to dispel the arguments not only from positivist linguistics but also from certain Marxist thinkers who wish to maintain this distinction in order to critique the 'post-Marxist' and 'postmodernist' obsession with language. My second guiding point is that since, for Gramsci, language is based on metaphor, the philosophy of praxis can use linguistic terms and models metaphorically in other realms of social inquiry and action. Moreover, the aim of linguistics cannot be to determine the unique properties or the essence of language. This is because, language is a historically created human institution, a collective term that is intimately connected to culture, philosophy, nationality, and history.

20

Gramsci's Politics of Language

With the questioning of the fundamental tenets of structuralism from various camps and the increasing pertinence of connections between language and subjectivity for feminist, antiracist, and gay and lesbian movements, an investigation of Gramsci's linguistic theory holds valuable insights. Gramsci's work is especially interesting because he was writing in the historical milieu from which structuralism arose. This combination of linguistics and Marxism, I argue, contributed to the production of writings that have become influential and relevant in a wide variety of fields yet still hold huge, unfulfilled potential. The Study of Language in Italy at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century In the Italian context of the early twentieth century, Gramsci's interest in 'the language question,' la questions delta lingua, was certainly not novel. When Italy was politically unified in 1861, only about 2.5 per cent of Italians were able to use any language that could be considered 'standard' Italian, and about 75 per cent were non-literate.22 The lack of a national language, especially in comparison with France and England and to a lesser extent Germany, was seen as a serious social and political problem. The linguistic situation was one of many profoundly important issues (including emigration, internal migration, urbanization, the introduction of mandatory schooling, and industrialization) that occupied intellectuals and politicians in the wake of political unification, during Gramsci's early life. By 1911, when Gramsci moved from Sardinia to Turin, the non-literacy rate for Italy as a whole had been reduced to about 40 per cent. In Sardinia it had dropped from 90 per cent in 1861 to 58 per cent; the equivalent figures for Piedmont were 54 per cent and 11 per cent.23 This is just one indication of how questions of language must have struck the Sardinian student as a twenty-year-old in Turin.24 The specific debates over Alessandro Manzoni's strategy of using the Tuscan dialect as 'standard' Italian and expanding its use throughout Italy waned somewhat after the turn of the century. But as Giacomo Devoto notes, 'Manzoni had given to the theory of the literary language an interpretation that was no longer artistic but juridical and political.25'Gramsci's attention to language is very much a reflection of his place as a Sardinian confronting 'standard' Italian in a relatively new nation. These Italian concerns with language took place during a time of important shifts in European linguistics. Between 1906 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure delivered the lectures that were to become his Cours de linguistique generate, which inaugurated synchronic linguistics so influential to structuralism and poststructuralism. Also around this time, Idealist linguistics was giving way to various other perspectives, including Saussure's.

Gramsci's Linguistics

21

Gramsci studied in Turin with Professor Matteo Bartoli. Bartoli directly opposed the Neogrammarians, who had taught (among others) Saussure and Franz Boas. The Neogrammarians, or Junggrammatiker (more accurately translated as 'young grammarians'), was the name given - initially as a slight on account of their youth - to a loose grouping of German linguists in Leipzig. They maintained that linguistic change over time and across languages is the result of regular laws of sound or phonetics. Much of nineteenth-century comparative linguistics was based on this idea, which permitted the grouping of languages into language families and made it possible to trace influences back to Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Spawned in the 1870s by the optimism arising from recent advances in finding new rules to explain phonetic changes over time in different languages, this group of young German linguists — who included Karl Brugmann, Hermann Osthoff, August Leskien, and Berthold Delbriick - worked under the premise that there were absolutely no exceptions to the phonetic laws. They contended that every anomaly to the phonetic laws could be explained by laws that had yet to be discovered or by one law interfering with another. This idea also led them to reject the earlier goal of reconstructing the one original language.27 That phonetic laws existed had been a common assumption for many linguists before the Neogrammarians. What distinguished the latter theoretically was their insistence on the exceptionless character of phonetic laws and their focus on the implications of this. Their methods did not differ much from those of their predecessors. They focused on the word as a phonetic entity and traced how it changed irrespective of shifts in its meaning or use. Semantics had little place in the Neogrammarians' empirical studies of sound changes regardless of the meanings of the words in which those sounds appeared. What mattered was the other sounds that surrounded a specific sound in a word — not the meaning, function, or representation of the words. Thus, changes in the culture or political context were irrelevant to the 'historical' examinations the Neogrammarians performed.28 This abstraction of words and sounds from the context in which they were used came to be the basis of many disagreements that Bartoli, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, and idealist linguists had with the Neogrammarians. Bartoli coined and developed 'Neolinguistics' in opposition to the Neogrammarians. He maintained that the Neogrammarians studied only grammar, only a collection of words, and not language itself. Neolinguistics opposed the idea that phonetic laws were exceptionless. Instead, it emphasized the importance of culture to changes in language. Saussure spent almost his entire career working in the circles of the Neogrammarians, using their methods and publishing in their journals. There is debate over whether the Cours de linguistique generate represents a definitive break with

22

Gramsci's Politics of Language

and rejection of the Neogrammarian position. Without entering such debates, it is clear that Saussure, as one of the founders of both structuralism and a pervasive new school of linguistics, was to have a profound impact on all the social and human sciences emerging from this context.29 Many linguists, took geographical, anthropological, or idealist approaches, and rejected the tradition of comparative grammarians and the Neogrammarians. Among them were Ascoli and Antoine Meillet as well as those, such as Karl Vossler, who worked within the Croce's Idealist framework. Ascoli and Meillet are discussed below in the context of Gramsci's linguistic studies. Here it is helpful to focus on Croce and his followers in order to clarify the important distinctions between them and Bartoli. Gramsci, of course, followed Bartoli and helped clarify the implications of his differences with the Crocean approach. Croce argues that there is no division between language and the aesthetic and that 'the science of art and the science of language, the Aesthetic and the Linguistic, conceived as true and proper sciences, are not two distinct things but one single science.'30 Thus, language is pure expression, nothing other than the conglomeration of individual acts of speech. Vossler compares language to climate as opposed to meteorological phenomena. Climate is an abstraction that does not exist in time but only in space; weather is a meteorological phenomenon that does exist in time as well as space. Likewise, conversation is the phenomenon that exists in time and space but language is that abstract thing which exists over time. Idealist linguistics gives great precedence to the aesthetic act of speaking — an act that is ultimately unrepeatable. From this perspective, language itself, like climate, is a generalization that must always be questioned and evaluated based on the aesthetic creativity of speech. Moreover, it is false to separate the content of the expression from the act of expression. Croce argues: 'The Linguistic has itself discovered the principles of the irreducible individuality of aesthetic entities when it has asserted that the word is what is actually spoken, and that no two words are really the same; thus eliminating synonyms and homonyms and demonstrating the impossibility of correctly translating one word into another, or a so-called dialect into a so-called language, or a so-called mother tongue into a so-called foreign language.'33 This view of language opposes the geographic linguistics of Jules Gillieron and Meillet, which is based on the notion that a word or linguistic form can have a translation in another language. Similarly, it rejects the Neogrammarian notion that a word or linguistic form can have an equivalent at a different historical time. Gramsci is at the nexus between Crocean Idealist linguistics and positivist linguistics as represented by the Neogrammarians. This mirrors Gramsci's more general position in opposition to both Crocean Idealism, as a whole system of philosophy, and economic positivistic Marxism; it also is reminiscent of V.N.

Gramsci's Linguistics

23

Volosinov's attempt to overcome the two trends of linguistics that he labels 'individual subjectivism' and 'abstract objectivism' (these will be analysed in the next chapter). Indeed, Volosinov's prime examples of the first trend are Vossler and Croce. His prime example of the second trend is SaussEure. Gramsci is similarly attempting to dialectically overcome the opposite trends of positivism and idealism. As we shall see shortly, in order to do this he develops the concepts of 'normative' grammar and 'spontaneous' or 'immanent' grammar. In so doing, he is able to appropriate the advantages of understanding the structural and institutional aspects of language provided by the positivism of the Neogrammarians. This theory constitutes a critique of two Crocean notions: that language is purely an expressive - and fundamentally individual - act; and that there is no such thing as normative grammar. Instead, Gramsci sees the manner in which languages are structured and their concomitant political implications. But in opposition to Saussurian and Neogrammarian linguistics, Gramsci maintains that language has expressive possibilities, and he does so without dichotomizing the material aspect that Saussure brackets off as parole and the systemic structure that he labels langue. Gramsci manages to articulate this by approaching language in neither an empiricist nor a rationalist manner. As we shall see shortly, Gramsci's overcoming of the errors of both the Idealist and positivist approaches to language yields a theory of language as a historical institution that changes continuously. In contrast, the vast majority of linguistic approaches presuppose a more static, ahistorical structure of language. For some, such as Noam Chomsky, that structure is contained in the rational human mind. For Jiirgen Habermas, reason itself somehow includes linguistic competence or a set of communicative principles. From these perspectives, the structures from which language operates are not only determinable but also already determineEd. Similarly, empiricist approaches to language presuppose language structures that are not humanly created and that can be discovered through empirical research. Gramsci not only rejects such notions of language structure but also contends that the unity of a language structure is always something that is created or endeavoured toward. The results of this process can be studied empirically, but not its future, and not the limits of its potentiality. This approach yields the understanding that language, like hegemony, is not something that is ever completed. Instead, language is a process. Unlike some relativist or poststructuralist perspectives, this does not reject the possibility of a linguistic system, nor does it postulate that unity of language is impossibile or that it should be avoided even if unavoidable. On the contrary, like hegemony, this process of turning chaos into coherent structures is necessary and important, and its possibility must be hoped for37. That is not to say that all coherence and structure is preferable to all forms of

24

Gramsci's Politics of Language

chaos. In fact, it is precisely the chaos and the lack of coherence among the world views of various subordinated and oppressed social groups in modern capitalist societies that enables bourgeois ideology to dominate. This is related to Gramsci's argument that the 'history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented and episodic.' And that the tendency of these groups toward unification 'is continually interrupted by the activity of the ruling groups.'38 Inconsistency and the gaps among the various experiences of those in subaltern social groups enable the ruling class to gain the consent that, combined with a certain amount of coercion, permits it to dominate the proletariat as well as the peasantry and all other subordinate social groups. If groups are to battle bourgeois hegemony, the only practical option is to create another hegemony. Gramsci argues that the proletariat will (or should) play the leading role in this process.39 In developing a concrete notion of how this effort should proceed, Gramsci used many of the concepts that were introduced to him by Bartoli. Linguistic Conflict and Bartoli's Theory of Irradiation A year before Gramsci began attending Bartoli's courses in linguistics, Bartoli coined the term neolinguistica. Bartoli used the term until 1934, when he abandoned it because 'among other things it was irritating to esteemed colleagues of the older schools.'40 From this time on he used the term linguistica areale or spaziale — that is, area or spatial linguistics. As Lo Piparo documents, this change in terminology was related to his increasing unease with the position of his Neolinguist colleague, Giulio Bertoni. And this was in part a distancing between Bartoli and the Crocean-based linguistics of both Bertoni and Vossler. Contrary to the claims of several scholars, Gramsci's training in linguistics should not be seen as an insignificant or youthful idealist phase that he overcame in his later materialist thought.42In fact, there are continuous themes that develop from his studiesS with Bartoli through his journalism to his prison writings. Moreover, in 1935, when his fascist prison guards softened their repression, he did not choose to write explicitly on political issues of the sort that would have been prohibited under prior censorship. Instead he chose to write about grammar! As we shall see at the end of this chapter, his discussion of grammar in his final writings is very much in line with his earliest concerns. As Franco Lo Piparo documents thoroughly, in a very real sense this leader of the Italian working class was a linguist throughout his adult life. In his letter to Schucht of 19 March 1927 - after the section regularly quoted by commentators about wanting to accomplish something 'ftir ewig'&s the genesis of his research program in prison - Gramsci lists four main ideas for his plan of study. The second is, as he describes, 'a study of comparative linguistics, nothing

Gramsci's Linguistics

25

less! What could be more "disinterested" and "fur ewig" than that?' This study is precisely a return to the interests he held during those years he spent studying with Bartoli. Gramsci writes that such a study would 'concern only the methodological and theoretical aspect of this subject, which has never been written about in a complete, systematic way, from the new viewpoint of the neo-linguists opposed to the neo-grammarians ... being of the same generation as [the neogrammarians], [Bartoli] was bound by thousands of academic strings to this infamous sect. In his pronouncements he didn't dare to go beyond certain limits of decorum and deference for old funerary monuments of erudition.'43 This indicates that in 1927, Gramsci did not see his early work in linguistics as an idealist phase that had been superseded. Moreover, both Bartoli and Gramsci apparently felt that the theoretical underpinnings of Bartoli's Neolinguistics had not yet been established. Given that by this time Gramsci was highly critical of Croce, and that in 1932 he had started his long detailed critique of Croce, we must recognize that the Neolinguistics of Bartoli (and Gramsci) cannot be synonymous with Crocean Idealism. Moreover, Gramsci derives from Bartoli a guiding motif for his theory of language. As Rosiello discusses, this motif is that all languages are the historical result of sociocultural conflict.44 Working from the geographic interests of earlier linguists such as Jules Gillie'ron and Ascoli, Bartoli begins with the notion that wherever two linguistic forms — for example, two words or phrases — are in competition with one another for usage, they can not be coeval: one of the words must be older than the other, and one of the words must eventually succeed and the other give way. Of course, this notion of competition is at odds with the Neogrammarian approach, which maintains that the meanings of words and a word's relationship to other words are outside phonic relations and have no effect on linguistic change. Bartoli's starting point is derived from Ascoli's contention that where two languages come into contact, there is always conflict between them, just as there is between the cultures of which they form a part. Thus Bartoli (like Ascoli) finds that linguistic innovations are not solely parthenogenetic or 'spontaneous' rather, they are the result of the relationships between different languages and different 'phases' of the same language. Ascoli insisted that the study of language must be non-autonomous. As an anthropologist, he was especially concerned with the overlap of biology and linguistics. According to Sebastiano Timpanaro, it was this approach - at odds with the Neogrammarians' more psychological outlook — that led Ascoli to place so much emphasis on his theory of'ethnic substratum.'45 Ascoli used the controversial concept of substratum to explain sound changes. He maintained that when a group of people accepts or adopts the language of another social group, there

26

Gramsci's Politics of Language

remains an underlying action from the original 'stratum' of language that exerts phonological, morphological, and syntactic pressure on the adopted language.46 In this way, linguistic change is embedded in history, politics, culture, and Ascoli's priority— the natural history of a group of people. But Ascoli also maintained that the 'oral habits' of a community are not simply the result of past acquisition and the history of that community; they also have a more permanent character, one that is connected to the anatomical structure of the glottis of different races.47 This tendency toward biological reductionism is something that Bartoli never emphasized, and it would be in opposition to Gramsci's historicism and philosophy. Instead, both Bartoli and Gramsci highlighted language's interconnectedness with history, politics, and culture. For Ascoli, then, the source of new idioms and phonetic change is the intermixing of two or more languages. The political overtones of this are quite evident in Ascoli's preface to his journal, Archivio glottologico italiano. He argues that linguistic change 'is a question, in other words, of new ethnic individuals that develop from the fusion of two diverse national entities. One of these national entities, whether its population is lesser or greater, is victorious when its words are adopted, and when the other adapts its speech to the right situations.' Ascoli explains how this process is always complex. For example, in the case of GalloRoman there is 'contamination between the grammar of the victors and those of the defeated.' The new idiom is the result of the various forces at work in the conflict between the two communities.48 Bartoli developed the concept of prestige in an attempt to explain why certain groups adopt other people's languages; that being said, this concept's beginnings can be found in the naturalistic and sociolinguistic writings of Ascoli. Although not articulated in these terms, both Ascoli's theory and Bartoli's subsequent work rely on the proposition that there is conflict and competition between word forms; it follows that both are based on the idea that different word forms are identical to each other in some way (whereas Croce would argue that each and every word is always unique when it is uttered). Put another way, words in conflict are synonymous, or function in the same manner within the system of language. The conflict lies in the implicit idea that words maintain their positions in language - and can relate harmoniously with other words only because they are distinctive relative to those other words. While all languages have synonyms, if there is absolutely no difference in implication, context, or overtone between two words, one word will fall out of use in favour of the other. This theory of historical linguistic change has strong affinities with Saussure's contention (although in synchronic linguistics) that 'in the language itself, there are only differences ... and no positive terms.'49 In this respect, both per spectives differ from one holding that linguistic forms or words are themselves

Gramsci's Linguistics

27

containers for meanings. In contrast to such views of language as nomenclature or as representative of things, Bartoli and Gramsci agree with Saussure that meaning is produced within language. However, Bartoli and Gramsci, contra Saussure, never abstract this process from its social context. As we shall see, this approach to language also has specific similarities and implicit connections to Gramsci's understanding of hegemony. The main question confronting Bartoli and Gramsci arises from the rejection of the biological reductionism of Ascoli's concept of the substratum. By adopting Ascoli's basic theory of language without its recourse to physiology, Bartoli and Gramsci reorient linguistics to a totally historical science. Taking off from Ascoli's conception of the conflict inherent in words and between languages, Bartoli developed a method that starts by determining the chronological connection between two linguistic forms and the geographic locations where they are used. This method concurs with Saussure's (borrowed) idea that 'geographical diversity has to be translated into temporal diversity.'50 After determining the chronological connection and geographic areas of competing word forms, Bartoli attempts to locate the centres from which these innovations 'irradiated.' In this way he adapts both diachronic analyses and the geographic, synchronic approach of Gillieron and others.51 Finally, he considers the cause of a specific innovation - that is, 'Why was one word, or linguistic form, preferred to another?' Even the first of these three steps combines synchronic and diachronic analyses. It is often possible to document which of two words is older and which geographic areas it is used in. For those times when such evidence cannot be found, Bartoli developed five general rules for determining which word is older. These guiding principles are based on the relative isolation of geographic areas, the positioning of these areas with respect to other areas ('lateral' areas), the size of the area in which the words are used, the length of the history of the populations in question, and which of the words is still being used and which has disappeared.52 The second determination of the centre of irradiation again shows the interest in place and the manner in which it interacts with time. But it also highlights the most obvious connection between linguistic influence and cultural power. In 1912 and 1913, when Gramsci was studying with him, Bartoli was asking, 'Why is it said that a people conquers another people? It is said that their costumes, their modes of thought are imposed with weapons or are accepted with the binding [fascino]^ of a spirit of superiority.'54Bartoliknewwthatt centres entres of irra always coincided with cultural power and that the linguistic concept offascinoprestigio included cultural qualities. The terminology of spiritual superiority can be seen as an influence of Croce; however, by 1925, Bartoli has basically stopped

28

Gramsci's Politics of Language

talking about the 'binding of superior spirit' and begun considering instead the amount of prestige that one people had relative to another. Not until his first years in prison did Gramsci begin using prestigio (prestige) and egemonia (hegemony) together. Lo Piparo argues compellingly that beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in the linguistic writings that Gramsci was familiar with, the terms prestigio (prestige), dittatura (dictatorship), and egemonia (hegemony) were being used almost synonymously. They all indicated when an idiom was or should have been the centre of verbal and cultural rules.55 This basic conception of the centre of linguistic and cultural power is what led Bartoli to ask how one people could conquer another not so much through the use of weapons, but rather by imposing customs and modes of thought. It is also at the very heart of Gramsci's use of 'hegemony' in the prison notebooks for theorizing the relationship and tensions between coercion and consent. Of course, this relationship had occupied Italian political thought from Machiavelli to Pareto. It is evident that Gramsci's concern, from his early studies in linguistics to his last writings in prison, is exactly the issue that Joseph Femia describes as the problematic of hegemony: 'Social control, in other words, takes two basic forms: besides influencing behaviour and choice externally, through rewards and punishments, it also affects them internally, by moulding personal convictions into a replica of prevailing norms.'56 It was Ascoli, d'Ovidio, Bartoli, and other linguists who first introduced Gramsci to a method for investigating these dynamics of social control. Lo Piparo demonstrates how Bartoli's alliance with the Crocean Idealists was akin to Gramsci's use of several strategies to work against both positivist science and the vulgar materialist Marxism of the Second International. The Crocean theory that language and historical change in language are the result of conscious spiritual creation was used to counteract the fatalistic conception that there are natural laws or physiological explanations which determine without exception how languages change and develop. The Bartolian conception of how language functions and Bartoli's battle against the mechanistic positivism of the Neogrammarians are both consistent not only with Gramsci's early writings but also with the arguments presented throughout the Quaderni. Quaderno 6, written between 1930 and 1932, states: 'In language too there is no parthenogenesis, language producing other language. Innovations occur through the interference of different cultures, and this happens in very different ways: it still occurs for whole masses of linguistic elements as well as happening in a molecular way (for example: as a "mass," Latin altered the Celtic language of the Gauls, while it influenced the Germanic language "molecularly," by lending it individual words and forms).'58 The question of Ian-

Gramsci's Linguistics

29

guage as non-parthenogenetic will be a major theme of chapter 2. This image of language development and change obviously reflects Bartoli's methods and also Ascoli's work, though it has been cleansed of its physiological reductionism.59 This is also analogous to the dynamics of many of Gramsci's historical analyses, including the history of Italian intellectuals. If, as I argue, Bartoli and Gramsci's linguistics are quite separate from the Crocean linguistics of Bertoni and Vossler, why have the two always been associated? The most obvious reason is that Bartoli worked with Bertoni. In 1925 they published the Breviario di neolinguistica with Bertoni writing the first part, on the theory of Neolinguistics, and Bartoli the second, on technique. In 1930, Gramsci castigated Bartoli for co-authoring this work with Bertoni. He contends that Bertoni in no way supplies the theoretical grounds for Bartoli's original concrete studies. Gramsci find Bertoni's work not only repugnant but also bereft of understanding of Bartoli or even of Croce ; more importantly for our purposes, he states, 'I do not feel that there is any relationship of immediate dependence between Bartoli's method and Crocism.,61ven if Bertoni had been an adequatere Crocean and scholar, he would not have been able to supply the theoretical support for Bartoli's concrete work. Thus, while there was some initial relationship between Neolinguistics and Croce's philosophy, Bartoli and Gramsci consciously moved away from that influence. It is likely that in the 1910s and 1920s Bartoli associated with the Crocean linguists in an attempt to refute the Neogrammarians. Indeed, one overwhelming characteristic of Bartoli's 1910 article that inaugurated the term neolinguistica is its staunch criticism of the Neogrammarian school. But by 1934, Bartoli had relinquished the label 'Neolinguistics' and Gramsci had carried out a more thorough critique of Croce. In 1930, Gramsci finds the brilliance of Bartoli not in his connection to an idealist philosophical position but in that 'he has transformed linguistics, conceived narrowly as a natural science, into an historical science, the roots of which must be sought "in time and space" and not in the vocal apparatus in the physiological sense.' This remark has as its object of critique Ascolian linguistics (and those of Ascoli's followers, Clemente Merlo and Pier Gabriele Goidanich), which, though it places too much emphasis on physiology, contains many useful insights. The other object of critique is the Neogrammarian approach to language. Bartoli's Neolinguistic position is not at odds with the idealist linguists but neither is it dependent on them. Bartoli never actually wrote on linguistic theory per se. Rather, he developed several methodological techniques. This absence of a theoretical basis for his methodology is probably what led him to collaborate with Bertoni. According to Gramsci, Bartoli saw him (i.e., his student, Gramsci) as the one who would be able to destroy the Neogrammari-

30

Gramsci's Politics of Language

ans once and for all. If Gramsci is right about this, it seems that Bartoli deemed Bertoni's theory a failure. At the very least, this was Gramsci's position.63 From Neolinguistics through Political Journalism to the Prison Writings Only by considering these details of what Gramsci meant by a study of comparative grammar (from a Bartolian perspective) can we understand Gramsci's entire project and, specifically, the thread that he saw uniting its various aspects. In the previously discussed letter of 19 March 1927 outlining the initial project, he writes that there is a unity within his four basic studies: besides making a comparative study of grammar he wanted to write about the history of Italian intellectuals, about Pirandello and the transformation of theatrical taste in Italy, and about 'feuilletons' (serials) and popular taste in literature. He remarks to Schucht, 'Really, if you look closely at these four arguments, a common thread runs through them: the popular collective spirit, in its diverse phases of development, is equally present in eachEE.' As Renate Holub points out, this complex term 'popular collective spirit' is the leitmotif of Gramsci's entire research in prison. It connects the four points of the initial scheme for his research. It is also a cornerstone of his much expanded research project, which includes studies of the Italian Risorgimento, Machiavelli and the Modern Prince, and Croce; a critique of economic and mechanical Marxism; and an ambitious attempt to renew Marxism as a tradition of thought and a plan of action with concrete historical roots. As Holub shows, when we view Gramsci's work as an investigation into the 'popular collective spirit,' we can see why his study of Manzoni is not — as one might expect, strictly literary, but instead focuses on non-literary or only semi-literary arguments. From Gramsci's method of inquiry in the prison writings, it is clear that he is not interested in Manzoni's work solely as the product of a novelist, poet, or dramatist; also central is Manzoni's relationship to la questione della lingua. Of course, Gramsci's commentary on Manzoni's work - including The Betrothed but also his linguistics and his political activities — entails an analysis of Manzoni's aesthetic product. But Gramsci weaves this aesthetic analysis into his various other interests, primarily through the sociological questions contained within the examination of the popular collective spirit.67 Hegemony is typically defined as coercion plus consent, or the State plus civil society; but it is also very much related to 'popular collective spirit.' Hegemony can also be understood as the progressive creation of a 'popular collective spirit' or as an impediment to such a spirit in the masses. When there is a lack of a progressive hegemony, regressive hegemony can be imposed from above on the majority of people in such a way that they consent to that ruling force. As long as

tRAMSCI'S LINGUISTICS

we fail to make the connections between the term hegemony and the 'popular collective spirit,' as long as we seek a literal definition of hegemony, that term will remain unclear and contradictory. The full potential of the term 'hegemony' as a tool for political and social thought and action is best realized when we see it as the culmination of Gramsci's thought as it developed through his linguistic studies, his journalistic writings, and his activities as a young political activist, a leader of the Italian Communist Party, and a political prisoner. That is, the success of the concept 'hegemony lies substantially in its connections with his other interests, which can roughly be associated with 'popular collective spirit.' Almost a decade before he identified the 'popular collective spirit' connecting his various prison research programs, before he wrote his commentary on Manzoni's The Betrothed, Gramsci attacked Manzoni and his attempt to unify Italy linguistically. In an article in the 16 February 1918 edition of IlGrido delPopolo, he identified Manzoni with the linguistic purists and with the advocates of Esperanto. According to Gramsci, not only were these people demonstrably incorrect about how language functions but they were also politically regressive. He criticized the advocates of a single language, including both the Esperantists and Manzoni, who would like artificially to create consequences which as yet lack the necessary conditions, and since their activity is merely arbitrary, all they manage to do is waste the time and energy of those who take them seriously. They would like artificially to create a definitively inflexible language which will not admit changes in space and time. In this they come head on against the science of language, which teaches that language in and for itself is an expression of beauty more than a means of communication, and that the history of the fortunes and diffusion of a given language depends strictly on the complex social activity of the people who speak it.68

This last sentence encapsulates important ideas from both Croce and Ascoli. That the aesthetic quality of language weighs more than its communicative potential is clearly a Crocean sentiment. But as we shall see below in the Quaderni, Gramsci adds to the Crocean element of aesthetic expression a distinct element of'normative' grammar. The latter half of the final sentence quoted above alludes to Ascoli's notion - emphasized by Bartoli - that language is tied to the social activity of its speakers. In the same article, Gramsci contends that Manzoni and the proponents of Esperanto are guilty of the same misunderstandings about language. Manzoni called for the Tuscan dialect to be disseminated throughout Italy as a means of creating or fostering a unified Italian language. Under his plan, all the elementary schoolteachers in Italy would be recruited from Tuscany. Gramsci refers to

32

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Ascoli's work to support the fact that 'not even a national language can be created artificially, by order of the state; that the Italian language was being formed by itself and would be formed only in so far as the shared life of the nation gave rise to numerous and stable contacts between various parts of the nation; that the spread of a particular language is due to the productive activity of the writings, trade and commerce of the people who speak that particular language.'69 This idea mirrors a statement he made many years before in Appunti di glottologia: 'Those who do not produce things (in the wide sense) cannot produce words.'70 As we shall see, this idea ties into Gramsci's insistence that a connection exists between practical activity and the production of a Weltanschauung, or philosophy of life. Gramsci's criticism of Manzoni is interesting because Gramsci himself understood the importance of a unified language for the real unification of Italy. This highlights two fundamental yet often subtle features of Gramsci's thought. The first is that his advocacy of something is never separate from his attention to how it is to be achieved. Gramsci knew that a unified Italian language would benefit the various peoples of Italy, yet this never overshadowed his awareness that a unified language should not be foisted on a people - rather, it must be created by them. Second, Gramsci did in fact have a philosophy of language, of how it functions and develops; otherwise he could not have been so ardently opposed on political grounds to the specific creation of a national language. In the terms of the above quoted article, he would have no criteria for distinguishing between 'artificially' created languages such as Tuscan (which is precisely not artificial to Tuscany) and an organic unified national language for Italy. Esperanto is an even more extreme case of an attempt to create a language without reference to the daily productive activity of a people. In refuting the request that the Milan section of the Socialist Party become an official champion of Esperanto, Gramsci writes: The Socialists are struggling for the creation of the economic and political conditions necessary to install collectivism and the International. When the International is formed, it is possible that the increased contacts between peoples, the methodical and regular integration of large masses of workers, will slowly bring about a reciprocal adjustment between the Aryo-European languages and will probably extend them throughout the world, because of the influence the new civilization will exert. But this process can then happen freely and spontaneously. Linguistic pressures are exerted only from the bottom upwards.71

This statement on its own suggests a straightforward mechanical determinism in which the economic base determines the linguistic aspects in the superstructure. It might be argued that here Gramsci is merely criticizing any notion of linguistic

Gramsci's Linguistics

33

determinism or idealism. But given his insistence, already noted in the same article, that the science of language 'teaches that language in and for itself is an expression of beauty more than a means of communication' - a Crocean contention — and given his rejection of economistic (or any other form of mechanical) materialism, this reading is narrow at best. His point is that for Socialists to use an already existing or 'artificial' language - one that was created without any reference to the life activity of the people who are to use it — is quite different from creating a national and international language.72 This reminds us that Gramsci rejects the notion that language is a transmitter of information, a medium of communication, and insists that it is productive of meaning. In contending in the above passage that linguistic pressures are exerted from the bottom upwards, Gramsci is clearly adopting Ascoli's 'substratum.' If the passage above is interpreted as an economic determinist theory of language; it would be at odds with Gramsci's concern with intellectuals and the history of Italian intellectuals, not to mention with the rest of his writings. Instead, the real question for Gramsci (and Bartoli) becomes, What replaces Ascoli's physiological root of the 'substratum' once biological reductionism is rejected? If, as I argue, the theory of language that Gramsci develops as the underpinnings of Bartoli's methodology is based on conflicts among different linguistic forms and how they are resolved, the questions become: What are the origins of linguistic forms? What is 'linguistic pressure' that is exerted from below? What determines which linguistic forms are capable of being victorious over the others? It is central to my argument that the importance of language is not at the expense of other social structures, and moreover, that its importance is not based on a firm demarcation between language and non-language structures. On the contrary, language is crucial to Gramsci because it cannot be separated from all other aspects of social life. In Quaderno 29 he states: 'Every time that the question of language surfaces, in one way or another, it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore: the formation and enlargement of the governing class, the need to establish more intimate and secure relationships between the governing groups and the national-popular mass, in other words to recognize the cultural hegemony.'73 Gramsci's preoccupations during his time in prison have their roots twenty years earlier. Even in his years as a student of linguistics and then as a journalist, he was beginning to relate linguistic paradigms to sociological issues. As Lo Piparo argues: 'The metaphoric use of the terms "language," "esperanto," "neolalism," "lexicon," for explaining phenomena that are found beyond the strictly linguistic domain is an indication of the intellectual itinerary of Gramsci. In language, in its synchronic functioning and in its history, a microcosm is implicitly recognized, a fundamental component of a more vast and complex social real-

34

Gramsci's Politics of Language

ity.'74 From this perspective, Gramsci displaces the debate about whether language belongs to the base or the superstructure, whether it is purely determined by material conditions or in fact determines those conditions. For Gramsci, language is material, albeit historically material. This much he does adopt from Ascoli's focus on the physiology of the speaker. But Gramsci rejects the biological fixity of Ascoli's presuppositions, which would have to transcend history. Instead, for Gramsci, language is rooted in the materiality of the production of words. And the structures within which words are produced are not based on an extrahistorical (or 'human') essence, and the same is true of the production of words themselves. Gramsci rejects any notion that language is the product of a 'faculty' of the human mind. In opposition to Perry Anderson's argument, summarized in my introduction, language is not the conglomeration of words produced by individuals who have total control and freedom over that production. The methodological component of Gramsci's linguistics also includes the application of linguistic paradigms (namely Bartoli's Neolinguistics) to political and sociological questions. Thus, Lo Piparo contends that Gramsci sees the relationship between national language and dialect as isomorphic with the relationships between city and country and also the relationship between official culture and folklore.75 Here we must make an important theoretical point. In the notion of the 'linguistic turn' in the social sciences, two aspects are often conflated. One is the role of language in political-cultural analyses of society, and the other is the use of methodologies developed in linguistics to examine political-cultural phenomena. For Gramsci, these two aspects fold in on each other. The linguistic model he is applying cannot be fully developed in an isolated realm of language precisely because it leads to a rejection of the boundary between language and nonlanguage. The problem that needs to be addressed regarding the second aspect is whether the linguistic paradigm is adequate to the phenomenon under study, or whether its application is necessarily forced so that it misses some important aspects of the phenomenon. Gramsci's awareness of this problem is evident in a statement from his critique of Bukharin: 'Every research has its own specific method and constructs its own specific science, and ... the method has developed and been elaborated together with the development and elaboration of this specific research and science and forms with them a single whole. To think that one can advance the progress of a work of scientific research by applying to it a standard method, chosen because it has given good results in another field of research to which is was naturally suited, is a strange delusion which has little to do with science.76 We could read Gramsci as ignoring his own advice in applying a methodolgy of linguistics to other questions. Or we could interpret his doing so as an asser-

Gramsci's Linguistics

35

tion that the linguistic methodology was not developed and elaborated in a realm outside cultural, political, and sociological questions. Ascoli certainly argues that his linguistics is not isolated from these realms. And as I have shown, Gramsci's linguistics borrows heavily from Ascoli. Moreover, Gramsci's theory of language is not a methodology aimed at grasping the essence of language, or even the general laws by which language must function. Instead, he views language as a collective term that 'does not presuppose any single thing existing in time and space. Language also means culture and philosophy (if only at the level of common sense) and therefore the fact of "language" is in reality a multiplicity of facts more or less organically coherent and co-ordinated.'77 Language is not, then, a phenomenon under study that has particular properties that are unique to it and that are not found in other social phenomena. In Gramsci's writings there is a constant interplay of linguistics and sociology. There is always an interaction between linguistics and how language functions metaphorically. This should not be surprising when we consider his argument that the relationship between language and metaphor is highly complex. In discussing Bukharin's attempt to sidestep Marx's use of the term 'immanence' by calling it 'metaphorical,' Gramsci writes that 'language, moreover, is always metaphorical. If perhaps it cannot quite be said that all discourse is metaphorical in respect of the thing or material and sensible object referred to (or the abstract concept) so as not to widen the concept of metaphor excessively, it can however be said that present language is metaphorical with respect to the meanings and the ideological content which the words used had in preceding periods of civilisation.'78 In other words, it is misleading to say that all discourse is metaphorical if metaphor means that a word refers to — or represents — an object in the sensible world but outside of language. This is an argument against viewing language as nomenclature or representation. The perspective of language as nomenclature demands a separation between language and the world that language represents. As I noted earlier, Gramsci rejects this notion. But because language is always historically metaphorical, words and linguistic structures are always related to (albeit often different from) meanings from the past. There is always movement from one discourse to another: 'the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture.'79 It follows that concepts such as prestige, attraction, and hegemony are not any different from words like 'disaster' in Gramsci's example: 'When I use the word "disaster" no one can accuse me of believing in astrology, and when I say "by Jove!" no one can assume that I am a worshipper of pagan divinities. These expressions are however a proof that modern civilization is also a development of paganism and astrology.'80 Likewise, prestigio, fascino, and egemonia were not

36

Gramsci's Politics of Language

originally linguistic neologisms; linguists such as Ascoli and Bartoli used them to describe particular technical linguistic circumstances. Then later, Gramsci used them along with the whole history of the metaphors associated with them. Gramsci's approach of extending the metaphors from linguistics to other realms including cultural, political, and social questions — is evident as early as 1918 in his critique of Esperanto and Manzoni. In justifying why it is worthwhile to discuss the issue of a single language, Gramsci states, 'I thus see in the solution of any one of the problems of culture the potential solution of all the others.'81 As youthful sentiments go, this one is perhaps overly Crocean optimistic, in that it totalizes and reduces particular social and historical problems; yet it is quite clear that the one problem he is investigating, language, is connected to many other social and cultural questions. Thus, in Quaderno 3, around 1930, he writes: 'I feel that if language is understood as an element of culture, and thus of general history, a key manifestation of the "nationality" and "popularity" of the intellectuals, this study [of the history of the Italian language] is not pointless and merely erudite.'82 By investigating language, Gramsci hopes to shed some light on a whole array of issues. As he writes in his last prison notebook, 'the linguistic fact, like any other historical fact, cannot have strictly defined national boundaries.' He is consistent throughout his life in viewing linguistic facts as belonging to a larger class of historical facts. And although here he means national boundaries quite literally, for our purposes the metaphoric overtones ring true. With these points in mind, let us take heed of Lo Piparo's suggestion that Quaderno 29 - the final ten pages of the more than two thousand that Gramsci wrote while in prison, which have been all but ignored by many Gramsci scholars — constitute an introduction to all of Gramsci's work and makes it clearer and more understandable. The crucial concepts that form the rest of Gramsci's prison writings and that have attracted so much attention from political scientists, sociologists, cultural theorists, and literary critics, can be seen quite easily in the dynamics and processes Gramsci describes in Quaderno 29. The central problematic is the question of how a 'collective popular will' is formed. That is, how are heterogeneity and multiplicity transformed into a collective unity? Put another way, what is the difference between a state that is the expression of the collective will of the multitudes who constitute it and a state that represents the will of only a specific group and forces that group's conception of the world onto other social groups? This question is analogous to a narrower question: What is the difference between an artificial language such as Esperanto or even Tuscan relative to the rest of Italy, and an organic national language created by a 'real' unification of Italy in what Gramsci terms a war of position? Of course, Gramsci is not just making theoretical distinctions. On the con-

Gramsci's Linguistics

37

trary, understanding this distinction is necessarily connected to understanding which conditions and actions lead to the success of an artificial language or regressive hegemony and how the Communist Party and the communist movement generally can lead to a different progressive hegemony. Language and Political Power Quaderno 29, entitled 'Notes for an Introduction to the Study of Grammar,' consists of initial reflections for a study that Gramsci expected to call 'Lingua nazionale e grammatical (national language and grammar). He begins with a discussion of a short and now obscure article by Benedetto Croce, 'Questa tavola rotonda e quadrata' (this round table is square). At first glance, his criticisms of Croce seem misguided. But this beginning introduces us to the term 'normative grammar,' which Gramsci uses to critique Croce's notion of language and philosophy and which is also key to Gramsci's development of 'hegemony.' Croce draws a distinction between logic and grammar by concurring with Steinthal that even when a sentence is grammatically correct (such as 'this round table is square'), it can still be absolutely absurd. Croce goes beyond Steinthal by introducing the question of aesthetic judgment. He argues that this sentence shows that logic and aesthetics are distinct from any type of normative grammar — that is, a grammar of specific rules. For Croce, grammar is not a philosophical matter such as aesthetics or logic. That is, grammar can only lay down rules and determine whether they are being followed; it cannot pass judgments of acceptability or unacceptability according to any other determinant than grammatical rules. Grammatical analysis cannot decide whether a proposition - such as 'this round table is square' — is satisfactory as a linguistic expression. It can only say whether it is grammatical. As already noted, Croce views language as an expressive act requiring an entirely different, philosophic, method of analysis than what here he calls 'grammar.' In The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General (1902), Croce writes: 'But an emission of sounds which does not express anything is not language: language is sound that is articulated, marked off and organised for the purpose of expression.'868Andlater on he states: 'Languages haveNO existence apart from the propositions and concatenations of propositions actually spoken or written between different people, at particular times.' As noted earlier, this argument was in part a polemic against the grammarians (and specifically the Neogrammarians) and other linguists of the time. Gramsci concurs with much of this concept of language, especially its critique of the Neogrammarians' extreme neglect (or bracketing out) of all expression in language in order to perform scientific study on it. But Gramsci rejects Croce's

38

Gramsci's Politics of Language

position with respect to the impossibility of normative grammar. He argues that Croce cannot successfully demonstrate what grammar is. Gramsci initially rejects Croce's essay because even as an example of a 'grammatical error,' the sentence 'this round table is square' is expressive. Thus, as Gramsci writes, 'the essay is mistaken even from the Crocean point of view (that of Croce's philosophy).'88 That is, Croce's own use of the sentence 'this round table is square' shows that it has at very least a negative expression of an absurd meaning. On the face of it, Gramsci's initial objection seems rather inappropriate, given that Croce discusses just this type of situation in the essay. Indeed, Croce's quotation of Steinthal provides a specific context: 'Someone approaches a round table and says: This round table is square. The grammarian says nothing, perfectly satisfied; but the logician cries: Absurdity!' Thus, both Steinthal and Croce contextualize the sentence, even if not to the extent that Gramsci demands. Croce also discusses the possibility of using this sentence to represent an incoherent mind: 'If I want to give concreteness to the image of this proposition, I should consider it, for example, as intentionally constructed to represent an incoherent mind; that is to imagine the arbitrary act of someone who combines voices barren of sense.89' Thus, he does not fall prey to Gramsci's contention that 'in Croce's essay the error comes from this, that such a proposition can appear in the descriptions of a "madman" or an abnormal person, and acquire absolute expressive value; how else can we represent someone who is not "logical" except by making him say "illogical things?"EE' Gramsci's critique falls flat. Is his inadequate criticism a result of his lack of direct access to the essay while in prison? Or did he mean to develop his notes more fully? Given that Croce's essay is only a few pages long, perhaps Gramsci overestimated the simplicity of Croce's argument.91 So are we to ignore section 1 of Quaderno 29? But this is not the only place where Gramsci gives great weight to this essay. For example, in Quaderno 3 he uses it as the starting point for a discussion of the relationship between Vossler and Bartoli.92 And he states in a letter to Schucht dated 12 December 1927: At this point I have abandoned my plan to write (by force majeure, given the impossibility of getting the necessary writing materials) a dissertation on the theme and with the title: This Round Table is Square,' which I think would have become a model for present and future intellectual prison endeavors. The question, unfortunately, will remain unsolved for some time yet and this for me is a cause for real regret. But I assure you that the question does exist and already has been discussed and dealt with in several hundred academic dissertations and polemical pamphlets. And it is not a small question, if you consider that it means: 'What is grammar?' and that every year, in all the countries of the world, millions upon millions of textbooks

Gramsci's Linguistics

39

on the subject are devoured by specimens of the human race, without those unfortunates having a precise awareness of the object they are devouring. I will not develop my argument here, even schematically, because I would not have enough space; without taking into account the preoccupation that, given the relative public nature of my correspondence, these arguments might reach some student on the lookout for subjects of doctoral theses in philology and might be defrauded of the just fame that I propose to acquire by means of my lucubrationEs.

Given the importance Gramsci repeatedly attached to his proposed study of Croce's essay, it would be a pity to let this anomaly remain enigmatic. In order to provide an explanation of what I take to be Gramsci's more profound point, I will use Roland Barthes's conception of a second-order semiological system. This will enable us to follow up some of the possible implications of Gramsci's apparent misreading of Croce's essay. This in turn will lead us to a pivotal rejection of Croce's conception of'normative grammar' as well as the basis for Gramsci's own use of the term — a term that is central to his critique of individualism of all stripes, both idealistic and positivistic. In chapter 3 I will expand this analysis of 'normative grammar,' explaining the importance of the distinction made by Gramsci and also by Walter Benjamin, between individual linguistic acts and social linguistic change. This distinction is also at work in chapter 2 with the question, What constitutes linguistic change as opposed to a new expression by an individual? In his analysis of speech as a form of myth, Barthes borrows an example from Valery to show that beyond a simple level of signification (or beyond the simple operations of language), there must exist another level of signification that Barthes calls 'global signification.' Barthes gives the following example: when a student reads 'quia ego nominor leo in a Latin grammar book, 'it tells [the student] clearly: I am a grammatical example meant to illustrate the rule about the agreement of the predicate.'94 Barthes elaborates that the grammatical example, 'because my name is lion,' does more than illustrate a rule about the agreement between the subject and the predicate; it also demonstrates the existence of a higher order of signification: I am even forced to realize that the sentence in no way signifies its meaning to me, that it tries very little to tell me something about the lion and what sort of name he has ... I conclude that I am faced with a particular, greater semiological system, since it is co-extensive with the language: there is, indeed, a signifier, but this signifier is itself formed by a sum of signs, it is in itself a first semiological system (my name is lion). Thereafter, the formal pattern is correctly unfolded: there is a signified (lam a grammatical example) and there is a global signification, which is none other than the

40

Gramsci's Politics of Language

correlation of the signifier and the signified; for neither the naming of the lion nor the grammatical example are given separately.95

Gramsci does not use this semiotic terminology, but his point is quite similar. Barthes is showing how myth operates as a system of signs in an analogous fashion to Gramsci's notion that normative grammar exists as a structure of regulation and the exercise of power. Thus, Gramsci's real point in this section (beyond his apparent misrepresentation of Croce) is that a proposition 'can be expressive and justified inasmuch as it has a function.'96 The manner in which a proposition functions must be placed in the broader context, its 'global signification.' Only then can it be seen to make sense - that is, to have a signified. At the grammatical level of the sentence, the example cannot be divorced from larger questions, be they philosophical, sociological, or cultural. Gramsci's criticism of Croce is actually connected to his more substantial point, which is that the structure of language, as evident in grammar, documents a society and illustrates aspects of its history as well as existing power relations. It is the first step in his answer to the question that he claims Croce failed to answer: 'What is grammar?' For Croce, grammar is a technical matter of little significance outside the narrow bounds of pedagogy. For Gramsci, grammar is the outcome of social and political history, and it enables or obstructs future possibilities. Gramsci's distinctions between types of grammar constitute the ground on which historical analysis interacts with future moral and political actions. The Grammatical Approach to Hegemony In order to adequately define grammar — which Croce failed to do — Gramsc develops the terms 'immanent grammar' and 'spontaneous grammar' (which he uses synonymously) and 'normative grammar.' It is important to keep both 'spontaneous' and 'immanent' in mind in order to connect them with his discussions of spontaneity and immanence. Here I will use 'spontaneous grammar' to avoid awkwardness. The distinction between spontaneous and normative grammar provides important insight into Gramsci's political theory, most specifically his concept of hegemony. Gramsci developed his concept of grammar as part of a double-pronged critique of Crocean linguistics and Neogrammarian positivist linguistics. This is mirrored in his dialectical incorporation, critique, and supersession of both Crocean philosophy and the mechanistic positivism of economic Marxism as expressed by Bukharin. Under the heading 'How Many Forms of Grammar Can There Be?' Gramsci states: 'There is the grammar "immanent" in language itself, by which one speaks

Gramsci's Linguistics 41

"according to grammar" without knowing it.'97 This concept is related to Gramsci's discussion throughout the Quaderni of 'spontaneous philosophy,' and to Gramsci's turning on its head Croce's phrase, 'Every man is a philosopher.' While he contrasts spontaneous (or immanent) grammar with normative grammar, he also places the two in a dialectical relationship. Thus, after identifying 'immanent' grammar with the prose of Moliere's character (M. Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act II, scene 4), and rejecting Panzini's notion that 'we can write and speak even without grammar,' he states: 'In reality, beyond [oltre alia] the "immanent grammar" in every language [linguaggio], there also exists [esiste anche], even if unwritten, one (or more) "normative" grammar (s).'98 The strict separation between 'immanent' and 'normative' grammar — suggested by the words oltre alia (beyond, in addition to, 'apart from,' as Mansfield translates, or 'besides' as Boelhower translates) and esiste anche ('there exists also') — is quickly dissolved by Gramsci. He is not making a simple dichotomous distinction between the two types of grammar. He then proceeds (and in the original, this is all one sentence whereas both translations break it up into two sentences) to expand on what is meant by 'normative' grammar: '[Normative grammar] is constituted by reciprocal control, by reciprocal teaching, and by reciprocal "censorship," which manifest themselves with the questions: "What did you intend, or want to say?", "Explain yourself better," etc ... With caricature and teasing, this whole complex of actions and reactions combines to determine a grammatical conformism, to establish "norms" or judgements of correctness and incorrectness, etc.' He then more clearly explains the complex relationship between 'normative' and 'spontaneous' grammar: 'But this "spontaneous" manifestation of a grammatical conformity is necessarily disconnected, discontinuous and limited to local social strata or local centres, etc ... (A peasant who moves to the city, because of the pressure of the urban environment, ends up conforming (herself) to the speech of the city; in the country people try to imitate the speech of the city; the subordinate [or subaltern] classes try to speak like the dominant classes and the intellectuals, etc.)'99 This account reflects Bartoli's examination of centres of irradiation, discussed earlier. It also reflects Gramsci's explication of the city/ country relationship as well as his conceptualizations of 'common sense,' including religion and folklore, 'good sense,' and philosophy (of praxis). Finally, this account reflects Gramsci's description of the history of subaltern social groups as necessarily fragmented and as being interrupted by the activity of ruling groups.100 Gramsci reinforces this description of normative grammatical conformism as 'spontaneous' when he relates spontaneous grammar to the notion of normative grammar through unifying processes. In the paragraph that follows the one

42

Gramsci's Politics of Language

quoted above, he theorizes how, with request to the language question, fragmentation, particularity, and multiplicity are transformed into coherent unity: One could sketch a picture of the 'normative grammar' that operates spontaneously in every given society, in that this society tends to become unified both as a territory and as a culture, in other words it has a governing stratum [ceto] whose function is recognized and followed. The number of'immanent or spontaneous grammars' is incalculable and, theoretically, one can say that each person has a grammar of her own. Nevertheless, next to this 'disaggregation,' ['disgregazione]EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE unification, of greater or lesser amplitude both as territorial area and as 'linguistic volume.' Written 'normative grammars' tend to embrace an entire national territory and its total 'linguistic volume,' to create a unitary national linguistic conformism, that elsewhere places expressive 'individualism' at a higher level, because it creates a more robust and homogenous skeleton for the national linguistic organism of which every individual is the reflection and the interpreter. (Taylor system and selfeducation).101

By 'governing stratum,' Gramsci is referring to the function of intellectuals. In this way he is connecting his discussion of grammar to his other major preoccupations, including conformism, education, Taylorism (and by extension Fordism), and the national popular. Gramsci's spontaneous grammar is analogous to Croce's grammar - that is, connected to aesthetics and to the manner in which individuals express themselves. In contrast, his notion of normative grammar is denied or devalued by Croce. As shown earlier, because it separates normative grammar from logic, aesthetics, and philosophical inquiry, Croce's normative grammar is almost irrelevant except in the field of practical education. For Gramsci, normative grammar cannot be delinked from philosophy. This has to do with its relationship to spontaneous grammar.102 Moreover, normative grammar amounts to the exercise of power and law (even if informal customary law, as in the case of the peasant who moves to the city) over some people. Furthermore, it operates molecularly as that which creates the spontaneous or immanent grammar. Gramsci is thus not positing some sort of original spontaneity, or some immanent grammar that is developmentally separate from all normative grammars. Nor is he simply replacing Ascoli's notion of the 'substratum' with spontaneity. That, after all, would amount to a populist Idealism. The distinction between spontaneous grammar and normative grammar is found not in the content of the grammars, but rather in how they operate:

Gramsci's Linguistics

43

We are dealing with two distinct and in part different things, like history and politics, but they cannot be considered independently, any more than politics and history. Besides, since the study of languages as a cultural phenomenon grew out of political needs (more or less conscious and consciously expressed), the needs of normative grammar have exerted an influence on historical grammar and on its 'legislative conceptions' (or at least this traditional element has reinforced, during the last century, the application of the positivist-naturalist method to the study of the history of languages conceived as the 'science of languagEEe')

This shows how spontaneous grammar is different from normative grammar but cannot be thought of without it. Once again we find ourselves comparing linguistic methodology with methodological considerations of the study of history and politics. That Gramsci's notion of spontaneous grammar is not the product of some unencumbered 'free will' is also seen in his concern with child education. Gramsci advocated the inculcation of normative grammar in children to enable them to be expressive and learn. He contended that not teaching children grammar — especially children from subordinated social groups — would be to their disadvantage: 'If grammar is excluded from education and is not "written," it cannot thereby be excluded from EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE tile's Fascist educational reform in part because it dropped grammar from the curriculum. He argued that the justification for this was based on the Crocean proposition that grammar has only narrow ends within a practical sphere and is separate from the theoretical sphere, which includes subjects such as formal logic and arithmetic. To which Gramsci responded: 'All in all, this is a "liberalism" of the most bizarre and eccentric stripe105 THE EFFECT OF THE GENTILEAN reform is that 'In practice the national-popular mass is excluded from learning the educated language, since the highest level of the ruling class [ceto], which traditionally speaks standard Italian, passes it from generation to generation, through a slow process that begins with the first stutterings of the child under the guidance of its parents, and continues through conversation (with its "this is how one says it," "it must be said like this," etc.) for the rest of one's life.'E1 Yet Gramsci is against prohibiting children from speaking local dialect in favour of standard Italian or more literary languages. On 26 March 1927 he wrote to his sister Teresina in reference to his nephew: I hope you will let him speak Sardinian and will not make any trouble for him on that score. It was a mistake, in my opinion, not to allow Edmea to speak freely in Sardinian as a little girl. This harmed her intellectual development and put her imag-

44

Gramsci's Politics of Language

ination in a straightjacket. You mustn't make this mistake with your children. ... It is a good thing for children to learn several languages, if it is possible ... I beg you, from my heart, not to make this mistake and to allow your children to absorb all the Sardinian spirit they wish and to develop spontaneously in the natural environment in which they were born.107

This, combined with Gramsci's writings on education, in which he explains the importance of learning Latin and Greek as 'dead' languages for pedagogical purposes,108 shows that his views on learning grammar were quite complex. But it does not follow that they were contradictory. His 'spontaneous grammar' is not spontaneous at all; rather, it is created throughout the molecular processes of learning a language from birth throughout one's entire life. This process of sedimentation is affected by religion, class, gender, and geographic location (i.e., dialect). In different circumstances, many of these processes contain different normative grammars. Thus, Gramsci is not simply equating spontaneous grammar with the grammar of subaltern languages and suggesting that it must be freed from the oppressive normative grammar of the leading social group. Quite the contrary - just as the history of subaltern social groups is by definition fragmentary, so too is spontaneous grammar. The act of unifying it, of creating a normative grammar, is that of becoming a 'State.'109 Spontaneous grammar is the historical product of the interaction of past normative and spontaneous grammars. Normative grammar is created from spontaneous grammars. As Gramsci also explains: 'It is evident that someone who writes a normative grammar cannot ignore the history of the language of which she wishes to propose an "exemplary phase" as the "only" one worthy to become, in an "organic" and "totalitarian" way, the "common" language of a nation in struggle and competition with other "phases" and types or schemes that already exist (connected to traditional developments or to the inorganic and incoherent attempts of forces which, as we have seen, act continuously on the spontaneous "grammars" immanent in the language).'110 Precisely because it is in some senses a frozen picture or photograph of a language, a normative grammar cannot be understood outside of the historical development of language. In this sense, normative grammar is what Saussure calls the synchronic dimension of language. By definition, it can at best take into account its historical predecessors, but solely as teleological determinants. In other words, a linguistic form 'can be expressive and justified inasmuch as it has a function.' The normative grammar itself does not take into account the forces that continue to exert pressure on the grammar that might continue to transform it in the future. As with Saussurean synchronic linguistics, the frozen language is an entire closed system that functions in relation to its various parts rather than

Gramsci's Linguistics

45

with reference to an outside, either in time or space. Yet as Saussure admits, this synchronic linguistics cannot explain how synchronic language structures come about or how they may change in the future. For Gramsci, the synchronic language structure that is a normative grammar has been justified (to some extent, in the eyes of at least a few) and has a moral and political element. This is sometimes disguised with the argument that the normative grammar is the only phase worthy of study. Implicitly or explicitly, this approach to normative grammar brackets out its historical (moral and political) development and focuses solely on the isolated grammar. But in fact, other languages with other grammars are always exerting pressure on the normative grammar. The normative grammar is the historical product of these pressures and struggles, because 'in language too, there is no parthenogenesis.' This notion of the exertion of pressure is taken from Ascoli. In the above quotation 'totalitarian' and 'organic' are used, albeit in quotation marks, to describe how a normative grammar becomes the 'common' language of a nation. This completes the circle whereby certain phases of spontaneous grammar become legitimated, justified, and transformed into normative grammars. The cycle comes full circle in that these formations - including inorganic forces - 'act continuously on the spontaneous "grammars" immanent in the language.' In a nutshell, here we have Gramsci's problematic of hegemony. It is not a simple, dichotomous relationship between coercion and consent; rather, it is a question of the formation of consent and the role of coercion. Clearly, it is impossible to simply separate those forces which act from above, externally, as force (and illegitimate from a progressive perspective), from the movements of spontaneous organic formation of collective will. All of this provides an example of a richer explanation of what Gramsci means by 'organic.' This is especially important, given his influential term 'organic intellectuals,' which will be discussed in chapter 4. From this perspective, we can see the beginnings of a theory of how social groups are constructed, which is a different thing from simply presupposing, for example, the 'proletariat.' This notion of 'organic' is explained by what Helsloot has called Gramsci's 'premise of coherence.' Helsloot contends that the central theme of Gramsci's linguistic theory is 'the demand to develop one's language in an "organic" direction. Organicity, i.e. the organizing power of a language, is measured by Gramsci by the degree of linguistic coherence of this language.'111 Thus, the organic intellectual is not only organic in relation to the community into which she was socialized, but also 'organic' in the sense that her function is to organize, and this includes organizing language. This is also true of the 'traditional intellectual,' the difference lying in what is being organized and for what purposes. A traditional intellectual simply refines and adjusts the already created organization of the

46

Gramsci's Politics of Language

world view of the dominant class. In contrast, an organic intellectual must organize more thoroughly that which is in chaos. In order to create a more coherent world view, she must work with conflicting perspectives and ideas that do not correspond to lived experiences. This project requires Gramsci's distinction between 'normative' and 'spontaneous' grammar. Gramsci argues that political intervention is always necessary to form a normative grammar, at very least in its written variety: 'Written normative grammar, then, always presupposes a "choice," a cultural direction, and is thus always an act of national-cultural politics. One might discuss the best way to present the "choice" and the "tendency" in order to get them accepted willingly, that is, one might discuss the most suitable means to obtain the goal; but there can be no doubt that there is a goal to be reached, that adequate and suitable means are needed, in other words that we are dealing with a political act.'112 To exclude political questions from the science of language (as the Neogrammarians, Saussure, and many other linguists including Chomsky do) would be to render it wholly sterile and to neglect all the points of interest to science (at least, to Gramsci's conception of science — see chapter 4). As Lo Piparo contends, for Gramsci 'the articulation of linguistic power is isomorphic to the articulation of political power.'113 Thus, to subtract considerations of linguistic power from synchronic linguistics would have to entail more than just narrowing one's field of inquiry for practical purposes. It would also have to mean ignoring the essential feature of synchronic linguistics - the linguistic power that makes such an approach possible by defining what the system is. This linguistic power is also required in order for us to understand how specific linguistic forms function within the linguistic system, because it is linguistic power that defines what the system is and what it is not. Gramsci is not rejecting normative grammar as a practice of regressive force imposed on the speakers. On the contrary, his interest in a national, unified Italian language represents perhaps the strongest analogy to both his critique of the Italian Risorgimento as a 'passive revolution' and his interest in Machiavelli as accurately diagnosing Italy's need for a strong and active unity. As in Gramsci's political theory, linguistic national unity always raises the question of international relationships: 'Historical grammar cannot but be "comparative": an expression that, analysed thoroughly, indicates the intimate consciousness that the linguistic fact, like any other historical fact, cannot have strictly defined national boundaries, but that history is always "world history" and that particular histories exist only within the frame of world history.'114 This may seem to be a technical aspect of linguistic methodology that can be supported empirically by the linguistic atlases of Meillet, for example. But it also introduces the concept of'world history.' World history is significant to Gram-

Gramsci's Linguistics 47 sci's thought and to what we shall see is his presupposition that organization and centralization hold a progressive potential if carried out correctly. Laclau and Mouffe and others have misunderstood this aspect of Gramsci's work in arguing that he 'presupposes' that the proletariat is the protagonist of progressive world history.115 On the contrary, much of Gramsci's history of Italy can be seen as an explanation for why, at that moment in Italian history, his political position was that the proletariat (along with a crucially important relationship with the peasantry) held the potential to form a 'popular collective will' for all of Italy. The question is not so simple as that of 'presupposing' a category of the proletariat. Rather, it involves asking why a 'popular collective will' formed by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry is an improvement for all those living in the territory of Italy. Gramsci attempts to analyse this question by discussing a national language for Italy. He begins to lay out the argument for why a unifying language for the nation of Italy would be foolish to resist and is in fact necessary for a progressive politics. Immediately after arguing that a written normative grammar is a political act, he continues: Questions: what is the nature of this political act, and is it going to raise oppositions of'principle,' a de facto collaboration, opposition to the details, etc. ...? If one starts from the presupposition of centralizing what already exists in a diffused, scattered but inorganic and incoherent state, it seems evident that an opposition on principle is not rational, but on the contrary it is rational to collaborate practically and willingly to welcome everything that may serve to create a common national language, the non-existence of which creates friction particularly in the popular masses among whom local particularisms and phenomena of a narrow and provincial psychology are more tenacious than is believed. It is, in sum, a question of increasing the struggle against illiteracy, etc. The opposition 'de facto' already exists in the resistance of the masses to shedding their particularistic habits and psychologies. A stupid resistance can be determined by the fanatical advocates of international languages.11E

What Gramsci presupposes is not some notion of the 'proletariat' or any other social identity, but rather the process of organizing and centralizing that which exists in a diffused, scattered, inorganic and incoherent state. This passage makes clear the interconnections among a number of Gramsci's concerns, including a national language, the drawbacks of of artificial languages (including Manzoni's project for a national Italian), 'normative grammar' (and its accompanying political acts), illiteracy, provincial psychologies, and local particularisms (associated with folklore and religious superstitions). While not elaborated, he argues that the non-existence of a national language 'creates friction' among the popular

48

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Figure 1.1 Lo Piparo's diagram of written and non-written normative grammar A) National linguistic reality =

Non-written normative grammar + Written normative grammar

B) Non-written normative grammar =

Civil society (hegemony), moment of spontaneous consensus to the more prestigious linguistic norm

C) Written normative grammar =

Political society (domination-leadership), moment of the imposition of a linguistic norm mediated by State institutions

Source: Franco Lo Piparo, Lingua intellettuali egemonia in Gramsci (Bari: Laterza, 1979), 252.

masses. For Gramsci, this friction explains how the bourgeoisie can rule with the supposed 'consent' of the people after only a 'passive revolution.' That is, the bourgeoisie can govern even when the democratic majority have interests that are systematically opposed to the government because that majority is divided and fragmented. Indeed, the third section of Quaderno 29 is titled, 'Foci of Irradiation of Linguistic Innovations in the Tradition and of a National Linguistic Conformism in the Broad National Masses.'117 It lists eight such foci: the education system; newspapers; artistic writers and popular writers; the theatre and sound films; radio; public meetings of all kinds, including religious ones; the relations of'conversation' between the more educated and the less educated strata of the population; and local dialects, understood in various senses. Gramsci sees all these sociopolitical questions, which he is famous for writing about, as directly connected to Bartolian linguistics in some way. We must agree with Lo Piparo that in Gramsci's thought there is a methodological identity between linguistic power and political power. Figure 1.1 illustrates Lo Piparo's understanding of written and non-written normative grammar in terms of Gramsci's political concepts. While these schematic equivalences could produce confusion and an overly mechanistic view of the given relationships, they do offer an initial — even if not definitive - way to grasp how Gramsci's linguistics are linked to his political theory. Yet this scheme is problematic, because in Gramsci's writings there does not seem to be such a separation between written and non-written normative gram-

Gramsci's Linguistics

49

mar. It is true that Gramsci considers one of the major problems in the history of the Italian language to be that it remained a written language like the written Latin it replaced, and it never became a spoken languageEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE lier, he introduces immanent grammar with reference to speech and opposes this to the '"normative," written grammar. But this strict distinction between written and non-written later seems to break down.119iNDED HE QULIFEIS HIS INTIA tinction of 'normative' grammar with the parenthetical statement, '(i.e., even if not written).' But except for this one parenthetical statement, Gramsci himself never mentions non-written normative grammars. Moreover, it is unclear how this distinction would fit into his critique of Gentile's educational reform, which excluded the teaching of grammar in the school system.120 Gramsci's use of the phrase 'written normative grammar' can best be understood as referring to the most explicitly frozen, static, and systematized of the normative grammars, especially those used in education. But given the above description of the dialectical relationship between spontaneous and normative grammar - including Gramsci's examples of normative grammar as reciprocal censorship, teaching, and monitoring conducted through the presumably oral phrases 'What did you mean to say?' 'What do you mean?' and 'Make yourself clearer' — Lo Piparo's focus on this distinction between written and non-written normative grammars seems overstated.121 More importantly, Lo Piparo's scheme leaves us with an unsatisfactory view of Gramsci's political theory. It is a mistake to neglect the extent to which state institutions mediate not only the moment of imposition of linguistic norms but also the moment of consensus (or prestige and attraction) about norms. In other words, state institutions are very important in determining and mediating the prestige of a linguistic norm. Lo Piparo's equations beg the question of what determines or constitutes the prestige of consent. They leave us with a simple opposition between civil society and the state parallel to the one between spontaneous consent and forced imposition. This interpretation does not enable us to theorize the intricacy of all the various instances that Gramsci analyses using the concepts of hegemony, civil society, and the state. Instead of an opposition between spontaneous consent and forced coercion, Gramsci is formulating a distinction between those normative grammars that truly express or succeeded in creating a 'national popular collective will' — those that create a language in which everyone can produce meaning - and those grammars that do not succeeded and instead require imposition and enforcement. The latter are those normative grammars created by recourse to such processes as Manzoni's plan for national linguistic unification. These normative grammars are the result of only passive revolutions that exist as a result of the disunity and incoherence of various existing spontaneous grammars.

50

Gramsci's Politics of Language

As explained earlier, Bartoli was struggling with this problem: How do we determine when one people really conquers another? This question is the product of attempts to adapt Ascolian linguistics without replicating its physiological and biological reductionism. For Ascoli, the question is ultimately answered by the physiology and race characteristics of the glottis of those in power. Gramsci, following Bartoli, rejects this answer and is thus required to develop some alternative to the notion of the 'ethnic substratum.' The important elements of this determination are the characteristics and potentials of the friction created by the underlying action of the 'substratum.' We should then understand Gramsci's development of the concept of spontaneous grammar to be a replacement for Ascoli's 'substratum.' Usually, constant pressure is being applied on the normative grammar from this substratum or underlying immanent or spontaneous grammar. It is this pressure that 'creates friction particularly in the popular masses.' The practical and moral question then becomes how to relieve this pressure. I contend that this is the central question of hegemony and its various uses throughout Gramsci's writings. Hegemony is the relationship between spontaneous grammar and the prevailing normative grammar. The goal of the Communist Party, the workers' movement, or any progressive social force is to relieve this tension by paying careful attention to the formation of the normative grammar in the first place. For Gramsci, spontaneous grammars are not — as they are for Ascoli's substratum - pregiven, preconstructed, or fixed structures.122 On the contrary, they are historical entities that are themselves partly the products of the various normative grammars combined with a host of other elements that have been sedimented onto the languages used. Much of the confusion surrounding Gramsci's use of 'hegemony' arises because he is using the term to describe both how a normative grammar has been imposed and how friction among different immanent or spontaneous grammars and normative grammar continues to lie unresolved. But it is also an attempt at a projected solution of this problem - a solution that involves relieving the tensions. The direct pressure from various spontaneous grammars on national normative grammar must be either relieved or quelled, sedated, and repressed if normative grammar is to remain in power. Of course, many strategies can be used to maintain the power of normative grammar, from a rigid educational system that imposes a normative grammar such as Manzoni's, to a military regime. Such strategies are more likely to succeed if the normative grammar has little organized opposition and the pressure against it is to some extent counteracted by various forces among the various spontaneous grammars. But the consequences of such a situation are morally and practically troubling to Gramsci. Another strategy for maintaining a normative grammar's hegemony would be to keep its rules and

Gramsci's Linguistics

51

mechanisms relatively unknown to everyone except those in the dominant class. This strategy is not mutually exclusive from Manzoni's proposal, and it would be the outcome of Gentile's educational reforms. To oppose regressive hegemonies such as these, Gramsci proposes the creation of a normative grammar that has a different and more conscious relationship to the spontaneous grammar that constitutes it. As discussed earlier, his linguistics attempts to show how all normative grammars are the (supposed) 'exemplary phase [s]' that have been frozen and defended as the 'only' grammar worthy of becoming a 'common' language. Instead of trying to impose a normative grammar on a people, be it the normative grammar of Esperanto or some specific dialect like Tuscan, it would be more ethical and more pragmatic to develop a normative grammar that did not have to manage these various frictions but instead was itself the product of their resolution. The process is very similar to Gramsci's description of how 'common sense' as a disconnected, contradictory, and confusing melange of beliefs and ideas can be moulded into 'good sense' and then into a philosophy of praxis. This process occurs both in civil society and within the apparatuses of the state. It is the creation of a 'popular collective will.' To the extent that no one can mould such a 'popular collective will,' the world view or normative grammar of a particular social group - in capitalism, the bourgeoisie - can be imposed on the entire population. Indeed, it must be, since no alternative is availableEEE. Conclusion Against much scholarship that depicts Gramsci's early studies in linguistics as part of a phase of Crocean Idealism that gave way to a more mature Marxist, materialist perspective that made the linguistic questions and methods irrelevant, this chapter has shown that Gramsci consistently emphasized the importance of linguistics throughout his life. While his full articulation of this point had to wait until he began his last substantial prison notebook, his concern with language is present from his earlier political journalism through his prison notebooks. Moreover, in both content and method his linguistics are part and parcel of his now famous political theory. Specifically, his concepts of 'immanent' or 'spontaneous' grammar and 'normative' grammar are important if we are to understand the dynamic of hegemony and its progressive versus regressive forms. These concepts also encapsulate much of the explanatory power derived from Saussure's distinction between langue and parole; furthermore, they contain an implicit critique of the hypostatization of these two realms. These concepts are also developed by Gramsci from the linguistic approach of Bartoli and Ascoli, which is based on the idea that language is the product of conflict, including cultural and political struggle.

52

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Gramsci's concern with 'spontaneous grammars,' which I have termed the vernacular approach, does not posit some structure, medium, or entity of free will or unimpinged consent; rather, spontaneity is created from what had been considered normative. This presents a well-articulated Marxist critique of liberalism. It also provides us with a materialist view of language as a human, historically created institution that produces meaning not by being a collection of labels for things, or being a medium for propositions whose truth content can be judged against some non-linguistic reality. This latter argument requires a more fully developed investigation into Gramsci's epistemology (see chapter 3). The more immediate concern is raised by the contention that historical languages are the result of part conflicts among languages. This is crucial to Gramsci's political theory, since it is the basis on which I have distinguished his various types of hegemony as being regressive or progressive. To put this another way, the process advocated by Gramsci to form a much-needed Italian unified popular language — which serves as a metaphor for a 'national popular collective will' - needs to recognize the conflicts out of which it arises, and needs to relieve the tension created by these conflicts. In short, Gramsci's national unified language cannot be a homogeneous language; instead, it must be able to embrace diversity in its unity. It is this issue that chapter 2 takes up.

Chapter Two

The Dialogism of Hegemony? 'Unity' in Gramsci and the

Bakhtin Circle

There is ample reason for carefully comparing Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle. Their chronological overlap (Gramsci, 1891-1937; Bakhtin, 1895-1975; V.N. Volosinov, 1895-1936; and P.N. Medvedev, 1891-1938), their critiques of positivism, their focus on popular culture, and their influences in social theory, literary criticism, and cultural studies all point toward productive affinities and differences. Gramsci's explicit Marxism contrasts with the complex and inconclusive arguments over the Bakhtin Circle's relationship to Marxism, yet the debates take place on comparable terrains - relationship to Leninism and Stalinism, questions of epistemology and relativism, degrees of Hegelianism, and the like. Recent contributions to Bakhtinian scholarship have reframed these questions as well as the political implications of Bakhtin's work, providing an even broader basis for comparison.2 Add to this my argument about the importance of language and linguistics to Gramsci and such a comparison begs to be undertaken. Unfortunately, such a comprehensive comparison raises many more issues than I am able to take into account in this far more modest engagement with the Bakhtin Circle. My aim is to augment the fragmentary nature of Gramsci's framework as outlined in the previous chapter. I will use comparisons with the Bakhtin Circle to follow through the possible consequences and potential problems associated with Gramsci's linguistic orientation. This will include linking his theory of language with questions of ideology that have done so much to make hegemony such a wide-ranging and influential concept. Raymond Williams, Tony Bennett, and others recognize the Bakhtin Circle as a valuable source for Gramscian cultural studies precisely because of this connection between language, ideology, and power. They utilize Volosinov's description of language as a site of class struggle analysed as signs with various possible 'accents,' meanings, and nuances. They also use Bakhtin's concepts such as the polyphonic novel,

54

Gramsci's Politics of Language

'heteroglossia, the carnival and popular celebration, and the rich dialogic aspects of language. By relating the Bakhtin Circle directly to Gramsci's theory of language, I will show how the latter's conception of a 'unified national language' (and by extension a progressive hegemony) might avoid the pitfalls of homogenization, repression of spontaneous grammars, undemocratic vanguardism and bureaucratic centralization. By showing the clear parallels between Gramsci's and Volosinov's specific critiques of positivistic and idealist linguistics, we can flesh out Gramsci's theory of language - especially regarding the interaction between human individual and collective agency and the structured nature of communication, meaning making, ideology, and language. The basic theory of this interaction was set out in the previous chapter's explanation of Gramsci's concept of normative and spontaneous grammar, but its implications and its relationship to more recent debates around structuralism and poststructuralism will become more apparent, and cast Gramsci in a more semiotic light. Yet all these comparisons raise a number of potential problems and confusions for Gramsci's position. Most obviously, Bakhtin and Volosinov rejected unified national languages as necessarily 'monologic' and as suppressing heteroglossiaE. How does this challenge my previous chapter's argument that Gramsci sees the possibility of rejecting the method by which Italian was standardized - a regressive form of hegemony - while offering a better, Marxist method for creating a national unified language - the model of a laudable hegemony? The key to this distinction, as I detailed, is that the national unified language should not be based on the exclusion and repression of previous languages and of the world views of subaltern social groups contained in them. But what would such a language look like? This is central to Gramsci's political theory, since, I argue, unified national language is both a metaphor and a literal component of the hegemony that he urged the Communist Party to construct. It is also an integral part of presenting language as an element of social praxis rather than a realm outside of praxis where meanings are transmitted. Can Gramsci's hegemony be dialogical in Bakhtin's sense?7 This is an essential aspect in the issues of unity and totality that, especially since Lukacs, have been seen as so central to Marxism.8 Gramsci does not use the term 'totality'; instead he takes language as the model of what unity means. This is important to understanding his political theory. Underlying these questions is a tension that arises in Gramsci's own writings. If language is a historical institution without 'natural laws' or essential characteristics beyond history (as I argued in the last chapter), what accounts for his contention, taken from Bartoli, that languages are the result of conflict and struggle among past languages rather than simply the continuous creation and expansion of human ingenuity? This is the question of parthenogenesis.

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

55

On the one hand, I have argued that Gramsci rejects the idea of language as a 'faculty' or 'biological' ability (although it clearly requires many different biological capabilities). He finds it useless to search for language's essence or nature outside its social context. Instead, it is a social institution constructed historically. On the other hand, I have also quoted this argument that he makes: 'In language too there is no parthenogenesis, language producing other language. Innovations occur through the interference of different cultures, and this happens in very different ways: it still occurs for whole masses of linguistic elements as well as happening in a molecular way (for example: as a 'mass' Latin altered the Celtic language of the Gauls, while it influenced the Germanic language 'molecularly,' by lending individual words and forms).'9 Given Gramsci's acute awareness of the role of biological metaphors in Marx's writings,10 the multitudinous overtones in the term parthenogenesis are certainly deliberate. The term has biological and religious overtones of virgin birth, reproduction without intercourse between opposite sexes, and generation from an unfertilized gamete. Gramsci contends that language is not given by the miracle of immaculate conception or divine gift of God and cannot regenerate spontaneously. This view also sees language as more than the simple result of its use within what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls a 'language-game.' Rather, the growth of language requires cross-fertilization (to continue stretching the biological metaphors), using words or phrases from different language-games than where they arose. Wittgenstein suspects that such borrowing from different language-games produces philosophical confusion.11 Bakhtin's and Volosinov's rich analyses of dialogue and dialogism could be very helpful here, but only if we clear up the confusions surrounding parthenogenesis, unified national languages, and the natural, non-historical essence of language. The following comparison between Gramsci's theory of language and that of the Bakhtin Circle also requires our attention because of Bakhtin's legacy and the use that has been made of his work. Since their resurrection — especially in the English-speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s - the Bakhtin Circle's writings have been of great interest to Marxists and non-Marxists concerned with language. Terry Eagleton, David Forgacs, Tony Bennett, Raymond Williams, Allon White, Graham Pechey, Julia Kristeva, Michael Gardiner, and others have looked to Bakhtin, Volosinov, and Medvedev for a Marxist approach to language, literature, and culture.12 While admitting that Bakhtin 'was virtually worthless as a political thinker in the strict sense,' Ken Hirschkop contends that he is very useful in articulating the cultural and aesthetic conditions that could enable democratic institutions to succeed. As he notes, this reading of Bakhtin makes him quite comparable to 'Europe's most linguistically oriented revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci' - a point also made by others in discussing the politics of the Bakhtin Circle.13

56

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Others have approached Bakhtin for very different reasons and with different emphases. Americans, especially Morson and Emerson, have found an especially liberal and pluralist argument within Bakhtin and his theory of language. In all the various academic debates that rage within Bakhtinian scholarship, his work is often used not so much as a site of struggle and debate but rather as a weapon in the battles among various perspectives. Marxists use Bakhtin as a weapon against poststructuralists; in turn, many anti-Marxists and anti-poststructuralists try to disarm him by 'proving' that Bakhtin was not a Marxist and moreover was 'apolitical.' All of this might remind us of similar posturing within Gramscian scholarship: Did prison save him from Stalinism? Was he Leninist or Hegelian as opposed to following some variant of'true' Marxism? Instead of pursuing such polemical methods, I will change tack and ask this question: What can we learn about both Bakhtin (whose specific political stance is at best inexplicit and ambiguous) and Gramsci (whose Marxism can be interpreted in various ways but not denied) by asking them to speak to each other in dialogue? What are their presumptions about language and how it functions? How do these presumptions relate to their respective notions of culture and politics? There is considerable debate over whether it was actually Bakhtin who authored Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, which was published under Volosinov's name, and The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, attributed to MedvedEevE. Given my purposes here, one might think that I must come down on one side of this debate or the other. It could be argued that if Bakhtin did not author these texts, the tension between their critiques of linguistics and the rejection of a unified language might not seem as enigmatic as I suggest. But much of the content of the critique of Indo-European linguistics, as well as many of the general contentions about the relationship between language and culture, can certainly be found throughout those works which Bakhtin definitely did author. As Maria Shevtsova and others contend, elements of a theory of culture found latent in the texts whose authorship is contested are indispensable to the development of the concepts 'speech genre,' 'heteroglossia,' and 'dialogue' in Bakhtin's essays 'Discourse in the Novel' and 'Forms of Time.' The discrepancies between the central terms of Rabelais and His World and the other texts that everyone agrees were authored by Bakhtin are greater than the differences between some of the disputed and the undisputed texts. Thus, at least for the issues under discussion here, it makes little difference whether Bakhtin was the sole author of the disputed texts. If Bakhtin did not write these texts - which I believe to be the case - he was clearly influenced by them, and he developed some of their themes in several of his later works. It is useful to note before we continue that the concepts of 'unity,' 'organization,' and 'language' do not exist in a vacuum separate from the life and circumstances of the thinkers we are about to discuss. These concepts take on different

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

57

connotations precisely because of the different historical contexts in which these authors developed them. These terms themselves are what Volosinov would call 'multiaccentuated.' Understanding this permits a more subtle investigation of the role of these concepts play in these men's texts. Historical Contexts Bakhtin, Volosinov, and Medvedev faced circumstances in which consolidation, unification, and organization had negative connotations connected to Stalinism; in contrast, Gramsci looked to organization and unification as positive attributes that could help overcome oppression. In his view, the solution to the setbacks he and the workers' movement encountered in the Biennio Rosso was a more unified and well worked out organization. For Gramsci, the failure of the Turin uprisings was at least partly the result of abstract debates - debates that arose because the leaders of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and Avanti! did not want the masses to participate directly in revolutionary struggle. Gramsci's early admiration for Lenin was in part based on his assessment in 1919 (before he knew that much about the Russian situation) that the Bolsheviks' key achievement was the ability to 'weld communist doctrine to the collective consciousness of the Russian people.'17 As Gwyn Williams describes, Gramsci saw the October Revolution as 'imposing] form on chaos.'18 Gramsci maintained that people do not become convinced of communism, nor do they gain critical consciousness from party propaganda. Instead, people acquire conviction from the 'molecular' type of work carried out by institutions such as the Factory Councils. Gramsci sharply contrasted this self-activity with other passive processes of unification that he argued occurred in the Risorgimento. The party would never succeed by following the model of a 'passive revolution.' It should not try to impose its political analysis or positions on the 'unconverted.' Instead, it should 'convert' the masses, most notably the peasantry and the proletariat — not solely to its politics but rather to an entire way of understanding the world. This emphasis on the need for unity and mass active involvement against 'bureaucratism' and vanguardism is evident in his letters to Palmiro Togliatti regarding the splits in the Soviet Communist Party leading up to Stalin's consolidation of power before Gramsci's arrest.19 In prison, he continues to elaborate this distinction between bureaucratic mentality and the type of unity he envisages. He states: 'When the party is progressive it functions "democratically" (democratic centralism); when the party is regressive it functions "bureaucratically" (bureaucratic centralism).'20 The key distinguishing feature between the two lies in the relationship between the leadership and the led — a relationship mediated by organic intellectuals.

58

Gramsci's Politics of Language

This is the context in which Gramsci approaches the concepts of unity, organization, and discipline, especially in relationship to emancipatory struggle. All of Gramsci's endeavours, from his theatre reviews and cultural writings to his work in the Factory Councils and the Communist Party, had the ultimate aim of bringing about a 'revolution.' For him, the future possibility of progressive social change, and past failed opportunities, were intricately bound up with questions about unity and organization. What is at stake in these terms theoretically is the topic of much of this chapter. But for Gramsci, as we shall also see for Bakhtin, the connections between 'unity' and revolution are far from arbitrary or abstract, nor do they lack practical examples. The prestige and cultural baggage that Bakhtin acquired before entering university - he had already read widely in German and Russian - placed him in an almost inverse position to that of the Sardinian, Gramsci, when he moved to Turin. Furthermore, Bakhtin was in the 'prestigious' minority.21 In contrast, Gramsci — like many other immigrants to Turin from Italy's south - was a member of a minority social group. However, he also belonged to the oppressed majority caught up in the processes of linguistic and cultural unification after political unification in 1861. He was from one of the social groups that was to be brought into national unity. The Bolshevik Revolution that Gramsci hoped to translate into Italian historical conditions was not an event in which Bakhtin participated actively. Rather, it was a tumultuous historical transition that he experienced directly and that would define his life personally and intellectually.23 By the time Gramsci was a Commintern delegate of the Communist Party of Italy to Moscow between May 1922 and November 1923, during the high tide of revolutionary change in the Soviet Union, Bakhtin had published only one article - two pages in a local journal in Nevel - and he was unable to find stable employment. Galin Tihanov surmises that Lukacs would not have known of Bakhtin even in the 1930s: 'Bakhtin's intellectual career ... was evolving far from the noise and struggles of official circles. He was detached, reserved, and apparently disinterested in success.'24It was not until 1929 that Bakhtin would publishEEEEEEEEEEEEEE under his own name. That year, his book on Dostoevsky was published, but only after his arrest for being allegedly active in the Russian Orthodox Church, which had gone underground. That Maxim Gorky participated in the campaign to reduce his sentence suggests that Bakhtin had already attracted some respect for his work. Adding to the success of this campaign was a favourable review of Bakhtin's book by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commisar of Education.E2 But this was three years after Gramsci's own imprisonment and six after he left Moscow. As Renate Holub notes, we have little information about Gramsci's eighteen months in Moscow, so we don't know if he made any contacts with anyone asso-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

59

ciated with Bakhtin, or how much he learned about cultural developments during the Revolution, from poetry, theatre, and film to Formalism and Proletkult. He seems to have occupied himself with attending the Fourth Congress of the Comintern; this included struggles with Bordiga over the Communist Party of Italy in relation to the International. We know he found time while in the Soviet Union to recover from a nervous breakdown in a sanatorium outside Moscow and to fall in love with another patient there, Julia Schucht. There is no evidence - and it seems very doubtful - that Gramsci and Bakhtin met or that they knew anything about each other.27 There is a greater chance of connection between Gramsci and one of the members of Bakhtin's circle, but such relations remain to be discovered. Gramsci's imprisonment was far more severe than Bakhtin's exile, the longerterm impact of their arrests had almost inverse effects on the course of their intellectual renown. For years before many of Gramsci s writings were published in any language, he was often invoked by name as a heroic fighter who had been imprisoned by Mussolini. Even today, this is the paramount fact about his life known to everyone who recognizes the name. Bakhtin spent four years exile in Kazakhstan, and partly as a result was consigned to many more years of intellectual and social obscurity than Gramsci. Bakhtin led an active life as a teacher and academic in Saransk after 1945, but it was not until the 1960s, with the rewriting and republication of his book on Dostoevsky, that his work began to gain international recognition. Moreover, many of his friends and intellectual colleagues fell victim to the Stalinist purges, including Medvedev who was arrested in 1938 and executed sometime later. Thus, Bakhtin's life and the manner in which his writings have reached us reveal a very different response to questions of social unity and organization than do Gramsci's life and work. Philosophically, the Bakhtin Circle emerged from a fundamentally neo-Kantian setting, whereas Gramsci's world, both intellectual and cultural, was shaped by Croce's Hegelianism. Some suggest that Bakhtin's trajectory went from Kant to Hegel; others argue convincingly that his neo-Kantian roots remained important throughout his life.29 Moreover, the longer-term historical differences between the Italian nation-state and the Russian Empire are not insignificant to how 'unity,' 'centralization' and 'language' are conceived by Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle, respectively. Common Enemies on Two Fronts Given their historically and philosophically divergent contexts, there is, as Craig Brandist notes, a remarkable similarity between Gramsci's philosophy of language and that of the Bakhtin Circle's.30 Volosinov's Marxism and the Philosophy of Language and Medvedev's Formal Method are the most explicit and well worked out

60

Gramsci's Politics of Language

of these positions, but, as argued above, Bakhtin incorporates these perspectives in his later work, especially 'Discourse in the Novel.' Gramsci's criticisms of the positivists, including the Neogrammarians and vulgar Marxism on one side, and the Italian idealists such as the Crocean linguists on the other, is succinctly mirrored in Medvedev's general summation that 'contemporary European thought is suffering keenly from the simultaneous crises of idealism and positivism.'31 Like Gramsci, the Bakhtin Circle focused on specific manifestations of these broad crises of European and Russian thought in debates within the fields of linguistics and the philosophy of language. Volosinov demarcates two main trends in the philosophy of language: 'individualistic subjectivism' as epitomized by Croce and Vossler, and 'abstract objectivism' whose most prominent exponent is Saussure (as read by the Moscow Formalists, especially Roman Jakobson). I will argue later that this latter trend should also include nineteenthcentury comparative philology. Medvedev describes his supersession of these twin crises as 'uniting a wide synthesis and general philosophical orientation with a mastery of the material diversity and historical generation of ideological phenomena.'32 This describes not only Volosinov's project as well, but also Gramsci's. Gramsci's critique of Croce is far from an obliteration of Croce's position; rather, it requires us to work through Croce's problematics. In the same way, the critiques by Medvedev and Volosinov are not purely negative; rather, they pay great attention to the contributions made by the various perspectives they encounter. For example, Medvedev castigates Marxists for not taking the Formalists' position seriously enough, for creating an 'amicable division of the historical and literary material that amounted to saying: "You take the extrinsic, I'll take the intrinsic," or "I'll take the content, you get the form."' As the subtitle to his book indicates, Medvedev worked through the Formalists' positions in an effort to introduce a fully constituted methodology of'sociological poetics.E'3 Italy did not have a Formalist movement in literature in the way that Russia did. Thus, Gramsci laments, 'So far, the Futurists have had no intelligent critic: that is why no one has paid any attention to them.'35 Perhaps one of the greatest differences between Italian and Russian Futurism is that the latter had intelligent critics. As Gramsci noted in a letter to Trotsky, this lack of intellectual substance may account in part for the short-lived alliance between Marinetti and Mussolini, as well as for Futurism's fragmentation into Fascism and reaction.36 In Russia, the Formalist movement relied heavily on Russian Futurism, and Formalists functioned as Futurisms critics. But Formalism outlasted Futurism and had a more profound influence. Both Gramsci and Medvedev praise the Futurists of their respective countries for their critiques of culture and ideology. However, both also fault Futurism for failing to create future possibilities. In 1921, Gramsci extolled the Futurists:

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

61

They have grasped sharply and clearly that our age, the age of big industry, of the large proletarian city and of intense and tumultuous life, was in need of new forms of art, philosophy, behaviour and language. This sharply revolutionary and absolutely Marxist idea came to them when the Socialists were not even vaguely interested in such a question ... When they supported the Futurists, the workers' groups showed that they were not afraid of destruction, certain as they were of being able to create poetry, paintings and plays, like the Futurists; these workers were supporting historicity, the possibility of a proletarian culture created by the workers themselves.37

Not unlike Medvedev's more in-depth analysis, Gramsci views the Futurists as destroyers of bourgeois culture: 'They have destroyed, destroyed, destroyed, without worrying if the new creations produced by their activity were on the whole superior to those destroyed.'38 Similarly, Medvedev notes 'that the basic spirit of formalist literary history originates in futurism, in which extreme modernism and radical negation of the past is combined with complete absence of inner content.>39 Both Medvedev and Gramsci see Futurism as a critical starting point. For both, the Futurists represent the most creative and progressive response to capitalism in the cultural field. And both fault the Futurists for not going far enough and for being unable to produce a positive reconstruction out of the destruction of bourgeois culture. In order to move beyond the purely critical realizations and practices of Futurism without falling into certain Futurists' fascistic or hedonistic embrace of everything 'new' for the sake of being 'new' and against the 'old,' Gramsci, Medvedev, and Volosinov all used both objectivist positivism (especially in its structuralist variant) and idealism (especially its conceptualization of subjectivity).EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE which Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle launch their dual-pronged critique of the Neogrammarians and Saussure on the one hand and Croce on the other. One of the issues at stake here is the question of authorship, the death of the author, and the whole quagmire around subjectivity that intervenes in most discussions involving poststructuralism, especially those including Marxism. While this is not the place to summarize the debates, if Volosinov and Gramsci succeed in dialectically overcoming the opposing trends, they provide a framework that neither denies agency nor assumes a preconstituted subject position. Positivism and Objectivism: Saussure, the Neogrammarians, and Formalism Gramsci's critique of the Neogrammarians and of the positivism inherent in mechanical Marxism has several key elements in common with Volosinov's criticisms of 'abstract objectivism' and Medvedev's attacks on Formalism. The initial problem with making this comparison is that Volosinov singles out Saussure,

62

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Charles Bally, and the Geneva School as his main adversaries representing 'abstract objectivism'141 whereas Gramsci poeticizes against the Neogrammarians. I do not want to conflate or minimize the differences between the Neogrammarians and Saussure. But when we examine Volosinov's actual characterization of 'abstract objectivism,' we find that he locates in Saussure the same problems that Gramsci condemns in the Neogrammarians. My interpretation is at odds with the usual emphasis on the radical break between Saussure and nineteenth-century historical linguistics - a break emphasized by many, including Jonathan Culler and Fredric Jameson.42 This is clearly not the place for an extensive debate over interpretations of Saussure. For our purposes, the significant point is that Volosinov's depiction of 'abstract objectivism' actually describes much of nineteenth-century historical linguistics, including the Neogrammarians, as much as it does Saussure. Volosinov defines abstract objectivism as a tradition that takes as its object of study 'the linguistic system as a system of the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical forms of language.43'hese stable structures ensure the unity of a language so that allAL members of a speech community can understand whenever various elements of these structures are used by particular speakers. Emphasis is placed on the identity between the various and different uses of the same phoneme, word or grammatical form. No weight is given to different particular usages of the same form, nor to the generation of new forms. Instead, speakers find language ready-made and use the system of signs based on arbitrary and conventional meanings. The ideological value or individual subjectivity of the speaker is unimportant to this approach. While Volosinov discusses in detail problems associated with Saussure's new 'synchronic' approach, the central attribute of abstract objectivism is that it treats language as a dead, alien, and objective structure. This approach allows for the abstraction of both synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics. As Volosinov writes, 'The isolated, finished, monologic utterance, divorced from its verbal and actual context and standing open not to any possible sort of active response but to passive understanding on the part of the philologist - that is the ultimate "donnee" and the starting point of linguistic thought [of abstract objectivism] .' Volosinov marshals the work of Nikolai Marr against Indo-European linguistics to analyse the implications of this starting point. He traces its roots back to the concerns of priests with sacred writings, whose mystery and need to be deciphered derived from their foreign origin. This perspective has as its centre the discovery of Sanskrit, which fostered comparative philology. According to Volosinov, Indo-European philology was 'formed and matured over concern with the cadavers of written languages.45' Viewing words as 'alien' is in direct opposition to seeing them as 'native.' The

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

63

native word contains no mystery; rather, it is habitual and ordinary, drawing no attention to itself as language. The alien word, in contrast, needs to be deciphered and carries with it immense power of a sacred, political, and social nature. Volosinov argues that 'it was the alien, foreign-language word that brought civilization, culture, religion and political organization.' This critique of abstract objectivism is clearly applicable to the Neogrammarians as well as to Saussure, in that both start from language as if it were dead and alien rather than the living product of actual speech and writing. Abstract objectivism equally includes Saussurean synchronic linguistics and the comparative philology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that culminated with the Neogrammarians. This is evident in the eight vital points that for Volosinov define this trend: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

[SJtable self-identity in linguistic forms takes precedence over their mutability. The abstract takes precedence over the concrete. Abstract systematization takes precedence over historical actuality. The forms of elements take precedence over the form of the whole. Retfication of the isolated linguistic element to the neglect of the dynamics of speech. Singularization of word meaning and accent to the neglect of its living multiplicity of meaning and accent. 7. The notion of language as a ready-made artifact handed down from one generation to another. 8. Inability to conceptualize the inner generative process of a language47.

Comparative philology, which focuses on the mutations of a single, self-identical word through history and across languages, results in each of these eight factors, with only minor revisions in emphasis. To develop its methods, comparative philology had to emphasize the self-identity of various words so that the mutations it discovered were meaningful. These historical changes around which comparative philology revolves are not multiple meanings, nor are they changes arising from specific historical circumstances. On the contrary, the methodology assumes that word forms remain consistent in the absence of some linguistic pressure or 'phonic law' arising from other linguistic structures or human physiology. It is this separation of language from culture, society, and politics that Gramsci (following Ascoli and Bartoli) rejected in the Neogrammarins. What Volosinov provides here is a much more detailed account of the implications of Gramsci's criticisms. Though it may seem that these methods of comparative philology did not neglect the mutability as stated in point 1, the sound changes and their 'causes' which comparative philology uncovers, or in many cases reconstructs - in effect

64

Gramsci's Politics of Language

depend on the self-identical stability of linguistic forms in order to isolate historic changes. Similarly, the passage of word forms from generation to generation, described in point 7, may not seem applicable to the diachronic approach. But linguistic forms are viewed as artifacts that change due to 'phonic laws' conceived from the perspective of positivism. In the extreme case of the Neogrammarians, these 'laws' account for every single linguistic change, without exception. Indeed, the emphasis in point 4 on the precedence of elements of speech over the form of the whole is more directly applicable to Neogrammarian methodology than to Saussure's premises, which depend heavily on language as a whole system, the parts of which function only in relation to the whole. Thus, when Volosinov adopts Vossler's criticisms of the historical grammarians, in effect he is retreating from his early position that Saussure had few recent precedents and that his thought displayed little continuity with past traditions of linguistic thought. Volosinov is correct in pointing out that the Neogrammarians locate phonetic laws in the physiology of the individual, yet he creates confusion by suggesting that they fit his typology between the two trends, given their construction of abstract, invariable natural scientific laws. The Neogrammarians focused on individuals at the biological level, neglecting variations between individuals that were not physiological. Their physiological reductions took place only at the level of biologically determined group attributes, not at the level of individuals, as occurs in Crocean and Vosslerian linguistics. Thus it would be more accurate to characterize them, as Medvedev does, as naturalistic positivists or mechanical materialists.499 With the emphasis of Volosinov's analysis of abstract objectivism clarified to include both the Neogrammarians and the tradition of comparative philology, we can see that his critique of this trend is - as we saw of Gramsci's writings part of a larger general critique of positivism. As Medvedev explains, no variant of positivism can properly understand ideological objects because it falsely conflates them with either natural and physical bodies, instruments of production, or items of consumptionE. Medvedev's Critique of Formalism Medvedev's critique of Formalism helps us understand Gramsci's work by providing for a deeper analysis of Gramsci's rejection of language as a medium of representation for reality. It also shows how Gramsci's critique of Crocean aesthetics fits into his wider philosophy and is related to his linguistics. Chapter 3 will describe Gramsci's epistemology, which undermines the very idea of a realm external to language that is to be represented in language. When we consider the parallels between Gramsci's assessment of Italian Futurism and Medvedev's read-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

65

ing of Formalism, we will see the implications of approaches to language that are not representational. Literary criticism confronted the crisis of positivism and idealism much earlier than European and Russian linguistics. European Formalism in the late nineteenth century and Russian Formalism starting with V.B. Shklovsky's The Resurrection of the Word in 1914 addressed this dualism.51 Medvedev argues that however constructive its aims and its assessment of the crises of idealism and positivism, Formalism fails to overcome these perspectives because it isolates literature and denies its irreducibly social character.52 Gramsci's own literary criticism similarly insists that literature — and other realms of culture such as theatre and opera - cannot be abstracted from its social and political context. Shklovsky 'resurrected' the materiality and physicality of the actual word in reaction against the Symbolists' elevation of the word to the heights of lofty meaning and symbolic value. Taking the lead from the Futurists, the Formalists analysed 'devices' in literature, including the process that Shklovsky called 'making strange,' to reveal the primacy of form over any possible meaning or content of language. For the Formalists, poetic language is language that focuses purely on itself, on its form. It disregards the extra-poetic world that it might represent or express. Thus, Formalism undermined the notion of language as a mimetic reflection of reality — at least the language of literary texts, if not quotidian speech. On the contrary, literature constituted by 'devices' 'defamiliarizes' or 'makes strange' our prosaic and habitual modes of understanding the 'real world.' This process, also apparent in Futurist sound poems, could be viewed as an active and conscious variant of what is only implicit in Saussure's method. Saussure's writings omit the question of the 'referent' and discuss only the relationship between the signifier and the signified; in contrast, the Formalists actively undercut any assumed or seemingly natural relationship between words and what they are supposed to represent.53 Futurist sound poems enact the split between sounds and meaning at the level of the word and the sentence. Gramsci notes the importance of such poems in shattering bourgeois careerism in the arts: '[Futurist destruction of bourgeois culture] means not to be afraid of innovations and audacities ... not to believe that the world will collapse if a worker makes grammatical mistakes, if a poem limps, if a picture resembles a hoarding.'54 The Formalists go farther than this, insisting on this separation at the level of the literary whole. They view art and literature from an autonomous perspective and explain literary works solely with reference to internal structures such as plot, as opposed to the content of the story, which represents events or material outside of the work of literature.55 Medvedev asserts that while they correctly diagnose the crisis of idealism and positivism, the Formalists fall into an error similar to the positivism of the Neogrammarians. He concurs with Shklovsky's The

66

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Theory of Prose: 'The word is a thing. And the word changes according to its own philological laws, which are connected with the physiology of speech, etc.'56 This position is exactly that of the Neogrammarians. As Medvedev states, for the Formalists 'the materialization of the word is attained at the price of a naturalistic subtraction of meaning.'57 The result is a similar neglect of any dynamic or important connection with factors extrinsic to literature. The referent is not shown to be something conventional, linguistic, or historical; instead it is obliterated altogether, leaving an incommensurable gap between 'poetic' and 'prosaic' language. Freed from the social and historical restraints of prosaic language, literature and poetry became — as Tony Bennett has described — the 'self-consciousness' of language calling attention to the act of communication itself rather than to what is communicated.58 On this point, Medvedev's argument is the same as Gramsci's critique of the Neogrammarians. The self-consciousness of the Formalists cannot account for human agency and creativity, nor can it provide an understanding of the unity of either a novel as an undivided piece of work, or of a given epoch of a society.59 The focus given to the poetic nature of language — as opposed to its 'practical' nature - 'is only able to "make strange" and deautomatize that which has been created in other language systems. It does not create new constructions itself.'60 The Formalists understand literature not as 'organizing' the world but rather as 'disorganizing' our customary understandings of it, and this leaves scant room for human creation. Thus, literature only works on already created perception, undoing it, highlighting its conventional and construct^ nature but not its constructm? potentialities. Literature, understood this way, has no means of creating new perceptions. Instead, creation of any sort is left to the realm of practical language as distinct from poetic language. It is only in practical language that individuals or groups can exert agency on language and create new objects of perception. Formalism leaves this realm out of its purview. According to Medvedev, this same rift between poetic and practical language prevents Shklovsky from understanding the novel as something other than the amalgamation of various materials of everyday life. For him, a novel's unity consists solely in the stringing together of these elements. This view of the novel is in stark contrast to Bakhtin's argument that the novel is the supreme genre in that it unifies the various and heteroglot elements that constitute it, but does so without subordinating them. As we shall see below, this special type of unification is the defining characteristic of the novelistic genre, according to Bakhtin. It is also a model that will inform my interpretation of unity for Gramsci. Shklovsky lacks a concept of unity other than chance occurrence and mechanical synchronicity in literature, and this intensifies the Formalists' ahistorical point of view. It also places beyond reach any understanding of historical epochs

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

67

and their relationship to literature. Thus, the purely negative character that we noted earlier with respect to the Futurists is also applicable to Formalism. Medvedev finds the reason for this in Formalism's lack of connection to any sociological conception: 'These movements did not or could not provide anything positive, solid or new, because, lacking a firm and creative social base, they carried on the purely negative work of the corruption of the forms established in the symbolist epoch.'63 The Formalists recognized the problems with positivism as apparent in the Neogrammarian methodology, but they failed to solve them and fell into the same objectivist trap of abstraction. Similarly, Saussure made a definite break with nineteenth-century philology and the Neogrammarians but was unable to overcome the false (undialectical) claims to objectivity. Instead, he demanded his own high degree of abstraction in his attempt to found a science of language. To avoid such objectivist abstraction, Medvedev, Volosinov, and Gramsci all turn toward idealism as a counterbalance. But they do this while appreciating the importance of denaturalizing the connection between words and their apparent meaning achieved by Formalism, abstract objectivism and positivism (respectively). These -isms, whether in the realm of linguistics, literary criticism, or art, pose an important question: How is meaning produced? This question, which Croce avoided, obscures the structured and political forces at work in expression. For Gramsci, this question must be asked in order for the answer to lie in praxis. If meaning is not seen as needing to be produced in social, linguistic interaction, or if it is seen as something that is only transported and distributed by language, a philosophy of praxis will never confront the centrality of language for politics, nor will the question of ideology or 'common sense' be approached adequately. Croce, Vossler, Idealism, and Romanticism Volosinov's critique of what he calls the 'first trend' in linguistics, 'individualistic subjectivism,' is easily comparable to Gramsci's writings, since like Gramsci he focuses on Croce and Vossler as the key representatives of this school. Thus, it is easier to see how Volosinov's argument augments and clarifies Gramsci's. Most specifically, Volosinov systematically connects Vossler and Croce's philosophy of language back through the empirical psychologism and methodological precision of Steinthal (see previous chapter), to the broader philosophical framework of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Volosinov traces the history of 'individualistic subjectivism' back to German Romanticism as a reaction against neoclassicism, rationalism, and the alien word as the basis for philology. This connection between 'individualistic subjectivism' and the veneration of vernacular languages contributes to Gramsci's Vernacular

68

Gramsci's Politics of Language

materialism.' After this analysis we will find it easier to relate Gramsci's linguistics to his writings on science, logic, and empiricism and their importance as social forces (see chapters 3 and 4). Moreover, my analysis will highlight Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle's engagement with the question of individual expression, authorship, and subjectivity - a question that was central to social and political thought throughout the twentieth century. In opposition to positivist philology based on the 'alien word' - which, as argued earlier, still frames Saussure's approach to language - the Romanticists focused on 'native' language. In Volosinov's words, they saw language 'as the medium through which consciousness and ideas are generated.' This invaluable bedrock, on which both Volosinov and Gramsci stand, reveals the irreparable abstractions of objectivism whether in its Neogrammarian or Saussurean variant. From this insight, Gramsci and Volosinov further develop Marx and Engels's notion that consciousness is not 'pure consciousness' but rather 'practical consciousness,' which is identified with language. This is, of course, coupled with requisite awareness of the (structural) interrelationships among people in order to further two of Marx and Engels's contentions: practical consciousness 'exists also for other men [sic], and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well'; and 'language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men [sic]'66 These tangential remarks of Marx and Engels on the relationship of language to consciousness had not been published when Gramsci and Volosinov were writing, yet they are precisely what both aim to develop. From this perspective, we understand language as the terrain on which the question of ideology can be addressed. It also reveals the importance of language to culture and culture to politics. Marx and Engels made their remarks in a polemic against German Idealism in which they implied that the response to idealism should not be to fall into the opposite errors, such as 'abstract objectivism.' The perspective that language is key to understanding ideology is strengthened by the structuralist approaches of Saussure and the Russian Formalists; even so, it requires a method of overcoming their positivistic and mechanical aspects. As we have seen, Saussure and the Formalists end up replicating the problems they are attempting to escape. Croce is perhaps the most sensible starting point for understanding how Gramsci and Volosinov avoid this mistake. Croce's identification of language with art and aesthetic activity (see chapter 1, p. 22) constitutes a radical rejection of the perspective that views language as an objective structure separate from the individual's use of language for expression. Croce equates the Linguistic with the Aesthetic: An emission of sounds which does not express anything is not language: language is sound that is articulated, marked off and organised for the purpose of expression.' He contends that 'Ian-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

69

guages have no existence apart from the propositions and concatenations of propositions actually spoken or written between different people, at particular times, that is to say outside their works of art (great or small, oral or written, soon forgotten or long remembered, it matters nothing).' In the same vein, Vossler states: 'The first and most obvious assumption of the science of language is that there is a language. But this is precisely what is uncertain ... To begin with, there actually is no language, but only speech: my speech, your speech, our speech now and here, to-day and yesterday.'69 Thus, where Saussure brackets the use of language, parole, and declares that it is not the subject of linguistics as a science, Croce and Vossler do the opposite. They privilege parole and neglect those attributes which systematically relate individual speech expressions. Volosinov initially criticizes Croce and Vossler's theory of language as expression because it privileges the 'creative and organizing forces of expression' from within the individual at the expense of the outer elements, which are viewed as entirely passive materials to be infinitely manipulated by the individual in the speech process. Volosinov argues precisely the opposite: 'The location of the organizing and formative center is not within [the individual] but outside. It is not experience that organizes expression, but the other way around expression organizes experience.,'70 The 'individual subjectivist' trend in the philosophy of language, from Humboldt to Vossler and Croce, consistently invokes metaphors of inner depths and outer surfaces. Humboldt insists that inner thought and external language are an indivisible unit, yet he sees this unit as driven by the prior internal energy or intellectual power that is externalized as expression. Brandist correctly points out that Vossler is critical of Croce's individualism and of anything resembling the Hegelian Absolute Mind. However, contrary to Brandist's depiction, Vossler's concept of language community and linguistic environment - which is not terribly different from Humboldt's emphasis on the 'nation,' although a different terminology is used - does little to challenge Humboldt's emphasis on the unidirectional movement from inner speech (whether of an individual or community) to outer language.72 Volosinov combines individualistic subjectivism's emphasis on the internal generation of language with abstract objectivism's focus on the importance of external linguistic structures in that very generation in every utterance. He writes: ' Word is a two sided act. It is determined equally by whose word it is and^or whom it is meant.'73 Thus, he rejects the entire premise that expression is the transferral of the thing that is expressible and the act of objectifying it in expression. Humboldt contends that 'the need for a concept and its resultant elucidation must always precede the word, which is merely the expression of the complete clarity of a concept ; in contrast, Volosinov insists that concepts - indeed experience

70

Gramsci's Politics of Language

itself, including such elementary feelings as hunger — are always social, political, and ideological. Thus, we should not miss the importance of Volosinov's argument because he misleadingly depicts the entire trend of individualistic subjectivism as ignoring the social and community aspects of language. Croce neglects the communal aspect of language. In contrast, for Humboldt, the 'nation,' serves as a pivotal concept emphasizing the communal aspect of language. For Vossler, the 'linguistic community' serves the same purpose. Volosinov's important insight is that Croce, Vossler, and Humboldt all see language as the movement from something expressible that initiates in the inner depths of the psyche (whether individual or communal) and is expressed on the outer surface of perceptible sound that is language.75 This dualism - however unified and indivisible its proponents claim it to be — is an obstacle to understanding language from a historical materialist perspective. 'Individualistic subjectivism' is perhaps a misnomer if one opposes the individual to the social group, community, or nation (indeed, this dynamic occupies much of Humboldt's work). If one takes 'individual' to be the indivisible whole (person, nation, or community) from which language is supposed to emerge, Volosinov's label has greater clarity. The structural component of abstract objectivism is what enables Volosinov and Gramsci to counteract individualistic subjectivism's movement from some sort of internal, non-linguistic depth to the linguistic expression that communicates this non-linguistic content in the form of language. And yet, individualistic subjectivism allows them to see the fallacy of viewing language as solely an external, objective, and fundamentally alien structure. Both these approaches falsely divide form from content. By working the two trends in the philosophy of language against each other, Volosinov derives a theory of language that is true to the tenets of historical materialism. It is worth quoting Volosinov's outline of five basic propositions about language: 1. Language as a stable system of normatively identical forms is merely a scientific abstraction, productive only in connection with certain particular practical and theoretical goals. This abstraction is not adequate to the concrete reality of language. 2. Language is a continuous generative process implemented in the social-verbal interaction of speakers. 3. The laws of the generative process of language are not at all the laws of individual psychology, but neither can they be divorced from the activity of speakers. The laws of language generation are sociological laws. 4. Linguistic creativity does not coincide with artistic creativity nor with any other type

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

71

of specialized ideological creativity. But, at the same time, linguistic creativity cannot be understood apart from the ideological meanings and values that fill it. The generative process of language, as is true of any historical generative process, can be perceived as blind mechanical necessity, but it can also become 'free necessity' once it has reached the position of a conscious and desired necessity. 5. The structure of the utterance is a purely sociological structure. The utterance, as such, obtains between speakers. The individual speech act (in the strict sense of the word 'individual') is contradictio in adjectoJ*

These five points are entirely consistent with Gramsci's approach to language as presented in chapter 1. Moreover, they provide a general summary of Gramsci's theory of language, which he never fully articulated. The only difference between Volosinov's summary and Gramsci's view is one of emphasis in connection with the first point. Gramsci highlights that seeing language as a stable system of normatively identical forms is not only a 'scientific abstraction,' but also always a political abstraction that has real social consequences. It is 'productive' of not only scientific explanation but also social forces. Language as a stable system of normatively identical forms has effects that can never be avoided, since language is treated as such not only by linguists but also by average people.79 Indeed, this notion of language as a stable system of normatively identical forms is an intellectual abstraction that almost everyone has adopted. It has become a part of 'common sense.' The fourth point corresponds closely to Gramsci's discussion of Croce's potentially productive but possibly misleading equation of language with art. Like Volosinov, Gramsci is very careful to distinguish linguistic innovations as communal events from the individual innovations of aesthetic activity. Volosinov's description of the movement from blind mechanical necessity to 'free necessity' is very close to the dynamics of freedom and necessity as set out by Gramsci. That Volosinov (and the Bakhtin Circle generally) and Gramsci share a basic conception of language (the discrepancies will be discussed below) yields two very important points for understanding Gramsci and his relationship especially to debates around poststructuralism and Marxism. The first has to do with making a connection between language and ideology. Gramsci is well known for insisting that 'ideology' cannot simply be understood as 'false consciousness,' but he never explicitly relates his theory of ideology, common sense, and the role of intellectuals to his writings on grammar and language. As I hope is obvious from the previous chapter, the resonances are clearly there. That there are 'historically organic ideologies [that] "organise" human masses, and create the terrain on which men [sic] move, acquire consciousness of the position, struggle, etc.,' is just a different terminology, but it is also deeply connected to Gramsci's discussions of language

72

Gramsci's Politics of Language

as a conception of the world.81 With Volosinov's more explicit discussion of ideological signs as the constituent elements of language, it is easier to see how Gramsci's theory of language fits very well with his materialist understanding of ideology and with his argument that the historic bloc incorporates both material and ideological forces whose separation is merely of 'didactic value.' This challenges any simple base/superstructure model or reading of Marx. Moreover, Volosinov reveals that language cannot fit into any base/superstructure model; in the same way, Gramsci's attention to language conforms to his transformation of such models through concepts such as the historic bloc, civil society, and hegemony. Galin Tihanov's summary that 'for Voloshinov language is not only the mechanism by which all ideology is produced and stratified, but also the site of all developments crucial for social change' applies equally to Gramsci. And both their descriptions of how such struggles over language take place is then essential to all ideology critique. The second implication of the confluence of Gramsci's theory of language with Volosinov's is that while Gramsci did not use the semiotic terminology of signs and systems, his concept of normative grammar and the historical (what Saussure called 'arbitrary') connection between language and meaning incorporates what is often seen as the structuralist and poststructuralist view of language as a system of signs that produces meaning through its relations to other linguistic elements, not some non-linguistic, 'real,' physical or material world, as examined in the introduction of this work (pp. 5-7). The implicit critique in Volosinov of those variations of structuralism and poststructuralism that deny people's historical and political role and agency in creating meaning and languages is also evident in Gramsci's notion of spontaneous grammar and the choices involved in forming normative grammars. The 'Heteroglottic' Nature of Language Gramsci's double-pronged critique of Crocean linguistics and the Neogrammarians is strikingly similar to the Bakhtin Circle's proposal (especially in the work of Volosinov and Medvedev) for overcoming the equally flawed perspectives of individualistic subjectivism and abstract objectivism; however, their concordance wanes when we begin to consider unified national languages. Gramsci's advocacy of a unified national language - which I have argued is a metaphor for hegemony — is met by Bakhtin with an almost equally strong disdain. How can we reconcile such different accounts of unified language projects that develop from almost identical critiques of various schools of linguistics? And how can this divergence help clarify Gramsci's and Bakhtin's conceptions of unity? As noted earlier, Bakhtin is absorbed with Stalin's centralization of everything

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

73

involving culture and language. Gramsci is preoccupied with the disorganization and chaos of a working-class movement that ended in defeat. According to Gramsci, that movement's failure was a result of Fascism's success in exploiting differences between peasants and the working class and the general tensions among subaltern groups. Bakhtin uses his literary scholarship to launch veiled criticisms of Soviet centralizing policies. One would not want to reduce Bakhtin's work to a criticism of Stalinism; even so, it is certainly one layer or element of his writing. He writes about national language projects and the 'unifying' of culture in the past tense, as concrete historical processes either still taking place or that have already occurred. For Bakhtin, such projects are always attempts at abstraction that obscure the heteroglossia and diversity of social life.83 Gramsci has his own critiques of specific strategies for creating a national language in Italy, as we saw in chapter 1. But he is ultimately dedicated to the possibility of creating a unified national-popular force and language that has not yet existed in history and that could oppose bourgeois and fascist hegemonies that rely on the fragmentation wrought by capitalism. Thus, he distinguishes between different kinds of national unified languages. This is one of the main points of difference between Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle. On closer analysis, however, this disjuncture rests on parallel tensions in both Bakhtin and Gramsci regarding how 'unity' is conceived and regenerated. The discord between Gramsci and Bakhtin lies mainly in the fact that the former is a political theorist and activist and the latter is primarily a literary critic and philosopher. Of course, Russia has had a rich history since the eighteenth century of using literature for social and political commentary.88While some commentators like Emerson overemphasize the separation between Bakhtin's philosophy and his politics, even those who want to ferret out the political implications and connections often encounter the limitations of Bakhtin's thought at the line between literature and social or political reality.85iIn comparing G ramsciand Bakhtin,, Brandist argues that his 'main problem was that since the discussion is limited to the development of narrative prose, the process of ideological struggle appears to be wholly linguistic, while on the carnival square the organizational consciousness is entirely absent.86' Gramsci's advocacy of a national unified language is guided by political issues that are beyond Bakhtin's explicit purview. Ken Hirschkop's detailed analysis of what he calls Bakhtin's aesthetic for democracy actually bears my argument out. He notes that Bakhtin's trajectory moves from locating this democratic aesthetic, dialogism, in Dostoevsky's work specifically, to the novel as a genre, then to outside laudatory in the carnival (although this is still through literary study of Rabelais), and finally to humanistic interpretation in general. Hirschkop points out that this trajectory revolves around Bakhtin's 'exaggerated' claim that works of lit-

74

Gramsci's Politics of Language

erature actually 'reflect within themselves the social and philosophical drama of modern Europe.' A claim that Gramsci insists must itself be analysed and placed in the perspective of the role of literature (including the types of literature, their languages, styles, etc.) in society and politics. Bakhtin's argument never steps outside the literary realm. As Hirschkop admits, the point that the novel as a 'system of languages' 'was in fact a model for the modern European vernaculars themselves' was made only indirectly by Bakhtin.87 How is one to use Bakhtin's literary criticism for social theory? This remains an open question. However much Caryl Emerson and the apolitical reading would like to close this question, I fully appreciate projects such as Hirschkop's, which pursue the implications of Bakhtin's theories for politics. And Bakhtin's own attention to the social and political contexts of language use is quite suggestive. But because he focuses on literary works, he never confronts the substantial questions of social heterogeneity and operations of power that Gramsci raises. Moreover, because he does not problematize 'unification,' commentators use his work to naturalize just this question, and in doing so reduce centralizing or organizing forces to regressive political projects and laud all practices of destabilization and centrifuge. The extent to which this is a result of the politics within Bakhtinian scholarship, or Bakhtin's own tendency, is not my focus. My aim is to use Bakhtin's work as commonly interpreted (sometimes suggesting where reinterpretation is necessary) to clarify tensions in Gramsci's writings regarding the relationship between language and diversity. Dialogue and Language Any discussion of Bakhtin and language must account for the importance of'dialogue,' as exemplified by the Bakhtin industry's obsession with the term 'dialogism.' The specific way that Bakhtin articulates 'dialogue' and what he describes as 'dialogic' is what makes his work so attractive. Bakhtin relies heavily on 'dialogue' as a primary element in literature, first and foremost, but also as a metaphor for ethical behaviour, as an epistemological premise, and ultimately as human ontology. The multiplicity of meanings assigned to the term makes it compelling to many different (and sometimes opposed) projects, from Marxist theories of literature to pluralist theories of democracy to religious and theological relations between individuals and God. In the spheres of ethics, religion, philosophy, and even literature, the term 'dialogic' functions differently than it does in the study of language. In the former spheres, dialogue is a metaphor for rethinking earlier ways of understanding. In contrast, language is the terrain from which the term dialogue is derived. There can be dialogue without philosophy or religion or even ethics. But dialogue with-

tEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE E E

out some type of language is impossible. Without reference to language, the concept of dialogue makes no senseEE. As argued earlier in reference to Volosinov's critique of Saussure and abstract objectivism, dialogue as the interaction among speakers challenges certain propositions about what language is and how it functions. Most notably, focusing on dialogue rejects the strict separation between langue and parole. It criticizes overly abstract attempts to separate form and content at any level. Beyond this critique, what is the advantage of emphasizing language's dialogic aspect? If the concept of dialogue is derived from the use of language, how much is gained from using it as a metaphor when discussing language? Dialogue is inherently linguistic, but is language inherently dialogical? What does it mean to say that language is inherently dialogic? The dialogic aspect of language certainly cannot mean that non-dialogic language does not exist. Bakhtin opposes the term 'monologic' to 'dialogic.' And he applies 'monologic' to various languages and literatures. The other term that functions in opposition to 'monologia' is 'heteroglossia,' which is intricately connected to Bakhtin's concept of dialogic. Clark and Holquist define 'heteroglossia' as the principle 'that meaning is context bound but that context is boundless. The name of this boundlessness is "heteroglossia."'90 Thus, one definition focuses on the openness not of meaning at the level of the word, or on utterance, but at the level of different contexts. Bakhtin uses the term 'heteroglossia' to extend Volosinov's critique of abstract objectivism and all actual historical attempts to create unified national or common languages. As he writes in 'Discourse in the Novel': 'A common unitary language is a system of linguistic norms. But these norms do not constitute an abstract imperative; they are rather the generative forces of linguistic life, forces that struggle to overcome the heteroglossia of language, forces that unite and centralize verbal-ideological thought, creating within a heteroglot national language the firm, stable linguistic nucleus of an officially recognized literary language, or else defending an already formed language from the pressure of growing heteroglossia.'91 At one level, this position is in total agreement with Gramsci's rejection of abstract definitions of language rarefied from their historical and cultural contexts. Gramsci consistently argues that linguistic norms are the generative forms of linguistic life and that these struggles have a definite ideological component to them. But the basic question is: Where does this growing pressure of heteroglossia come from? Gramsci also confronts this question in his contention that language is non-parthenogenetic and thus cannot reproduce itself alone. Gramsci's rejection of parthenogenetic language is parallel to Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia. And both need to be explained.

76

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Hirschkop reveals this problem of the source of heteroglossia with regard to Bakhtin: 'If all language is heteroglottic, then it is hard to see how and why certain languages have escaped this requirement: monoglossia appears to be explicable only as a language whose natural tendency is repressed or obstructed by some external force."92thata is,if language by itsvery nature isconstituted by various and irreducible styles, genres, or speech forms, is made up of different traditions, and is open to different uses and interpretations, how exactly does a state of monoglossia come about?93 What does this monoglossia consist of? The default assumption, reinforced within much of the commentary on Bakhtin, is that monoglossia is the resistance of language's 'natural' and 'inherent' dialogic essence. While in the context of neo-Kantian ethics such a position may be tenable, it poses two problems for historical materialism, which claims to reject theological and ahistorical theories of language. The first problem is, Where does this transhistorical 'essence' of language come from, and where does it exist, if language is a human institution? The second problem is that it leads to the position of several Bakhtin scholars (see below) who place the questions of human morality and ethics outside of human agency and turn dialogism into some technical attribute of language. It is as if the orders a soldier gives a prisoner at the point of a gun are somehow less linguistic - untrue to the 'essence' of language than a mutually enriching exchange between interlocutors. It presupposes that verbally abusive language is somehow less real language than supportive language. We might agree that orders given at gunpoint are morally reprehensible. But that they go against the essence of language is a different and unsupportable contention. Moreover, this position tends to reduce moral and political issues to linguistic and technical ones. These assumptions have no empirical evidence, and more importantly, they predispose inquiry into language use toward actions we deem ethically positive and idealized. They obscure the real power relationships among speakers.49 Hirschkop identifies a related problem with Bakhtin's conflation of philosophy and empirical cultural analysis. According to Hirschkop, heteroglossia is at once historically descriptive and ahistorically normative without making any distinction between the two. Clark and Holquist concur that Bakhtin's conception of language is normative, and specifically politically laden: 'Language invokes the political concept of freedom because language is struggle against the necessity of certain forms.'9 Moreover, they argue that monologism is comparable to despotism, whereas heteroglossia and dialogism are democratic.97 It might not be difficult to argue that significant social resistance to oppression always involves the use of language, at least to a degree. That said, the quelling of progressive struggle, even in its violent forms, also involves language, if for no other purpose than for the soldiers or the police to communicate. To place Ian-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

77

guage itself on either the side of coercion or that of consent is a tall order. Gramsci's understanding that coercion and consent are not opposites, and that neither can ever exist without the other, breaks down the very possibility of such considerations. Whether or not Bakhtin ever made the explicit and simple political connections with his concepts, which he developed fundamentally for literary criticism — and specifically within a discussion of the novel - is a point to which we shall return. We can say that much of the secondary material posits a connection between political support for 'freedom' and Bakhtin's literary notions of heteroglossia, polyphony, and dialogism. And most commentators do not express the critical reservations that Hirschkop reveals. One exception is Tony Crowley, who takes Hirschkop's position on the problems raised by conflating the various different usages of dialogism, monologism, and heteroglossia. Interestingly enough, Crowley resorts to Gramsci's historical context of pre-Fascist and Fascist Italy and Gramsci's insistence on the centrality of language to political movements, in order to drive home some of the political problems inherent in conflating normative and historical determinations of heteroglossia. Crowley contends that in the historical circumstances faced by Gramsci 'a preference for heteroglossia over monoglossia would be a reactionary stance, given that it would serve only to heighten the differences which exist to prevent necessary forms of unity. In a situation in which a linguistic hierarchy exists, a refusal to work for common and unified forms is tantamount to support for an unjust distribution of power.'99e then attempts to solve Hirschkop's problemM with Bakhtin by rejecting the normative claim of heteroglossia in favour of historical analysis. He argues that such normative positions must take into account the historical context. He provides the example of the 'standardization' of the English language and shows how it shares with Bakhtin a preference for heteroglossia. But, he continues, in situations like that of Italy during the interwar period, monoglossia would be a progressive strategyEEE. At the other extreme, Morson and Emerson embrace Bakhtin's celebration of dialogization and double-voicing, although (see below) they have a more complex understanding of its relationship to political issues. Similarly, Holquist unambiguously celebrates the connection between heteroglossia in language and political judgments - without detecting the slightest problem. He contends that dialogism's ethical position is based on the grounds that it is 'a condition built into the structure of human perception, and thus a condition inherent in the very fact of being human.' * Robert Young describes this position as a source of Bakhtin's popularity among very different political positions, explaining that it offers 'a humanist version of poststructuralism together with a liberal politics centering on the idea of the word as the guarantor of human freedom.'10E

78

Gramsci's Politics of Language

These characterizations of Bakhtin as a champion of the inherent dialogic or heteroglottic nature of language - a nature that is somehow connected to the essence of humanity as freedom - make Hirschkop's objection and Crowley's argument even more pertinent. If every human is by nature dialogic and perceives the world based on this characteristic, where do the antihuman monologic forces come from? We suddenly find ourselves on the terrain of believing in the devil himself. This changes from an argument about language being inherently heteroglottic to the idea that humans', including individual humans', way of perceiving by nature embraces heteroglossia.103Both these Positionsoth these positions c-valuation of heteroglossia as unambiguously good and monoglossia as bad, regardless of whether the root of this moral judgment is some kind of natural law (heteroglossia in language is good because it is the natural condition of language, and it is both futile and bad to fight this) or some unstated belief in pluralist politics. There is some evidence in Bakhtin's texts for these valuations of heteroglossia and dialogism. His discussion of centripetal versus centrifugal forces implies that the former are dogmatic and the latter favourable. In 'Discourse in the Novel,' Bakhtin criticizes European linguists stylistics, and philosophy of language for being 'born and shaped by the current of centralizing tendencies in the life of language ... For this very reason, they could make no provision for the dialogic nature of language.'1074n direct and indirect ways,baakhtin repeatedly favours that which supports heteroglossia and casts aspersions on centripetal forces as detrimental abstractions.105 Yet Bakhtin's texts seem more persistent in arguing that heteroglossia is not an inherent aspect of language itself, but rather an aspect of the social world in which language resides. The related but distinguishable concept of polyphony is a facet of the relationship between different aspects (characters' and author's voices) within the novel. Dialogue, while technically occurring only among real, living individuals (with respect to the novel, between the reader and the author and characters) is the premise on which both heteroglossia and polyphony are based. Morson and Emerson exhibit a clearer notion of heteroglossia than Clark and Holquist when they define it as 'Bakhtin's term for linguistic centrifugal forces and their products [that] continually translates the minute alterations and reevaluations of everyday life into new meanings and tones, which, in sum and over time, always threatens the wholeness of any language.'1061eteroglossia here does not lie in the realm of language itself, or in the structure of human perception. Rather, it is derived from everyday life and re-evaluations within it.107Bakhtin discusses how the 'seeds of social heteroglossia [are] embedded within words.'10 Thus, social diversity and heteroglossia are manifested in languages but are not inherently a part of language. This line of argument is more than a simple exege-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

79

sis of Bakhtin: it brings us back to Marxist analyses of ideology and contentions about their relationship to language and praxis. Social Diversity and Heteroglossia: Reflection and Refraction Defining heteroglossia as the manifestation of social diversity in language has two important implications. First, without divorcing language from everyday life, it makes the issue of whether language is heteroglottic irrelevant by focusing on the strong connections between languages and social activity. This is certainly one of Bakhtin's arguments. Second, it avoids reductions that heteroglossia is necessarily good and democratic whereas monoglossia is inherently bad and antidemocratic. It is worth considering these points carefully, since they are directly related to my own contentions: For Gramsci, language is culture and philosophy. It has no ahistorical essence. There is no clear demarcation between language and nonlanguage. Meaning is produced through language praxis. Let us start with the first implication. When we evaluate Bakhtin's assertion that there is a close relationship between languages and everyday life, we find that this view of heteroglossia dissolves the very question of whether language is inherently heteroglottic. Languages 'reflect and refract' not only the degree of diversity within the societies that use them but also the interactions of various social groups, some of which may have different mother-tongues and different stakes in language usageEEE. This perspective, however, highlights problems regarding how 'reflection' and 'refraction' are understood. Embracing the view that language is purely reflective can lead to twin, opposing, dangers. One dissolves language into a passive objective structure that functions only as a medium or form for some separate content (Volosinov's criticism of abstract objectivism). The other, opposite, danger ignores the aspect of language as a stable structure; this gives way to Croce's perspective that language is the sum total of speech utterances, which are viewed as expressions of individuals. What is at stake, then, is the process of'refraction.' Bakhtin's discussion of'refraction' in 'Discourse in the Novel' does not help us solve this quandary. It limits itself to the 'refraction' of authors' intentions through language.110 It helps describe how every utterance is layered with meanings, innuendos, and valuations. But it does not present the more complex dynamics of how social reality - including but not limited to individual intentions - is 'reflected' or 'refracted' in language rather than in particular utterances. Raising this question creates the problem of reinforcing, or presupposing, the dualism between social reality and language, as if the two can be separated, as if social reality can exist without language. Volosinov's discussion of the 'reflection and refraction' of all ideological prod-

80

Gramsci's Politics of Language

ucts is much more wide ranging. Semiotic value, on which all languages (and other cultural products) rest, is created by the reflection and refraction of another reality outside the sign. This, for Volosinov, distinguishes ideological objects, or signs, from non-semiotic objects, or objects without semiotic value. Semiotic objects are physical objects with their own materiality that also reflect and refract other realities.111 Thus, within every sign there is a diversity of its own materiality and the realities of the worlds it reflects and refracts. Volosinov is adamant that this reflection and refraction shows the flaws of those idealistic and empirical/ psychological approaches which locate these ideological formations in individual consciousness (a danger into which Bakhtin's discussion of the refraction of thought in language could fall). A certain plurality or duality is 'built into' Volosinov's definition of a sign as a cultural product that reflects another reality — that is, between the materiality of the actual sign (or signifier to use Saussure's term) and the reality it reflects. Volosinov contends that 'every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also itself a material segment of that very reality.EEEEEEEEEEE, all language by definition has a double character. Gramsci makes a crucial intervention, or clarification, to this idea with his insistence that language is historically metaphorical (see chapter 1, pp. 35—6). In order not to fall into the abstract dualism between social reality and language — the materiality of the signs and non-signs - the social reality outside the sign that is reflected in the sign cannot just be seen as outside of language. It includes other signs, that is, includes language. Besides pointing to this double character of language, whereby the sign exists in itself and also reflects, Volosinov insists that signs do not merely reflect but also refract existence: a sign 'may distort that [other] reality or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special point of view.' That is, reflection is non-distorting, whereas refraction is perception from a particular standpoint (i.e., distortion). Refraction occurs because Various different classes will use one and the same language,' thus producing differently oriented accents within the same signs. This is what makes the sign an 'arena of the class struggle.' It also 'makes the ideological sign vital and mutable' as well as 'a refracting and distorting medium.'113 Gramsci's insistence, discussed later and also in chapter 1 (pp. 46-7), that all language usage involves a 'choice' undermines the extent to which 'reflection' exists totally free of'refraction.' From Gramsci's perspective, 'reflection' is always 'refraction.' The malleability or multiaccentual aspect of the sign is central to what Volosinov calls 'the capacity for further development.' In an argument that foreshadows Bakhtin's disdain for all unified language projects, Volosinov argues that the sign's multiple accents are resisted by the ruling class, which 'strives to impart a supraclass, eternal character to the ideological sign, to extinguish or drive

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

81

inward the struggle between social value judgments which occurs in it, to make the sign uniaccentual.'114 Heteroglossia or multiaccentuality, then, comes not from language, nor even from social diversity in itself; rather, it is the product of different groups of people using the same signs from different perspectives. That is, it is the product of both social diversity and language use. Gramsci takes the same perspective in adopting Bartoli and Ascoli's notions that linguistic innovations are always the product of competition and struggle among linguistic forms and that the residues of these struggles and linguistic changes are never totally erased. Gramsci's example, which I raised in the Introduction and in chapter 1, is that while we can use the word 'disaster' without knowing its etymological roots in astrology, it retains those resonances. If we consider events such as earthquakes and floods disasters totally beyond human control (a result of astral movement), then it seems futile to try to ameliorate the damage they do by enacting building codes, building better social housing, and providing relief for those who happen — often not just coincidentally — to live in dangerous areas. The second implication of the strong connection between heteroglossia and social diversity is that the simple equation of heteroglossia being good and monoglossia being bad disappears. Both these points are related to Todorov's discussion of raznorecie (heteroglossia), which he (or his translator, Wlad Godzich) translates as 'heterology.' He points out that heterology is rooted not in language per se, but rather within society: 'Heterology is, in a way, natural to society; it arises spontaneously from social diversity. But just as the latter is constrained by the rules imposed by the single State, the diversity of discourses is fought against by the aspiration, correlative to all power, to institute a common language (or rather a speech).'115 As Todorov correctly points out, there is a distinction between linguists' study of language and political attempts to present a single language as if it does not contain diversity, when in actual fact it is riddled with diversity. Existing languages are also the result of conscious efforts to institute common national languages. Bakhtin is correct that linguists themselves might conflate these perspectives and contribute to the political goal of enforcing a language. But the point, as Bakhtin states, is that 'a unitary language is not something given [dan] but is always in essence posited [zadan] - and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia.116 iT IS A MISTAKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE aspect of a language. This naturalization of language works in the interests of those who wish to maintain a national language — by methods that Gramsci rejects - since it makes opposition to this language impossible to imagine. In effect, it suppresses the realities of heterogeneity and diversity in society. It obscures the heteroglossia and conflict within language.117 Bakhtin argues that this mistake runs rampant throughout history: 'Aristote-

82

Gramsci's Politics of Language

lian poetics, the poetics of Augustine, the poetics of the medieval church, of "the one language of truth," the Cartesian poetics of neoclassicism, the abstract grammatical universalism of Leibniz (the idea of a "universal grammar"), Humboldt's insistence on the concrete - all these, whatever their differences in nuance, give expression to the same centripetal forces in socio-linguistic and ideological life; they serve one and the same project of centralizing and unifying the European languages.'118 In other words, these various socio-linguistic theories work to substantiate, naturalize, and enforce common or national languages. They keep linguistic politics from those 'not in the know,' as Gramsci says in reference to his reading of Machiavelli.119Ahey are also examples of linguists functioning as traditional intellectuals, making linguistic change seem impossible. Both these issues are discussed at greater length at chapter 4. And (see chapter 1, pp. 37-49), Gramsci makes a similar argument against those who support a normative grammar as somehow the natural or pure state of a language. In his view, they are doing so without realizing that they are making a political argument. Despite this strong connection in practice between traditional philosophy of language and the institution and maintenance of a language, it is important to retain the distinction between the two.120 Bakhtin often obscures the line between the two by focusing on how the imposition of national languages often relies on the failures of linguists and intellectuals, to present the real mutability of language. Instead, to use Gramsci's terminology, linguists and philosophers of language have functioned as traditional intellectuals, by obscuring challenges to the status quo. Bakhtin does not allow any role for organic intellectuals, who could highlight this mutability of language and still work toward creating a unified language by different means. Connected to this possibility for Gramsci is another central distinction that Bakhtin never makes. That is Gramsci's explanation of bureaucratic (regressive) versus democratic (progressive) projects of instituting common or national languages.121 Gramsci totally agrees with Bakhtin about the 'political' nature of all normative grammars (to use Gramsci's terms). In effect, Bakhtin accuses Aristotle and Augustine through to Leibniz and Humboldt of forgetting, as Gramsci argues, that 'written normative grammar ... always presupposes a "choice," a cultural tendency, and is thus always an act of national-cultural politics.'122 For Gramsci, this is a 'choice' everyone must make. Such choices are made by both individuals and collectivities.123 Sometimes they are more conscious, other times they are tacit implications of behaviour. But these choices cannot be avoided altogether. In Volosinov's terms, by using language you always accent it, or reinforce a certain accent. From Gramsci's perspective, such choices, if conducted consistently and consciously, contribute to the unification of language. But Bakhtin does not discuss the possibility of democratic or progressive cen-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

83

tralization in unifying a national language. In effect, he attempts to avoid or even refuse the choice. He attempts to accent words, but at the same time he maintains that they are open to other accents and that his accentuations are no more interesting, useful, or valuable than the accents of others.124Going beyond the point that this choice is never final and must be made repeatedly, Bakhtin at times seems to want to raise himself, or the author (whether Dostoevsky, Rabelais, or Goethe), above the choice that everyone else must make in order to speak in real life.125 At other times, he himself argues that all speakers must make a 'choice' of which 'speech genre' they wish to employ. And he argues that such choices have normative implications and are made under certain constraints.12 But even addressing this choice, Bakhtin argues that language as a system is 'neutral' and has no 'expressive aspect.'1 7 This is in opposition to Gramsci's argument that languages themselves are not neutral (see chapter 1, pp. 24-37). According to Gramsci, Esperanto is politically negative (regressive), whereas a standard Italian unified by a progressive hegemony would be politically positive. In literary analysis, Bakhtin celebrates 'polyphony' in Dostoevsky and reads Rabelais's novels as its historical precursors. To many commentators, this amounts to a rejection of all centralizing and unifying linguistic projects.128But on closer inspection, I shall argue, while Bakhtin indeed celebrates resistance to centralized unitary language (or monoglossia), he does not fully embrace centrifuge and diversity to the extent claimed by many of the secondary sources. In fact, the most striking aspect of both The Problem of Dostoevsky s Poetics and Rabelais and His World is the extent to which Bakhtin argues that where previous critics have just seen arbitrary disorganization to an almost nonsensical extreme, there is actually an underlying 'structure' or 'unity' in these works. This unity constitutes these works' brilliance, according to Bakhtin. But Bakhtin never extended this literary coexistence and relationship - dare we say 'dialectical' relationship, notwithstanding Bakhtin's rejection of the term?12 — between the author's unifying and centralizing organization and the polyphonic and dialogic aspects into social theory or non-literary language. After I examine in more detail my reading of the unifying and centralizing tendency in Bakhtin's literary work, we will see that such an extension would bring Bakhtin into Gramsci's realm and also provide a thorough explication of Gramsci's notion of democratic unity within a national language. Bakhtin's Literary 'Unity' According to Bakhtin, past scholarship on Dostoevsky had failed to understand that the novel is more than just a collection of heteroglottic languages. In fact, these languages are organized, orchestrated, and worked into a form of 'unity.'

84

Gramsci's Politics of Language

His entire analysis is precisely the investigation of what he calls the 'new holistic unity of the novel itself.'130 Bakhtin focuses on Dostoevsky's ability to create a unified, orchestrated novel out of a whole diversity of languages without merging or submerging those languages into the authorial perspective. According to Bakhtin, this unity permits the autonomy of the perspectives that constitute it. Bakhtin actually defines the novel as a genre that 'consists precisely in the combination of these subordinated, yet still relatively autonomous, unities (even at times comprised of different languages) into the higher unity of the work as a whole ... the language of a novel is the system of its languages.'131 A similar emphasis on unifying and organizing diverse languages is also evident in Bakhtin's study of Rabelais, which is often singled out as his most extreme embrace of bacchanalian carnavalesque chaos. It is ironic that Morson and Emerson hold this work out, along with 'Epic and Novel,' as anomalous because of its extreme overemphasis on 'unfinalizability.' According to them, in the Rabelais book, 'everything completed, fixed, or defined is declared to be dogmatic and repressive; only the destruction of all extant or conceivable norms has value.',13 They find Bakhtin's emphasis on excess and carnivalesque language to be aberrant to the rest of his career, especially because it neglects the 'ethical' aspect of the self/other relationship that he presented in his early work. This emphasis on destruction is similar to the previous discussion about Gramsci and Medvedev's attraction to, and critique of, Futurism. Yet as I shall show, it is a grave misreading of Bakhtin's analysis to think that he disagrees with Medvedev and Gramsci about the insufficiency of pure negation. On the contrary, Bakhtin's study of Rabelais hinges on the shift from the relegation of carnival and folk culture to inconsequential, limited arenas of life to their entrance into the major organizing images of society at large. This shift marks a transition into a diversity-in-unity model that we can use to support Gramsci's notion of a democratic hegemony. Rabelais and His Language Bakhtin's study of Rabelais was his first book translated into English. In the early 1940s he had submitted it as his doctoral dissertation, and it went through an arduous defence process that dragged out over five years of political intrigue. The resulting book, The Work of Francois Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, argues that all previous scholarship on Rabelais had misunderstood the most important aspects of his work. Specifically, it argues that Rabelais's 'grotesque realism' is a unified system of images that is not wholly negative. As with many dissertations, Bakhtin's starts with a review of the literature. It is

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

85

framed by the following proposition: 'Although during these four hundred years there have been many enthusiastic admirers of Rabelais, we can find nowhere a fully expressed understanding of him.'133According to Bakhtin this lack of understanding comes from the view that the grotesque elements of Gargantua and Pantagruel are wholly negative. He goes on to show that this focus on pure negation and destruction misses the uniqueness and brilliance of Rabelais, and also fails to understand Rabelais' novels as whole, integrated pieces of work. His argument against pure negation and destruction mirrors Volosinov, Medvedev, and Gramsci's rejection of Futurism as discussed earlier. Moreover, it provides, in the realm of literature, a model of unity that is not based on homogeneity. This can help us understand Gramsci's notion of progressive hegemony and democratic centralism. Bakhtin contends that whether from a Romantic perspective or Modern one, past commentators have not understood the dynamic, interwoven elements of laughter, bodily material, and degradation of medieval folklore and culture that are portrayed by Rabelais. According to Bakhtin, this misunderstanding of the relationship among the different elements in Rabelais's novels is directly tied to their emphasis on the purely destructive and negative features of his work. Bakhtin locates a unity of grotesque realism, a system of images, that links ritual spectacles such as the medieval carnival, various comic verbal compositions both written and oral in the vernacular or Latin, and the billingsgate language of the marketplace. The unity of these various elements marks the historical move of popular speech and vulgar dialects into literature and public discourse.134Thaat rituals, carnivals, comic verbal compositions, and various forms of vernacular language existed before this transformation is indisputable. Bakhtin's thesis is not that their existence is new, but rather that their coming together and entering into literature through the novel is unique to this period and exemplified in Rabelais's writings. Bakhtin emphasizes that the negation offered by Rabelais is not abstract and logical, leading to nothingness. On the contrary, his negation is part of a transformation into affirmation. Rabelais does not leave a vacuum: what he negates he replaces; what he destroys he remodels.135For bakhtin this constitures a utopiaanism that heralds positive potentialities without harping on the possible negative outcomes. Of course, depending on one's position in society - and especially for the oppressed classes — the new might bring further economic hardship and authoritative control. Thus, Bakhtin's most notable area of neglect is the relationship and tensions among different social groups within the 'masses.' This is lost in his preoccupation with the opposition between the masses and 'official culture,' including the aristocracy and the Church. If these are the possible dangers or oversights in Bakhtin's study of Rabelais for

86

Gramsci's Politics of Language

political theory, the role of the interwoven imagery of degradation, laughter, the grotesque, and popular festivities can be seen more sociologically as an investigation into the transition from the medieval world to the modern world. It is this that Bakhtin accuses all prior Rabelais commentators of having missed this: All the influences we have analysed [ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and various genres of billingsgate] have been known to scholars and have been studied by them ... But these influences have been examined separately, completely severed from their maternal womb - from the carnival, ritual, and spectacle. This means that the studies have been pursued outside the unity of folk culture, the problem of which was not posed. This is why, dealing with the variety and heterogeneous character of these phenomena, the scholars did not see the one deeply original humorous aspect of the world, presented in isolated fragments... The peculiarity of comic imagery, which is one in spite of its variety and is inherent to medieval folk culture and generally foreign to modern times (especially to the nineteenth century), was also not understood.136

The position taken by most Bakhtin scholar, including Morson, Emerson, Clark, and Holquist, that this work is a defence or description of extreme heteroglossia against unifying tendencies - that it is part of the boundless argument for dialogism that is 'unfinalizability' - seems quite overstated.137 Bakhtin seems to be promising us that the carnivalesque can overcome the oppressiveness of 'official culture' and liberate the popular masses; however, the status of this promise, its role within the analysis of language, and its implications have led some commentators to see it as anomalous with respect to his other works. The exceptionality of this promise is positive for some, negative for others. Morson and Emerson, exemplary of the latter camp, condemn the work's atypicality. They see it as contrary to several of the important themes that tie the rest of Bakhtin's life's work together. Instead of condemning or extolling Rabelais and His World on the basis of the success of the carnivalesque as a concept, we should understand it as an investigation into the historical transformation of medieval society. According to Bakhtin, Rabelais's novels express a shift from one manner of organizing society to another - a shift that affects, most importantly, society's imagination, its imagery, and its way of understanding the world with all the objects it contains (most especially the human body). The heteroglottic moment cannot be understood as the moving force that brought down 'officialdom.' If anything, heteroglossia might be related to the outcome of the toppling of the former organizational principle. It does not mean that the state of topsy turvy, inverted, and 'free' carnival can itself work as a Utopian image. Bakhtin is not as interested in the actual states of 'offi-

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

87

cialdom' and 'unofficial culture' as he is in their relationship (and earlier lack of interaction). What Bakhtin bemoans is the stark separation between officialdom and the world of the carnival. Neither of these realms can be compared to what Bakhtin would later describe as monologic. If the terms dialogic and monologic can be applied to this work, they should describe the relationship between these realms, instead of seeing 'officialdom' as monologic and the popular as dialogic. Because carnival is the 'official' order turned on its head, where royalty is conferred on commoners in a purely arbitrary manner, the two worlds are pitted against each other; never the twain shall meet. Nor did Bakhtin, as some commentators suggest, see monologic forces as the devil incarnate - as enabling authoritarian regimes and abuses of power. He does not present heteroglossia as the tool for beating down such abuses. Instead, he is arguing more modestly that Rabelais's novels provide the exemplary case of the transition from a state where 'officialdom' and 'unofficial culture' are mutually exclusive toward a state where the elements of folklore are entering the official culture (in the strict sense of the word) of literature. These folkloric elements have a significant impact because they change the very nature of official culture that has been dominated by ecclesiastic genres. This is the only way to explain Rabelais's oft-repeated sentiment that these popular/festive forms 'prepared the way for a new, free, and sober seriousness.,138 This is inexplicable by Emerson and Morson reading that Rabelais and His World is a celebration of all things unfinalized, chaotic and destructive. If this were the case, why would Bakhtin state that an analysis similar to the one he conducts on Rabelais could be carried out on Shakespeare, and would help determine his 'fearless, sober (yet not cynical) realism and absence of dogmatism'?139stead ofof setting up a simple opposition between all things serious, sober, and 'official' with everything that is celebratory, festive, unfinalized, inebriated, and 'carnivalesque,' Bakhtin explores how this particular set of oppositions broke down historically. With the breakup of these binaries, Bakhtin's own use of these images becomes quite intricate. One especially pertinent example can be found in an ambiguity contained in the book's last chapter in the relationship between progressive political positions and the jocular, vernacular style of folkloric language. Bakhtin begins by separating form from content, the style of language from the political stance being expressed. But before long, this opposition breaks down. First, Bakhtin tells us that 'the avant-garde positions in the field of politics, culture, science, and mores were directed and unambiguously expressed by Rabelais in various parts of his novel ... All these episodes have a more or less rhetorical character; the bookish and official language prevail in them.'1401° Here his distinction between offic bookish language and unofficial, vernacular, jovial language forces a separation

88

Gramsci's Politics of Language

between Rabelais's own political positions and the style or language in which they are represented. While Bakhtin is duly impressed by Rabelais's progressive sentiments, he does not find them especially important compared to Rabelais's novelistic achievement. On the contrary, 'Rabelais would be merely one of the progressive but commonplace humanists of his time [unless we] seek [his] last word in the popular-festive, elemental imagery in which these images are immersed ... [in the] gay, free, absolutely sober word of the people.'141 Thus, Bakhtin argues that while Rabelais's political positions are admirable for his time, those positions are separate from - and not nearly as significant as - his 'last word,' or the method by which he understands the limitations of all political positions, indeed, of anything finalizable. Instead, Rabelais's significant 'last word' is his consistent mobilization of a 'gay loophole [that] opens on the distant future and that lends an aspect of ridicule to the relative progressiveness and relative truth accessible to the present or to the immediate future.' According to Bakhtin, Rabelais 'never exhausts his resources in direct statements,' and it is toward his indirect images that we should look for true significance.142us, in these pages, Bakhtin is arguing that the content of of Rabelais's political progressiveness is relatively trivial, as well as unrelated to his real contribution in the realm of style, approach, and imagery. Such themes are clearly the source of Morson and Emerson's interpretation. However, when we examine the actual relationship between Rabelais's politics and his method, we find that Bakhtin himself encounters a completely different relationship. He identifies Rabelais's serious progressive politics and derives them from real historical events. Bakhtin argues that Pantagruel's military methods are modelled on those used in the occupation of Piedmont by Seigneur de Langey, Guillaume du Bellay, a good friend of Rabelais. Thus, Rabelais eulogizes Du Bellay's politics in Pantegruel's position: In order to instill and maintain obedience in a newly-conquered people, the one thing a monarch must avoid is pillaging, harrying, vexing, oppressing, and tyrannizing them. The rod or iron will not work; woe to the conqueror who swallows the nation in his maw ... Conquered nations are newborn babes; as such they must be given suck, they must be rocked, fondled and amused. Like newly planted trees, they must be supported, propped up, protected from all tempests, injuries and calamities. Like convalescents from lengthy illness, they must be nursed, coddled and cherished.143

Instead of delineating a separation between this progressive political position (in 'rhetorical' and 'serious' language) and Rabelais's popular/festive imagery and his 'gay loophole' as described earlier, Bakhtin emphasizes that 'this eulogy of an

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

89

actual political method is deeply infused with a festive conception of the popular body which is born, feeds, grows and is regenerated.' When the details of Rabelais's expression of his progressive politics are examined, this 'new progressive serious speech' is hardly separate from - but is 'deeply infused' with - the carnivalesque imagery. Bakhtin emphasizes the 'deep infusion' of Rabelais's politics with these popular/festive, carnivalesque images and politics. Of all the ways in which the parallels between du Bellay's policy and Pantagruel could be described, Bakhtin emphasizes that 'these typically Rabelaisian and carnivalesque images of the people and of their ruler broaden and deepen to an extraordinary degree the actual political problem of the Piedmont occupation.'14 These images of the increasingly important body of the people, the masses, distinguish modern political theory from its predecessors. Thus, the connection between Rabeliasian imagery and the new politics is directly connected to the importance of languages and the new role of vernaculars. When Latin is the one language of rule, the masses and the various vernaculars they speak are relatively ineffectual in the realms of high culture and politics. But the principle of modern politics - used for good and evil - is that 'the people' are a significant subject to have knowledge of and reckon with, whether tyrannically or democratically. It is no coincidence that in these very pages Bakhtin details 'the special attitude of Rabelais's time toward language and its philosophy.'145nally, he contextualizes the Renaissance as a transformation not only inin cultural and political spheres but specifically in linguistic structures. One of Bakhtin's most powerful and pertinent discussions for our purposes is how linguistic struggles are related to folk culture (the unification of laughter, carnival and billingsgate language) and its entrance into 'high culture' through the novel. Bakhtin argues that this high/popular culture transformation is integral to relations among classical Latin, medieval Latin, and vernacular language. The Renaissance broke the monopoly of Latin in literature and marked the ascension of vulgar dialects. These vernaculars overwhelmed medieval Latin and its hierarchical structures, according to Bakhtin. Classical Latin became a pure language in its own death. When it ceased to be used for daily interaction, it also ceased to be a living and changing language. It attained a specific rarefied position, unlike medieval Latin. Likewise, dialects that had existed side by side came into conflict with one another, and this struggle went in tandem with the rise of nation-states and national languages. With an analysis very similar to Gramsci's Bartolian premises, Bakhtin describes the transition in European literature between the 'dual language system' and 'linguistic interorientation.' Carnival, as the metamorphosis of society involving the erasure of the line between 'officialdom' and 'unofficialdom' that is described throughout the work, is taken up as the interpenetration of Latin and the vernaculars. The living language of me-

90

Gramsci's Politics of Language

dieval Latin in its position as 'literature' and 'culture' was invaded by dialects. Bakhtin writes: 'The process of transferring the whole of philosophy to the vernacular and of creating a new system of literary media led to an intense interorientation of dialects within this vernacular (but without concentration at a center).146'Aabelais's novels are the epitome of a combination of various elements of this transformation evident throughout many medieval developments including other forms of literature and billingsgate speech. The analysis of this transition and the representation of it, including Rabelais's 'gay loophole' open to the distant future, cannot be separated from Rabelais's own modern political stance, which embraces the imagery of the body of the people. Most notably for our purposes, Bakhtin argues: 'The naive and peaceful coexistence of the dialects came to an end; they began to clarify each other, and their variety was gradually unveiled.' Bakhtin describes a new situation, the formation of Renaissance consciousness, as the intense interorientation of dialects, 'a complex intersection of languages, dialects, idioms, and jargons,' where languages struggle with one another.l 7 Not surprisingly, Gramsci also concerns himself with this transition in the relationship between Latin and vernaculars. His description of the struggle among literary Latin, vulgar Latin, and the vernaculars is very similar to Bakhtin's. In his analysis, the medieval ages were marked by the crystallization of literary Latin into 'middle-Latin,' a language used by scholars and intellectuals in everyday life148ramsci is especially interested in how this language is not a living lan-AN guage of the people or a nation, but rather is cosmopolitan and 'artificial.' He compares it to Esperanto as opposed to a national language. Gramsci relates the separation between vernacular languages and middle-Latin to the split between the people and intellectuals.1 9 The fall of what he calls middle Latin and the rise of the communes - especially Florence - are historical precedents for his conception of organic intellectuals. He distinguishes between intellectuals from the popular (bourgeois) classes and those who are the product of the absorption and assimilation of single individuals into a traditional hierarchy that has its own conception of the world150.or Gramsci, like Bakhtin, thisIS transition in the relations among languages is intricately linked to larger ideological and social changes. It is also exemplified by the movement of vernacular into writing, from the oath of Strasbourg in 842 to literary, poetic, and artistic realms of culture in later centuries. Gramsci invokes Dante's phrase 'illustrious vernacular' (de vulgari eloquentia) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a literary manifestation of this transition151 The description of struggle among languages with the advent of the Renaissance is also similar to the basic presumptions of Bartoli's linguistics (see chapter 1). Both Bartoli and Gramsci focus on the competition among languages and

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

91

contend that such competition arises not within a language but when two or more languages that developed at different times, in different contexts, come into contact. Thus, as we saw earlier with reference to the possible meanings of Bakhtin's term heteroglossia, Gramsci and Bartoli, also, maintain a strong connection between diversity in languages and social conditions.152rtoli does not restrictictt his methodological principles to certain historical epochs, and he certainly applied them to premedieval times, and Bakhtin's description of linguistic struggle after this transition is very similar to Bartoli's. Moreover, this compares directly with Gramsci's contention that language is non-parthenogenetic. Unfortunately, Bakhtin does not describe, explain, or make any conjectures about the 'nature' of language before this transition. He describes a world in which Latin as the official language did not interact with the vernacular dialects and the dialects did not interact with one another; however, nowhere does he account for the 'nature' of language in this period. But just as we used Volosinov's analysis to help flesh out the fragments of Gramsci's work with which it was consistent, here we can use Gramsci's position to further explicate Bakhtin. Presumably, Bakhtin's position yields two options regarding the condition of languages before this interorientation occurred. One option is that languages grew, developed, and changed without interference from other languages - that is, isolated languages were parthenogenetic, but not interactive. The second option is that the naively coexisting languages cannot be said to have changed, grown, or developed in any real sense153that is, there was no parthenogenesissis either before or after this transition. In part, this is an empirical issue. Historical linguists describe the period in Europe from the ninth century until the thirteenth century as 'bilingual' - that is, Latin and the multitudinous vernaculars remained separate. But within the languages themselves, there certainly were grammatical, syntactical, and phonological changes.154 Thus, Bakhtin would be more empirically correct if he favoured option one. But the non-empirical aspect of all this is more important for our purposes. The issue is one of methodology and philosophy. It is really a question of what 'growth,' 'change,' and 'development' mean. It makes more sense to presume that Bakhtin was not arguing that language went through a transformation from being parthenogenetic to not being parthenogenetic (for if that is his argument, he seems to be empirically wrong). Rather, like Gramsci, Bakhtin develops and defines the meaning of'change,' 'growth,' and 'development' in languages. Similar to my earlier contentions about the intersections between Gramsci's notion of linguistic struggle and interaction and his understanding of philosophical, political, and cultural struggle, Bakhtin sees this transition in language as

92

Gramsci's Politics of Language

inseparable from questions of how the world is viewed: 'Languages are philosophies - not abstract but concrete, social philosophies, penetrated by a system of values inseparable from living practice and class struggle. This is why every object, every concept, every point of view, as well as every intonation found their place at this intersection of linguistic philosophies and was drawn into an intense ideological struggle.155'learly, Bakhtin is not arguing that struggle, conflict,CT and the ensuing chaos and disorder are to be celebrated, whereas the order before this shift is to be condemned, as is every stable, fixed culture. His point is that before the Renaissance, there was ideological struggle between 'official culture' and 'unofficial culture.' But such interactions were fragmentary and ineffectual and left both sides basically unchanged. With Rabelais's novels and the social changes that made them possible, the real confrontation, interaction, and interchange among the various aspects of these two worlds occur. This is what is worth celebrating. One may object to this reading of Bakhtin by pointing to his emphasis on Rabelais's 'last word' as a 'gay loophole' that is directed toward the future, and is thus unfinalizable. But the bulk of his analysis of Rabelais places this loophole toward the future in a very specific context. It is a reduction to understand this loophole, this unfinalizability, as favouring chaos or all indetermination or even general 'openness.' This reductive meaning contravenes the rest of Bakhtin's work and especially Medvedev's. The loophole is invoked precisely at the point where, as a result of the combination and unification of diverse aspects of folk culture, the 'official world' has been forced to engage in struggle. To read this loophole as support of all things not unified in this way is to totally neglect Bakhtin's distinction between his own reading of Rabelais and that of previous scholars. Instead, Bakhtin is making a point akin to Gramsci's: 'Spontaneity is therefore characteristic of the "history of the subaltern classes," and indeed of their most marginal and peripheral elements.' However, this is not a point to be celebrated, and it is certainly not one to be prolonged; rather, it arises from the fact that these classes, these 'unofficial cultures,' have been unable to achieve 'any consciousness of the class "for itself," and consequently it never occurs to them that their history might have some possible importance, that there might be some value in leaving documentary evidence of it.'156abelais and the passing of these undocumentedD folkloric aspects of billingsgate language, carnival, and laughter into literature into written documentation - raise 'unofficial culture' to a new importance. But this only occurs because of the unification (and presumed increased power) of these previously diverse and fragmented elements. Rabelais's novels mark a progress in the subaltern classes' achievement of consciousness.157 In Gramsci's terms, the chaotic elements of 'common sense' are organized in a manner that

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

93

moves them closer to 'good sense.' Rabelais's genius is certainly not in creating these images, for he did not create them. It is not even in presenting or representing them in literature. Bakhtin argues that Rabelais's contribution is the realization that 'in spite of their variety, folk festivities of the carnival type, the comic rites and cults, the clowns and fools, giants, dwarfs, and jugglers, the vast and manifold literature of parody - all these forms have one style in common: they belong to one culture of folk carnival humor.'158 To explain how Bakhtin's gay loophole looking toward the future compares to Gramsci's thought, we can take up Michael Gardiner's comparison of the two. Gardiner suggests that Gramsci's insistence on the metaphorical nature of language accords with Bakhtin's 'stress on the multiaccentual character of the sign and of the threat of monologism to a healthy heteroglossia.'159 This brings out the problem described earlier: If for Bakhtin language is 'inherently' or 'naturally' heteroglottic or dialogic, where does the ever-present threat of monologism come from? We have found a similar enigma in Gramsci's position that language is not parthenogenetic but rather is in 'inherent' need of 'difference' for its production and reproduction. Where does this nature or inherent characteristic reside? A historical materialist approach must be able to explain such properties instead of just presuming them. The parallel between these dilemmas faced by Bakhtin and Gramsci lies precisely in the similarities between their concepts of unity. For both Gramsci and Bakhtin, unity does not mean homogeneity, monoglossia, or uniaccentuality. Rather, it includes uniqueness and differences that are not 'transcended,' 'overcome,' or merged. These differences remain intact but are now translatable, at least partially. It is not Hegelian or Crocean 'totality' but a 'totality' in which the different 'theses' are communicable but not assimilated. This is the concept of 'metaphor' in Gramsci and multiaccentuality in Volosinov and Bakhtin. Because language is historically produced and always contains past meanings, traces, and sediments, every sign always has possible multiple meanings, and moreover, there can be 'future' new meanings. This is what ensures (if it is remembered) that the 'new' will always live on in what is 'created' after it. Such materiality at the social level is what enables the creative aspect of language in its usage. Language used without consciousness of its past — including its multiaccentuality, its non-parthenogenetic history, its metaphoricity - is severely limited in expressing the life of individuals, especially as that life changes and grows. The contradictions of capitalism and their expression require very specific types of repression and conflict. We can see now that taken in context, the statement that 'in language there is no parthenogenesis' tells us little about the nature of language per se. Rather, it is a contention about what we should consider 'genesis' or 'progress.' What is 'new'? What is 'creative'? What is 'genesis'? These are the questions Gramsci is confront-

94

Gramsci's Politics of Language

ing when he discusses language as part of social praxis. He is defining 'progress,' 'creation,' and 'genesis' as the coming together into a 'unity' of different perspectives or worldviews. Languages can exist that are totally isolated from other languages and that are 'monological' - to use Bakhtin's term - but they cannot produce anything new at the social level.160kewise, two or more languages canan exist side by side but be in monological relations with one another. Bakhtin's description (perhaps an overgeneralization) of the relationship in medieval Europe between Latin and the vernaculars is a prime example. This is not to suggest that individuals living within primarily monologic relations of language cannot produce individual things. Such production, Gramsci notes, takes place with art.161 But this production is neither 'progress' nor social innovation nor history. Instead, history is always a social, communal, and group event. The statement 'in language there is no parthenogenesis' contains ambiguity, as we have seen through Bakhtin, because it is a descriptive, non-normative statement; however, it takes on normative overtones, or has inherent normative presumptions. If language were inherently non-parthenogenetic, it would be useless to resist this nature. It might also be immoral, if such futile efforts wasted resources and caused suffering. But this is not Gramsci's position. Its logic goes against Gramsci's entire method of incorporating objectivity into subjectivity. While Gramsci is consistently aware of the normative side of empirical arguments (his discussion of'prediction' is a very good example), the logic is never that the normative is determined by or subservient to the empirical - that is, 'Because it is it ought to be,' or 'Because it is ontologically, or essentially, then we must work to actualize it historically.' This is antithetical to Gramsci's whole modus operandi. Gramsci is not suggesting that we open ourselves to the multiaccentuality or metaphoricity of language because it is language's essence or ontology. Instead, he organizes, describes and defines that which is 'new' at the level of society (not the individual) - the 'progress' that ought to be - as that which is the meeting of different perspectives, the interfering of one culture with another, the metaphoric use of language. This is a political and moral argument, not a factual one. Bakhtin is not always as consistent as Gramsci on this matter. In his Rabelais book he traces the historic specificity of the relationships among Latin and vernacular languages as they relate to changes in the imagery of these different languages - that is, what they describe and how they describe it. He describes the transitional moment of the Renaissance as the fall of medieval Latin and the rise of both classical, pure, dead Latin and the competing and all-pervasive dialects. This is a historic transition and, furthermore, a transition that Bakhtin welcomes as moral progress. He is not arguing that language did not exist before this period, or did somehow exist but was not true to its essence or ontology. He never describes 'perversion' or 'abuse' of language in the monologic officialdom.

'Unity' in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle

95

Instead, as Gramsci shows us, this period is defined as 'progress,' as the creation of something new. Perhaps such transitions did not benefit every individual, but at the social level they constituted progress. Conclusion In chapter 1, I placed Gramsci's argument that language is always historically metaphorical at the centre of his methodology. Because, as he states, 'present language is metaphorical with respect to the meanings and the ideological content which the words used had in preceding periods of civilization,'162he can borrow 'prestige' and 'hegemony' from the field of linguistics for the study of politics and society. His adaptations of other people's phrases or concepts — such as 'passive revolution,' and 'everyone is an intellectual' — are excellent examples of what Volosinov calls 'reaccentuation' of words from a different ideological perspective. Bakhtin's contempt for unified national languages - which is shared to an extent by Volosinov — is based on this notion of language as always containing layers of valuations and meanings. Both argue that unified languages either hide or try to erase these previous meanings and that they curtail the creation of new meanings. Gramsci agrees with these two with respect to certain projects of unifying language and certain approaches to linguistics. But he also holds out an alternative approach to unifying language that is based precisely on the historical metaphoricity of language. Bakhtin understands linguistic utterances as participating in both centripetal and centrifugal forces, but he consistently emphasizes the latter and is critical of the former.163In those writings which have been translated into English, he never backs off from his renunciation of national unified languages. However, this may be a question of emphasis and context - that is, he is highlighting what he feels is being undervalued and is not concerning himself with what is accepted by those around him. It is then the task for anyone who is translating Bakhtin's work, or using it in different contexts, to address these issues. Bakhtin does not consider the possibility of progressive, unified national languages, but he does examine in detail just such a unity as it takes place within certain literary forms, most notably Dostoevsky's novels. Thus, the most significant difference between Gramsci and Bakhtin is that Gramsci believes in the possibility of an actual, 'prosaic,' progressive unified language in which differences are held intact and not obliterated, in which different voices exist. For Bakhtin, this type of unity and organization is certainly found in the field of literature with the unity of the novel. But it is an open question whether Bakhtin thinks we should place our faith in constructing such an open unity in a nation or community of people.

96

Gramsci's Politics of Language

In this chapter I have attempted to add to Gramsci's writings on language by using this conception of'unity' to give further descriptive force to the differences between Gramsci's projected hegemonic project and those which he condemns. I have also placed Gramsci's critiques of Croce and the Neogrammarians within a wider framework that prepares the ground for questions about 'unity.' This discussion allows us to connect Gramsci's theory of language as the production of meaning within social praxis with an array of contemporary theories of semiotics and linguistics. If such a democratic, progressive unified language and hegemonic force, based in diversity, can be constructed, how would it relate to other languages? In other words, how are we to translate the 'alien word' that is so central to 'abstract objectivism' into a non-alien word without obliterating its alien-ness? It would be possible to pursue the question of translation by further developing the connections between Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle. But if we turn to the influential writings of Walter Benjamin on translation, we can emphasize more clearly that Gramsci's 'translation' is not a question of transferring content from one language to another. Benjamin's work will also provide a contrast that we can use to highlight Gramsci's complete rejection of language as nomenclature, as well as traditional philosophy's obsession with the relationship between subject and object. This will provide a context for exploring Gramsci's epistemology; it will also set up a framework for discussing the work of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas in chapter 4.

Chapter Three

Translating Revolution: Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

One may in fact say that only in the philosophy of praxis is the 'translation' [between different civilizations] organic and thoroughgoing, whilst from other standpoints it is often a simple game of generic 'schematisms.' Antonio Gramsci1

In The Search for the Perfect Language, Umberto Eco addresses the future possibilities of a 'polyglot Europe': Polyglot Europe will not be a continent where individuals converse fluently in all the other languages; in the best of cases, it could be a continent where differences of language are no longer barriers to communication, where people can meet each other and speak together, each in his or her own tongue, understanding, as best they can, the speech of the others. In this way, even those who never learn to speak another language fluently could still participate in its particular genius, catching a glimpse of the particular cultural universe that every individual expresses each time he or she speaks the language of his or her ancestors and his or her own tradition.2

If this is a 'solution' to the (new?) European questione delta lingua posed by European 'unification,' it is also Eco's attempt to mediate between on the one hand, the image of language as the transmitter of information, as a necessary medium of communication, and, on the other, Wilhelm von Humboldt's emphasis on language as the expression of the genius of particular nations.3 Eco's study traces the various projects that have searched for the perfect language in the hope that by unifying language the tragedy of Babel can be overcome. His goal is to undermine the premises of such projects and to deflate appeals to pre-Babelian times by stepping beyond the search for the perfect language. He does not hope that we

98

Gramsci's Politics of Language

can all take the time, energy, and resources to actually learn to speak the many languages of those with whom we would like to speak, for this would be highly unrealistic. Instead, he postulates a dialogue, an interchange, a conversation, with and across various languages. He tracks the long history of different projects of creating or recovering a perfect language and shows how they all presuppose the perspective of Genesis 11, where the diversity of language is a curse, a punishment, or at the very least an impractical impediment. Eco astutely asks whether Genesis 10 might be a better model than Genesis 11, since it postulates the diversity of tongues before the founding of Babel. In Genesis 10, linguistic diversity is not the negative result of punishment by God but merely the consequence of the spread of the families and nations of Noah's sons across the Earth. Eco overcomes Babelian presuppositions that linguistic diversity constitutes a threat or a hindrance, and asks whether we can learn to listen to and understand languages in which we will never be able to express our own thoughts and feelings. However commendable the general project, and however brilliant his examination of underlying assumptions about linguistic diversity through the centuries, Eco's vision seems to obscure the power struggles inherent in languages. In striving to retain the particularities of all the peoples who make up this 'new' Europe, this conversation misunderstands — while trying to exalt and preserve - the significant differences among diverse groups of people. Eco circumvents the problem of translation. Translation is no longer necessary if it is possible for us to understand others without being able to speak their language. Yet if, as Walter Benjamin says, 'all translation is only a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages, at least translation identifies and attempts, however imperfectly, to come to terms with the differences between languages. In contrast, Eco aspires to come to terms with foreignness by avoiding the foreignness of languages, by evading translation. The problems of translation — and the faith its success promises — are only obscured by Eco's 'polyglot Europe.' As we shall see in the writings of both Gramsci and Benjamin, translation as is a fundamentally political and perhaps spiritual question - if we are very careful about the many meanings of'spiritual.' In contrast to those who consider translation a 'literary' endeavor or a technical problem, Gramsci and Benjamin follow Martin Luther in seeing it as a political act.7 Moreover, both of them reject commonsense notions of translation as the transference of something from one language to another. Instead, they have more in common with recent trends in translation theory (especially feminist approaches), which forgo translation as an attempt to overcome the obstacle, or curse, of linguistic diversity by creating an equivalent expression in a different language. Benjamin and Gramsci - especially the latter - undermine the usual opposition between the creative production of

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

99

an original and a secondary, parasitic transposition of translation; instead, they emphasize translation as creative and productive. In this chapter I examine how Gramsci uses translation as a metaphor for the processes of non-parthenogenetic development introduced in chapter 2. Benjamin's conception of translation has been at the centre of much commentary8; Gramsci's 'translation' has not yet been placed among the concepts most closely associated with him, such as hegemony, organic intellectuals, passive revolution, civil society, and Fordism. The centrality of translation to Gramsci's writings has been recognized only recently.10 Besides addressing the lacuna in Gramscian scholarship around translation, in this chapter I show how Gramsci uses it to understand unity as that concept was developed in chapter 2. I have argued that diversity, struggle, and cultural heterogeneity are central to Gramsci's linguistics and by extension to his political philosophy. Expanding on these issues, in this chapter I will illustrate how unity is created through processes of translation that neither assimilate nor mechanically transpose diverse elements into a unified homogeneity. Gramsci's comparative methods rely on a complex conceptualization of translation that involves more than just the transference of single words, phrases, meanings, and elements from one language to the next. This supports my earlier argument that for Gramsci, meaning is not created through the relationship between words and the external (non-linguistic) world to which they supposedly refer. Rather, meaning is produced from the differences and relations among signs within language. This does not mean that language is abstracted from its social context. On the contrary, this constitutes linguistic praxis. In this chapter I illustrate how throughout Gramsci's writings, translation and translatability link a whole series of themes comprising roughly three areas: (1) cross-cultural social analysis; (2) interpretations of Marx and Engels's equation of German philosophy with French politics and with English political economy; and (3) epistemological questions regarding the definitions of science and objectivity. These three major themes are wrapped around the ultimate problem of how to 'translate' the Russian Revolution into Italy, the rest of Europe, and the world. A fundamental aspect of this translation is the assessment Gramsci makes in this oft-quoted passage: 'In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed.'11 This difference between Russia and the rest of Europe the difference between, in the terms of the translator, the source language and the target language - is the difference in these societies' hegemonic make-up. Initially noted by Lenin, but theorized more explicitly by Gramsci, these differences in hegemonic context account for the Comintern's failure to spread the revolution.

100

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Next to the Bakhtin Circle, Benjamin provides one of the most significant Marxist discussions of language. Moreover, he had a strong influence on Adorno, Horkheimer, and Habermas, who will be discussed in the following chapter. I will use Benjamin's work, as I used the Bakhtin Circle's in the previous chapter, not to engage in a systematic comparison with Gramsci, but rather to cast Gramsci's particular emphases in greater relief. I will connect his perspective to contemporary issues in social thought, especially those for which Benjamin has been especially important. In this sense, I will not be able to meet Gramsci's own requirements for a full, comprehensive translation. But I hope to achieve a more limited version of one of the goals of translation - that is, I hope to change both the languages involved, Gramsci's and Benjamin's, by bringing them together. Gramsci and Benjamin understand translation as a necessary sign of the possibility of both revolution and revelation, but in considerably different ways. The tension between revolution and revelation — change and recovery of what has always been there - characterizes the discrepancy between Gramsci and Benjamin. But translation is also where Gramsci's politics meet Benjamin's faith, revealing how faith (especially in the form of optimism of the will) is vital for Gramsci and the aspects of Benjamin's theory of language that bear on Marxism. As Rodolphe Gasche argues, 'difference' is the persistent concern of Benjamin's and is based in the concrete act of revolt. It is no accident that Gasche finds this 'difference' most clearly explicated by Benjamin not in his later 'materialist' writings but in his theory of language, especially his essays 'On Language as Such and the Language of Man' (1916) and 'The Task of the Translator' (1923).12 From a Gramscian perspective, Eco's proposed 'solution' to la questione della lingua that has been surfacing in Italy at least since the introduction of Latin to the peninsula (i.e., before 'Italia and 'italia.no existed as words) seems to do little more than Manzoni's 'solution' to address the real issue of the gap between intellectuals and the general population. As Ascoli argued about Manzoni's 'solution,' it is an artificial response to a very real political and historical problem. But Eco provides the initial turn in understanding how linguistic diversity has been considered a curse. Gramsci and Benjamin take us beyond a merely neutral consideration of linguistic difference, and see in it the very conditions of revolution. Translating Revolution Loosely translating Lenin, Gramsci notes: 'In 1921 Vilich [Lenin], in dealing with organisational questions, wrote and said (more or less) this: we have not been able to "translate" our language into those of Europe.'13 Lenin did not actually employ the concept of translation to describe his dissatisfaction with the resolution passed by the Third Congress of the International in 1921, to which

TENJAMINSlANGUAGEANDgRAMSCISPOLITI

Gramsci alludes. Lenin actually wrote what is translated thus: 'We have not learnt how to present our experience to foreigners.' It is Gramsci who brings the concept of translation (tradurre) to Lenin's rather narrowly organizational comment. Gramsci's own 'unfaithful' or 'loose' translation introduces 'translation'; once again, this shows the extent to which linguistic concepts were integral to his thought. 'Translation' enables him to explain how the 'presentation' of 'our experience' — that of revolution - requires 'translation' and not the mere transmission from one context to another. This is the starting point for a series of connections he makes between social analysis, his reading of Marx and Engels's equation of German philosophy with French politics and with English political economy, and his epistemological argument about science.15 Using translation as the link, he relates these various parts of his research project to the political project of revolution. The notion that the Russian Revolution was to be a model for an Italian Revolution was commonplace, especially during the Biennio Rosso, when the slogan 'We must do the same as in Russia' spread through the factories. But Gramsci was strongly aware of the complexity and ambiguity of 'the same as in Russia,' especially as events unfolded. He addressed and rethought this question through the concept of translation. The Italian term tradurre has a wider range than the English 'translation.' Besides meaning linguistic 'translation,' like in Old English, it means 'to express,' 'to interpret,' 'to summon,' and 'to transfer.' It can be used to describe the transfer of prisoners, such as Gramsci, from one prison to another. Though tradurre is used more widely in Italian than 'translate' is in English, there is much evidence that Gramsci's use of the term is not merely superficial; instead, it is the development of a concept. His expansion and exploration of translation, and his use of it to relate disparate parts of his research project, resemble his development of concepts we have come to know as 'Gramscian,' such as hegemony, organic intellectual, and civil society.17 Tradurre, like the English word 'translation,' has the same root as 'tradition' and 'traitor' — the Latin tradir, to 'hand over.' In relation to Benjamin, 'tradition' is also one particular translation of Kabbalah, which means 'to receive' more generally.18Thus, the etymology of the term tradurre reveals the filial interplayy between continuity and change (restoration/revolution) as the terms themselves change but retain some of their earlier resonance. As we saw in chapter 1, this interplay is integral to Gramsci's understanding of language as historically metaphoric. 'Metaphor' itself comes from the Greek word meaning 'to transfer,' 'to bear,' or 'to carry,' which has come to emphasize difference and replacement rather than equivalence. The dynamic of continuity and change in translation also contains the tension between being 'faithful' to the original text and being

102

Gramsci's Politics of Language

attentive to the audience for whom the text is being translated. The Italian expression 'traduttore, traditore' captures nicely the bind that the better a translation is from the perspective of the target language, the more traitorous it is to the original text.20 With the notion of translating the Russian experience, Gramsci was not thinking that the October Revolution itself, the 'Revolution Against Capital' should reoccur in Italy or anywhere else.21 The project of the Communist Party and the Comintern was not to repeat an event (i.e., the Bolshevik Revolution specifically). A transference of the October Revolution into Italy would look more like a re-enactment, a theatrical event, or a 'farce' — as Marx speaks of in the Eighteenth Brumaire — than a revolution that could completely alter the power structure of Italian society. 'Revolution,' then, does not signify a content that can be transmitted into a different context, a different society. It is itself a relational concept. Its referent is not a static object, state, idea, blue-print, or theory, but rather a dynamic relationship among elements within a society. As Benjamin says of bad translations, 'any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information — hence, something inessential.'23 The history of Russia and the contextual details of the October Revolution cannot be separated from that revolution. But translation is precisely the realization that there is something 'inessential' about the context of that which is to be translated. That is, there is something that relates the two languages beyond the particularities of an individual text. Translation necessarily interrogates the relationship between similarity and difference that occurs at different levels of analysis and of activity. As we saw in chapter 1, Gramsci looked to linguistics for ways to think about these dynamics of identity and difference. Within the linguistic paradigm he studied, the historical identity of an idiom or linguistic form is always seen in relation to (or defined against) the changes it has gone through. One of the main features of Gramsci's translation is that it must take into account the entire structure of both the source language and the target language. Gramsci's rendition of Lenin emphasizes the inability 'to translate our language — not a single event, not our words, but the entire structure. As Gramsci explains in the more narrowly linguistic context: 'The language exercises that one does in the grammar school make it apparent after a time that in Latin-Italian and GreekItalian translations there is never identity between the terms of the languages placed side by side, or at least that what identity there seemed to be at the beginning of the exercise (Italian "rosa" = Latin "rosa") becomes increasingly complicated as the "apprenticeship" progresses, moves increasingly away from the mathematical scheme and arrives at a historical judgement.' 25 The task of translation requires and enables a comprehensive analysis of both

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

103

languages and societies involved in translation, plus historical judgment.26Historical judgment here is meant both to emphasize that this is not a mechanical analysis or process and to subvert Croce's insistence that historical judgment is individual judgment (i.e., philosophy).27 Translation is not a technical activity; instead, it requires normative judgment that makes the translation a historical act. That this act of translation is neither passive nor schematic is central to Gramsci's rejection of economistic Marxism. Gramsci's use of'translation' contains a critique of the concepts of presentation and representation because these acts require active translation.28 This is related to Gramsci's distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals, where the former are intellectuals who really 'represent' their social group and the latter function without direct or organic relations with those whose life activities they are supposed to 'represent.' It is also integral to Gramsci's emphasis on the strong link between languages and conceptions of the world discussed in chapter 1 (pp. 35-6). In this light, the debates over whether Gramsci's political theory is an expansion and deepening of the fundamental insights of Lenin by applying them to the Italian context, or whether he adds fundamentally new (non-Leninist) insights into Marxist political theory, seem almost foreshadowed — and answered - by Gramsci's explicit discussion of translation. As we might expect, Gramsci's detailed expansion or subversion of 'translation' - specifically in relation to Lenin - undermines the grounds on which this debate is staged. Taken seriously, Gramsci's notion of translation makes each of these perspectives equally valid but also short-sighted if the philosophy of praxis is to translate organically and to thoroughly reject the generic schematisms of other perspectives on translation. Sentiments about Gramsci being the 'Italian Lenin' can be meaningless unless the modifier, 'Italian,' is paramount, given that Lenin was quintessentially Russian. At the same time, that Gramsci is the 'Italian Lenin' can be as provocative as Gramsci's notion that Machiavelli is the 'Italian Luther.'32 Gramsci's analyses of Italian and European history can be seen as part of the preparatory work of translation. They are also his method of analysing the hegemonic make-up of Western Europe that explains why the translation of revolution failed. Gramsci is trying to understand the different conditions into which he wants (or had failed) to translate the 'revolution' and how these conditions themselves make the 'translatability' of revolution possible. The Task of Revolution In German, Benjamin's language, 'translation' ('iibersetzeri) does not have the same 'traitorous' resonances as in Latin or Italian. As opposed to the lateral direc-

104

Gramsci's Politics of Language

tion of'trans-,' 'iiber- is a preposition for 'up' and 'over' as well as 'across.' 'Setzen iiber'is 'to leap' or 'to jump' over something. This vertical movement — coupled with the metaphor of height with the divine, the heavenly, progress, achievement, and a general positive sentiment — carries with it very different resonances than the English or Italian term for translation.33 Notwithstanding these German particulars — and perhaps in part because of them — Benjamin's insights into translation help us flesh out the implications of the above discussion of translation. In 'The Task of the Translator,' Benjamin plays with these German resonances of'translation' in order to dispel overtly the same commonsense notions of translation that Gramsci undermines. Benjamin asks: 'Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original?' He answers no, and further argues, as noted earlier, that bad translations simply transmit information, which is inessential to the translation. Benjamin supplies us with the explicit reasoning for this position - reasoning that is only implicit in Gramsci's writings. Benjamin points out that translations are made after the originals, normally when the original has achieved some fame. In the time lapsed, the original changes if for no other reason than the context changes. The aim of transmission will always run into the unsolvable problem that styles change; thus, 'What sounded fresh once may sound hackneyed later; what was once current may someday be quaintEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE transmission is impossible. Benjamin uses the example of the German word 'Brot' and the French word 'pain.' Both 'intend' the same object, but 'Brot' has an entirely different meaning to a German than does fain' to the French.35 Instead of attempting a practical method for overcoming these problems, such as Eugene Nida's model of encoding and decoding, Benjamin takes them as indications of a different task for translation. Translation is not a transference, a lateral movement from one context to another. This is because, as Benjamin argued in his earlier essay on language, language is not simply a medium through which thought can be transferred (as in Locke's theory of language)EE. In a position similar to the linguistic relativism of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, Benjamin argues instead that 'mental being communicates itself in language and not through language.'38 But for Benjamin, as for Gramsci, the process of translation points in exactly the opposite direction from linguistic relativism's denial of translation: 'Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages.'39 This relationship or kinship is not based on some likeness between languages, some minimum requirements or 'universal grammar': 'it cannot be defined adequately by identity of origin' or by historical considerations. On the contrary, 'kinship of languages rests in the intention underlying each language as a whole - an intention,

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

105

however, which no single language can attain by itself but which is realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other: pure language.'41 Later, through an exploration of Benjamin's 'On Language' essay, I will consider at length the theological aspects of 'pure language.' The important point here is that even this 'pure language' is not a metalanguage, a language of languages or any type of universal grammar. Gramsci also condemns such notions for what he calls 'an incomprehension of the historicity of languages.' This has its root in the 'tendency that is characteristic of all forms of thought (including idealist-historicist ones) to build themselves up as an Esperanto or Volapiik42 of philosophy and science.'43 Tosel expands this point, arguing that for Gramsci translation does not establish a metalanguage and moreover that the philosophy of praxis is not an absolute language, a language of languages444. Thus, Gramsci's elaboration, development, and analysis of translation in unorthodox directions is rather similar to one of Benjamin's fundamental points. Both show, contra our commonsense presumptions, that translation does not make a text, or event, accessible to people who do not speak the language in which it was originally written, or who did not experience the original event. Translation cannot make a text transparent. To give just one pertinent example, Gramsci dedicated four prison notebooks mostly to his own translations of German texts. His goal was not to make their contents accessible to an audience that did not speak German. They were for his own education. Translation in this case is not a process made necessary by the curse, punishment, or pragmatic obstacle of linguistic diversity. Going beyond Eco's neutralization of the Babelian model of linguistic diversity from Genesis 11, Benjamin and Gramsci understand linguistic diversity as enabling translation. They recognize what contemporary feminist theorists of translation have developed more fully. As Barbara Godard argues: 'Though traditionally a negative topos in translation, "difference" becomes a positive one in feminist translation.' Difference is not an obstacle to be overcome, as in traditional theories of translation, which Godard describes as being based on 'equivalence which is grounded in a poetics of transparency.' Rather, difference is productive of meaning and translation is able to make women's exploitation visible.EE For Benjamin, linguistic diversity provides the space for translation that he sees as revelation (the precise meaning of which will be become evident shortly); for Gramsci it enables translation as revolution. This explication of translation provides a much more thorough account of Gramsci's claim that language is 'nonparthogenetic' (see chapter 2). Through 'translation' we can see how this nonethnocentric, non-teleological, communal creativity is related to revolution. 8

106 Gramsci's Politics of Language The Possibility or Impossibility of Translation In subverting the notion that translation is transmission, Gramsci highlights translation as a philosophical concept rather than a purely linguistic technique. Gramsci raises Luigi Einaudi's example that with skill, geometric language can be translated into algebraic language, hedonism can be translated into Kantian ethics, and an economic proof can be translated successively in the language of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marx, John Stuart Mill, and Cairnes. Gramsci sees clear parallels between this intralingual and interlingual translation. He comments that Einaudi's limited starting point is perhaps 'the first step of the vaster and deeper problem' of translation between cultures. 9 But he also points out that significant translation between cultures can never be 'perfect.' Indeed, what could perfection mean in this context? Maurizio Lichtner has explained that far from aiming at perfection, Gramsci's notion of translation is rich with complications, theoretical knots, and limits that cannot be transcended.50 In Quaderno 7, Gramsci explicitly states that the limits of translation are reached in attempting to translate traditional philosophy into historical materialism. Such translation is 'impossible,' he states.51 It is impossible primarily because Croce — traditional philosophy's main proponent — could not avoid the impasse of Liberal Italy, which reinforced the disjunction between the intellectuals and the masses.52 When Gramsci rewrites the passage in Quaderno 10, more substantially than many other rewritten sections, he omits the assertion that such translation is impossible. He makes many additions, and he reorganizes the passage almost beyond recognition. So it is difficult to determine whether this omission signifies an explicit and conscious rejection of his earlier position that traditional philosophy cannot be translated into historical materialism. It is possible that he merely thought this point no longer fit with his more general attack on Croce's rendition of Marxism. However, the change in his evaluation of the impossibility of translation is better explained by his development and expansion of the concept of translation so that it includes social change as well as literary and analytic activity.E5 Perhaps Gramsci's most explicit description of translation is 'that two fundamentally similar structures have "equivalent" superstructures that are mutually translatable, whatever the particular national language. Contemporaries of the French Revolution were conscious of this fact, and this is of the greatest interestEE Thus, traditional philosophy is not translatable into historical materialism, because each belongs to superstructures of fundamentally different structures (bourgeois capitalism and a projected and hoped for communism). But lest we take from this description a static or deterministic structure/superstructure model, Gramsci devotes the very next section of Quaderno 11 to the dangers of

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

107

Marx's biological metaphors. He suggests that Marx's use of 'anatomy as a metaphor for the economy within society is due both to the status of the natural sciences in Marx's day and to their popularization. As we shall see later, Gramsci is quite critical of each of these attributes of science. He wants to find 'the culturallinguistic origin' of this metaphor in order to 'define the limit of the metaphor itself, stopping it in other words from becoming prosaic and mechanical.'56 He then embarks on a long discussion to dismiss any notion that superstructures are 'illusory' or 'unreal' mental facts or mere appearances. Thus, translation figures into Gramsci's redefinition of the economistic model of the structure/superstructure relationship. He transforms any causal or deterministic model into analyses of the translatability of philosophic, scientific, and cultural languages. Tosel demonstrates that Gramsci uses 'translation' to overcome any 'unilinear representation' of the relationship between the economic (structure) and the political (superstructure). Gramsci, according to Tosel, replaces this picture with the netlike relations of the historic bloc. In this way, Gramsci presents a non-mechanistic conception of'causality.' Moreover, if— as Tosel convincingly argues - the philosophy of praxis as the unification of theory and praxis is itself the product of a thorough translation that opens up new fields of human activity,58 then it contributes to the alteration of the capitalistic economy. This process is also at the heart of Gramsci's distinction between traditional intellectuals, who are involved not in changing the world but rather in sustaining it, and organic intellectuals, who are involved in active translation. In examining la questione delta lingua, Gramsci describes traditional intellectuals as speaking and writing an Italian that is not a national language, that the masses cannot understand. Organic intellectuals, of course, speak the language of the masses because they emerge from the masses. But they must also create new language by translating the language and knowledge of traditional intellectuals so that the masses understand it. Far from using sterile, abstract language, organic intellectuals speak about the circumstances of everyday life — especially productive activity — using what Gramsci calls 'technical' knowledge or specific understandings of modern industrial production. Organic intellectuals should enrich such knowledge with real history, pertinent philosophical insight, and rich cultural interpretations. These ideas are foreshadowed in Gramsci's writings on the experience of the Factory Councils as more educational for workers than ten years of education by petty-bourgeois intellectuals out of contact with proletarian reality.61 When Gramsci considered translation as a narrowly theoretical activity, he found that it could not overcome the differences between traditional philosophy and historical materialism. But in expanding translation to include its profound effects on human behaviour and on society's structures and functioning, Gramsci

108

Gramsci's Politics of Language

realizes that the philosophy of praxis is able to translate traditional philosophy. As Marx stated in the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach and as Gramsci translated: 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it.EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE contexts surrounding that which is deemed 'translatable,' that equivalence marked within the differences among societies.EE Gramsci's eminently practical considerations of this expanded notion of translation are seen in a letter he wrote to Julca Gramsci. In it, he recommends that she become a 'translator from Italian' and points out that 'a qualified translator should be able not only to translate literally but also to translate conceptual terms of a specific national culture into the terms of another national culture, that is, such a translator should have a critical knowledge of two civilizations and be able to acquaint one with the other by using the historically determined language of the civilization to which he supplies the informative material.' Sociocultural analysis can overcome the imperfections in translation by making them evident and thus open to change. For Gramsci, like Benjamin, translation is not just the transmission from one language to another, or making accessible a text to people who do not happen to speak the language in which it was written. For both Benjamin and Gramsci, the circumstances leading to the need for such (bad) translations preclude their success. Both argue that not every work is translatable and that translation also depends on the languages and cultures from which and into which the translation is to be made.65 But Gramsci's concern is less with the quality of what is to be translated than with the two (or more) cultures involved (although these positions become distinctions of emphasis): "Translatability presupposes that a given phase of civilization has a "basically" identical cultural expression, even if its language is historically different, being determined by the particular tradition of each national culture and each philosophical system, by the prevalence of an intellectual or practical activity etc.' Here Gramsci comes very close to Benjamin's position that the content of what is to be translated cannot be the question.67 Translation is not solely a matter of communicability. If Gramsci had been worried only about the comparative analyses of societies as a question of possible communication among them (i.e., questions of linguistic relativism), his primary and opening example would not have been the October Revolution and the possibility or failures of attempts to translate it. Individual Creation versus Social Production From the argument that translation is not the communication of content, Benjamin derives a clear distinction between works of art and poetry produced by

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

109

individuals, on the one hand, and translations, on the other. His elaboration of this distinction is important because it connects translation to Gramsci's distinction (mentioned in chapter 2, but not elaborated there) between individual innovations (art) and social innovations (language). This distinction is at the heart of Gramsci's critique of Croce and of all forms of individualistic liberalism. This is also pertinent to Gramsci's development of'normative grammar' (see chapter 1). Unlike artistic works or poetry, translation is directed at the target language as a whole. Likewise, when translating the event of revolution, the aim is to transform the entire target language, to cause a revolution. The goal is not to allow a revolutionary event to enter into the new context without changing that context. Benjamin quotes Rudolf Pannwitz again to correct our commonsense notion of translation: 'The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue ... He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language.'68 This error of turning the source language into the target language, of translating foreign texts into German ones to make the works available in German, needs to be reversed - that is, we must affect German by translating other languages into German.69 Benjamin's description of this process becomes especially resonant when we consider Gramsci's desire to translate the October Revolution. Benjamin writes: 'The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original.' Thus, Benjamin concurs with Gramsci's distinction between individual artistic acts of creativity and social creativity. He writes that this echo 'basically differentiates [translation] from the poet's work, because the effort of the latter is never directed at the language as such, at its totality, but solely and immediately at specific linguistic contextual aspects.'70 Contrary to Antoine Berman's assertion, this distinction between poetry and translation distinguishes Benjamin (and Gramsci) from the early Romantics (as well as Baudelaire, Proust, and Valery).71 Berman argues that 'Walter Benjamin's theory of translation, which would be inconceivable without his prolonged engagement with the Romantics, only expresses their intuitions more purely.'72 Berman is quite correct that Benjamin's theory of translation depends heavily on his engagement with the Romantics. But as Rodolphe Gasche argues, ' The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism [Benjamin's dissertation] is anything but a wholesale appropriation or celebration of romanticism.' Instead, it is a substantial departure from it.73 Certainly, in his later work on the German mourning play, Trauerspiel, Benjamin discusses the 'introduction of this distorted conception of the symbol' celebrated by the Romantics. He argues that the symbolic form is an 'abuse [that] fails to do justice to content.' Benjamin distin-

110

Gramsci's Politics of Language

guishes symbol from the truly dialectical baroque conception of allegory.74 While Benjamin credited the early Romantics for overcoming the dogmatic rationalism in aesthetics and for rescuing the concept of criticism from the idea of judgment (this will be discussed later), he by no means accepted their concept of translation. Berman correctly argues that the early Romantics' theory of translation culminates in Novalis's assertion that 'in the final analysis, all poetry is translation.' Berman's thesis is that even though translation is not explicitly the topic of many early Romantic writings, it is still key to their thought. Benjamin is fully aware of this connection in the Romantics, and he moves translation in a different direction, explicitly away from the Romantics' category of the secular or sober AbsoluteEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE appraisal of the early Romantics' notion of criticism. It is perhaps useful to heed Berman's analysis of the role of translation in the development of German culture [Bildung] especially as it exhibits what Berman calls the 'metaphysical aim of translation77.Berman separates this search for aA 'truth' beyond all natural and empirical languages from what he calls the ethical translation that attempts to overcome ethnocentrism by opening a culture to the 'Other.' Berman argues that the early Romantics — distinguished historically, on one side, by Luther and Goethe, and on the other, by Humboldt and Holderlin reduce translation to one 'metaphysical aim.' This aim, Berman argues, has little to do with the cultural relationships between the languages and societies involved. The foreign becomes a generic foreign that only moves German Bildung closer to the Absolute. If Benjamin errs toward this dynamic in the 'Task of the Translator' and 'On Language as Such' by emphasizing 'pure language,' his increasing interest in cultural analysis which culminates in the Arcades Project,' suggests a different trajectory, one that is equally rooted in these earlier essays. Moreover, in these two earlier essays, the extent to which he actually errs in this direction is an open question. It would be a mistake to think of'pure language' as 'truth' in any simple manner, or as what the early Romantics called the Absolute. Yet Berman's position contains insights that can lead us to take more seriously than Benjamin the intricacies of his metaphor of kinship among languages. As we know, kinship is a metaphor loaded with complex - and not always positive relations among the members along kinship lines. Moreover, Berman's work illustrates the importance of Gramsci's emphasis on cultural analysis and interchange. Benjamin's 'Task of the Translator' does not focus on the actual relations among different languages and societies; in contrast, Gramsci is concerned with, for example, both Italy's relationship to Russia and the similarities and differences between the Italian hegemonic make-up and the Russian.78 Completing this

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

111

analogy, the comparative social analysis between the societies involved becomes action. Philosophy becomes — is translated into - politics because it makes possible (i.e., is the preparatory work for) the translation that revolutionizes the target society. In summary, well before their time, Benjamin and Gramsci were arguing for a concept of translation that has more recently been accepted by many translation theorists: translation is not a narrowly technical linguistic activity; rather, it requires broader social and cultural analyses. Edwin Gentzler summarizes: 'Clearly there is a shift of focus occurring at this moment in Translation Studies; one might describe it as a move away from looking at translations as linguistic phenomena to looking at translations as cultural phenomena.79In translationN studies, Andre Lefevere and Susan Bassnett have labelled this shift 'the cultural turn.'80 Accompanying the cultural turn in translation studies is its corollary: translation does not aim at equivalence - that is, the presentation of the 'same text' in a different language. Mary Snell-Hornby demonstrates that even the discrepancy between the English term 'equivalence' and the German 'Aquivalenz reveals how the aim of equivalence in translation is an illusion at very least based on different units of analysis within a text (word, idiom, phrase, sentence, or the entire text itself).82 Typical of both these positions is Douglas Robinson's thesis that equivalence is at best an interpretive fiction and that it should not be the aim of all translations. He argues that sense-for-sense translation is reductive and is only fruitful with a limited number of technical and non-demanding texts. This is the main support for his general position that translators are not impersonal transferring devices; in fact, they make use of their personal emotions and attitudes38-o which Gram-M sci would add, their implicit or explicit political perspectives. These movements in translation theory are related to Benjamin's impact on translation studies (especially with Derrida's writings on Benjamin).84 8 Translating Marx Another aspect of this emphasis on non-equivalence is Gramsci's repeated concern with equivalences between French politics and German philosophy as postulated by Marx in The Holy Family.EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE statement of this point: 'If Herr Edgar [Bauer] compares French equality with German "self-consciousness" for an instant, he will see that the latter principle expresses in German, i.e. in abstract thought, what the former says in French, that is, in the language of politics and of thoughtful observationE.' Here Gramsci enacts the same manoeuvre he used with Lenin's statement - the

112

Gramsci's Politics of Language

same one we encountered earlier. He adds the concept of translation in order to interrogate the nuances in such comparisons. He traces the insight of this equivalence between French politics and German philosophy through Carducci's expression: 'Immanuel Kant cut off the head of God / And Maximilien Robespierre that of the King.' Grarnsci notes that Croce uncovered a letter that Hegel wrote to Schelling expressing this idea. Hegel developed the same idea in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. According to Gramsci, Fichte also drew parallels to this idea. Gramsci contends that this argument that the principle of formal will and abstract freedom is given its concrete expression and effect (i.e., its translation) in the French Revolution, is the 'source' of the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach and Engels's claim that the German 'people' are the legitimate heir to classical German philosophy.87 Thus, as Gramsci suggests elsewhere, the unity of theory and practice advanced by the philosophy of praxis was inherent in Hegel even if it was not emphasized correctly and was obscured by his Idealism88. This notion of translation is central to Gramsci's reading of Marx, with its emphasis on the Eleventh Thesis. It also brings to the fore what equivalence of translation means for Gramsci. How is the French political idea of equality equivalent to the German philosophical concept of self-consciousness? Moreover, how are we to understand those particular equivalences (whether concepts of equality or self-consciousness or events such as revolution) that make the entire languages of French politics and German philosophy translatable? Certainly, here the form or mode of politics is so different from philosophy that it is difficult to see this as the transference of something into a different geographic or national context. This notion of equivalence must be closer to the literal meaning of 'equally valenced' within the structure akin to Saussure's concept of'linguistic value.'89 As argued earlier, taking revolution as a relational concept, in this example Gramsci finds analogies between 'the political upheaval in France in its entirety' and 'the philosophical reform in Germany in its entirety.' As Gramsci's discussion indicates, this includes the actual influences that passed between the two nations (as German philosophy - not to mention the French Revolution — also clearly influenced the Italian Risorgimento). He also indicates the more general manner in which bourgeois hegemony - resulting from changes throughout central Europe from before 1789 through the nineteenth century - brings about a synthesis of French political innovations and German philosophical advances. Of course, Marx and Engels add the English changes in political economy to the equation. Gramsci uses Marx and Engels's equation to ask how we are to understand Lenin's assertion that the philosophy of praxis originates on the terrain of the highest development of nineteenth-century European culture as represented by

TENJAMINSLANGUAGEANDgRAMSCISPOLIT

German philosophy, English economics, and French politics. Are we to think that these movements, taken separately, each contributed to the philosophy of praxis in their respective domains? Gramsci contends that it is more a question of the synthesis of these movements, 'the entire culture of the age.' This synthesis of politics, philosophy, and economics is identified in the new conception of'immanence [that is] translated from the speculative form, as put forward by classical German philosophy, into a historicist form with the aid of French politics and English classical economics.'92 The achievement of the philosophy of praxis is the translation it effects.93 And this requires the translation among different languages, as well as among different cultures, for understanding the world (philosophy, politics, economics, and his earlier discussion of the physical sciences). While he does not actually employ 'translation,' Gramsci's comparison between the Renaissance and the Reformation is a precursor to the relationships he sees among French politics, German philosophy, and English economics. He argues that the Italian Renaissance contributed many intellectual achievements but was never able to influence or pervade any social strata except the court. In contrast, Luther's Reformation and Calvinism were extremely effective at diffusing their influence throughout the national-popular but unable to 'create a higher culture' because of their disdain for learned culture.49Thus,Gramsci adds theE Renaissance and the Reformation to the three-part translation equation of politics, philosophy, and economics.95 While Gramsci limits these sections to his reading of Marx and the 'great' world powers of Europe, as we saw earlier, elsewhere he relates these issues to the Russian Revolution and to his interest in technical developments in production in the United States. Here we see the motif discussed in chapter 2 that languages and cultures do not grow and develop parthenogenetically. Of course, the difficulties of this translation project are apparent when one asks which scientific and cultural languages are in need of translation today.96IfheodelMODELCISCE GER many, England, and perhaps the former Soviet Union and the United States, to what extent or how far can we push Gramsci's framework? Can we correct Gramsci's own Eurocentric tendencies using his conception of translation?97 Is this translation of different languages still framed by nationalities in a supposedly globalizing world? Benjamin's Response to Croce's Impossible Translation Clearly, Gramsci's extensive use of 'translation' was partly a response to Croce's drastic position that translation is impossible. When we look at Benjamin's commentary on Croce -an influence most often overlooked by Benjamin scholars we find that he and Gramsci use Croce in similar ways. Both of them mobilize

114

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Croce against positivism but also move beyond this to criticize Croce's Idealism by implicating it in bourgeois ideology, which obscures the miseries of modern capitalism. This point is essential because it allows us to see that Benjamin's critique of historicism does not apply to Gramsci's historicism. Moreover, Benjamin argues that Idealist historicism ends up with the same problem as positivistic versions of history: it depicts history as what he calls 'empty time.' Gramsci never draws this explicit conclusion, yet the premises of his approach lead to similar criticisms. From these connections we can also relate Benjamin's notion of allegory to Gramsci's insistence that language is historically metaphoric. The most important reason for examining Benjamin's engagement with Croce is to highlight his nuanced distinction, noted earlier, between individual artistic expression and translation. While Gramsci makes a similar distinction in his critique of Croce, he does not fill out the implications as thoroughly as Benjamin. Elaborating this point reveals the full significance of Gramsci's subversion of Croce's position that translation is impossible. It also shows how the collective process of coping with the historical fragmentation of subaltern consciousness is, for Gramsci, intricately connected to his theory of language. Croce's rejection of translation grows out of his more general critique of genre, which Benjamin seems to wholly adopt in the 'Epistemo-Critical Prologue' to The Origin of the German Truerspiels. The question has to be asked: What is the extent and nature of Benjamin's use of Croce's theory of ideas, if this same theory leads Croce to deny translation? In this section, by responding to this question, I will stipulate how Benjamin's theory of knowledge (which he then recognized through Lukdcs as a position that theory is bound up with praxis)100 uses - but also is critical of Croce's critique of genre. Croce argued: Every translation, in fact, either diminishes or spoils the original, or the translation creates an entirely new expression by putting the original expression back into the crucible and mixing it with the personal impressions of the one who calls himself the translator. In the first case the expression stays the same as it was originally, the other version being more or less inadequate, that is to say, not properly expression: in the other case there will indeed be two expressions, but with different contents. 'Ugly but faithful, or beautiful but faithless'; this proverbial saying neatly captures the dilemma with which every translator is faced. Nonaesthetic translations, like those that are literal or periphrastic, are then to be considered simply as commentaries on the original.101

From this argument, Croce draws the extreme conclusion concerning 'the impossibility of translations': it is impossible to 'present one expression in the guise of another' since expression is indivisible. This is the logical corollary to

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

115

Croce's more general critique of rhetoric as a field of study, or the use of classifications or genre for analysing expression or aesthetic activity. This is also why Croce rejected the concept of normative grammar as anything other than a pedagogical tool (see chapter 1, pp. 37-40). As Rochlitz argues, Benjamin's essay 'On Language' calls for the restoration of the primordial perception of words through philosophical contemplation, but he never tells how this contemplation is to occur. In contrast, the prologue of the Trauerspiel work attempts to develop a methodology for such contemplation.102 Croce is a central figure in this discussion. Benjamin refers to a later treatise of Croce's from 1925 in which he repeats his critique of genre: 'Any theory of division of the arts is without foundation. The kind or class is in this case one only, art itself or the intuition, whereas the particular works of art are infinite: all are original, each one incapable of being translated into the other (since to translate, to translate with artistic skill, is to create a new work of art), each one subdued by the intellect.'103 Benjamin uses Croce's qualification of this argument as the lynch pin of his methodology.104 As he notes, taken too far, Croce's position would 'reduce the philosophy of art to silence.' To avoid such reduction, Croce must stipulate that 'to deny the theoretical value of abstract classification is not to deny the theoretical value of that genetic and concrete classification which is not, in fact, "classification" at all, but is what we call History.'105 According to Benjamin, this statement 'touches — alas, all too fleetingly — on the core of the theory of ideas.' Benjamin adopts this core, combined with his correction of Croce's 'psychologism,' as the basis for his theory of ideas.EE1 It is not surprising that such a central discussion is perhaps the most often quoted passage from the 'Epistemo-Critical Prologue': [Croce] fails to see how the contemplation which he described as 'genetic classification' agrees with107an idealist theory of art forms in the problem of origin. Origin [Ursprung], although an entirely historical category, has, nevertheless, nothing to do with genesis [Entstehung]. The term origin is not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance. Origin is an eddy [Strudel\ in the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in the process of genesis. That which is original is never revealed in the naked and manifest existence of the factual; its rhythm is apparent only to a dual insight. On the one hand it needs to be recognized as a process of restoration and re-establishment, but, on the other hand, and precisely because of this, as something imperfect and incomplete.108

Commentators make a great deal of this passage but almost always omit the first sentence quoted here and, indeed, the entire discussion of Croce, of which this

116

Gramsci's Politics of Language

passage is the culmination.1 9 This effectively abstracts Benjamin's distinction between 'origin' and 'genesis' from the context in which he is trying develop his theory of knowledge. Benjamin scholars have focused on the terms Ursprung and Entstehung and to a lesser extent Strudel. Samuel Weber suggests that regardless of the number of times this passage is quoted, it remains enigmatic, vertiginous, and untranslatable. He provides an exegesis that emphasizes the passage's internal contradictions.110 But perhaps the persistence of this enigma is really a result of commentators' neglect of Benjamin's entire reason for writing it. Benjamin's rationale for defining 'origin' as distinct from 'genesis' is to illuminate the core of ideas on which Croce touches only fleetingly. Benjamin's claim is that this distinction will show how 'genetic classification' (which Croce argues is 'History'), understood correctly, is not at odds with the idealist theory of art forms. The agreement between 'genetic classification' and an idealist theory of art forms (especially if it is seen as a 'reconciliation,' as Osborne's translation suggests) seems an unlikely goal, given Benjamin's critique of Historicist Idealism. Thus, the significant enigma is how his conception (or problem) of origin reveals the relationship between genetic classification or History and an idealist theory of art forms if origin and genesis have nothing to do with each other. The only way to explain Benjamin's reference to Croce is that he is practising a Gramscian-like methodology of thoroughly subverting Croce's position. He is not reconciling his methods with any idealist theory of ideas; rather, he is using Croce to attack positivistic theories of genre. Benjamin must be arguing that those aesthetic productions which are simply existent and factual - which have come into being through history (conceived as chronology or the passing of time, what Benjamin calls 'empty time') and which still exist manifestly — can be categorized after the fact. Because such aesthetic works have a genesis, they can be categorized genetically. This is Croce's conception of genetic classification as History. Benjamin agrees to the extent that he is not engaged in subjecting individual works of art to the general categories of genres. Benjamin is not engaged in the search 'for schools of poetry, epochs of the oeuvre, or strata of individual works, as the literary historian quite properly might.'111 He is using Croce to support this rejection of literary history. Benjamin parts company with Croce because his search for origins (Ursprungen)112 is aimed at those works in need of recovery. This recovery cannot assume that the origin is the beginning of the process of development by which what exists has come into being, especially if that process is seen as a causal one. Instead, origins are like eddies. Like Croce's aesthetic expressive activities, they are singular unique events. But unlike Croce's historicism, Benjamin's 'history' recognizes the 'flow' or 'stream' within which origins and eddies are contained. Moreover, for Benjamin and especially Gramsci, those origins and eddies contain

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

117

the possibility of influencing and changing the stream's flow pattern and even direction. Sometimes downstream there is little trace, no obvious effect, of the eddy on the flow. There is nonetheless an interaction between the eddy and the stream. The activity of restoration is not like Croce's aesthetic creations because they are not solely individual. Of course, this is no small modification of Croce's position, because for Benjamin, as will be seen later, all of human life and society after the Fall is in need of recovery - especially modernity.113 This point is crucial for Gramsci, in that it fills in his notion of history and language. To use the example discussed earlier, why is it important that 'disaster' has its etymology, its origins, in astrology? Has not that origin given way to its current secular and modern genesis as a synonym for 'catastrophe' or 'calamity,' with enough difference in nuance that it cannot be totally replaced by them? No, its historic resonance and origins reveal the interdependencies between science and myth. Interdependencies that despite appearances have not been totally superseded. Another example would be Gramsci's reading of Machiavelli's The Prince. Croce's more conventional version that The Prince offered a science of politics can be seen as its genetic history, how it has come to be understood. Gramsci counters this with a reading — more difficult to sustain textually - that reverses the flow of Italian political thought to be 'collective,' one in which Machiavelli's Prince merges with the people, and that sees The Prince as an instruction book for those 'not in the know.'114 Benjamin's distinction between origins and genesis runs parallel to his earlier use of the German Romantics' criticism and his later distinction in 'The Task of the Translator' between translation and poetry, discussed earlier. As we saw in chapter 2 (pp. 68-70), Gramsci's similar distinction between social creativity and individual, artistic production is integral to his understanding of normative grammar. For Croce, aesthetic expression or intuition cannot be categorized into genres in the production of art, which is 'spontaneous,' nor in the production of criticism (the judgment of art), which is philosophical. Such categorizations can only be made on arbitrary grounds when, as Croce says, 'arbitrariness becomes innocuous and useful from the very fact that every pretension of being a philosophical principle and criterion for the judgement of art is removed from it' — that is, when these categorizations are used only for pedagogical and not philosophical purposes. As the passage quoted by Benjamin argues, the only arbitrariness and abstractness of categorization with philosophical value is not really arbitrariness; rather, it is 'classification' of a historical nature. Croce's History always looks through the eyes of the victor, of the artwork that has survived and of the culture that produced it. Thus Croce argues that 'in history ... is to be found the link of all works of art and of all intuitions, because in history they appear organically connected among

118

Gramsci's Politics of Language

themselves, as successive and necessary stages of the development of spirit, each one a note of the eternal poem which harmonises all single poems in itself.'116 This is why Croce's History is not 'classification' in the arbitrary and abstract sense, but instead is based in the concreteness of historical occurrence that has to be the unfolding of spirit. This is Croce's version of Hegel's proposition: 'What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.'117 Gramsci and Benjamin are engaged in showing that what is actual is often irrational and damaging. Moreover, they both approach history looking for those eddies, those origins that have been obscured and fragmented, which if recovered and connected can spur on revolution. Historicism and 'Leaps' in History Benjamin, like Gramsci, rejects idealist versions of historicism precisely because only certain works of art appear and survive in history. The march of events especially the succession of oppressive social and state institutions - buries the aesthetic expression of many (which is Benjamin's concern with the Trauerspiel). Moreover, capitalist societies suppress the possibility of aesthetic creativity, especially of those oppressed groups but also of the oppressors. In Benjamin's later writings, he introduces the concept ofjetztzeit ('now-time') to expand (or explode) history beyond the simple positivistic limits of the linear chronological succession of minutes, days, and years of what he calls 'empty time.' Ironically, Croce's Idealist version of history, which is universal history, as described in the phrase 'History is living chronicle, chronicle is dead history,'118 has in effect the same problems as the positivistic perspective. Benjamin argues: 'Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogenous empty time.'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE between chronicle and history relates to the spirit by which they are approached. In effect, they are indistinguishable from empty chronological time. Gramsci's critique of Croce's notion of History also considers closely whether history is a progression of events one after another or a series of progressive 'leaps,' as Benjamin understands JetztzeiP. 'If the discussion between history and anti-history is the same as whether nature and history may proceed only in an "evolutionary" fashion or may do so by "leaps," it would be salutary to remind Croce that even the tradition of modern idealism is not against "leaps," i.e. against "anti-history" ... We are then dealing with the discussion between reformists and revolutionaries about the concept and fact of historical development and progress. The whole of historical materialism is a reply to this question.'120 Mirroring Benjamin's concern with 'leaps,'121 Gramsci accuses Croce of being unable to distinguish philosophy from ideology because he sees all of history as

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

119

the progress of liberty. Gramsci contends that Croce's position would judge the history of the oriental satrapies as liberty.1 2 Nor does Croce leave room to reclaim moments of history that are almost forgotten, nor does he allow the investigation of transitional and tumultuous periods of history.123 Just as Croce's History judges positively (as a movement of spirit) all that survives in our memories, it judges negatively (as insignificant to the development of spirit) all that is either forgotten or mistakenly labelled less perfect examples of more significant works by the use of genres. Benjamin's example is that the German mourning plays are seen as bad examples of the genre of tragedy. Benjamin shows that Croce is correct in criticizing genre analysis but also incorrect in that he leaves no room for their allegory to reveal the decrepit and fallen nature of modern society. Thus, the dynamics set out in The Origins of German Trauerspiels lead to Benjamin's critique of the bourgeois and (vulgar) Marxist conception of progress in the 'Konvolut N' of the 'Arcades Project'124 and the 'Theses on the Philosophy of History.' In the theses, Benjamin writes: 'The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time.'EE In sum, Benjamin uses Croce's critique of genre to support his investigation into the role of allegory in the Trauerspiel — an investigation that is not an attempt to establish the rules and tendencies of this genre of literary production.126 However, he does not accept Croce's view of history- especially not History as the continuous succession of artistic expressions. Instead, in a manner that mirrors Benjamin's criticism of the early Romantics regarding the continuity between the profane and the Absolute,127 he sees the allegory of theRAUERSPI significant in that it reveals the ruptures and discontinuities in the history of artistic forms, and thus avails itself of the fractures and ruptures in the modern world.128 Benjamin argues specifically that poetic expression requires the translator for its survival, its afterlife (uberleberi); and that unlike the task of the poet, which remains individual and directed toward artistic work, the translator's task affects the entirety of the languages and societies involved. Thus, he is taking on the role of the translator in the Trauerspiel book as well. For Croce, great aesthetic works 'appear organically connected among themselves, as successive and necessary stages of the development of the spirit'; Benjamin attempts to recover those aesthetic works, in this case baroque mourning plays, that reveal despair and contempt for the world. He focuses on what has been lost almost irretrievably, on works that reveal the meaninglessness of modernity. Benjamin's analysis of allegory in Trauerspiel indicates that these plays reveal the fallen state of the world. Symbol could never accomplish such a task, in part because symbols do not make statements about the entire structure of language

120

Gramsci's Politics of Language

within the modern world. Only through allegory can this fallen condition be recognized, understood, and perhaps changed. Both positivism and idealism produce ideology that obscures the miseries of modern life and capitalism, eliminating any need for change. In allegory, Benjamin presents restoration, redemption, and re-establishment as backward-looking dynamics that even so are necessary for future possibilities that exceed the past. It would require a separate work to investigate what is at stake between this particularly Benjaminian notion of revelation and Gramsci's revolution. But here we should note that this process is akin to Benjamin's argument - which we have related to Gramsci — that translation affects the entirety of both languages involved. Moreover, Benjamin's use of allegory to point to what has been buried by history, rather than to the symbol that obscures such losses, can be compared to Gramsci's seeing in languages the residues of past cultural struggles that contain the possibility of reconstructing a subaltern history from which to mount revolution. As Benjamin shows in his later 'Theses on the Philosophy of History,' his concern is for the redemption of the Trauerspiel and allegory for the present, because 'only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments.129This citation enables social change. Gramsci's attempt to translate the October Revolution, although it does not focus on hopes of a Benjaminian redemption, is connected to Italian history and the success of the Soviet Union itself. As twentieth-century history has made all too clear, because it was never successfully translated into other parts of the world, that revolution's survival was always highly doubtful. Very early in Soviet history, once Stalin took the position of 'communism in one country,' the October Revolution's afterlife faded. In Gramsci's writings, the necessary Utopian element is never expressed in terms of 'redemption' or 'recovery' of what has been lost; rather as we shall see below, it is equated with the dynamic of tradition/ change, or revolution/restoration, and with examining the fragmentary nature of the experiences of subaltern social groups. Gramsci's own dual movement between tradition and revolution is tied to his epistemological stance — specifically, to the struggle between the Church and the Communist Party for the realm of the 'faith' of the people. Faith and Politics Next to Gramsci's pragmatic political concerns, Benjamin's concern with redemption and the Messiah might seem to be a form of opiate,130 one that is a dangerous distraction from political or revolutionary action. However, we must remember how much importance Marx always placed on religious critique. We must remember, too, that by the time Benjamin wrote 'Theses on the Philosophy

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

121

of History,' he was making it clear that theology (not to mention hashish) was to be enlisted to serve historical materialism131.However, in his earlier writings he hadn't yet forged this allegiance. Most of Gramsci's concern with religion centres on the Roman Catholic Church as an institution and as the creator of intellectuals and a world view. Yet just as he does not dismiss the Catholic Church as an institution (his criticism is accompanied by fascination with its success), neither does he reject the importance of faith.132 Gramsci writes that 'in the masses as such, philosophy can only be experienced as faith.'133 It might be tempting to read the as such emphasis to mean that intellectuals and non-subaltern classes are beyond philosophy as faith. But Gramsci's explanation does not support this reading. He describes the irrationality and schizophrenia that result when people change their opinions, convictions, criteria of discrimination, and standards of conduct every time they meet someone who can advance a better argument. He states: 'Every conception has its thinkers and experts to put forward, and authority does not belong to one side.'134 This does not mean that political positions should not be argued, or that the philosophy of praxis should not be presented in rational form. Instead, it means that rational arguments do not exist in a vacuum. Consent to authority, as opposed to coercion, has always required an understanding of the importance of faith for 'any cultural movement which aimed to replace common sense and old conceptions of the world in general.'135 Thus, as is evident in his discussion of Croce on religion, Gramsci asserts that every philosophy, every conception of the world, becomes a 'faith.'13FaithisanintegralTEGRALENTOFANYVE component hegemony. In his pre-prison writings, Gramsci developed his concern with faith and religion as an inherent element of common sense that communists must take seriously. Already in 1920, in the pages of L'Ordine Nuovo, Gramsci was presenting what William Hartley has called 'Gramsci's lay religious concept of socialism':137 'For Sorel, as for Marxist doctrine, [early] Christianity represents a revolution at the height of its development, i.e. a revolution that has gone as far as it can, as far as the creation of the novel and original system of moral, juridical, philosophical and artistic relations.138ramsci continues: 'In the present period, the Commu-U nist Party is the only institution that can seriously be compared with the religious communities of primitive Christianity.' He then compares the 'City of God' with the communist struggle for the 'City of Man,' and describes the communist worker as a 'miracle.'139 These themes are woven into the prison writings, laying the groundwork for hegemony as the relationship between force and consent. Gramsci summarizes: 'Guicciardini's claim that two things are absolutely necessary for the life of a state:

122

Gramsci's Politics of Language

arms and religion. This formula of his can be translated into various other, less drastic, formulas: force and consent, coercion and persuasion, state and Church, political society and civil society, politics and morals (Croce's ethico-political history), law and freedom, order and discipline.'140 Once again, through 'translation,' religion and faith are compared to the consent that Gramsci wants the Italian Communist Party to attract. Benjamin's 'Origin' of Language: The Split between Subject and Object So far, I have used Benjamin to emphasize Gramsci's development of translation, with the goal of showing that translation affects the entirety of both the contexts involved as distinct from individual creativity or expression. I have also specified a critique of idealist historicism advanced by both Benjamin and Gramsci. This led to my suggestion that Benjamin's allegory has some similarities with Gramsci's idea that language is historically metaphoric and that faith is an essential subject for the historical materialism of both Gramsci and Benjamin. All of these congruencies should not lead us to neglect the theological chasm separating these two authors. In this next section, I argue that while Benjamin agrees with Gramsci in locating the problem with bourgeois philosophy's subject/ object dichotomy, he does not overcome that problem. Moreover, his philosophy of language actually reinforces the split between subject and object because his task of translation is directed at revelation. In the final two sections of this chapter, using Benjamin's position as a contrast, I highlight how Gramsci's epistemology places objectivity on a continuum with subjectivity. Gramsci's theorization of revolution relies on this continuum replacing the opposition between objectivity and subjectivity that is inherent in revelation. I do not want to oversimplify Benjamin's position. He explicitly argues that the Messianic cannot be the goal of history and that 'the quest of free humanity for happiness runs counter to the Messianic direction.'141 My point is not to close down the possible insights thaf Benjamin's complex dynamics can yield. Rather, I want to highlight how, even given the congruities between Benjamin and Gramsci regarding translation, language, and their critiques of Croce, Gramsci's epistemology is distinctly Vernacular' in its approach to subjectivity and objectivity. This distinction between Gramsci and Benjamin will lay the groundwork for chapter 4's argument that Gramsci's vernacular epistemology distinguishes him from the Frankfurt School, including Habermas. In his 1918 essay 'On the Program of the Coming Philosophy,' Benjamin explicitly roots his projected plan for philosophy in a critique of the Kantian system. He contends that Kant was unable to ultimately overcome his 'conception of knowledge as a relation between some sort of subjects and objects or subject

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

123

and object' because his concept of experience was too 'shallow.'142 The changes Benjamin proposes in order to correct Kant are directly related to his understanding of language: 'The great restructuration and correction which must be performed upon [Kant's] concept of experience, oriented so one-sidedly along mathematical-mechanical lines, can only be attained by relating knowledge to language ... A concept of knowledge gained from reflection on the linguistic nature of knowledge will create a corresponding concept of experience which will encompass regions that Kant failed to integrate into his system. The realm of religion should be mentioned foremost of these.'1 3 In Benjamin's estimation, Kant's synthesis of empirical perception with transcendental apperception does not reconcile subjects with objects, because it neglects languageEE.1 In 'On Language,' Benjamin roots the philosophical abstraction between subject and object in language, and in the difference between human historical language on the one hand, and on the other the originary Adamic language of the Garden of Eden.145 This reliance on the themes of Jewish Messianism contributes to his separation between objectivity and subjectivity in the sense that God created the world and then created humans. Benjamin, following Kabbalah, assigns great importance to the role of humans not in creating the world, but rather in cataloguing and defining it - that is, perfecting it. And contra many 'religious,' 'theological,' and 'mystical' perspectives, this human activity, according to Benjamin, is necessary (albeit not sufficient) to allow for the coming of a Messianic age. Presumably following the sixteenth-century Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (or Scholem's account of him), Benjamin argues: 'There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is in the nature of all to communicate their mental meanings.'146 hISRGUMEN that 'we cannot imagine a total absence of language in anything.'147 This position has similarities with Gramsci's emphasis on meaning. At one level, the strong link between thought and language is comparable to Gramsci's pragmatic, almost relativistic concern with the 'existence' of the objective world, which I will later examine at length. The link is that it makes no sense (literally) to discuss objects outside of language or human subjectivity. Of course, Benjamin's theological understanding of language roots him not in any Gramscian historicism but instead in an exegesis of Genesis. Benjamin's reading of Genesis is based on his three levels of language: language of things, language of human knowledge (of the name), and the creative word of God. Language before the Fall of Adam, before the knowledge of good and evil, was the language of names. Benjamin describes the advent of knowledge: 'Knowledge of good and evil abandons name, it is a knowledge from outside, the uncreated imitation of the creative word. Name steps outside itself in this knowledge:

124

Gramsci's Politics of Language

the Fall marks the birth of the human word, in which name no longer lives intact.'148 Thus, divine knowledge resides in the name and in the thing that is the knowledge of creation. Divine knowledge is distinct from the knowledge of judgment introduced after the Fall. Judgment is the knowledge of the sinner that Benjamin, following Kierkegaard, sees as 'prattle.' With the knowledge of judgment, subjective names becomes less and less related to their objects as language becomes increasingly instrumental and concerned with evaluations of good and evil rather than names. This is the root of Benjamin's critique of the bourgeois theory of language as an instrument for transmitting information, and of the fact that such theory is based on the arbitrary relation between word and thinEEg. Benjamin argues that this is the origin of abstraction and of the increasing use of language for merely instrumental purposes of transferring information, with increasing neglect of the name. But even after the Fall, human language is still in its essence the language of names. Humans can perform their role of naming things, translating the language of things to the 'language of man.' In highlighting the differences between the first and second creation stories in Genesis, Benjamin argues that both vouch for 'a special relationship between man and language resulting from the act of creation.'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE t tha Go d f the material of the dust, and He 'expresses his will' by breath-EEEEEEE ing life into man. Here language is a gift of God to man. In this version it is Adam, not God, who gives all the living creatures their names. Genesis 1 tells of God naming everything as part of the threefold process of creation: 'Let there be' - He made (created) — He named. But even in this version, Benjamin argues, humans have a special relationship to God. This is shown in the break of the previous threefold process of creation. Benjamin interprets Genesis 1:27 as follows: 'God did not create man from the word, and he did not name him. He did not wish to subject him to language, but in man God set language, which had served Him as medium of creation, free.' Thus, 'Man is the knower in the same language in which God is creator.'EE This creative language of the divine word is the language of the proper name, and in comparison it shows that 'the infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature.'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE of the judgment of good and evil and instrumental abstract language, human language retains a connection to the divine word within the proper name. Through his insistence that knowledge is tied to creativity, Benjamin rejects the secular, 'scientific,' and 'common sense' notions of an objective, eternal, and already created world accessible to knowledge but not changed by that knowledge. The role of translation in 'On Language' is similar to that in the Task of the Translator.' Translation among languages is what points to the existence of'pure

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

125

language.' Neither the language of things nor the language of man can be translated into God's language (or 'pure language'), but their relationship indicates that God's language does exist. Here Benjamin is describing the translation of the language of things (which is nameless and mute) into the language of man. This act translates the mute into the sonic, and the nameless into the named, which gives objects their divine knowledge guaranteed by God. That this guarantee enables all translation is how we know 'pure language' must exist. This translation is conceived of as revelation that is the equation of the mental and linguistic being: 'The equation of mental and linguistic being is of great metaphysical moment to linguistic theory because it leads to the concept that has again and again, as if of its own accord, elevated itself to the center of linguistic philosophy and constituted its most intimate connection with the philosophy of religion. This is the concept of revelation. Within all linguistic formation a conflict is waged between what is expressed and expressible and what is inexpressible and unexpressed.153'As we saw earlier, this dynamic is taken up again in the 'Task of the Translator,' though in a less theological and Biblical language. Benjamin's Later Theory of Language In 1933, Benjamin returned to the theme of language without using the Biblical framework of 'On Language.' He wrote a draft titled 'The Doctrine of the Similar' and then 'On the Mimetic Faculty,' in which he concluded that 'language may be seen as the highest level of mimetic behaviour and the most complete archive of nonsensuous similarity: a medium into which the earlier powers of mimetic production and comprehension have passed without residue, to the point where they have liquidated those of magic.154 hE STILL REJECTS THE or conventional relationship between referent and sign. Instead of this relationship being guaranteed by God, it is the historical development of the human faculty of mimesis from the similarities in nature (not that this excludes God's role in this relationship). The mimetic faculty is able to transform the recognition of sensuous similarities into what Benjamin calls 'non-sensuous similarity.'155 He provides several examples of what he means by non-sensuous similarity. The whole idea of astrology and the horoscope rests on the notion that 'celestial processes could be imitated by those who lived earlier' — that there was sensuous similarity between human activity and the behaviour of the planets and the stars as they related to one another. As those who live by astrological teachings lose their understanding of the similarity but come to understand its 'experiential character,' this similarity becomes 'non-sensuousEE.' Likewise, language is a 'canon according to which the meaning of nonsensuous similarity can be at least partly clarified.'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

126

Gramsci's Politics of Language

den placed on anyone who holds a non-arbitrary or non-conventional relationship between words and the objects for which they stand is to explain why different languages clearly refer to the same object with words that have absolutely nothing in common. Benjamin tries to overcome this by beginning with the onomatopoeic element of language as asserted by Rudolf Leonhard - an element that reflects the sensuous similarity between word and thing. Benjamin adds to onomatopoeia the idea that if all the words for an object in different languages are organized around that object, they are all similar to what they signify in different and possibly unrelated ways. He extends this to the written word as well as to graphology, which also contains unconscious elements from the author. Many non-sensuous correspondences, he contends, are developed from the layering of mimesis. Thus, we read 'what was never written.' We read the stars, and entrails, and the natural world, in ways not altogether different from the ways we read human language that is written. In this way, Benjamin is trying to bridge the gap between symbol, metonymy, or simile on the one hand, and denotation on the other. He is pointing to what Charles Taylor finds to be 'the importance of Herder' - that what needs to be explained about the origin of language is how humans understand 'what it means for a word to stand for something.'EE While this later version of Benjamin's theory of language does not rest on Biblical interpretation,159 it still rests on meaning as the relationship between name and thing. He describes how meaning derived from the name and the thing develops from onomatopoeia. Gramsci points out the problem with all onomatopoeic theories of the origin of language. He does this by recounting a joke: '"In the beginning a piece of fruit fell, making the sound 'pum!' and so we have the word 'porno' [apple]." "And if a pear had fallen?" young Dossi asks.'EEEEEEEEEr words, onomatopoeia is not an explanation at all. The question is, Why and how did this sound get attributed to this fruit, of all the other similarities that could be made, and of all the other objects to which this sound could be applied? Benjamin's notion of non-sensuous similarity and his mimetic theory of language do not succumb to this criticism of simple onomatopoeia theories to the extent that he focuses on the historical developments that follow such origins. But this compels us to consider the relationship between mimesis and 'nonsensuous similarity,' which results in language with seemingly arbitrary (i.e., historical and conventional) relationships between words and their meanings. These later writings of Benjamin come closer than his earlier writings on language to his project, set forth in 'The Coming Philosophy,' of overcoming Kant's shortcomings through a theory of language. It is difficult to figure out the implications of Benjamin's insights in these two short essays.EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and 'The Doctrine of the Similar' do help explain why, as Habermas points out, Benjamin was not 'concerned with a critique of necessarily false conscious-

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

127

ness.'162 Whereas for Habermas this is a limitation of Benjamin's perspective, from a Gramscian approach this is an invaluable insight based on an understanding of the role of language, common sense, and knowledge in creating and recreating the world. Neither Benjamin nor Gramsci views common sense and world views in need of translation as false; thus, the term 'false consciousness' never appears in the writings of either. Nonetheless, whether he starts from Biblical tradition or from mimesis, Benjamin is unable to overcome the subject/object dichotomy at the heart of bourgeois philosophy in a manner that provides a critique or a way forward.EEEEE focus is still on the relationship between names (or nouns) and their objects rather than on the semiotic view (to which Gramsci subscribes) that meaning is produced by a complex interaction among all parts of speech, including verbs, adverbs, and prepositions. Benjamin's work consistently presumes that the subject, the word, is separate from the object, the world. This assumption is hardly unique to him. In a very different form, it underpins many versions of materialism and realism, and many common sense understandings of the world - in fact, any philosophy that explicitly or implicitly understands language as creating human meaning by referring to some non-linguistic realm outside meaning. In the next section, I argue that Gramsci explicitly rejects such starting points, which have their roots in the Graeco-Christian theological assumption that God first created the world and then created humans in the world. Gramsci's Critique of Science and Objectivity Faith is an important element in Gramsci's notion of the progressive hegemony to be constructed by the Communist Party. This stance is not antithetical to science and rationality as Gramsci conceives them. On the contrary, his critique of Graeco-Christian religious world views extends to his criticism of bourgeois science. His response to both science and traditional religion is a significant element of translation as the movement between subjectivity and objectivity. In this section I will argue that for Gramsci the dichotomization of science and reason from faith, religion, and belief is spurious, and reinforces common sense world views of bourgeois hegemony. In this way, he repeats Benjamin's use of Croce as an attempt to critique bourgeois and especially positivistic versions of science. As Benjamin states in one version of his 'Curriculum Vitae': Just as Benedetto Croce opened the way for the concrete and singular work of art by destroying the doctrine of art forms, all my efforts have until now tended to forge a path toward the work of art by destroying the doctrine of art as a specific domain. Their shared programmatic intention is to stimulate the process of the integration of

128

Gramsci's Politics of Language

science that mote and more makes the rigid cloistering of disciplines - characteristic of the concept of science in the last century - fall away, through an analysis of the work of art that recognizes it as a complete expression of religious, metaphysical, political, and economic tendencies of an age, an analysis that cannot be reduced in any of its aspects to the notion of domain.16

Benjamin's version of a non-dualistic alternative to the relationship between religious belief or faith and scientific understanding is not as consistent or as convincingly worked out as Gramsci's. He emphasizes only those epistemological conceptions that, as we shall see, Gramsci rejects. Nonetheless, as seen in the above quotation, he, like Gramsci, uses Croce's Idealism to combat nineteenthcentury conceptions of science as an autonomous, fully secular, non-political, and neutral method of apprehending the world. Gramsci notes that what is often seen as science is actually a fetishization of the methods of the physical and natural sciences.165And this 'superficial infatuation for the sciences' is accompanied by a lack among the popular masses of real knowledge about scientific facts and the real conduct of scientific inquiry.166In an argument that sounds much like David Noble's critique of current science and technology,1687ramsci contends: 'Scientific progress has given birth to belief in and the expectation of a new Messiah who will bring about the Land of Cokaygne on this earth ... This infatuation — the abstract superficial faith in humanity's miracle-working ability— leads paradoxically to the sterilisation of the very bases of this ability and to destruction of all love for concrete and necessary work in order to indulge in fantasies, as if one has been smoking a new type of opium.'168 Gramsci uncovers the nonsense of some of the popular science of his day, for example, Arthur Stanley Eddington's writings on atomic physics. He points out that the following assertion made by Eddington - 'If we eliminated all the unfilled space in a man's body and collected his protons and electrons into one mass, the man would be reduced to a speck just visible with a magnifying glass' is virtually meaningless169.Gramsci first notes the fanciful and abstract nature of such a proposition, given that it could never be carried out. The very terms 'mass' and 'unfilled space' are what the theories of Rutherford and Bohr redefine. Moreover, unless some people were magically left out of the science fiction of getting rid of all the unfilled space, nothing would change perceptibly: the relations between the elements would remain the same. The point of Gramsci's criticism here is that, although popularizing statements such as Eddington's sound like dramatic statements of cutting-edge theoretical physics, actually they amount to silly word-play, and serve only to confuse people about scientific discoveries.170

tEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Gramsci is also critical of how philosophers (as traditional intellectuals) frame the question of the 'reality of the external world,' or 'objectivity' as separate from 'subjectivity': 'The entire polemic against the subjectivist conception of reality, with the "fearsome" question of the "objective reality of the external world," is badly framed and conducted worse and is to a great degree futile and superfluous.'171 It is badly framed because its esoteric intellectual character makes the public think it is a ridiculous question. Moreover it leads them to answer it the wrong way: 'The public "believes" that the external world is objectively real, but it is precisely here that the question arises: what is the origin of this "belief and what critical value does it "objectively" have?' Despite the seemingly abstract and nonsensical character of questions like these, which contradict the commonsense experience of the external world, Gramsci answers by showing that the belief in an external, non-subjective world is not based in scientific objectivity: 'In fact the belief [in an external world] is of religious origin, even if the man who shares it is indifferent to religion. Since all religions have taught and do teach that the world, nature, the universe were created by God before the creation of man, and therefore man found the world already made complete, catalogued and defined once and for all, this belief has become an iron fact of "common sense" and survives with the same solidity even if religious feeling is dead or asleep.172'Thus, while common sense often sees the secular neutrality of science as opposed to - or at least separate from - religion or theology, Gramsci argues that both the ideology of science and most religions are based on the same unexamined presumption that there is a dichotomy between humans and nature. This dichotomy is the same as the separation between subjects and objects of the world. That the world exists apart from humans carries over from Graeco-Christian world views into the European secular world view of science, which sees the world as a previously created realm complete with laws that govern it. Even the 'materialism' of science, which eschews theological positions, holds a conception of 'matter' as a physical substance with fixed laws inside a causal matrix that is unchangeable by history. This view is tantamount to presuming an initial creative event from which point the universe unfolded according to fixed laws (as exemplified in theories such as the Big Bang). As Gramsci states: Common sense asserts the objectivity of the real in so far as reality, the world, has been created by God independently of and before humanity; reality is, therefore, an expression of the mythological conception of the world. On top of this, in describing this objectivity, common sense falls into the crudest errors - it is still to a great extent at the Ptolemaic astronomy state, not knowing how to determine the real connec-

130

Gramsci's Politics of Language

tions of cause and effect etc.: that is, it calls 'objective' a certain anachronistic 'subjectivity' since it is not even able to conceive that a subjective conception of the world might exist and what that could or might mean.173

This focus on meaning places Gramsci on the terrain of hermeneutics, a terrain that stretches from Schleiermacher through Husserl to Gadamer and Ricoeur. It is only from the absurdity of the question of the objectivity of the world — a question with a long history in Western philosophy - that common sense sides with empiricism to repostulate the religious world view that human subjectivity is separate from non-human (natural or divinely created) objectivity.1741or Gramsci, such a position is more abstract and esoteric than supposedly ridiculous philosophical positions such as 'subjectivism' and 'relativism.' Moreover, such commonsense belief in an external world plays into quietism and justifications of bourgeois hegemony, complete with its economic defense of capitalism. This does not mean that Gramsci is against the practice of science or does not believe the knowledge it produces. The above arguments pertain to popular understandings, to how science operates in society, and to the non-scientific nature of the philosophical question of an objective external world. As Esteve Morera notes, he does not launch an attack on science per se175. Gramsci further relates this epistemological position to all those which attempt to 'predict' the future based on determining causal relations. He argues that disinterested prediction leads to the search for essential causes, which is akin to the religious quest for the 'first cause,' the 'cause of causes'7617hat is the 'unmoved mover.' Commonsense conceptions of science presuppose a religious metaphysical position regarding the world's creation before and separate from human creation; furthermore, this presupposition leads to a view of subjectivity as the opposite of objectivity. For Gramsci, the translation of subjectivity into objectivity is central to understanding Marx's Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach - that is, that philosophy can go further than interpreting the world: philosophy can change the world. Gramsci's Science and Subjective Objectivity Gramsci does not simply reject commonsense notions of science, objectivity, and prediction; he redefines these terms so that they cohere with the philosophy of praxis. Andre Tosel argues: 'The function of the philosophy of praxis is not to liquidate common sense as deteriorated ideology, but to transform and amend it.'177 Gramsci's definitions are not ex nihilo; rather, they are derived from previous commonsense definitions and modify and replace them. For Gramsci,

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

131

'"Objective" means this and only this: that one asserts to be objective, to be objective reality, that reality which is ascertained by all, which is independent of any merely particular group standpoint.'178:lsewhere he states:: Objective always means 'humanly objective' which can be held to correspond exactly to 'historically subjective': in other words, objective would mean 'universal subjective' [universale soggettivo]. Man knows objectively in so far as knowledge is real for the whole human race historically unified into a single unitary cultural system. But this process of historical unification takes place through the disappearance of the internal contradictions which tear apart human society, while these contradictions themselves are the condition for the formation of groups and for the birth of ideologies which are not concretely universal but are immediately rendered transient by the practical origin of their substance. There exists therefore a struggle for objectivity (to free oneself from partial and fallacious ideologies) and this struggle is the same as the struggle for the cultural unification of the human race179.

As I argued in the previous chapter, this notion of 'unification' must not exclude all cultural differences; in fact, it necessarily entails them. This leads to a sort of democratic epistemology where 'mass adhesion or non-adhesion to an ideology is the real critical test of the rationality and historicity of modes of thinking/180 In Gramsci's notion of prediction, there can be no ultimate separation between the objective world and subjective knowledge about that world. Prediction for Gramsci is not a forecast involving the application of knowledge of the fixed rules of the universe or human nature. Instead, prediction involves the practical act of trying to change the world: 'In reality one can "foresee" to the extent that one acts, to the extent that one applies a voluntary effort and therefore contributes concretely to creating the result "foreseen." Prediction reveals itself thus not as a scientific act of knowledge, but as the abstract expression of the effort made, the practical way of creating a collective will.,181lsewhere he writes: 'Anybody whoO makes a prediction has in fact a "programme" for whose victory he is working, and his prediction is precisely an element contributing to that victory.'182 Thus 'science' is not the process of uncovering, or approximating, the immutable laws of the external world as laid down before human history. Science is not a method that yields knowledge about the external world, nor is it a systematic process for extracting subjective bias from observation and analysis. Instead, it is the collection of methods for distinguishing that which is transitory (i.e., or based on limited and individual conditions), from that which is true only for certain portions of society from that which is 'essential' (i.e., common to everyone). Science is conceived historically, and it constantly affects how we perceive the

132

Gramsci's Politics of Language

world, all the while correcting and reinforcing our sensory organs.183It follows that scientific methods vary depending on the topic under study.184 This perspective makes the question of the objectivity of the external world as irrelevant for the philosophy of praxis as it is for the average person: What is of interest to science is then not so much the objectivity of the real, but humanity forging its methods of research, continually correcting those of its material instruments which reinforce sensory organs and logical instruments of discrimination and ascertainment (which include mathematics): in other words culture, the conception of the world ... In science, too, to seek reality outside of humanity, understood in a religious or metaphorical sense, seems nothing other than paradoxical. Without humanity what would the reality of the universe mean?185

Again, meaning is the central category, especially in defining science. Science is historical, but it is also an ideology, a superstructure. Its privileged location derives from its history within any given society, not from some ontological proximity to the 'eternal truth' of the universe.186 Tosel argues: 'Philosophy is not then something incredibly difficult or specialized: determining the certainty of theoretical truth, but it is above all the socialization of truth already discovered.'187 This is also true of the philosophy of science. Gramsci's notion of science coincides with his concern over the division between the specialized knowledge of intellectuals and common understandings of the world. Once again, dispelling or modifying any mechanical distinction between structure and superstructure, Gramsci argues: 'The theory of the superstructures is the translation in terms of realist historicism of the subjective conception of reality.188' It is worth repeating a passage quoted earlier to emphasize in this context Gramsci's reliance on language to describe his position in relation to science: 'From the incomprehension of the historicity of languages and therefore of philosophies, ideologies and scientific opinions, there stems a tendency that is characteristic of all forms of thought (including idealist-historicist ones) to build themselves up as an Esperanto or Volapiik of philosophy and science.'189 Just as a language cannot be created ex nihilo, and just as the imposition of a language not organically related to people's lives requires undue coercion, so too philosophical and scientific perspectives must be created organically by transforming previous conceptions, by absorbing them into the philosophy of praxis. As Tosel demonstrates, this process is conceived by Gramsci - especially throughout Quaderni 10 and 11 — as a process of translating the disjointed languages of common sense into a collective human conception of the world, a unified language — that is, into good sense190.

Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics

133

In sum, Gramsci, like Lukacs and Benjamin, diagnoses the philosophical rupture between subject and object as a symptom of bourgeois modernity, a symptom growing stronger and stronger as new strata of traditional intellectuals attempt to secularize religious world views. But Gramsci's position is quite different. He recognizes the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity in bourgeois philosophy and the understanding of science. He is also highly aware of how these conceptions have found their place in common sense, unproblematically alongside religious notions. For Gramsci, as opposed to Lukacs or Benjamin, neither a proletarian revolution nor a radical epistemological break can erase the dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity. No combination of philosophizing and concrete revolutionary action will actually change how the subjects and the objects of the world recognize and relate to one another unless this revolution includes reformulating the commonsense notion, based on Graeco-Christian religion, that the world was created before humans, who where then placed in it. It is the insistence that humans create that can enable us to overcome Western philosophy's abstraction of subjectivity from objectivity. For Gramsci, such a change can only come about by translating these ideas from 'common sense' into 'good sense,' and then into the philosophy of praxis. Only Gramsci's method of translation will replace the opposition between subjects and objects with continuity between subjectivity and objectivity. Conclusion As with other Gramscian concepts, 'translation' is used in a wide variety of contexts without a clear or systematic definition. Instead of bemoaning these inconsistencies, in this chapter I have attempted to understand translation as a concept that unites much of Gramsci's wide-ranging prison research project, including his comments on Lenin, cross-cultural analysis, and revolution. I have explained what may have seemed like a counter-intuitive notion of translation by comparing Gramsci's position with Benjamin's influential essay, 'The Task of the Translator.' In a more extended comparison, I showed the importance of Gramsci and Benjamin's distinction between individual expression (including poetry) and translation - contra Croce and the German Romanticists. For Gramsci and Benjamin translation aims at changing the languages involved, both the source language and the target language.

Chapter Four

Language and Reason: The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

Even today we must be able to form our convictions on the basis of the best available knowledge and arguments, without being coerced; that is, without being coerced except by the noncoercive coercion exercised by the better argument. Jiirgen Habermas1 The most widespread error of method seems to me that of having looked for this criterion of distinction [of'intellectuality'] in the intrinsic nature of intellectual activities, rather than in the ensemble of the system of relations in which these activities (and therefore the intellectual groups who personify them) have their place within the general complex of social relations. Antonio Gramsci2 The word 'reason,' in the English language, has different significations: sometimes it is taken for true and clear principles; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from those principles; and sometimes for the causes, and particularly the final cause. John Locke3

'Reason' and 'rationality' are not concepts that Gramsci utilizes consistently; nor does he develop them as 'Gramscian' concepts. He uses these terms fairly often, but most often incidentally, as synonymous with 'good,' 'appropriate,' 'systematic,' or 'thought out in advance.' As the opening quotation illustrates, Gramsci focuses on how intellectual activity functions in social relationships. For Gramsci, intellectual activity can not be strictly separated from other human activities, non-intellectual activity, or physical activity. This is integral to our concerns because it allows him to think about language as an intellectual activity that has physical and material attributes.

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

135

Gramsci's omission of any developed concept of reason or rationality in favour of the analysis of the activities of various intellectuals is itself revealing. For him, 'philosophy in general does not in fact exist'5; and thus, to speak of reason in general does not make sense. Various philosophies and concepts of reason are historically integrated into society. He investigates how 'reason' has been conceived in relation to faith, science, and social institutions, but he does not attempt to define it transcendentally.7 He consistently begins from the proposition that 'even ways of thinking are acquired and not innate.' He proceeds to ask how the invention of printing changed this acquisition, and how the quality of newspapers and periodicals, and the education system continue to do so.8 Gramsci is fully aware that the battle to convince large groups of people of the 'better argument,' addressed by Habermas in this chapter's opening quotation, involves not some transcendental reason but the institutions of civil society, especially the religious and educational. In other words, as shown in chapter 1, Gramsci is highly aware that the structure of language itself, and the choice of language in which any discussion should take place, is what Barthes calls a 'second order semiological system.' The speech situation itself signifies a particular (not universal, as Habermas argues) set of rules, and it has meaning that involves power relationships among the participants. Thus, struggles over the 'better argument' also involve the state and are ultimately questions of hegemony.9 Why, then, devote a chapter to Gramsci and 'reason,' especially when it is such a complex term, as Locke notes in his opening quotation? My answer lies primarily in developments in social and political theory since Gramsci's death. In the introduction to this work, I argued that the label 'linguistic turn' can be misleading because it tends to obscure the history of the role of language in social theory and philosophy prior to the twentieth century. A more specific characterization of the various movements that have been labelled 'linguistic turns' — whether in the fields of philosophy, cultural anthropology, historiography or social theory would focus on the use of linguistic theory to call into question past presumptions about reason and rationality and their transcendental status. 'Reason' is directly related to the communicative action theory of Habermas and to philosophical reflections on language, whether of the ordinary language philosophy variety or from antifoundationalist philosophy. In some senses, reason is central to all debates over language and Marxism. The question of'reason' is thus crucial for placing Gramsci's work; it also point to the centrality of language within social and political theory as it has unfolded throughout the twentieth century. Habermas is an especially important figure because his expansive and sophisticated conception of 'rationality' is directly aimed at showing how the Enlightenment tradition continues to hold the promise of moving us beyond a world governed by coercive nation-states and institutions (or steering media). Through

136

Gramsci's Politics of Language

an expansive concept of communicative rationality, he contends that we can make public decisions by garnering the consent of the populace through informed debate. According to Habermas, reason — specifically in the form of communicative rationality— is that which legitimates in modern democracies. He separates the realm of social interaction guided ideally by communicative rationality from human labour, and then argues that the former does not need to be implicated in the exploitative character of the latter. As Philip Brewster and Carl Buchner contend, 'Habermas redefines ideology as distorted communication and thereby detaches the critique of ideology from its Marxian foundation in the critique of political economy.12' Positing a Gramscian response to Habermas will help us delimit Gramsci's own political theory. It will show that while attention to language helps us understand the political importance of mass consent, it does not provide a space free of coercion (or free of what Habermas would have to call 'coerced coercion,' as opposed to the uncoerced coercion mentioned in the opening quotation). On the contrary, Gramsci's concern with language shows the extent to which, because meaning is socially produced in history, consent is the product of past coercive and non-coercive structures, the history of which might have been forgotten to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, instead of providing the potential for 'noncoerced coercion' and the 'rational' recognition of the 'better argument,' Gramsci's insights into language show that all debate is framed by political relations and that even perfectly 'reasonable' and often necessary statements such as 'What did you mean to say?' 'What do you mean?' and 'Make yourself clearer' are forms of censorship and monitoring, replete with power dynamics among the speakers13 Moreover, language is a site of conflict among different social groups. These conflicts can yield passive consent to regressive hegemonies or they can create new hegemonic formations to which previously subordinated social groups consciously contribute. Thus, Gramsci shows us that all meaning production, distribution, and reception takes place within socio-political contexts, outside any 'universal' frameworks of ethical behaviour. Since Saussurean structuralism, Lacan's psychoanalytic version of linguistic difference, and Derrida's 'differance,' social and political theory has been concerned with how longstanding notions of 'reason' - especially as proffered by the Enlightenment - rely on the identity/difference distinction that is at the centre of semiotic understandings of language. Feminists have also taken up these concerns, demonstrating that most conceptions of reason in Western philosophy are buttressed by gendered metaphors and implicit masculinist arguments. Moreover, social issues from abortion and wife abuse to gender-based pay inequities have shown that it is not so easy to separate 'rationality' from our bodies and our real lives.

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

137

I am not suggesting that Gramsci addressed these questions as they have been presented since his death. Rather, I am contending that with twenty-twenty hindsight, we can highlight Gramsci's use of language and intellectuality to present a consistently historical materialist approach to these questions. This at least partly explains why feminists who have reacted to poststructuralism in opposite ways have found Gramsci useful.15 In this chapter I investigate Gramsci's understanding of the role of domination and freedom; however, I do so without maintaining that language provides necessarily legitimate space for 'noncoercive coercion.' Rather, any space or forum where language is possible is necessarily implicated in political power and the institutions that wield it. There is nothing in language itself that privileges the better argument or that provides us with access to liberty or freedom through recourse to 'reason,' however that term is defined. Language is just as much an instrument of oppression and domination as it is an instrument for fostering ethical relations among humans. This approach to language is what separates Gramsci's materialist approach from other theories of language and communication, most notably that of Habermas. At the heart of these issues as they relate to Marxism is this question: What is the relationship between Enlightenment reason and capitalist exploitation? This relationship underpins every debate over Marxism and postmodernism, and it almost always involves some implicit or explicit conception of language. In the previous chapter I argued that Gramsci highlights the complexity of Marx and Engels's equation of German classical philosophy, French politics, and English economics. For Gramsci, the concept of bourgeois hegemony rests on the mutual 'translation' among these realms. As I have demonstrated, it is central to Gramsci's diagnosis of Italy in the 1920s and 1930s that this translation is premised on and creates a 'historic bloc,' or an 'epoch' complete with a hegemonic structure. The notion that bourgeois culture, including democratic politics and philosophical reason, can converge with capitalist economics has been under fire from historians at least since the 1960s, when Alfred Cobban attacked the concept of bourgeois revolution. Gramsci's understanding of this equation not as simple equivalence but as a complex relation of 'translation' and imperfect 'translatability' perhaps foreshadows some of the contemporary historiographical and theoretical debates over the Enlightenment Project, bourgeois society, and latetwentieth-century capitalism. But the historical controversies over the bourgeois or capitalist nature of the events in France between 1789 and 1794 have led some Marxist political historians in the opposite direction from that of Gramsci. In emphasizing the 'mature' historical materialism of Marx's Capital over his earlier writings, these historians seem to reject the very translatability of French politics and English economics.17 Paul Ginsborg has taken up these issues in relation to

138

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Gramsci and Italy, arguing that it is possible (although not simple) to define adequately and clearly a workable Marxist concept of bourgeois revolutio18n. For very different reasons, Althusser and his followers have also judged Marx's earlier writings wanting, and have privileged Capital as the 'scientific' explication of Marxism. Moreover, a whole series of social theorists want to separate the possibilities of democratic politics and philosophical postulations of rationality from the logic of capitalism and the exploitation on which it rests. At stake in all of these debates are the concepts of reason and rationality and their implications for social domination and exploitation. In this chapter I do not attempt a general defence of the concept of bourgeois hegemony (or bourgeois revolution) constituted by the rationality of Enlightenment philosophy, the democratic form of libertt, tgalitt, etfraterniti,,and the economic logic of capitalism. Instead, I will limit myself to explicating the connection between language and reason in Gramsci's writings. I will build on the previous chapter's examination of translation as a means to approach the relationship between the economics of capitalism and bourgeois culture in a manner that does not falsely equate the two but does indicate why they cannot be simply severed in order to reject the domination inherent in the former while celebrating the potential democracy of the latter. Gramsci's notions of language and reason, in contradistinction to Habermas's, show how the concept of bourgeois hegemony is useful and entails capitalist economic structures as well as bourgeois cultural and political mechanisms of legitimation. This understanding of capitalist bourgeois hegemony runs counter to Habermas's exploration of the demise of the free, critical-rational debate - a debate that eighteenth-century bourgeois society made possible.19 Gramsci's perspective does not obscure the achievements of the public spheres of bourgeois Europe; that being said, it never forgets that those achievements were exclusionary precisely because they did not extend to large sections of the general population. As Gramsci shows in his discussions of the Reformation versus the Renaissance, the extent to which an intellectual movement is 'vernacularized' is an attribute that must be figured into our assessment of its merit.20 Moreover, as with Bakhtin's interest in Rabelais, Gramsci sees the positive potential of the interaction (including conflict) of a wide range of social groups. From this perspective, the intellectual activity of subaltern groups can be analysed in relation to elite philosophy. Habermas is, of course, fully aware of the historical limitations of bourgeois public-sphere communication, yet his theory of communicative action aims at reviving and adapting a form of bourgeois critical-rational debate for the purposes of expansive democracy. Gramsci would not want to ignore any of the advances of bourgeois capitalism, from the technical and scientific to the

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci 139 cultural and intellectual, but his notion of a politicized popular consciousness is not grounded in the history of the bourgeois public sphere. On the contrary, he is highly critical of the exclusionary premises of bourgeois critical debate. To support this argument, I will show what Gramsci's position shares with Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. I will argue that Gramsci would accept Horkheimer and Adorno's argument that Enlightenment 'reason' claiming to be 'universal' is actually not universal; rather, it is based on the idea of the self-preservation of those who define, possess, and implement it. This will allow us to amplify Gramsci's theory through Adorno and Horkheimer's notion of the dialectic of Enlightenment. This will involve comparing Horkheimer's traditional/critical theory distinction with Gramsci's theory of intellectuals. I will present a fairly extended analysis that does not explicitly involve language to show that Gramsci makes similar criticisms of the universality of reason. I will then be able to explain more persuasively why it is paramount that Gramsci's theory of language not be rooted in any non-historical essence, be it a biological faculty or universal reason. Throughout these comparisons, I will highlight the significant dissonances, clashes, and disagreements between Gramsci's perspective and the analyses of the early Frankfurt School. Gramsci's historicism is at odds with the more figurative and philosophical methods of Adorno and Horkheimer - methods that result in broad transhistorical generalizations. Gramsci's vernacular alternative points us toward the idea that language is not abstracted from social life but rather is part of praxis. Moreover, I will argue, Horkheimer and Adorno fall into the same problems that Gramsci criticizes in Croce. This chapter then turns to Habermas's supposed solution to Adorno and Horkheimer's aporia. I illustrate Gramsci's more materialist approach by contrasting it with Habermas's notion of 'communicative action,' which rests on some of the same presuppositions about the inherently ethical nature of language. To overcome Horkheimer and Adorno's problems, Gramsci does not focus on the content of Western philosophy; rather, he analyses the relationship between philosophical activity and everyday practices in society. Instead of adding a theory of communication to Marx's concept of labour, which is what Habermas does, Gramsci conceives of linguistic interaction as a type of labour. Historically, linguistic activity has not been exploited in the same manner as other forms of labour. But this in itself does not mean that language is non-labourious, or unexploitable, or somehow more free of coercive power relations than other human activities.21 In the final section of this chapter I examine Habermas's critique of Horkheimer and Adorno's notion of mimesis. I show that Habermas rejects precisely

140

Gramsci's Politics of Language

what Gramsci accepts about the Frankfurt School's earlier critique of reason — that is, its false pretensions to universality. Moreover, in order to make a shift to intersubjectivity, Habermas clings to a view of language that is similar to Adorno and Horkheimer's in several key respects. Thus, I argue, Habermas retains idealist assumptions about language, and as a result his theory cannot approach the real power relationships that are inherent in linguistic interaction. By showing how two different views of language - the early Frankfurt School's and Habermas's which both purport to be materialist, actually contain idealist elements, I highlight the importance of Gramsci's thoroughly historical materialist approach to language as social praxis whereby meaning is produced, distributed, and received in situations of conflict and struggle. For Gramsci, the possibility of such struggle can never be totally eliminated; furthermore, the conditions under which struggles are carried out are historically given and beyond the control of individuals or groups of speakers. Philosophical Tradition and the Institute for Social Research In the 1930s the Institute for Social Research - whose most renowned members have come to be called the Frankfurt School — faced the same perplexities as Gramsci over the rise of fascism. To understand fascism, the ideological attraction of which orthodox Marxism could not explain, the Frankfurt School sought to combine philosophy with a wide range of social scientific disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach remained within the academic sphere and would never achieve an extra-disciplinary relationship to political practice in the way that Gramsci's investigations did. Yet to a great extent, the Frankfurt School shared Gramsci's emphasis on the links between history, economics, politics, philosophy, psychology, and literary criticism. One of the major paths taken by the Frankfurt School was an analysis of the psyche. Several members attempted explicit syntheses of Marxism with Freudianism, and the entire 'school' was influenced to some degree by Freud's writings. Gramsci was intrigued by Freud's work but remained at the mercy of his selfacknowledged ignorance and inability to distinguish charlatans from legitimate practitioners of psychoanalysis.23 Jennifer Stone contends that 'Gramsci's serious consideration of psychoanalytic theory was occasioned by his discontent with orthodox Marxism's failure to account for individualization and sexuality.'24 Stone overstates Gramsci's engagement with psychoanalysis25; that being said, he was at least aware of the more psychological dimensions of cultural politics, as especially evident in his writings on Fordism.26 The most significant congruence between Gramsci and the Frankfurt School regarding the rise of fascism is their mutual insistence that far from being an his-

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

141

torical aberration, fascism developed out of nineteenth-century liberal bourgeois capitalist society. Horkheimer castigated what he called the 'gangster theory of National Socialism,' arguing that the 'government in Germany was not usurped by gangsters who forced an entry from without; rather, social domination led to gangster rule by virtue of its own economic principle.'27 Within a narrower historical framework, Gramsci contended that the unresolved tensions of Italian unification were the bases on which Mussolini forged an alliance between the northern Italian bourgeoisie and the southern landowners. Gramsci's analysis of the Risorgimento and his characterization of the Italian passive revolution directly connected Mussolini's rise with the failures of liberal nineteenth-century Italy coupled with those of the socialists and communists, to which Gramsci had devoted his life. Adorno and Horkheimer's later Dialectic of Enlightenment (first written in 1944) was the culmination of empirical and philosophical studies by the various members of the institute - studies that rooted the crisis of fascism in the advent of bourgeois philosophy, which had as its figurative starting point The Odyssey28 THE.e conjectural and generalized historical swath cut by Adorno and Horkheimer would be anathema to Gramsci's historicism, yet their ideas about philosophy's political and social role are quite similar, especially when viewed from our side of the Second World War. I will discuss later on the disjunction of their analyses of the potentialities of the proletariat. My point here is that Adorno and Horkheimer's indictment of traditional philosophy's role in making a Hitler possible pushes the envelope of Gramsci's critique of Croce and positivism, as well as his articulation of the concept of organic intellectuals. Self-Preservation: Reason against Nature Horkheimer and Adorno critique Enlightenment 'reason' for being as much about self-preservation as about accessing universal truth. This critique is tied to the question of the object of knowledge and how a reasoning subject might know the truth about such objects. They show that Western philosophy defines 'nature' as distinct from the reasoning subject. Nature is the object of knowledge; this refers to both non-human objects and the nature of human behaviour — that is, the laws that govern human actions. On these terms, their discussion is directly related to Gramsci's writings on 'prediction' as an activity of political science. Gramsci contends that it is absurd to speak of objective prediction if one means that the one making such predictions is impartial or does not connect the predicted outcome with his or her own political desire and conception of the world. This position is supported by his response to the so-called question of the existence of the objective, external world (see chapter 3, pp. 129-32). That enlightened reason treats both non-human objects and the nature of human

142

Gramsci's Politics of Language

behaviour (psychological and social) in the same manner is one of the central motifs ofDialectic of Enlightenment. Gramsci is also critical of this aspect of positivistic reason, especially as accepted by economic Marxism and sociology. The resounding opening lines of Dialectic of Enlightenment summarize the poignancy and drama of the entire work: 'In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.31 SUCH Auch a predicament is explained by the work's two main theses.The first is that myth is already enlightenment: both myth and enlightenment are rooted in 'anthropomorphism, the projection onto nature of the subjective32. The second and corollary thesis is that Enlightenment reverts into myth - or, as they write: 'Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical.'33 Fascism is only one example. The culture industry of the United States is an equally applicable one. Contrary to many current interpretations, which emphasize Adorno's hand in Dialectic of Enlightenment and distinguish it from Horkheimer's earlier writings, the first thesis can be traced back to the latter's first monograph, Anfange der burgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie (Origins of Bourgeois Philosophy of History).34 This argument is important beyond the specifics of intellectual history. As we shall see later, what is at stake here is the possibility of rescuing Enlightenment reason through recourse to language. By charting Horkheimer's trajectory as discontinuous in the sense that his co-authored work with Adorno bears little relationship to his earlier work, Habermas claims to be continuing the Frankfurt School as outlined in Horkheimer's work prior to 1937. Thus, Habermas can basically disregard Dialectic of Enlightenment and Adorno's work without relinquishing his claim to the Frankfurt School. Yet as we shall see, the very motifs of Horkheimer's work become the crucial elements of Dialectic of Enlightenment. Horkheimer's Vichian 'Myth' In Origins of Bourgeois Philosophy, Horkheimer follows the notion of myth in Giambattista Vico's New Science as the anthropomorphic projection of human traits onto the non-human world through Machiavelli's proposition of extending the natural sciences to human societies. Horkheimer argues that Vico's 'treatment of mythology as a mirror of political relations is nothing short of brilliant.'35 He attributes to Vico the idea that the dynamics of reason constitute an attempt to overcome the fear of nature and dependence on it. Vico states: 'Because of the indefinite nature of the human mind, wherever it is lost in ignorance man makes himself the measure of all things36.Vico's quintessential example of this is theE fear of thunder leading to the image of Jove.37 These motifs of fear and projection are familiar to us from Dialectic of Enlightenment and also from Eclipse of Reason.

tHEe FRANKFURT Frankfurt School, SCHOOL Habermas, HABERMAS,AND and Gramsci GR 143

Horkheimer summarizes Vice's New Science: Thunder, lightning, and inclement weather in general forced people to seek shelter and, at the same time, inspired them with fear of super powerful giants. This primitive reaction to natural phenomena by projection of human traits into physical nature, that is, by animating the powers of nature, constitutes the origin of poetry, which emerges simultaneously with the beginnings of civilization.'38 Thus, by 1930 Horkheimer was already developing the notion that reason has its roots in self-preservation as opposed to Enlightenment claims of universality. Reason is used for self-preservation first against all powerful natural forces and later in the face of other humans and social forces. As stated in Dialectic of^ Enlightenment-. 'The dualization of nature as appearance and sequence, effort and power, which first makes possible both myth and science, originates in huma n fear, the expression of which becomes explanation.39ikewise, explanation. Likewise,their theiranalysisSIS analysis of anti-Semitism explains, 'reflection, the life of reason, takes place as conscious projection,' whereas the formation of the individual, the creation of ego, is increasingly taken over by human intellect rather than affective mimesis. AntiSemitism, Adorno and Horkheimer contend, is the false mimetic counterpart to true mimesis, which is repressed by civilization: instead of adapting to the outside world, the ego forces the outside world to be like itself.41 As will become important later on with reference to theories of language, Gramsci does not have a concept of mimesis. This is directly tied to his rejection of language as nomenclature and the abstraction of the world from human subjectivity. Nor, within the history of Italian philosophy, does he attempt to wrestle Vico's name from Croce's clutches, as he does so conspicuously with Machiavelli. Yet this Vichian approach to the relationship between humans and nature mirrors Gramsci's concern with the 'objective' external world, which we examined in the previous chapter.42 chapter. 2 Gramsci Gramsci sees seesthe the separation separation between between humanity humanity and and nature nature as a presumption with its roots - at least in the West - in the Judeo-Christian belief that God created the world. Vico does not root this dichotomy between humans and nature in Judeo-Christian notions of Genesis, yet he too views it as a human abstraction. Both he and Gramsci reject the scientific basis of such an abstraction and are suspicious of its possible results. Horkheimer clearly agrees with Gramsci that the belief in an objective true reality outside human history is of religious origin. He also concurs that it is based not on science or reason itself 3 but rather on faith.43 In Gramsci's commentary on Lukacs, we see clearly that he always approaches 'nature' from within the changing dialectic of human history.44 Much like the dialectical notion of 'natural-history' articulated by Benjamin and taken up by Adorno, he sees nature as a historical concept that is always in interplay with human history. That there is an outside of human history is itself a concept of

144

Gramsci's Politics of Language

religious or metaphysical origin. Benedetto Fontana argues persuasively: 'Gramsci therefore refuses to begin his project by defining tout court man and nature. What he does is to attempt to see and describe how humanity defines itself.' For us to attribute some notion of 'objectivity' to matter or the natural world in isolation from humanity and its definition of 'objectivity' is, for Gramsci, the product of either idealistic philosophy or theology. In his inaugural address to the Institute for Social Research, Adorno came to the same conclusion: 'We have established that the division of the world into nature and spirit or nature and history, a tradition set by subjectivistic idealism, must be overcome and that its place must be taken by a formulation that achieves in itself the concrete unity of nature and history.46'The continuity of this lecture with Adorno's entire trajectory, which culminated with Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory, has been examined in depth by Susan Buck-Morss.47 I do not mean to downplay the differences between Horkheimer and Adorno. But the continuities between Horkheimer's early period and Dialectic of Enlightenment most clearly align with many of Gramsci's concerns. This powerful agreement between Adorno and Horkheimer explains how they were able to work together so closely. They themselves proclaimed: 'No outsider will find it easy to discern how far we are both responsible for every sentence.' Gramsci, Adorno and Horkheimer's approach - including both the 1930s works and various writings from exile in the United States - to the 'natural' or 'external' world is distinct from that of other prominent figures of Western Marxism, most notably Lukacs and Habermas.48 We must note, however, that Adorno and Horkheimer view reason's attempt to dominate nature as all-pervasive. In contrast, Gramsci emphasizes the disjunctures in all the various melanges of beliefs and ideas that make up the ways in which people of all different social strata of capitalist societies perceive the world. But with regard to their diagnoses of traditional philosophy and how it supports the domination inherent in the various veins of capitalist societies, the role of'nature' is quite similar. Dominating the Nature of Society In Origins of Bourgeois Philosophy of History, Horkheimer extends the Vichian concepts of myth and nature to social analysis through his interpretation of Machiavelli. His 'traditional' reading of Machiavelli is almost diametrically opposed to Gramsci's. Much like Croce, Horkheimer contends that Machiavelli was important mainly because he opened politics and human society to scientific methods, by drawing an analogy to the natural sciences based on humans' attempts to dominate other humans.49he consequence of this, HorkheimerER argues, is that 'the proposition of the uniformity of events cannot be separated

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

145

from this objective in Machiavelli. If groups of subjects in certain states in the present and the future do not react in the same manner as in the past, and if the passions connected with the reactions of such individuals do not remain the same, then all the writings of Machiavelli would have failed to achieve their author's goal, and he would have to view his own science as just a dream.'50 The fear of nature and inability to dominate it led humans to anthropomorphize natural forces in order to know them. The will to dominate other humans, also arising out of fear, led to the presupposition that human behaviour is uniform and that there is such a thing as universal human nature. Central to Horkheimer's entire project is the notion that science as the Western world has known it in history — be it science of the natural world or sciences of the social world - arises out of the will to self-preservation, fear when self-preservation is threatened, and the power of domination that ensures self-preservation. He states with Adorno: 'The principle of immanence, the explanation of every event as repetition, that the Enlightenment upholds against mythic imagination, is the principle of myth itself.'51 Gramsci reads The Prince as 'a "live" work in which political ideology and political science are fused in the dramatic form of a "myth."' Its style is not 'bookish' and abstractly scientific; rather, it is infused with 'action' and revelation to those who are not 'in the know.' Horkheimer, in contrast, agrees with Croce's more traditional reading, which understands Machiavelli's science as 'serving reactionaries and democrats alike' through the factual knowledge it generates about collective human behaviour.52 Gramsci insists that Machiavelli's moral and political aim was to educate the uneducated, to empower those disempowered by lack of knowledge. The difference in style between The Prince and other systematic treatises and compilations of the time was that The Prince was not written as a 'secret memorandum circulating among the initiated' but rather as a manifesto to educate 'those who are not in the know53 The most explicit and powerful presentation of this reading of Machiavelli was initially titled by Gramsci, 'Machiavelli and Marx.' In it he contends that the basic innovation of the philosophy of praxis for political science is that there is no such thing as 'human nature,' which can only be seen as the 'totality of historically determined social relations ... which can, within certain limits, be ascertained with the methods of philology and criticism.54'For Gramsci, thiSs fundamental tenet of Marxism is not at odds with Machiavelli's 'science.' While his epistemology regarding nature and humanity is similar to Gramsci's, Horkheimer's reading of Machiavelli shows much less awareness of the possibility of human agency. This pessimism about human agency characterizes much of his writing - Adorno's even more so. Instead of looking for ways in which Machiavelli accounted for the mutability of human behaviour, Horkheimer criticizes

146 Gramsci's Politics of Language (thereby reinforcing this particular interpretation) Machiavelli's ahistorical generalizations: '[Machiavelli's] mistake, which the ensuing period committed even more egregiously in the doctrine of raison d'ttat, was that his justification of means of domination that were essential for the rise of the bourgeoisie in the Italy of his time was extended by him to cover the past and the future as well. Such eternalizing of the temporally bound is a characteristic deficiency of modern philosophy of history.55Of course, Gramsci is attempting to spur a classic ItalianN figure into action. Gramsci's reading allows him to appropriate Machiavelli's writings for his own cause, and this cannot be separated from Machiavelli's role in Italian history56.5Horkheimer'sAapproachtoMachiavelli is not nearly as strategic and may even be more textually convincing.57 But both Gramsci and Horkheimer are especially concerned with scientistic approaches to society that treat humans as objects of knowledge. Scientistic methods relate knowledge about humans to the natural sciences that are themselves based on an anthropomorphic self/other distinction rooted in fear. Gramsci sees Machiavelli as agreeing with Horkheimer's later insistence on taking into account the subject of knowledge as well as the object. As the next section shows, when distinguishing traditional from critical theory, Horkheimer attributes to the latter the awareness that society is both the subject and object of social science. Horkheimer finds Machiavelli important because he systematized and made explicit the rules the ruling classes follow implicitly. Similarly, Gramsci's focus on the radical potentials of Machiavelli derive from his revelation of how power operates, especially for those dominated by its practice. Horkheimer assumes (perhaps with some evidence) that the audience of The Prince is 'those in the know'; in contrast, Gramsci underscores the ability of the subordinated classes to gain access to knowledge that had been unobtainable. Even in his writings on Machiavelli in 1930, Horkheimer sees an analogy between the domination of nature and that of humans - an analogy that is the central theme of Dialectic of Enlightenment but is ignored by Habermas (see below). In his 1937 essay, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' Horkheimer summarizes this sentiment by defining 'nature' as 'the totality of as yet unmastered elements with which society must deal.'58 This is one of the guiding motifs of Dialectic of Enlightenment: 'nature' must be dominated because it is by definition that which has not yet been dominated. This is true of all that is 'natural,' be it 'human' nature, external nature, or the nature of social behaviour.59 As Habermas and Schmidt suggest, Horkheimer may have been more optimistic about the possibilities of correcting these tendencies or grounding a new type of science on different principles in the 1930s than he was after his collaborations with Adorno. His own lack of research in the postwar period may have been a result of his inability to cope with this tension.60 But the dynamic of enlighten-

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

147

ment reverting on itself is clearly set out in Horkheimer's work before his major collaboration with Adorno. Critical Theory and Organic Intellectuals If there is a major theme in Horkheimer's writings prior to Dialectic of Enlightenment, it is his sociology of knowledge production, or what we might now call standpoint epistemology. In 1937, he develops the argument that 'since society is divided into groups and classes, it is understandable that theoretical structures should be related to the general activity of society in different ways according as the authors of such structures belong to one or other social class.' There is no reason as such why this emphasis on the heterogeneity of understanding the world - what Gramsci analyses as the contradictions and variations within common sense - is at odds with Dialectic of Enlightenment.62 But this analysis of what could be called common sense, the role of culture in politics and the workings of hegemony, constitutes a perspective that is missing from Dialectic of Enlightenment and Adorno's later work. Horkheimer's tendency to downplay the possibility of human agency, which we encountered in his reading of Machiavelli, emerges again in the terminology he uses to distinguish between traditional and critical theory. This distinction is quite similar to Gramsci's description of traditional and organic intellectuals, but its language is that of theory rather than people. 'Theory' is the subject of his essay, even though much of his distinction between traditional and critical theory rests in part on the social location of the theorists, specifically in relation to class. Gramsci incorporates this point into the language of his social analysis, in such a way that theories and world views are attributed to the people who hold them63. In an argument more reminiscent of Gramsci than of what is normally considered the Frankfurt School's position, Horkheimer contends not only that the social location of the theorist matters, but also that the intellectual must do more than simply express what is historically necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat. According to Horkheimer, an intellectual must be in a dynamic unity with the oppressed class so that the expression of societal contradictions becomes an active force stimulating change. Furthermore, Horkheimer insists that the intellectual must do more than simply confront traditional theories' support of the status quo; he or she must work against 'distracting, conformist, and Utopian tendencies within his own household.65 ' For this reason, Horkheimer argues that positivism, as a dominant form of traditional theory, plays a role in combination with more overt coercive forces in securing sometimes tenuous hegemonic power. He hints at the type of preoccupation that Gramsci has with the hegemonic interplay of commonsense world

148

Gramsci's Politics of Language

views and overt coercion: 'Although in the intensified class conflicts of recent decades rulers have had to rely increasingly on the real apparatus of power, ideology is nonetheless still a fairly important cohesive force for holding together a social structure threatened with collapse.66Both Gramsci and HorkheimeER emphasize how traditional intellectuals and their theories present themselves as neutral and as unconnected to any specific class or political interests. Horkheimer describes the 'intelligentsia' as that special social or even suprasocial stratum that includes university professors, middle-level civil servants, doctors, lawyers, and so forth. He contends that while this stratum presents itself as detached from all classes, it works to support the status quo, even if only tacitly. Traditional theory functions in contradistinction to a critical understanding of society and hinders its very possibility. Gramsci provides a more historical explanation for this 'independence' of the intelligentsia. He argues that the purported historical continuity of intellectual tradition makes it seem that these social groups are not connected to the interests of dominant social groups. Gramsci writes that even though the 'ecclesiastics can be considered the category of intellectuals organically bound to the landed aristocracy, [they] experience through an "esprit de corps' their uninterrupted historical continuity and their special qualification, they thus put themselves forward as autonomous and independent of the dominant social group.' This characteristic of traditional intellectuals is carried on into the secular realm and is as true of Gentile and Croce as it is of the Pope.68 Of course, Gramsci distinguishes between these supposedly 'autonomous' strata (cett) of intellectuals (however much they are really 'organically bound' to the dominant class) and the intellectual strata that come into being with the initial emergence of particular social groups. This group of 'organic intellectuals' is necessary for the technical ability required by the new social group, and also in order to organize society in such a way that the new needs of the social group can be met: 'He must be an organiser of the "confidence" of investors in his business, of the customers for his product, etc.69 For a social group to attain dominance, it must assimilate or conquer the traditional intellectuals, but this 'is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in simultaneously elaborating its own organic intellectuals.'70 Gramsci's description focuses on the historical rise of the bourgeoisie, yet it applies equally to his own struggle to create organic intellectuals from the working class - specifically, his attempt to 'conquer' and 'assimilate' traditional intellectuals for the communist cause. This is especially important in the south of Italy, where the functions of intellectuals are so strongly monopolized by the local clergy that the formation of a large stratum of organic intellectuals of the peasantry seems very difficult if not impossible.

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

149

As we see in Gramsci's own analyses, it would be a mistake to think that he is wholly uncritical of the world views of the proletariat or the peasantry. The rising social group may create its organic intellectuals, but this does not mean it determines the content of their organizational work. The intellectual function requires labour precisely because pre-existing world views and cultural values are in need of critique and reformulation. Gramsci would agree with Horkheimer that 'even the situation of the proletariat is, in this society, no guarantee of correct knowledge.'71 Moreover, Gramsci is highly aware - and Horkheimer also notes - that the theoretician does not have to belong to the economic class that is most affected by a particular conflict within society. Gramsci is appreciative of the Church's ability to recruit its intellectuals from the peasantry. This is especially necessary since they do not reproduce themselves biologically. Horkheimer describes the 'real function' of the theoretician as only emerging when 'he' forms a 'dynamic unity with the oppressed class.'72 He then argues that in social theory it is impossible to separate the object of theory from the theory itself without falling into quietism or conformism. While Gramsci's 'organic intellectual' seems to have a greater role in actually organizing the world views of the masses than Horkheimer's 'theoretician,' the end result of both is to bring about social change that moves all of society toward a more just state, dispelling the false claims to universality held by the theorizing of 'traditional' intellectuals. And at the most basic level, this work depends on becoming aware of the contradictions within society that require social change. For both Gramsci and Horkheimer, the distinction between their emancipatory projects and the standpoint of traditional intellectuals leads to very similar critiques of empiricism. As Gramsci explains: The investigation of a series of facts to find the relationships between them presupposes a 'concept' that allows one to distinguish that series of facts from other possible ones: how does the choice of the facts to be adduced as proof of the truth of one's assumption come about, if the criterion of choice is not already in existence? But what will this criterion of choice be, if it is not something that is at a higher level than each individual fact investigated? An intuition, a conception, whose history must be regarded as complex, a process that must be linked to the whole process of the development of culture etc.74

These criteria of choice are, then, not scientific or objective methods but rather cultural presuppositions. Moreover, as Maurice Finocchiaro explains about this argument, 'sociological laws have no use in causal explanation but are merely a different verbal expression of sociological facts.' And, more importantly, because it aims at creating social action and breaking the masses out of the passivity that

150

Gramsci's Politics of Language

accounts for 'laws of tendency,' Gramsci's philosophy of praxis tends to 'destroy the correctness of sociological laws75. Similarly, Horkheimer argues: 'For positivism, of course, there is simply no identity: first there is a child, later there is an adult, and the two are simply distinct complexes of facts. But this view cannot come to grips with the fact that a person changes and yet is identical with himself.76Thus, the history of a con-cept, including the role in class struggle for which different concepts are developed and mobilized, has an impact on the very observation and ability to perceive those facts as distinguished from others. After the last line of the above passage, Gramsci notes that this point is related to another section of his Notebooks, where he argues: The so-called laws of sociology which are assumed as laws of causation (such-andsuch a fact occurs because of such-and-such a law, etc.) have no causal value: they are almost always tautologies and paralogisms. Usually they are no more than a duplicate of the observed fact itself. A fact or a series of facts is described according to a mechanical process of abstract generalisation, a relationship of similarity is derived from this and given the title of law and the law is then assumed to have causal value. But what novelty is there in that? The only novelty is the collective name given to a series of petty facts, but names are not an innovation.77

This assessment of positivistic sociology is quite similar to Horkheimer's and leads to a similar need to integrate various fields of inquiry and especially to historicize the concepts used - by sociology in particular but also by all the sciences in general. However much these similar themes run through Horkheimer's early work and Gramsci's, Horkheimer is decisively more committed to critiquing traditional philosophy and social theory itself on its own terrain and less concerned with creating a 'unity' - an 'organic' connection, as Gramsci would say - with subaltern groups. Horkheimer focused less on how traditional theory is diffused throughout different realms of society and on what distortions or changes occur when 'traditional theory' reaches the person in the street. Nor was he as concerned as Gramsci with the possibilities created by the contradictions between the everyday life and practice of 'the oppressed class' and the bourgeois ideology its members were expected to swallow. Instead, Horkheimer concentrated on the traditional theories themselves; and when he joined with Adorno to venture social analyses such as the 'Culture Industry' and Anti-Semitism' chapters of Dialectic of Enlightenment, he highlighted how successful bourgeois enlightened thought was at penetrating every sphere of society.

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

151

The Immanent Critique of Positivist Reason

Fredric Jameson suggests that even the 'Culture Industry' chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment 'does not involve a theory of culture itself in any sense this word has come to have for us at least since Raymond Williams78.In an almost defe sive manner, Jameson explains why critics of Adorno's cultural elitism miss the point. He acknowledges the problem of Horkheimer and Adorno describing working-class people as 'slow-witted' victims with no agency to acknowledge that they are being duped, let alone mount any resistance. But according to him the 'Culture Industry' chapter is an exploration of the extent to which the industry that has come to produce culture is able to colonize the aesthetic realm that classical German philosophy had once held in abeyance. It is not an analysis of culture at all, but rather an analysis of the culture industry and of businesses that are able to extend the logic of commodity exchange. This is why Adorno and Horkheimer do not directly confront the distinction between high and low culture. Adorno's interest in high culture is combined with a concern over its popularization and degradation, he is preoccupied with how industry, business, and the capitalistic marketplace turn culture into a commodity.80 Adorno comes closest to approaching the subject of culture itself- in the way we understand it at least since Williams or Gramsci - in his introductory essay to Prisms, 'Cultural Criticism and Society.' But here he concerns himself with the contradictions in the function of the cultural critic and with the relationship between the critic and the critic's subject, culture. His analysis of these tensions takes 'culture' to be the status quo, the creation of bourgeois control and enterprise, the prevailing disorder that cannot be fully criticized by critics who rely on cultural products. Thus, in stark distinction from Gramsci, he sees culture as pre cisely at odds with critique and resistance. Adorno suggests that the only way to avoid reinforcing the fetishization of culture itself is for cultural criticism to become 'social physiogamy' aiming at neither immanent nor transcendent criticism.81 While we can presume that this social physiogamy must include analyses of low culture - of the clashes between various aspects of popular culture Adorno never provides such investigations. He has no notion of significant subaltern activity. For Adorno, vernacular culture — that is, the cultural products of subordinate classes - is never strong enough to resist let alone overthrow capitalist industry that has entered into the cultural realm. Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory take off from his and Horkheimer's earlier propositions about enlightened reason. But these works remain committed to the realms of philosophy and aesthetics respectively, even as they attempt to unravel them. The continued existence of philosophical thought

152

Gramsci's Politics of Language

is, for Adorno, tied up with the failure of Marxist movements to move beyond interpreting the world in order to change it. The opening lines of Negative Dialectics could not be more clear: 'Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world, that resignation in the face of reality had crippled it in itself, becomes a defeatism of reason after the attempt to change the world miscarried.'82 One could argue that the difference between Gramsci and the Frankfurt School on this question is a question of historical context. Gramsci was writing before the moment to realize philosophy was crippled. But rather than guessing what Gramsci would have written had he lived past 1937, it is perhaps more fruitful to start from Gramsci's approach to one of the central questions of Western philosophy, around which Adorno's work is oriented - the status of objective truth versus subjective thought. As explained in the previous chapter, Gramsci contends that the question of the 'real' or 'objective' existence of the external world as formulated by philosophers in his time is poorly framed and ultimately rests on the same religious principles it is attempting to overcome. From this perspective, Adorno's philosophical and aesthetic works can be read as critiques of how these questions are framed. Gramsci's hasty insight that the question is 'poorly framed' does not lead him to ask how or why it is poorly framed.83 In contrast, Adorno and Horkheimer provide detailed analyses of such inadequacies. They interrogate Western philosophy's questions and approaches, and they try to show the inherent dialectics of these approaches. The insight that the division between nature and history must be overcome does not itself provide a clue to how this must happen. Adorno turns to a critique of the Western philosophical tradition; Gramsci is convinced that the gap between intellectuals, who create and rely on this tradition, and the popular masses, who are affected by it, is the fundamental problem that must be considered. This is another way that Gramsci presents a vernacular materialism as opposed to a Latin one. Judging from his fascination with how changes in language are also changes within society, Gramsci is less interested in what he sees as the Latinesque dialectical movements of 'high' culture or traditional philosophy. For him, this dichotomy between the keepers, interpreters, and creators of world views and the majority of those who come to accept these world views is at the root of the false separation of theory and praxis. This opposition between theory and practice is reinforced by the idea that language, like theory, is separate from reality and represents reality. Gramsci's primary interest is in how this dichotomy allows regressive hegemonies to maintain power and repel alternative hegemonic forces. As Jameson comments, Adorno makes no 'recourse to those conceptions of praxis whereby a Gramsci or Sartre, in very different ways, sought to cut the Gor-

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

153

dian knot of the dualisms of idealism and materialism and to replace them with something else.'84 This lack of a theory of praxis is directly related to Adorno's use of 'mimesis' as a strategy for rethinking the dualism running throughout Western philosophy between subject and object, particular and general. 'Mimesis' is central to his analysis of the development of reason and subjectivity; not only that, but his own philosophical writings have a mimetic relationship to the object of their critique — that is, philosophy. This keeps Adorno within the realm of philosophy in his attempt to explicate his negative dialectical method. As we shall see, this notion of mimesis is at first a linguistic concept. Instead of embarking on such a rethinking, Gramsci looks to praxis in order to reorganize the languages and concomitant Weltanschauungen of 'common sense,' with the aim of creating a 'good sense' and a philosophy of praxis. To continue the metaphor, he does not neglect the effects of the Latinesque residue on common sense; He does, however, realize that these are now residues that can be reformed and altered as they enter the vernacular language or praxis. Thus for Gramsci the rearticulation of traditional philosophy's movement from subjectivity to objectivity involves a very different notion of language than Adorno and Horkheimer's. Language is always subjective, but because it is understandable and translatable to a wider sphere of others from different social groups, it becomes more and more objective without relinquishing its subjective 85 character. Language and Mimesis Inherent in the considerations of language in Dialectic of Enlightenment is the replication of the dichotomy between humans and nature — a dichotomy that the authors wish to overcome. Language as a vehicle for subjective pronouncement on the world is presumed to be at odds with the world on which it lays its dictates. The dialectic of enlightenment is mirrored linguistically by Horkheimer and Adorno.86 In itself, this parallel between some linguistic activity and instrumental reason might be appropriate. But by posing it as an all-encompassing analysis applied thoroughly to all language use, the authors further entrench the human/nature dichotomy of which they are suspicious. Language, according to Dialectic of Enlightenment, originates in poetry but is increasingly devalued, becoming more and more instrumental and less and less able to express anything of significance87. This concern about the demise and degradation of language has a long history dating at least back to Rousseau. We can use Adorno and Horkheimer's version as a contrast to highlight Gramsci's approach to languages as ways of viewing and acting in the world, whereby utterances are as much processes and actions as they

154

Gramsci's Politics of Language

are the context for labels of physical objects. With the similarity of their critiques of positivism and Enlightenment reason in mind, we can understand the importance of Gramsci's statement 'that "language" [linguaggio] is essentially a collective term which does not presuppose any single thing existing in time and space.,89Along with his discussions of various types of grammar and his interest in the changing meanings of words and phrases (see chapter 1) and his rejection of an objective, 'external' world (see chapter 3, pp. 129-32), we can see that he does not approach language as representation or as rooted in any mimetic process. This is pivotal for thoroughly breaking with the tradition of language as representation and for understanding it as the production, dissemination, and reception of meaning - that is, for seeing language as a type of labour. These characteristics place Gramsci within current semiotic understandings of language90. Although Gramsci never makes the specific argument, from his perspective one still might have a concern about language usage becoming mechanical and instrumental. For example, language may be used in situations where human interactions are constrained or repetitive or are required to follow defined sets of rigid procedures. Gramsci's critiques of Esperanto and Manzoni border on such concerns because these 'solutions' to la questione delta lingua would force the masses to speak 'artificial' and imposed languages. Their relationship to these languages would be 'instrumental' or 'mechanical,' whether the language itself was 'artificial' for everyone (like Esperanto) or only for some (like Florentine). That is, this lack of organic relation to the language would be a characteristic not of the language involved but rather of its social contexts. And in these contexts, people have a more difficult time using imposed languages to create meaning in their daily lives. Thus, such concerns are questions about the conditions under which it is possible to create meaning. In this way, seeing language as a type of labour does not reduce it to an instrument. On the contrary, seing language this way amounts to a rejection of such understandings. Making meaning in one's everyday life is a more immediate and practical, even vernacular, concern than philosophical abstractions about the relationship between words and some nonlinguistic reality or ontological truth - a relationship with which Horkheimer and Adorno are ultimately preoccupied. Moreover, from Gramsci's perspective, tendencies toward the instrumentalization of language would not be the result of autonomous laws inherent in language, but the result of human activity. They also would not be total or exceptionless. Horkheimer and Adorno do not conjecture that the instrumentalization of language is separate from its social context or the result of laws inherent in language outside of its human usage. On the contrary, they connect this process to capitalism and the dialectic of reason and domination. They do, however,

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

155

see it as all-pervasive, and as a transformation that is distancing language farther and farther from its origins in mimetic reflection between words and the reality that they represent. In Eclipse of Reason, Horkheimer describes a mimetic impulse that language 'releases.' He distinguishes these impulses from the use of language as a 'power instrument,' which fascism enacts. The former notion of language reflects 'the longings of the oppressed and the plight of nature,' and in this way it contains a 'mimetic impulse.91Mimesis is the key to a 'truth' that is the 'adequation ofF name and thing.' The mimetic connection between name and thing 'enables thought to withstand if not to overcome the demoralizing and mutilating effects of formalized reason.' In this way, the mimetic impulse in language can be used to help the 'recovery' of reason diseased by self-preservation: 'Philosophy helps man to allay his fears by helping language to fulfil its genuine mimetic function, its mission of mirroring the natural tendencies ... Philosophy is the conscious effort to knit all our knowledge and insight into a linguistic structure in which things are called by their right names93. Dialectic of Enlightenment presents a more complex, less optimistic, but fundamentally similar version of language in relation to reason. It remains within the limits of language conceived as names for things, as nomenclature. The authors argue that the referential theory of signs, as examined in detail by Volosinov, is the result of mythology: 'Through the deity, language is transformed from tautology to language.'95 This contradiction, they argue, is at the root of dialectical thinking that 'something is itself and at one and the same time other than itself, identical and not identical.' The original form of 'objectifying definition,' and the original separation between concept and thing, subject and object, is the root of the dialectic of enlightenment96The relationship between subject and objectC would occupy Adorno for the rest of his life. It is a central question in Negative Dialectics and in his 1969 essay, 'Subject and Object.'*9 Horkheimer and Adorno emphasize the extent to which language is originally pictorial and symbolic. Later, as science separates from poetry, sign and referent are further dissociated. They contend that science uses language as a system of signs that 'is required to resign itself to calculation in order to know nature.'98 In distinction to the language of science, the language of art and poetry is a system of images and is based on mirroring nature 'and must disregard the claim to know her.' When science is differentiated from poetry and art, knowledge is divorced from resemblance.99 The more traditional bemoaning of the instrumentalization of language is used by Adorno and Horkheimer to critique positivism. In one of the more powerful manoeuvres in their work, they entwine this critique of language with their analysis of the culture industry. They specifically illustrate how the fascists' use of the

156

Gramsci's Politics of Language

radio culminates in decrepit language, in science and in every other sphere of life.100 They argue that theey argue that the logic of Fascist propaganda and Holly ing of the early 1940s were similar outcroppings of monopoly capitalism. Two of their chapters, 'The Culture Industry' and 'Elements of Anti-Semitism,' are linked to the rest ofDialectic of Enlightenment through the dynamics of mimesis, which are significantly tied to language. Horkheimer and Adorno's excursus into Odysseus's journey shows both the miming of nature and the mastery of it as strategies for coping with the fear inspired by the threats of nature that are central to the formation of bourgeois subjectivity. But the authors presume that with the development of reason, these two functions are differentiated. These various strategies are divided into two categories - those of knowledge of nature (science), and those of mirroring it (art and poetry). And they extend this generalization beyond the specific practices of science and art to all language use in society. In their introduction they generalize this same devaluation of language and loss of its original power and wholeness: 'There is no longer any available form of linguistic expression which has not tended toward accommodation of dominant currents of thought.'101nguage has a central role, though not a causal one, in thehe inescapable process of Enlightenment turned bad: 'It is characteristic of the sickness that even the best-intentioned reformer who uses an impoverished and debased language to recommend renewal, by his adoption of the insidious mode of categorization and the bad philosophy it conceals, strengthens the very power of the established order he is trying to break.'102 This helps explain some of the peculiarities in the method of Dialectic of Enlightenment and Adorno's later writings: they do not follow traditional lines of philosophical or socially scientific argumentation; at times they even abandon basic grammatical rules. This goes hand in hand with their assessment of the successes of the 'totally administered society.'103 Gramsci would agree with such an assessment of the implications of debased language. The structures of hegemonic world views are what require the wide, pervasive measures of counter-hegemony - the entire restructuring of how the world is understood even at the micro and prosaic level. That is why he insists that even if a proletarian seizure of power were successful in western Europe, it would be short lived because the 'defenders [of the old system] are not demoralised, nor do they abandon their positions, even among the ruins, nor do they lose faith in their own strength or their own future.' 140ForGramsci,the seizureER of the power of the state and the economy must be accompanied by changes in the consciousness of the masses and in the institutions of civil society. Every war of manoeuvre must be prepared for by a war of position.105herwise the changege in power holders will not change the power relations and language that pervaded the old epoch.

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

157

Because languages contain, embody, and are constituted by world views, changes to the social relationships in the world must be accompanied by changes within language itself. Horkheimer and Adorno agree with this proposition while also asserting that all contemporary language is impoverished and debased. They have adopted the Benjaminian theme discussed in the previous chapter that all human language is fallen language. The only non-debased language is an original, true identity between word and thing, a proper relation between subject and object. This relation can be approached only through the idea of mimesis. Jameson proposes that the enigma of the term 'mimesis' in Adorno's work - 'a foundational concept never defined nor argued but always alluded to' - can be clarified if we relate it to contemporary terminology of 'narrative.' This suggestion adds to our discussion not so much for clarity's sake (Jameson does not define or argue what it means either) but because it suggests that mimesis for Adorno displaces metaphor.106Asinednchapter1, Gramsci's notion oS NOTION metaphor as the central function of all language is not a synchronic function of words standing in for things; rather, it functions historically. Words and collections of words are made up of previous meanings but also stand in relation to their new context. For Gramsci, all language is metaphorical with respect to the ideological content of words as used in the past.107 In this way, Gramsci foreshadows the semiotic notion that meaning is produced within the relationships among signs in language, not in any notion of language referring (adequately or not) to some non-linguistic realm through mimesis or any other process. This line of thought can be related to the previous chapter's discussion of Benjamin's notion of allegory in distinction to symbol, which he developed in the Trauerspiel study. For Benjamin, symbolic language relies on the relationship between essence and appearance; in contrast, baroque allegory relies on the passage of time, on the necessary separation between essence and appearance. In this sense, the allegorical is the distorted symbol.108 Or as Benjamin writes: Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.'091Thus, both Benjamin and Gramsci emphasize the importance of language's relationship to the past. Unlike strictly structuralist semiotics, history is of the utmost importance to meaning. This includes not only the victor's history — what Nietzsche would call monumental history — but also the histories of the subaltern classes, however obscured and fragmented they may be. Benjamin's preoccupations depart from Gramsci in that allegory's importance lies in its ability (an ability symbols don't have), to indicate the extent to which language has fallen, the world is in ruins. As we found in the previous chapter, Benjamin's linguistic framework depends on 'pure' language rooted in theological thematics about the philosophical problems of essence and appearance. Likewise, Jameson's suggestion that Adorno's mimesis is related to narrative

158

Gramsci's Politics of Language

opens a possible approach to thinking about mimesis historically. But Jameson does not explain how narrative or mimesis would be tied to the dialectics of subject and object. That is, he seems to correctly read Adorno as not overcoming the basic view of language as nomenclature. The positive potentials of language are rooted in what Benjamin calls 'non-sensuous similarity,' or some non-selfpreservation directed relationship of apprehension and communication. Horkheimer hinted at just this potential. Linguistic Potentials in Horkheimer Although he did not develop the theme in his published writings, Horkheimer was quite interested in the potential of rooting reason in language for Critical Theory. This, of course, is precisely the route taken by Habermas. Besides the dynamic of language's expressive potentials being subsumed by its increasing instrumentalization, Horkheimer postulates that language itself inherently favours an ethics of cooperation and sincerity. He suspects that this aspect contains a potential corrective for instrumental reason. In a letter to Adorno, Horkheimer makes the point that in seventeenth-century France, raison was synonymous with ttiscours, and that the latter was in fact used more often. Moving this insight in a different direction than Michel Foucault,110rkheimer sees aES way to ground reason in language. On 14 September 1941, Horkheimer wrote to Adorno: Language intends, quite independendy of the psychological intention of the speaker, the universality that has been ascribed to reason alone. Interpreting this universality necessarily leads to the idea of a correct society. When it serves the status quo, language must therefore find that it consistently contradicts itself, and this is evident from individual linguistic structures themselves. I should like to hear your reaction to this idea, although I have only hinted at it rather formally and vaguely here. Because in this form I don't really trust it myself.111

This universality inherent in language, Horkheimer argues, is based on the idea that lying and using language for unethical reasons is somehow inimical to language itself: To speak to someone basically means recognizing him as a possible member of the future association of free human beings. Speech establishes a shared relation towards truth, and is therefore the innermost affirmation of another existence, indeed of all forms of existence, according to their capacities. When speech denies any possibilities, it necessarily contradicts itself. The speech of the concentration camp guard is

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

159

actually a terrible illogicality, no matter what its content is; unless, of course, it condemns the speaker's own duties112.

In this way, Horkheimer articulated the premises on which Habermas would build his theory of communicative action as an ethics based on some assumed inherent nature of speech. He was also offering a theory of language reminiscent of how some interpret Bakhtin (see pp. 74-8). But he was not convinced enough to bring these ideas into his published writings. As Wiggerhaus points out, he realized that this ideal was of bourgeois origins: 'There was no concealing the fact that it was derived from Kant, and it could not offer any guidance.' That is, as Wiggerhaus correctly notes, basing an antidote to the domination inherent in reason on language is too idealistic.113 Adorno's reaction to Horkheimer's notion of a critique of language was very positive: 'I totally agree with the thesis about the antagonistic nature of every language that has yet existed ... If humanity is still not yet mature [mundig], then it means that, in the most literal sense, it has not yet been able to speak ... In fact I am so convinced by it that I can hardly understand your hesitation. It should not be called critique of language, but something like "language and truth" or "reason and language."'114 Here Adorno is ignoring Horkheimer's emphasis - which Habermas will expand on - that in contemporary language use there is a basis for 'universal reason' that could guide a free association of humans. Instead, taking up the more Benjaminian themes, he highlights the possibility of true speech in 'mature' language that has never been approached by actual, degraded, and fallen language. According to him, we have not yet spoken such a language, and its possibility lies only in a Utopian future moment. As with Benjamin, current language use is only an indication of this Utopian vision of language. But instead of following this perspective, Adorno looked not to language but rather to aesthetic theory for mimetic relations. Horkheimer never developed these reflections. Nor did he publish on the topic. Thus, Adorno and Horkheimer in their individual and collective work describe the regressive dialectical movement of reason as understood by traditional philosophy. They also illustrate how these concepts affected society at large by, playing into the dynamics of the rise of fascism and the logic of the capitalist culture industry. Much of their analysis - including the role of language within the concept of reason — shows how this dialectic of reason is driven by a historically changing conception of nature. 'Nature' is defined as that which reason needs to control. Thus, 'natural' non-human objects, human psychological 'nature,' and social 'nature' are all, at different times and to different degrees, considered in opposition to reason. They are all objects to be manipulated by reason.

160

Gramsci's Politics of Language

They do not, however, postulate a critical theory free from a dichotomy between nature and humanity. Instead, they preserve that dichotomy by ignoring intellectual activity and reaction outside of the bourgeois intelligentsia. They have no grounds for a theory that is capable of transcending the nature/history dichotomy precisely because - as Horkheimer generalized in a letter to Leo Lowenthal - 'enlightenment here [in Dialectic of Enlightenment] is identical with bourgeois thought, nay thought in general, since there is no other thought properly speaking than in the cities.'115 This brash summary in a letter not meant for publication should perhaps be taken with caution, but it describes the more general approach that is implicit in the published works of Adorno and Horkheimer. It shows the extent to which they focus on how ideas operate as they move from bourgeois intellectuals to the rest of society. They take into account the economic structures of society in which these bourgeois theories are created. But they fail to appreciate the complexities and inconsistencies of this movement, the various non-bourgeois ways of understanding reason, and how the sediments of past world views interact with the dominant conception of the world offered by traditional intellectuals. That is, they do not see the importance of the chaotic interaction among vernacular world views as they relate to Latinesque philosophy and social science. This tendency does not belong solely to Adorno, nor was it foisted by him on Horkheimer. Rather, as we have seen, it is evident in Horkheimer's early works — for example, in his reading of Machiavelli. On this account, Adorno and Horkheimer fall into a theory of ideas not unlike Croce's approach, which was criticized by Gramsci.1116For Croce, 'the "common sense" of the "man of common sense" is the heritage left by the philosophies preceding him,' and in this way philosophy passes into 'common sense.'117ramscCIi reinterprets the way in which this relationship between philosophy and common sense means that 'everyone is a philosopher.'118 Reversing the direction of movement, Gramsci emphasizes that common sense is a confusing, incoherent and contradictory collection of ideas from different world views sedimented from various times in history. Gramsci advocates a philosophy — the organic intellectuals' philosophy of praxis - that organizes the disparate elements of common sense into good sense. From (i.e., not against) the melange of ideas and beliefs of nonintellectuals, Gramsci wants to create good sense and then the philosophy of praxis119.his is what I call vernacular philosophyY. On a related note, Croce contends that to be effective in replacing religion, philosophy must provide for the same needs as religion120This is one of the touchstones for Gramsci's analysis of religion121.But, Gramsci argues, because Croce and Italian Idealism have not attempted to develop philosophy in connection with

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

161

the 'simple,' the popular masses, they cannot succeed in forming a world view capable of replacing Catholicism.122Thus, Gramsci accuses Croce of only paying heed to the one-way relationship between philosophers' thoughts and society at large. Adorno and Horkheimer succumb to these Crocean tendencies. Mirroring the linguistic dynamics examined in chapter 1, Gramsci emphasizes the opposite movement (or resistence and adaptation) of ideas in what could be described as a 'trickle up' theory of ideas. That is, in order to play a role in changing the world, philosophy must begin from the problems presented in society at large. It must ground itself in common sense even if it is critical of common sense. As evident in his examination of the dynamics of spontaneous and normative grammar, at the level of social and cultural analysis, the imposition of normative grammar (or the world view created by traditional intellectuals) must be met with a clear understanding of the effects of spontaneous grammars on that imposition. Gramsci argues that normative grammar should not simply be imposed; rather, it should itself be constituted by an interaction of spontaneous grammars. Applying this metaphor, he contends that organic intellectuals are progressive not because they ignore traditional theory, but because they start from common sense - including the traditional philosophies historically embedded in it - and from extant spontaneous grammars, and then use those grammars as the material for creating a normative grammar, or for creating the intellectual apparatus to make sense of the world. Gramsci's critique of Croce applies also to Adorno and Horkheimer's approach to 'thought in general,' which for them means bourgeois thought developed by Enlightenment philosophers. Gramsci states: An introduction to the study of philosophy must expound in synthetic form the problems that have grown up in the process of the development of culture as a whole and which are only partially reflected in the history of philosophy.'1 3 Adorno and Horkheimer concur with the first clause here but fail to understand that the history of philosophy only partly reflects what problems philosophy must address. By neglecting the types of thought — one might say the vernacular - that are not reflected in traditional philosophy, Horkheimer and Adorno obliterate historically grounded places from which to challenge the dynamics of bourgeois reason. They also neglect the ruptures and inconsistencies that face traditional theory in social and cultural spaces outside of academic requirements of consistency. This is why they never adequately conceive of praxis. Their analyses locate the contradictions within bourgeois rationality. They then examine how this logic is administered ideologically in the realm of politics and culture. But in effect, they reinforce its dynamic by refusing to see where its administration is incomplete, troubled, and inconsistent.

162

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Habermas's Linguistic Return Habermas has a very different conception of language than Adorno and Horkheimer. While his theory of communicative action begins from the idea noted by Horkheimer that critical theory could connect reason and language, his development of a theory of language and communication distinguishes his critical theory from theirs. The remainder of this chapter highlights the distinct and materialist nature of Gramsci's approach to language, by examining Habermas's reorientation of the relationship between language and reason. Gramsci agrees with Habermas about the need to thoroughly overcome the subject/object problematic in the philosophy of language found in Benjamin, Adorno, and Horkheimer, but he does not hold language out as providing a possible space of'noncoerced coercion' or deliberative, consensual freedom. The heart of Gramsci's political theory- the dialectical relationship between coercion and consent - is precisely what is missing from Habermas's theory of society. This is why feminist commentators and others have been quick to criticize Habermas - he has failed to theorize relations of power.124 Habermas looks toward a wide variety of philosophies of language in order to move beyond what he finds to be an impasse in the critical theory of Adorno and Horkheimer. His approach to language is influenced by Wilhelm Dilthey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Peirce, John Austin, John Searle, and Noam Chomsky125.He uses and augments these philosophies of language in order to rescue a version of Kantian ethics - a connection made by Horkheimer, as noted earlier. This is Habermas's major reason for describing the Enlightenment as an 'unfinished project.'162 Habermas's theory of communicative action has its roots in his response to Adorno's engagement with Karl Popper in the 'positivist dispute,' and also in Horkheimer's earlier debates with the Vienna Circle127Habermas agrees withH Adorno's rejection of Popper's critical rationalism, which strives for a value-free epistemology not directly related to the social conditions of those involved in the production of knowledge.128 In this respect, Habermas, Adorno, and Horkheimer share Gramsci's critique of positivism, as well as all notions that knowledge can be considered 'true' based on its relation to some objective world external to humanity (see chapter 3). But influenced by Charles Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, Habermas derives a notion of scientific validity based on uncompelled consensus129 He contends that had Peirce taken his propositions to their proper conclusions130,he would have come to a concept of self-reflection and intersubjectivity that is the framework for the idea of communicative action: 'The communication of investigators [scientists] requires the use of language that is not confined to the

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

163

limits of technical control over objectified natural processes. It arises from symbolic interaction between societal subjects who reciprocally know and recognize each other as unmistakable individuals. This communicative action is a system of reference that cannot be reduced to the framework of instrumental action.'1^1 Thus, precisely where Adorno and Horkheimer see an instrumentalization of lan guage, Habermas sees communicative action: in scientists' use of language. Habermas contends that this concept of communicative action - distinct from and irreducible to instrumental action — is missing in Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of enlightened reason132Marx's critique of capitalism133and Weber'sRS action theory of rationalization in modern societies.134 For Habermas, the possibility of communicative action aimed at reaching an understanding is the possibility of freedom and democratically reasoned decision making. Habermas attempts to find in structures of language and in the presumptions of linguistic, consensually-based interaction the foundation for uncoerced decision making by a large number of individuals within the public sphere. He finds that Adorno, Horkheimer, and others (most notably Weber) might be partly correct about the dangers of instrumental reason and about the increasingly strategic and non-ethical, non-consensual, or non-deliberatively democratic bases for decision making in the modern world. But he insists that this represents a condemnation not of the Enlightenment Project as a whole but rather of its one-sided, unbalanced development. According to Habermas, this one-sided development can be best fought through a continuation of the Enlightenment Project that confines strategic and instrumental action to their proper places. This, he argues, allows a greater role for what he investigates as communicative rationality135. Gramsci, Bakhtin, and Volosinov emphasize language as a site of political struggle and conflict; in contrast, Habermas contends that the 'original mode' of language use is directed toward two or more speakers reaching an understanding, and that this is the basis of communicative action.136 He distinguishes reaching an understanding from ideological action and language use that aims at achieving specific ends. The attitude of reaching an understanding rests on three universal validity claims that must be a part of every communicative act: the speech act must be true in that it corresponds to the existing state of affairs; it must be appropriate to the context; and it must be sincere.137 Each of these aspects truth, appropriateness, and sincerity - relates to one of the three 'worlds' (objective, subjective, and social), for which, according to Habermas, any theory of society must account. In this way, Habermas attempts to define a type of reason, communicative reason, that guides a category of action separate from the exercise of illegitimate power, violence, or coercion: 'We have distinguished genuine imperatives, with which the speaker connects a claim to power, from speech acts with which the

164

Gramsci's Politics of Language

speaker raises a criticisable validity claim.'138 He claims to have conceptualized reason as containing distinguishable types, some of which are not susceptible to Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of instrumental reason. As evident from the previous discussion of Adorno and Horkheimer's position on language, it is misleading to see Habermas's critical theory as a turn toward language. This picture obscures the extent to which a particular theory of language is central to Adorno and Horkheimer. Moreover, it closes down a wide variety of other theories of language that Habermas does not incorporate into his project, such as the type of historical linguistics in which Gramsci was schooled. To understand Habermas's communicative action based critical theory as a turn toward language is to preemptively dismiss the possibility of a materialist linguistics that is not at odds with Marx's philosophy. Gramsci's approach is congruent with Habermas's criticisms of Adorno and Horkheimer for rooting language in the relation of word and thing, or the philosophical abstraction of concept and reality. But as we have seen, Gramsci's linguistics had no recourse to Anglo-analytic language philosophy or to efforts to resurrect Kantian ethics through communication; rather, his linguistics developed from socio-historical investigations into language usage from the perspective of turn-of-the-century European historical linguistics. Language is not a source of hope for Gramsci, nor is it a vehicle for rescue. Habermas first detects communicative action in the conversations of scientists whom Gramsci would call traditional intellectuals; Gramsci focuses on the language use of a wide variety of social groups, and he specifically directs his attention to language use among different social groups. As shown in chapter 1, for Gramsci the structures of language, far from offering 'universal' validity claims, signify what Barthes calls 'global significations.' That is, different normative grammars make different validity claims, and thus none of these claims are 'universal' in any true sense of the word. This awareness is precisely what enables Gramsci to approach language from a more materialist position and with a greater sense of linguistic activity as it actually occurs in history. Habermas's commentary on Adorno and Horkheimer is a specific application of his more general criticism of the inadequacy of Marxist categories for accounting for intersubjective communicative action. One of Habermas's guiding motifs is the distinction between work, labour, or instrumental activity and self-reflection, consciousness, or human interaction: If Marx had not thrown together interaction and work under the label of social practice [Praxis], and had he instead related the materialist concept of synthesis likewise to the accomplishments of instrumental action and the nexuses of communicative

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

165

action, then the idea of a science of man would not have been obscured by identification with natural science. It would have taken up Hegel's critique of the subjectivism of Kant's epistemology and surpassed it materially. It would have made clear that ultimately a radical critique of knowledge can be carried out only in the form of a reconstruction of the history of the species, and that conversely social theory, from the viewpoint of the self-constitution of the species in the medium of social labour and class struggle, is possible only as the self-reflection of the knowing subject.139

Gramsci extends precisely this aspect of Marx. He 'throws' social interaction including language use and meaning production — together with work. From Gramsci's perspective, to do otherwise would be to fall into some form of idealism, where human interaction and language are distinct from Marx's notion of human labour as human interaction with the social and physical world. Habermas, on the contrary, sees in Hegel's early Jena lectures a notion of language from which to critique Kant's subjectivism and yet retain Kant's rejection of objectivism.140 It is worth noting that Gramsci is also critical of Marx's attempt to replicate the natural sciences - especially biology — in the social sciences.14But this doesS not lead him to see Marx's concept of labour as so limited. If anything, Gramsci uses similar insights to expand Marx's 'labour' and incorporate into it precisely the type of activity that Habermas distinguishes from labour - that is, communicative action (e.g., his discussions of education and the physical labour involved in spending hours at a desk studying)142. Thus, Gramsci and Habermas reflect on the topic of language for very different reasons and from different perspectives. Habermas turns toward a specific philosophy of language to break out of the aporias of the Marxism of Adorno and Horkheimer and to augment Marxism by synthesizing it with a variety of social theories and philosophies. Habermas's concerns arise from philosophical and academic debates141; Gramsci's approach derives from the historical importance of language both in his own life and in the history of Italian society. As a Sardinian student in Turin, he came to linguistics to help explain his world. Similarly, he turned to Marxism for help in analysing Italian bourgeois society. Habermas consistently begins with the notion that language and communication are distorted and impure in actual practice but implicitly rely on truth, appropriateness, and sincerity. Much of his social analysis, from his earliest writings to his most recent, is directed at explaining distortions and blocks in otherwise free, rational, and expressive communication. For him, ideology is also the result of distorted communication. Adorno and Benjamin talk about a Utopian 'pure' or 'free' language, one that has never existed in human history; in contrast,

166

Gramsci's Politics of Language

for Habermas this potential is embedded in the structures of everyday language.144 But it is difficult to empirically detect this undistorted, free, noncoerced, and rational speech. When we examine Habermas's reaction against Horkheimer and Adorno's dialectic of 'enlightened' reason, we will see where his and Gramsci's positions coincide in rejecting Horkheimer and Adorno's published approach to language and its relationship to reason. But where Habermas works toward reconstructing a linguistically based sphere of ethical action that can be separated from technical knowledge production and aesthetic appreciation145,Gramsci retains - in the form of his conception of traditional intellectuals - Adorno and Horkheimer's more devastating critique of traditional reason, not for itself but for how it is practised. He accepts their argument that bourgeois reason cannot be divorced from self-preservation against threats of nature, be it the nature of the external world, or the human nature of social behaviour or individual psychology. Habermas's Rejection of Mimesis Although Habermas did not write about Adorno and Horkheimer's notion of 'mimesis' until the 1980s, it then becomes the centre of his critique of Dialectic of Enlightenment.1^ This later critique views most of the work that Adorno is known for as fundamentally mistaken. Not only is Dialectic of Enlightenment 'odd,' it 'does not direct our thought to the path that is nearest at hand, a path which leads through the inner logics of the different complexes of rationality and through processes of societal rationalization divided up according to universal aspects of validity, and which suggests a unity of rationality beneath the husk of an everyday practice that has been simultaneously rationalized and reified.47Offf course, this other path is Habermas's own - a path that rejects much of the analysis of reason and myth examined earlier. Habermas argues that in locating rationalization much earlier in history than Lukacs or Weber, Adorno and Horkheimer expand the concept of instrumental reason to include all reason from its primordial beginnings. Emancipation must be connected to a reconciliation with nature, since that is what signifies the break with humanity. Habermas claims that for Adorno and Horkheimer, this reconciliation must rely on some form of'truth' and 'reason' which they cannot articulate clearly. He contends that their critique of reason is directed not solely at instrumental reason, but rather at a reason before reason, at some opaque notion of primordial reason. And this 'placeholder' is the capacity of 'mimesis': As a placeholder for this primordial reason that was diverted from the intention of truth, Horkheimer and Adorno nominate a capacity, mimesis, about which they can speak only as they would about a piece of uncomprehended nature.'148

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

167

Habermas bases his criticism on the inability of Horkheimer and Adorno to find a theory of mimesis.149 The dead end Habermas finds is that 'the critique of instrumental reason, which remains bound to the conditions of the philosophy of the subject, denounces as a defect something that it cannot explain in its defectiveness because it lacks the conceptual framework sufficiently to capture the integrity of what is destroyed through instrumental reason. To be sure, Horkheimer and Adorno do have a name for it: mimesis.' Habermas opposes this 'untheorized mimesis' with the claim that his own theory is able to 'capture' what instrumental reason destroys in Adorno's work. He claims that mimesis (or its rational core) can be 'laid open if we give up the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness - namely, a subject that represents objects and toils with them - in favour of the paradigm of linguistic philosophy — namely, that of intersubjective understanding or communication — and puts the cognitive-instrumental aspect of reason in its proper place as part of a move encompassing communicative rationality.150' Habermas is critical of Horkheimer and Adorno not only because they detach reification from the model of exchange — relations between subject and subject — but also more importantly, because they 'reduce' internal nature, external nature, and intersubjective nature to nature: 'Horkheimer and Adorno do not understand "the mastery of nature" as a metaphor; they reduce the control of external nature, the command over human beings and the repression of one's own internal nature to a common denominator, under the name of "domination.151" Thus, we find a tripartite division of 'nature' into internal, social, and external nature. It is crucial to note how these divisions make Habermas's entire project possible. They are the bases of his concept of language oriented toward reaching an understanding that must be sincere (in relation to internal nature), appropriate (in relation to social nature), and true (in relation to external nature). With these divisions, Habermas conquers that which Adorno defines as 'nature.' External nature is conquered through work because 'we cannot refuse the exploitation of nature that is necessary for survival.152Intersubjective domination is resolved for Habermas through recourse to 'natural languages' in which there are inherent universal qualities of reciprocity and sincerity that can overcome domination. Similarly, modernity in the form of rationalization of communication allows its members autonomy and responsibility, which are also presupposed in language153. In this way, Habermas uses language to synthesize critical theory with Angloanalytic language philosophy. But all of this is also the lynchpin of his rewriting of Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectic of nature and reason. Like Gramsci, he wants to outflank rather than transcend the dichotomy in traditional theory between subject and object that has preoccupied philosophers since Kant and

168

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Hegel if not Plato. Horkheimer and Adorno isolate the dynamics of this dichotomy but fail to overcome it. Instead, they delve deeper into the various ways that Western philosophy replicates it and the realms in which its problematics invade society and culture. Gramsci might be faulted for being overly dismissive of this issue as a misleading, academic inquiry; in contrast, Habermas retains the Frankfurt School's focus on philosophy and epistemology as expressed by different traditions in universities in Europe and the United States. But from this position he sees language abstractly. Horkheimer was wary about in his own unpublished speculations regarding the positive possibilities of language; Habermas for his part, replicates - in a new medium - the problems that critical theory had already found in Kantian claims to universality. But Habermas implicitly disguises these problems in the concept of 'communicative competence' and evaluations of sincerity and appropriateness. He admits that these Validity claims' are 'idealized' and that in actual speech situations they can never be met. And while he clearly rejects postulating a potential future language or time when these conditions will be met, he ultimately falls into non-materialist, non-empirically based notions of a 'pure' language that are similar in some respects to Benjamin's. Habermas concludes one of his critiques of Adorno and Horkheimer by stating that participants in discourse must assume that in the inescapable pragmatic presuppositions of rational discourse only the non-coercive coercion of the better argument gets a chance. But they know, or at least they are able to know, that even that presupposition of an ideal speech situation is only necessary because convictions are formed and contested in a medium which is not 'pure' nor removed from the world of appearance in the manner of platonic ideals. Only a discourse which admits this everlasting impurity can perhaps escape the myth, thus freeing itself, as it were from the entwinement of myth and Enlightenment154.

But this admission of impurity, of distortion from the ideals inherent in all communication oriented toward reaching an understanding, is based precisely on the notion of a 'pure' language in which power differences and relationships do not exist. According to Habermas, the coercion of the better argument is not coercion since participants are compelled to agree not because of power differentials but rather because as equals they have no choice but to recognize the better argument. It is difficult to see how this is any less 'mythic' than Adorno and Horkheimer's conception of mimesis. Both are attempts to overcome the subject/object relationship postulated by Western philosophy that finds itself rooted in language. Both postulate some ideal outside of history and real social relationships involving participants who have different attributes that lead to power differen-

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

169

tials. And both equally neglect the problem of diffusing such a basis of ethical behaviour throughout society. If Habermas were able to convince large groups of people not only to agree with his theory but to act on it, it would be capable of transforming society in the way that he desires. But the question of whether this convincing process will succeed cannot be decided by recourse to whether Habermas is correct or incorrect about the structure of language. Rather, if it is to succeed it will be precisely because of that aspect of social theory which he neglects - the gap between intellectual production and the mass of society. Gramsci makes this same criticism of Bukharin's Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. Gramsci castigates Bukharin for beginning his work not from 'common sense' but from abstract principles unknown to its intended popular audience.155 Moreover, Habermas has difficulty addressing non-traditional intellectuals because his theory of language makes it difficult to perceive the power differentials inherent in everyday discourse. Unlike Habermas, Gramsci sees the inextricable role of ideology (in the nonpejorative sense) in the process of creating norms of conduct and changing people's actions, including their speech. As presented in the previous chapter, Gramsci's appreciation of the value of religion is that it can be seen (in the secular sense) as the 'unity of faith between a conception of the world and a corresponding norm of conduct.156Because Habermas ignores this, he cannot hope to enlighten masses of non-philosophers about the universal and ethical validity claims of human speech. In other words, where Habermas sees the better argument as 'noncoerced coercion,' Gramsci recognizes it precisely as a type of'coercion': 'Coercion is such only for those who reject it, not for those who accept it. ... One can say of coercion what the religious say of predestination: for the 'willing' it is not predestination but free will.157'Gramsci is not simply equating coercion with consent or reducing all consent to coercion. Rather, he is repeating the same dynamics he laid out in great detail with his linguistic distinctions between normative and spontaneous grammar. As examined in chapter 1, he is concerned about the role of coercion and the historical effects of past coercion in the continued creation and re-creation of consent. For Gramsci, linguistics is what enables us to question how it is that people come to evaluate one argument as better than another. As I showed in chapter 1, such an investigation into how we evaluate the better argument has as much to do with what Barthes calls the global signification of the entire language structure - or what Gramsci calls normative grammar - as it does with the precise content of linguistic propositions and whether they are truthful, appropriate, or sincere. Ironically, Habermas's detailed concern with the grounds on which, and criteria by which, the better argument can be judged occludes the not necessarily

170

Gramsci's Politics of Language

rational and certainly not 'universal' politics of faith, common sense, and world views within that formulation. He is interested in distinguishing what is technical, aesthetic, moral, or political. And he presents a highly sophisticated theory of how these realms are interrelated but distinguishable. However, Gramsci's perspective shows that projects such as the theory of communicative action, which create these criteria, are themselves in the realm of the work of traditional intellectuals. Even if Habermas were to succeed at distilling a framework of minimal ethics required for communication, he never tackles how or why most people would come to accept his framework. Habermas's argument that by speaking in the first place we all must implicitly accept these universal validity claims seems to have little effect every time we hear someone lie or utter verbal abuse. Because Gramsci focuses on the practice of organic intellectuals and on how all of society comes to accept various and conflicting criteria for evaluating the better argument, he sees in language not potentials for universality and the resurrection of Kantian ethics, but the chaotic melange of the contradictions of modern capitalist society. Conclusion It is one thing to object to how other social theorists and traditions of thought have formulated a concept as significant as 'reason.' Along with this, one can point out that Gramsci provides a framework, conceptual tools, and examples of social analysis that do not rest on any dubiously conceived notion of reason. But these points tell us what Gramsci avoids, they do not provide substantive insight into his perspective. By looking at the changing role of language within the Frankfurt School's approaches to reason, this chapter has illustrated precisely what is at stake in not presupposing that language is separate from 'reality' and has some privileged status (as it does for Habermas), or that it is thoroughly condemned as implicated in fully administered modern society (as Adorno and Horkheimer contend). Even Adorno and Habermas, both of whom understand the relationship between human history and nature dialectically, adopt idealist tendencies when considering language. Adorno's idealism takes the form of assuming that all language use is entwined in the subject/object tension of Western philosophy. Habermas moves beyond this notion, yet he too resorts to idealist contentions about the 'universal' structure of language use. Without seeing how this happens, it is more difficult to understand the power of Gramsci's perspective. We must not forget how Gramsci uses Croce's Idealist linguistics to show the abstractions of positivism, but neither must we forget that he is consistently aware of the need to provide an equally trenchant (if not more so) critique of linguistic idealism. As

The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci

171

discussed in chapter 2, the notion that language is a type of labour does not mean it is purely an instrumental medium of intentions or ideas. In the opening quotation to this chapter, Gramsci promises a method that does not look toward the intrinsic nature of activities themselves to ascertain whether they are intellectual. Instead, he turns to the ensemble of relations within which these activities take place. Gramsci comes to similar conclusions as the Frankfurt School - that is, a critical approach to social analysis must diagnose and critique the problems of traditional theory. Moreover, in his theory of language he shares with Habermas an intersubjective approach that overcomes the philosophical focus on subject/object relations inherent in the notion that language is a collection of words representing objects. But in contrast to Gramsci, Habermas uses this perspective (or tries to) to reject Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of 'traditional theory' and Enlightenment reason. Gramsci uses intersubjectivity to develop what I call the vernacular approach. Gramsci accepts some of the fundamental points of Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectic of Enlightenment reason, but he rejects the idea that it is all-pervasive and that modern society is 'totally administered.' Such a diagnosis amounts to neglecting key elements within popular culture not as exhibited by the culture industry, but instead as evident in the cultural perspectives and products of various subordinated social groups. Gramsci's linguistically influenced social analysis is much better at theorizing these spaces of possible resistance and counter-hegemony than any Frankfurt School social analysis. This is clearly one reason why Gramsci has been so important to British cultural studies and other politically engaged analyses.

Conclusion

While theoretical inquiries into language can become quite complex and abstract, Gramsci reminds us of that for which we should need no reminder: language is part of our everyday lives, our daily frustrations, and collective achievements. The spectre of globalization and reconfigurations of capitalism especially in cultural fields and electronic technologies have raised new language questions. David Crystal illustrates how since 1950, English has become a truly 'global' language, but not because it has the most speakers (which it well may have, depending on how one defines 'speakers'), and not because it is the largest mother-tongue language in the world (since it is not). Rather, Crystal argues that a language becomes 'global' because of 'who those speakers are' who speak it.2 Though he admits a confluence of English with colonialism, imperialism, and military power, Crystal applauds the advent of global English as a benefit to the world. Moreover, he contends that the increasing dominance of English is more or less inevitable. Gramsci rejects this latter idea that language change is beyond human control. He also gives us the tools to go beyond simplistic options of accepting or rejecting 'global English.' His writings on language compel us to ask: How is the spread of English being achieved? Does it offer greater possibilities for active participation of people in the decisions that affect their lives? Or does it signal and support further separation of elites from everyone else - tendencies that can spell disaster for any hope of democracy? These questions are not limited to issues of 'global English'; they extend to the many sites of language politics, from the 'English only' movement in the United States, to separatisms as diverse as Quebecois, Basque, or Tamil. Throughout this work I have highlighted how Gramsci's theory of language provides the touchstone for a vernacular materialism that does not shy away from the links between language and politics. Noam Chomsky explicitly separates the two, and several Marxist positions neglect the former, and some poststructural-

Conclusion

173

ists tend to obscure the latter5; in contrast, Gramsci constantly utilizes the relationship between language and politics to benefit our understandings of both.6 Gramsci scholars persistently find his writing relevant to contemporary cultural and political circumstances, yet, language - a central topic in current social and political theory - has not often been associated with Gramsci's writings. Gramsci's vernacular materialism is at once a Marxist theory of language and a materialist approach to politics. It does not neglect language, nor does it posit language as secondary or independent; instead, it understands language as a central human practical activity. Gramsci's 'philosophy of praxis' is indeed a 'living philology' that addresses many issues that have become central to the development of social and political theory since his death. The pervasive influence of structuralism based on Saussurean linguistics across many disciplines brought with it debates around authorship and the 'Death of the Author,'7 an emphasis on subjectivity, and an insistence that the creation and maintenance of language must be addressed, as well as various controversies around agency and the role of social theory in obfuscating the possibilities of political action. Whether through the work of Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Derrida, to name a few, the question of language as a structure or an impossible structure defined much of social theory in the latter part of the last century. Much earlier, Gramsci had addressed many of these issues, albeit couching them in different terminology and contextualizing them within different concerns. As a response to the same conditions from which Saussure launched synchronic semiology, he developed the dialectically related concepts of 'normative grammar' and 'spontaneous grammar.' As I have explored throughout this work, many of his central concerns revolve around agency and the conditions under which individuals and collectivities — especially subaltern groups - can hope to change their conditions of existence, including their linguistic realities. For Gramsci, the production of meaning and language in the context of past linguistic pressures and understandings cannot be separated from any project of social change. The tasks of directly engaging Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida from a Gramscian perspective would be difficult if not futile without first undertaking an exposition of Gramsci's theory of language as carried out here. I chose Marxist interlocutors precisely in order to tease out, distil, and explicate Gramsci's position as encountered in his fragmentary and unfinished writings. This method is not meant to overcome the disadvantages of the fact that Gramsci produced his notebooks under harsh conditions and was never able to prepare them systematically for publication. Joseph Buttigieg has noted that most commentators and editors take the fragmentary nature of the Prison Notebooks 'to be an unfortunate obstacle that stands in the way of understanding what Gramsci meant to say or would have

174

Gramsci's Politics of Language

said if only he had the time and the means to produce a "normal" book or series of books.' Buttigieg contends that Gramsci repudiated such attempts to reconstruct definitive and static theories out of fragments. He then shows how Gramsci's own 'philological' method concentrates on minute details involved in the process of research.8 This approach shares similarities with my argument in chapter 3 that Gramsci and Benjamin do not see linguistic diversity as an obstacle to be surmounted. Moreover, my comparative methods have taken advantage of questions raised by the fragmentary character of Gramsci's writings and of the discrepancies between his positions and those of other Marxists concerned with language. I hope that this has not been an exploitation of the indeterminacy of his writings, mutating them into positions that Gramsci would reject. I have tried to use Gramsci's approach to think through issues around language that have their roots in the early part of the twentieth century and that have been significantly transformed and taken on new meanings in the intervening time and space. The writings of Volosinov, Medvedev, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas have proved invaluable for drawing from Gramsci a position that makes greater sense of his own political theory of hegemony as well as for relating his work to broader trends in social and political theory. These theorists have influenced much contemporary investigation into language, authorship, subjectivity and ideology. They have also provided contrasts from which to show Gramsci's unique position and his thorough insistence that language be understood as a human institution historically created through praxis without recourse to metaphysical and ahistorical presuppositions. Through Gramsci, I have insisted that linguistic praxis can only be separated (for purposes of devaluation or supervaluation) from all other social activity at the cost of further entrenching phantasmic abstraction. As in Marx's analysis of value relations within human economic systems, for Gramsci linguistic values and meanings are human creations that always exist within history. They are subject to human collective and individual manipulation within the parameters set by past human action. Thus, language is not a non-productive realm of communication or merely the transmission of information. On the contrary, language is continually involved in human production and is also a product of human activity itself. From this perspective, we can realize that the 'information age' or 'technological revolution' is not predetermined by laws beyond our control. Language products - whether Hollywood movies or computer programs - are constituted by language, and this requires that Marxism and all progressive social movements comprehend the importance of language to politics. As human institutions, language and linguistic behaviour have also served as metaphors for political action and reaction; here, we must not forget that these other actions and reactions always involve language in some manner.

Conclusion

175

When Tullio De Mauro introduced Lo Piparo's Lingua intellettuali egemonia in Gramsci in 1979, he predicted that its thesis - that Gramsci was strongly influenced by his studies in linguistics - would have a profound impact on Gramscian literature. Since then, Lo Piparo's book has been footnoted abundantly as the important study on Gramsci and language. But this does not constitute what I would call the 'rethinking' and 'reopening' of 'Gramsci's inheritance,' as De Mauro prophesied. Instead, Lo Piparo's work has been acknowledged as an important piece of research on one discreet area of Gramsci's interest. It is importance has not been sufficiently recognized either in Gramscian scholarship or in social and political theory more broadly. To some extent, this is a problem of translation - both literally and as I developed the term in chapter 3. Lo Piparo's book and his subsequent summary article have not been translated from Italian into English, nor has his argument been widely discussed or summarized in English.10 However, this lack of rethinking and reopening is almost as present in the Italian literature on Gramsci. There is also a problem of disciplinary languages. Lo Piparo is a linguist and historian of language, and his concerns are framed accordingly. Thus, while his work has corrected the record concerning the role of linguistics in Gramsci's intellectual trajectory, it has not been used to rethink, clarify, or alter interpretations of Gramsci's political and cultural analyses. This is another type of linguistic barrier preventing Gramsci's linguistics from being recognized as central. I have not attempted to translate Lo Piparo's work by overcoming these various barriers of linguistic diversity, whether disciplinary or national. Instead, my goal has been to 'translate' the centrality of language to Gramsci's thought through a model of translation as developed in chapter 3, whereby linguistic and contextual differences — such as those of the Frankfurt School and Bakhtin Circle - are viewed as productive.11 By arguing that language is central to Gramsci's writings, I do not mean for it to eclipse the importance or centrality of other topics addressed by Gramsci. On the contrary, much of his insight into language is derived from the manner in which he intertwines this concern with the other strands of his research project. As with his and Benjamin's notion of translation, the point is to highlight all the relationships involved, not to place one over another. Similarly, by putting Gramsci in dialogue with other influential thinkers on language, I hope I have established some new networks and relationships capable of extending some of Lo Piparo's important insights. The ambitious goal of this work has been to foster - if only in a small way Gramscian scholarship as well as more general discussions in social theory around language and politics. I have tried to add to the work of Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Renate Holub, Craig Brandist, Andre Tosel, and many others in propel-

176

Gramsci's Politics of Language

ling Gramsci and his Marxist historicist approach into other debates around language and social analysis in a manner that alters both Gramscian scholarship and those other debates. By comparing Gramsci and Bakhtin, I have highlighted the problem in Bakhtinian scholarship of the idea that language is inherently 'dialogic,' that it somehow by 'nature' embraces 'heteroglossia,' and that it favours democratic and ethical relations. Furthermore, by bringing Gramsci to bear on Habermas's connection of language to reason in an attempt to universalize both, I hope I have raised the problems involved in looking to the inherent structures of language for ethical behaviour and non-oppressive and neutral communicative exchange. Turning to Benjamin's writings on language, with their messianic influences, I have used Gramsci to reinforce the importance of 'faith' for politics and also to query the implications of separating language from the human praxis of language. In commencing a dialogue among Gramsci, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas, I have emphasized how non-materialist concepts of language can in effect extract political struggles and power differentials from communication. This shows the importance of Gramsci's not basing language on any mimetic relationship between language and what language represents. Ironically, the position that Marx's philosophy cannot account for linguistic interaction can lead to a 'naturalization' or concealment of language as a site of political differences. These are all variations of the clarity gained through Gramsci's materialist historicism - above all, his insistence that language does not have an ahistorical essence but, like the economy and the state, is created by humans but not necessarily under conditions of our choosing. In contrast to any notion of language as representation or nomenclature, Gramsci's perspective presents language as one type of human labour. This becomes clear in contradistinction to Adorno and Horkheimer's view of language as falling on a Rousseauian continuum between language as expressive and language as instrumental. Instead of such a continuum or the choice between these two alternatives, Gramsci, like Volosinov, insists that idealist and positivist oppositions must be dialectically overcome. That is, the creative processes of language must be seen as social and as distinct from individual creativity and aesthetic production, but not as structures or the products of laws outside of human history. Language is not simply a medium or instrument that humans use to express themselves or to convey ideas, feelings, and emotions. In Gramsci's terminology, all language takes place within normative contexts, however spontaneous they may appear. The dialectical component comes from the idea that normative grammars are created from one or more spontaneous grammars. A language and its normative grammar are endlessly generative, and they change as unique speech utterances are produced and received. But these utterances are created only within systems of ideological meanings and values created by the structured differences among linguistic forms or signs.

Conclusion

177

This view makes it clear that language use - and translation as the paradigmatic example of its social generation — requires diversity and heterogeneity. Any notion of language as purely a medium of exchange ignores everything except individual creation. When Benedetto Croce or Perry Anderson view language as solely the aggregate of individuals' activities, they ignore the fact that all utterances take place within normative grammars. And many of the productive changes in language (as with culture, society, and politics) cannot be traced to the individuals or groups of individuals who initiated them. Instead, they are social products involving the entire structure of the various languages and societies involved. The linguistic production of meaning takes place when the differences, the tensions, and the heterogeneity in language interact. Gramsci's views on language add to his political theory in several ways. They enable us to distinguish more clearly between his use of hegemony as an analytical tool for understanding the historic forces existent in his world, and his endorsement of a proletarian hegemony of the Communist Party. As a tool of social analysis, his theory of hegemony helped him investigate and criticize the maintenance of bourgeois ideology and its role in the functioning of the Italian state and the rise of fascism. Applying such social analyses and criticism, Gramsci proposed a constitutively different form of hegemony, a counter-hegemony, that would be democratically rather than bureaucratically centralized. Gramsci's paradigmatic use of la questione della lingua and his promotion of a unified national language illustrates how his linguistics illuminates his political theory. He was critical of the strategies for creating a unified national language proposed by Manzoni and Esperanto, arguing that however progressive these projects were meant to be, they would result in the problems of a 'passive revolution' and thwart any progress toward a democratic, national, popular collective will. This suggests the most pressing question that needs to be asked of 'global English,' the 'English only' movement in the United States, and all movements for language rights and regulations. Gramsci's rejection of various strategies of achieving a unified national language cannot be conflated with the dismissal of the goal of a unified national language. On the contrary, he is quite clear that many of the political problems that led to fascism were symptomatic of Italy's lack of a national popular collective will and language. The question that his writings on the Italian language question addressed was how to create a democratic unity that would not repress differences and that would not misrepresent certain social groups' interests but that would recognize the conflicts that existed among the various world views held by Italians. These questions are certainly at least as pressing, if not more so, in today's 'globalizing' world, in which we are witnessing a resurgence of xenophobic backlashes throughout Europe and North America. Gramsci's approach shows us

178

Gramsci's Politics of Language

many alternatives to the simplistic opposition between linguistic purism aimed at conservation (and exclusion) and the presumption that adopting the most dominant language is progress. To describe his project of progressive hegemony, Gramsci developed the terminology now associated with his name: hegemony, civil society, organic intellectuals, war of manoeuvre/position, and the philosophy of praxis. I have argued that besides these concepts, Gramsci also developed 'normative grammar,' 'spontaneous' or 'immanent' grammar, and 'translation.' Like the better known Gramscian terms, these words are used to describe the various and complex ways in which coercion and consent are created and maintained in relation to each other. The question of coercion and consent is vital not simply because of the Italian tradition of political theory going back to Machiavelli. Different ways of conceiving these concepts are at the heart of how we judge any political system - especially democracy - to be legitimate and justified. Gramsci's dialectical and historical materialist approach to the relationship between coercion and consent is what makes his Marxist political theory as important today as it was in the 1930s. His writings are more important now than in his own time, provided we translate them in such a way as to produce better understandings of our own circumstances that cultivate critical change.

Notes

Introduction: Towards a Vernacular Materialsim 1 For example, Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), see especially 21-44 and 108-14; Stuart Hall, The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees' and 'For Allon White: Metaphors of Transformation,' in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and KuanHsing Chen, (London: Routledge, 1996), 25-46 and 287-305; and many of the articles in Culture, Ideology and Social Process: A Reader, ed. Tony Bennet, Colin Mercer, and Janet Woollacott, (London: Open University Press, 1981). By making specific linguistic connections with Marxist cultural analysis, this book reinforces such more general uses of Gramsci. 2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 429 (hereafter cited as SPN). I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Q and then the section number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and in the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published; Ql 1§25. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, 4 vols., ed. Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975). A list of abbreviations of Gramsci's works is located on page ix. 3 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 224-34 (hereafter cited as SCW), Q5§123. 4 'Vernacular' comes from the Latin verna, meaning home-born slave. This etymology adds to my purpose of focusing on the ever-present power relations within language. 5 This usage arose partially from Marx's own comments about the 'vulgarizing and extending of Ricardo's theory' in England between 1820 and 1830. Karl Marx, 'Pref-

180

Notes to pages 4-5

ace to the Second German Edition,' Capital, vol. 1, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: Random House, 1906), 18.

6 S/W,450,452;Q11§28, Qll§24. 7 Of course, there are many explicit explorations of Marxism and language that do not simply oppose Marxist materialism to language, such as the work of L.S. Vygotsky, Adam Schaff, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and Maurice Cornforth, among others. While obviously related to questions of Marxism and language, my project here is to explore Gramsci's approach and explain its relevance to contemporary debates. 8 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), 59-71. Some examples of scholars who accept this view are Sue Golding, Gramsci's Democratic Theory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), and Michele Barrett, The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), especially chapter 5. 9 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 250-302. See also his discussion about his relation to Marxism in Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx, trans. R. James Goldstein and James Cascaito (New York: Semiotext(e), 1991), especially 103-13. 10 While beyond the scope of the current work, there is an interesting parallel between Foucault's analyses of epistemes and Croce's histories, which Gramsci criticizes for avoiding periods of conflict and change between one period of stability and the next. See Barry Smart, 'The Politics of Truth and the Problem of Hegemony,' in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 157-74. 11 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy attempt to redress this avoidance of the political implications of deconstruction. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Retreating the Political, ed. Simon Sparks (London: Routledge, 1997). For a discussion of their Center for Philosophical Research on the Political see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 69-92. 12 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994). See also Jacques Derrida, 'Politics and Friendship: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,' trans. R. Harvey, in The Althusserian Legacy, ed. E. Ann Kaplan and Micheal Sprinker (New York: Verso, 1993), 183-231. 13 To cite just a few examples with temporal diversity: J.K. Gibson-Graham, 'Haunting Capitalism ... in the Spirit of Marx and Derrida,' Rethinking Marxism 8, no. 4 (1995): 25-39; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Speculations on Reading Marx: After Reading Derrida,' in Post-Structuralism and the Question of History, ed. D. Attridge et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 30-62; and Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). 14 Aijaz Ahmad, 'Reconciling Derrida: "Spectres of Marx" and Deconstructive Politics,' New Left Review 208 (November-December 1994): 88-106, and Terry Eagleton, 'Marxism without Marxism,' Radical Philosophy 73 (September-October 1995): 35-7.

Notes to pages 5-7

181

15 As Gramsci notes in discussing the work of Bukharin, 'Matter as such therefore is not our subject but how it is socially and historically organized for production, and natural science should be seen correspondingly as essentially an historical category, a human relation.' SPN, 465-6; Ql 1§30. 16 Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (London: Verso, 1983), 44. Italics in original. 17 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Retreat from Class (London: Verso, 1986), 5, 77-8. In the same vein, Wood attacks the use of the term 'discourse' as synonymous with 'autonomous ideology' and argues that Marxism can and should oppose using language as a model for social action (chapters 4 and 5). For other examples of attacks on 'discourse' and 'language' in defence of Marxism, see Norman Geras's critique of the position of Laclau and Mouffe, 'Post-Marxism?' New Left Review 163 (May-June 1987): 40-82; and Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). 18 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 24351, and John Thompson's 'Editor's Introduction,' in the same volume, 29-31. 19 Jiirgen Habermas,, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCar thy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 95-130. 20 Esteve Morera, Gramsci's Historicism: A Realist Approach (London: Routledge, 1990), see especially 115-24. It should be noted that Morera emphasizes the importance of Gramsci's particular notion of historicism, where 'ontologically real' does not mean transhistorical. My analysis concurs with much of Morera's analysis of the other features of Gramsci's historicism; transience, historical necessity, and humanism. But Morera's notion of'realism' implies a distinction between epistemological and ontological objectivity that, as Morera admits, Gramsci never made, 129. In chapter 3, I argue that Gramsci would not have countenanced such a distinction. This also puts my interpretation at odds with much of Morera's argument in Esteve Morera, 'Gramsci's Critical Modernity,' Rethinking Marxism 12, no. 1 (2000): 16-46. 21 Louis Dupre, Marx's Social Critique of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), especially 10, 13, 79-98, 148, 227-8, and Williams, Marxism and Literature, especially 27-34. 22 Alex Callinicos, Marxism and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 96-113. 23 Sean Sayers, Reality and Reason: Dialectic and the Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), xiv-xv. By using his definition of materialism, I am not attributing his realist argument to Gramsci. Adequate or not, Gramsci rejects the very question Sayers asks. As will be discussed in chapter 3, Gramsci holds that debates about whether there is 'an objective, material world, which exists independently of [human] consciousness and which is knowable by consciousness,' are poorly framed and assume an abstraction of humans from 'the world,' Sayers, 3. Ironically, Gramsci's positions

182

Notes to pages 7-15

concur with many of Sayers's conclusions about not separating consciousness and the real world, theory and practice, or reason and reality. 24 SPN, 465; Ql 1§30. Morera interprets this passage as Gramsci separating the business of the philosophy of praxis from that of the natural sciences, 65-6. But as we shall see in chapter 3, my interpretation is quite consistent with Gramsci's other comments about science, objectivity, the external world, language, and translation. 25 Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Derek Boothman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 406-9, 24 (hereafter FSPN), Q10II§41,Q4§75. 26 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. He"lene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), especially 465-74. 27 As with the terms enlightened and Enlightenment, I will capitalize 'Idealism' when referring to the specific philosophy of a thinker like Croce, and use lower case to refer to the more general perspective - in the case of idealism, any system of thought that holds that reality is ultimately ideal in nature, defined by some entity (Reason, God, Providence, etc.) beyond the physical world that humans can experience within particular moments of time and space. 28 See Joseph Buttigieg, 'Gramsci's Method,' Boundary 2, 17, no. 2 (1990): 60-81, and 'Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks,' Boundary 2, 21, no. 2 (1994): 98-138, especially 136-8. 29 SPN, 429; Ql 1§25. See also Q7§6.

30 SPN, 428;Q11§25. 31 SPN, 35-6; Q12§2. As will be evident in chapter 1, this image of a cardboard schemata is analogous to Gramsci's critique of Esperanto and Manzoni. 32 Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 35-50. 33 Roy Harris discusses why both Wittgenstein and Saussure start with a caricature of the 'language as nomenclature argument.' Roy Harris, Language, Saussure, and Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1988). 34 Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 248-55. In this connection, Michel Foucault's The Order of Things is also illuminating. 35 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 8. 36 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1986), 118 [166], italics in original. Numbers in brackets refer to the standard pagination from the French second edition. 37 Ferruccio Rossi-Landi argues that Gramsci's 'civil society' comes close to a semiotic understanding of the mediation between base and superstructure. See his Marxism and Ideology, trans. Roger Griffin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 60-6.

Notes to pages 16-17

183

Chapter 1: Gramsci's Linguistics 1 Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, trans. Lynne Lawner (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 79. Hereafter cited as LP. 2 Perry Anderson, 'The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,' New Left Review 100 (November 1976-January 1977): 13-15. 3 Franco Lo Piparo, Lingua intellettuali egemonia in Gramsci (Bari: Laterza, 1979), and 'Studio del linguaggio e teoria gramsciana,' Critica Marxista 2, no. 3 (1987): 167-75. 4 Lo Piparo, 'Studio': 167. All translations from Italian sources are my own. 5 David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, introduction to 'Language, Linguistics and Folklore,' in Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 164-7 (hereafter cited as SCW). 6 Niels Helsloot, 'Linguists of All Countries ...! On Gramsci's Premise of Coherence,' Journal of Pragmatics 13 (1989): 547-66; Leonardo Salamini, The Sociology of Political Praxis: An Introduction to Gramsci's Theory (London: Routledge, 1981), 181-96; and Lucia Borghese, Tia Alene in bicicletta: Gramsci traduttore dal tedesco e teorico della traduzione,' Belfagor36,,no. 6 (1981): 635-65. 7 Anne Showstack Sassoon, 'Gramsci's Subversion of the Language of Politics,' Rethinking Marxism 3, no. 1 (1990): 14-25. 8 Craig Brandist, 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' New Left Review 216 (March-April, 1996): 94-109 and 'The Official and the Popular in Gramsci and Bakhtin,' Theory, Culture, and Society 13, no. 2 (1996): 59-74; David McNally, 'Language, History, and Class Struggle' Monthly Review 47, no. 3 (JulyAugust 1995): 13-30; E. San Juan, Jr, Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 35-51; and Renate Holub Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1992), 117-47. 9 Luigi Rosiello, 'Linguistica e marxismo nel pensiero di Antonio Gramsci,' in The History of Linguistics in Italy, ed. Paolo Ramat, Hans-J. Niederehe, and Konrad Koerner (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986), 237-58; Luigi Rosiello, 'Problemi linguistic! negli scritti di Gramsci,' in Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, vol. 2, ed. Pietro Rossi (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1970), 347-67; M. Emilia Passaponti, 'Gramsci e le question! linguistiche,' Lingua, linguaggi, e societa: Propostaper un aggiornamento, 2nd ed., ed. Stefano Gensini and Massimo Vedovelli (Florence: Tipolitografia F.lli Linari, 1981), 119-28; Stefano Gensini, 'Linguistica e questione politica della lingua,' Critica Marxista 1 (1980): 151-65; Antonio Carrannante, Antonio Gramsci e i problemi della lin gua italiana,' Belfagor28 (1973): 544-56; Renzo De Felice, 'Un corso di glottologia di Matteo Bartoli negli appunti di Antonio Gramsci,' Rivista storica del socialismo 7

184

10

11 12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19

20 21

Notes to pages 17-19

(1964): 219-21; and Luigi Ambrosoli, 'Nuovi contributi agli "Scritti giovanile" di Gramsci,' Rivista storica delsocialismo 3 (1960): 545-50. Andre Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano filosofia della prassi,' Marxismo oggi 1 (1996): 4967; Maurizio Lichtner, 'Traduzione e metafore in Gramsci,' Critica Marxista 39, no. 1 (January-February 1991): 107-31; and Derek Boothman, 'Translating Signal and Sign: The Case of Gramsci's Quaderni,' in Miscellanea fra linguistica e letteratura, ed. Antonio Loprieno (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1988), 57-81. Tullio De Mauro, preface to Lingua intellettuali egemonia in Gramsci, by Franco Lo Piparo (Bari: Laterza, 1979): ix. Lo Piparo, Lingua, 106-9. Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State, trans. David Fernbach (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), 9. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 8-9. Italian language historians have been more attentive to this aspect of Gramsci's legacy. For example, in a general history of the Italian language one can find not only a summary of Gramsci's critique of Manzoni but also the insight that 'for Gramsci the questione della lingua was to be identified with the questione dell'egemonia.' Bruno Migliorini, The Italian Language (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 472. See also Stefano Gensini, Elementi di storia linguistica italiana (Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1982), which mentions Gramsci throughout. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 438. Hereafter cited as SPN. I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Q and then the section number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published: Ql 1§15. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, ed. Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), hereafter cited as QC. Karl Marx, 'Theses on Feuerbach,' in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology: Part One (New York: International Publishers, 1991), 122. Chapter 3 contains a more thorough discussion of this logic of'essence' and 'origin.' For an overview of the influence of Gramsci on British Marxist historians see Harvey Kaye, 'Political Theory and History: Antonio Gramsci and the British Marxist Historians,' Italian Quarterly 31, nos. 119-20 (1990): 145-66. Sebastiano Timpanaro, 'Graziadio Ascoli,' Belfagor27, no. 2 (1972): 149-76, especially 170. The terms regressive And progressive are not meant to suggest a predetermined path or ideal outcome along which different types of hegemony can be placed. The whole point of the hegemony advocated by Gramsci, which I term progressive, is that such

Notes to pages 20-2

22 23 24

25 26 27

28

29

30 31 32

185

decisions about the world that society is creating are open to influence from the largest number of members possible but not just a majority rule. Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1986), 43, 95. Ibid., 95. Given this context, Perry Anderson's contention, discussed in the introduction, that language changes slowly relative to economic, political, and social structures would seem counter-intuitive and need some justification. Giacomo Devoto, The Languages of Italy, trans. V. Louise Katainen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 277. The term neogrammatici in Italian was actually coined by Ascoli. See Timpanaro, 'Graziadio Ascoli': 164-5. Hermann Osthoff and Karl Brugmann, Morphologische Untersuchungen aufdem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen I (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1878), preface, as reprinted in A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics, ed. and trans. Winfred P. Lehmann (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), 199-202. This method of isolating certain elements and their relation to one another in order to study language 'scientifically' is also a crucial component in Saussure's concept of language as a system. Saussure attributes much importance to the Neogrammarians, especially the notion that language is 'a product of the collective mind of the linguistic community.' (5 [19]). This notion of community plays a significant role in his development ofsynchronic linguistics (73-4 [106-8]). His view of language as a closed system made up of units defined through difference is influenced by such comparative linguistic models. In comparative linguistics, two linguistic forms from different time periods must have some identity so that we can understand them as the 'same' and contrast how the one form has changed in time. But it is their difference that the comparative linguist focuses on and attempts to explain. Placed on a horizontal, or synchronic, axis, this idea of a closed system of differences bounded by connections is fundamental to Saussure. Yet he sharply distinguishes his synchronic approach from the Neogrammarians. See Saussure, especially 5 [18], and 89 [128]. Benedetto Croce, The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General, trans. Colin Lyas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 156. Karl Vossler, The Spirit of Language in Civilization, trans. Oscar Oeser (London: Kegan Paul, Tench Trubner, 1932), 15. Craig Brandist emphasizes the importance of Vossler's criticisms of Croce, especially his abstraction of the speaking subject from linguistic environment: see chapter 2, below; 'The Official and the Popular in Gramsci and Bakhtin,' 61-2, and 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' 94-109.

186 Notes to page 22-3 33 Croce, The Aesthetic, 160. For a good selection of the way Gramsci develops 'translation,' see the section titled 'The Translatability of Scientific and Philosophical Languages,' in Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Derek Boothman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 306-19. Hereafter cited as FSPN. See also chapter 3. 34 V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), especially chapter 1. My perspective differs from Salamini's argument that Bartoli was influenced by Saussure and through Meillet by Durkheim to the extent that Bartoli's Neolinguistics, and thus Gramsci's linguistics, are more closely concurrent with structuralism. 35 As Hoare and Nowell Smith point out, lingua should be translated (not specific to Gramsci) as 'languages [sic] in the technical sense' and linguaggio as 'language in general' (S/W, 348, n32). Mansfield contends that this is Gramsci's distinction and that it is reminiscent of, but not equal to, that of Saussure's distinction between parole and langue, Steven B. Mansfield, 'Introduction to Gramsci's "Notes on Language,"' Telos 59 (1984): 119. Salamini argues that Gramsci was 'dependent' on Saussurean method due to his postulation of a static-dynamic approach to language that was set up by Saussure's distinction between parole and langage, 31. Helsloot correctly points out that Saussure's notion of langage includes both the systematic shared aspect of language (langue) and the individual act of speech (parole). Relying on all of the above sources, he concludes that Gramsci borrowed this distinction directly or indirectly from Saussure. See Helsloot, 'Linguists of All Countries,' 553-4. Without entering into the debate about the (non-synonymous) oppositions synchronic/diachronic and langue/ parole, we shall see below that Gramsci did not dichotomize the synchronic (what he called 'normative grammar') and the diachronic (what can be seen as 'spontaneous grammar'). It also seems that he did not veer from the common (although inconsistent and overlapping) Italian usage of lingua meaning tongue or specific language (system) and linguaggio meaning the faculty of language, transmission of messages, verbal or otherwise, as Hoare and Nowell Smith state. 36 This assumption also seems to underlie much of Bakhtin's writings, or at least the influential interpretations of them, as we shall explore in the next chapter. It is also evident in Charles Woolfson's development of Marxist semiotics, 'The Semiotics of Working Class Speech,' Working Papers in Cultural Studies 9 (1976): 165. 37 Helsloot astutely argues that Gramsci is distinct from most others who approach language either from a rationalist perspective (including Descartes, Chomsky, speech act theory, empirical sociolinguists, and psycholinguists), or from an empiricist perspective (including Locke, Croce, Sapir, and Basil Bernstein) that attempts to establish an a priori unity of language. Instead, for Gramsci, 'coherence [of language] has to be developed historically, [and] is never given. There is no pre-established consensus,' 'Linguists of All Countries,' 552. 38 SPN, 54-5.

Notes to pages 24-7

187

39 It is this advocacy of creating a 'progressive' hegemony that separates Gramsci most drastically from Michel Foucault. 40 Quoted in Lo Piparo, Lingua, 59. Translated by the author, as are all the following quotations. 41 For a more detailed discussion of the details of the relationship between Bertoni and Bartoli, see Rosiello, 'Linguistica e marxismo,' 243-5. 42 I am not neglecting the influence of Croce on Gramsci at this time. My point is that by periodizing Gramsci's thought into early and late phases, as Joseph Femia and others do, one misses the consistent development of themes that begin relatively early in Gramsci's life. The tendency is to ignore these early years as not really 'Gramscian' because he was, as Femia describes, 'under the spell of Benedetto Croce.' Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 4. This early period, is often viewed only in light of the later Marxist period, as evident in William Hartley's contention that '[Gramsci's] early conceptions of revolution, expressed in the language of idealism were transformed as he pursued the study of Marxism'; 'Notebook Ten and the Critique of Benedetto Croce,' Italian Quarterly 31, nos. 119-20 (1990): 23. Such approaches conceal the importance of linguistics to Gramsci's work. 43 LP, 79-80. 44 Rosiello, 'Linguistica e marxismo,' 245-8. 45 Sebastiano Timpanaro, On Materialism, trans. Lawrence Garner (London: Verso, 1975), 145, 151. See also Timpanaro, 'Graziadio Ascoli,' 149-76. 46 Lo Piparo, Lingua, 67-8. For a detailed examination of the tensions inherent in Ascoli's work and his introduction of the concept of substratum, see Timpanaro, 'Graziadio Ascoli,' especially 160-74. 47 Lo Piparo, Lingua, 73, and Timpanaro, On Materialism, 145. 48 Graziadio Ascoli, 'II tipo galloromano SEUV-SEBO,' in Archivio glottologico italiano, 260-72. As quoted by Lo Piparo, Lingua, 69-70. 49 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1986), 118[166]. 50 Ibid., 197[271]. It is worth noting that this contention is at odds with the much heralded distinction that Saussure makes between diachronic and synchronic linguistics, the latter of which is the true subject of the science of language. 51 Kurt Jankowsky, The Neogrammarians (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), 230. 52 Matteo Bartoli, 'Parte II: Criteri tecnici,' in Guilio Bertoni and Matteo Bartoli, Breviario di neolinguistica (Modena: Societa Tipografica Modenese, 1925), 66-75. 53 The termfascino means fascination, attraction, allure, or charm; it is also related to the verb fasciare, meaning 'to bind together, wrap, or bandage.' The latter is the etymological root of fascism. 54 Matteo Bartoli, Appunti diglottologia. Anno accademico 1912—13, part I, 25; quoted in Lo Piparo, Lingua, 91.

188

Notes to pages 28-33

55 Lo Piparo, Lingua, 106. Lo Piparo's most convincing examples are from d'Ovidio's writings of 1873 and 1895. 56 Femia, 24. Emphasis in original. 57 Lo Piparo, Lingua, 87. 58 SCWT178;Q6§71. 59 While Gramsci was uninterested in searching for the origins of language, Ascoli's early position against the polygenesis of language and in favour of one mother tongue of the Indo-European language is at odds with Gramsci's rejection of parthenogenesis. Ascoli's position varied throughout his work, but he always attempted to fit his theories with monogenesis of language at least partially because of his rejection of the colonialist apologies that the polygenesis theorists supported. See Timpanaro, 'Graziadio Ascoli,' especially 152-5. 60 Gramsci's critique of Bertoni and his puzzlement as to why even Croce is in agreement with Bertoni is borne out in 1941 when Croce wrote that Bertoni's work is 'the odious rhetoric of idealism.' See Lo Piparo, Lingua, 60. 61 SCW, 174; Q3§74. 62 Ibid. 63 This point is further supported by Gramsci's commentary on a review of Antonio Pagliaro's Sommario di linguistica arioeuropea (1930); Gramsci states: 'It appears to me that much has changed (judging from the review) but that the basis on which linguistic studies can be situated has not been found.' SCW, 177; Q6§71. 64 IT? 80. 65 Holub, Antonio Gramsci, 54-5. 66 Ibid., 50-1. 67 Far from reducing Gramsci's incredibly diverse corpus to only one term, in agreement with Holub I maintain that seeing the various connections between the diverse topics allows one to get a feeling for Gramsci's own method of analysis. Ibid., 49-67. 68 SCW, 27. Emphasis in original. 69 5CV^28. 70 Quoted in Lo Piparo, Lingua, 98. 71 SCW, 30. 72 The previous quotation raises questions about the possible difference between Manzoni's program or Esperanto and the extension throughout the world of a unified Aryo-European language. Gramsci's description of the interaction among AryoEuropean languages is of a 'reciprocal' process, yet this term is conspicuously absent in his description of the extension throughout the rest of the world of a proletarian language. Or does this passage infer that the world hegemony of a European proletariat is inherently more progressive than its capitalistic counterpart, but that there could be other more progressive movements that show greater reciprocity among the different peoples?

Notes to pages 33-40 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89

189

SCW, 183-4;Q29§3. Lo Piparo, Lingua, 135. Ibid., 179-89. 5/W, 438-9;Qll§15. Ibid., 349; Q10II§44. Ibid., 450; Qll§24. Ibid., 450; Qll§28. Ibid. SCW, 26. Ibid., 170; Q3§76. Ibid., 181;Q29§2. Lo Piparo, Lingua, 248. Croce has more than one conception of grammar. In The Aesthetic he associates grammar with aesthetics and logic with the intellectual, so that the relationship between aesthetics and the intellectual is seen in linguistics as the relationship between grammar and logic. In this essay, 'Questa tavola rotonda e quadrata,' his use of'grammar' is synonymous with normative grammar. Benedetto Croce, 'Questa tavola rotonda equadrata,' in Problemi di estetica e contributi allstoria dell'estetica italiana (Bari: Gius, Laterza e Figli, 1966), 172-6. Croce, The Aesthetic, 156. Ibid., 160. QC, 2341; Ql 1§28. For a slightly different translation, see SCW, 179. Croce, 'Questa tavola,' 173-4.

90 SCW, 179;Q29§1. 91 One of the odd things about this essay is Croce's use of the term Grammatica, which presumably is synonymous with Steinthal's but is not synonymous with Croce's use of the term elsewhere in his writings as shown above. Gramsci seems correct to understand Croce's Grammatica here to mean normative grammar, whereas elsewhere Croce's Grammatica is associated with aesthetics. It is this connection and its implications that Gramsci rejects.

92 SCW, 175;Q3§74. 93 Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 1, ed. Frank Rosengarten, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 160. Hereafter cited as LP\ As history would have it, Gramsci's ironic premonitions about a doctoral student have come true, even if it took over seventy years. Although I hope my efforts will not 'defraud' Gramsci of fame but further 'lucubrate' his reflections on linguistics and Marxism. 94 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Paladin, 1973), 125. 95 Ibid.

96 SCW, 179;Q29§1.

190

Notes to pages 41-7

97 Ibid., 180; Q29§2. 98 I have used a modified version of Steven Mansfield's translation in order to be more exact about the relationship between 'immanent' and 'normative' grammars. Gramsci, trans. Steven R. Mansfield, 'On Language,' Telos 59 (1984): 145. The original reads: 'In realta oltre alia "grammatica immanente" in ogni linguaggio, esiste anche, di fatto, cioe anche se non scritta, una (o piii) grammatica "normativa."' QC, 2342Q29§2. For a slightly different, less literal translation, see SCW, 180. 99 QC, 2342; Q29§2. For a slightly different translation, see SCW, 180, or Mansfield's 'Gramsci on Language,' 145.

100 SPN, 54-5; Q25§2. 101 QC, 2343; Q29§2. For a slightly different translation, see SCW, 181. Note that since in Italian possessive pronouns do not carry the gender of the subject, but instead the object, the use of'a grammar of her own' is no less literal than 'his own.' For a discussion of the word ceto see FSPN, x. 102 Gramsci is actually unsure about the exact relationship between formal logic and the study of normative grammar. While he tends to think that there is a relationship and that it can be used at least for pedagogical purposes, he maintains that the question needs further study: 'One might debate whether this insertion [of elements of formal logic into the study of grammar] is or is not opportune, whether the study of formal logic is justified or not (it seems to be, and it also seems justifiable to attach it to the study of grammar, rather than to arithmetic, etc., because of its natural resemblance and because together with grammar the study of formal logic is made relatively more lively and easier), but the question itself must not be evaded.' SCW, 184; Q29§4. 103 SCWTl85; Q29§5. 104 Ibid., 187; Q29§6. 105 Ibid., 186;Q29§6. 106 Ibid., 187; Q29§6. 107 LPl,89. 108 SPN, 37-40; Q12§2. 109 Ibid., 52; Q25§5. 110 5CWH81; Q29§2. 111 Helsloot, 'Linguists of All Countries,' 553. 112 SCW, 182; Q29§2. 113 Lo Piparo, Lingua, 252. 114 SCWT181;Q29§2. 115 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), 47-91. 116 QC, 2344; Q29§2. For a different translation, see SCW, 182. The sentence that immediately follows - 'It is clear that with this set of problems the question of the national struggle of a hegemonic culture against other nationalities or residues of

Notes to pages 48-50

191

nationalities cannot be discussed' - should be read not as to oppose these linguistic questions to cultural and political ones, but rather to make a separation between questions of hegemonic unification internal to the nation and those pressures from other nations. Of course, these other national forces must enter into such unification, and Gramsci - for example, in his interest in popular novellas - is interested in this. It seems that here he is just trying to be clear that there are forces internal to Italy that are of primary importance - that is, hegemonic unification for Italy at that time is one of internal cultural, linguistic, and social matters, not international politics. Other interpretations would seem to lead to irreconcilable contradictions. 117 The title in Italian reads, 'Focolai di irradiazione di innovazioni linguistiche nella tradizione e di un conformismo nazionale linguistico nelle grandi masse nazionali.' While the SCWtranslation, 'Sources of Diffusion,' is accurate and less cumbersome than the one I propose, it conceals the close relationship to Bartoli's linguistics described above.

118 SCW, 169; Q3§76. 119 The only explicit exception to this breakdown is SCW, 178; Q5§151. Of course, he also discusses dialects and speech in several instances as distinct from written language. For example, SCW, 172; Q23§40. But where he makes the distinction between dialect and national-literary language it is not the written or non-written character that he mentions but 'the cultural, politico-moral-emotional environment.' SCW, 177;Q6§71. 120 While not objecting to Lo Piparo directly, Rosiello's discussion of Gramsci's distinction between 'normative' and 'immanent' grammar convincingly shows how it is aimed at complementing Gramsci's critique of Gentile. 'Linguistica e Marxismo nel Pensiero di Antonio Gramsci,' 251-4. 121 There does seem to be an interesting implicit critique of Jacques Derrida's reading of Saussure in OfGrammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) around precisely this distinction between written and non-written language. Gramsci's work could easily be used to show, contra Derrida, not only why Saussure would favour spoken language over written but more interestingly, to investigate why - at least throughout Italian history - written languages are more easily put to the service of the coercive imposition of a world view onto subordinate populations. 122 Rosiello suggests that Gramsci's notion of'immanent grammar' is what linguists now call linguistic competence, or what Chomsky calls transformational grammar. Rosiello, 'Linguistica e Marxismo,' 254, and 'Problemi linguistic!,' 358. Salamini makes a similar argument, The Sociology of Political Praxis, 37. This raises the problem of how to relate Gramsci's notion of'normative grammar' and its connection to 'immanent grammar' in Chomskian terms. But this line of argument could be followed to establish a critique of the way many linguists including Habermas, think about 'linguistic competence.'

192

Notes to pages 51-4

123 The distinction between these two processes is similar to the one between the creation of traditional intellectuals and that of organic intellectuals. For example, the distinction is, 'it is not a stratum of the population which creates its intellectuals on coming to power (this occurred in the fourteenth century), but a traditionally selected body which assimilates single individuals into its cadres (the typical example of this is the organization of the ecclesiastical hierarchy).' SCW, 169; Q3§76. Chapter 2: The Dialogue of Hegemony? 'Unity* in Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle 1 For example, see Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Craig Brandist, 'Ethics, Politics and the Potential of Dialogism,' Historical Materialism 5 (2000): 231-53; and the essays in Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory, ed. Craig Brandist and Galin Tihanov (New York: St Martin's Press, 2000). 2 Galin Tihanov's productive comparison of Bakhtin and Lukdcs advances several Marxist questions around class, class consciousness, culture, genre, and reification in relation to Bakhtin, The Master and the Slave: Lukdcs, Bakhtin and the Ideas of Their Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). Ken Hirschop's argument that Bakhtin is directly relevant to theories of democracy and culture also brings Bakhtin's thought closer to the orbit of Gramsci's concerns. Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). However, both these works pay heed to Brian Poole's recent research detailing the strong Kantian and neo-Kantian themes throughout Bakhtin's thought - themes that certainly distance him from Gramsci, especially on the question of materialism. Brian Poole, 'Bakhtin and Cassirer: The Philosophical Origins of Bakhtin's Carnival Messianism,' South Atlantic Quarterly 97, nos. 3/4 (1998): 537-78; and 'From Phenomenology to Dialogue: Max Scheler's Phenomenological Tradition and Mikhail Bakhtin's Development from "Towards a Philosophy of the Act" to His Study of Dostoevsky,' in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed., ed. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 109-35. 3 Craig Brandist and Renate Holub have also made valuable contributions to comparing Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle. Craig Brandist, 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' New Left Review 216 (March-April 1996): 94-109; The Official and the Popular in Gramsci and Bakhtin,' Theory, Culture and Society 13, no. 2 (1996): 59-74; and Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1992), 18-19, 132-40. 4 Bakhtin uses the term 'heteroglossia' to describe the inevitable 'social diversity of speech types,' stratification within any language into dialects and different voices where historical and social context is central to meaning and nuance. He articulates this concept in theory of the novel as a unique genre that combines these 'subordi-

Notes to pages 54-5

5

6

1

8

9

10

193

nated, yet still relatively autonomous, unities (even at times comprised of different languages) into a higher unity of the work as a whole: the style of a novel is to be found in the combination of its styles; the language of the novel is the system of its "languages."' M.M. Bakhtin, 'Discourse in the Novel,' in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 259-422, here see 262-3. Hereafter cited as DiN. While there is good reason why commentators have emphasized heteroglossia as a critique of language unification and 'standardization,' the question for Gramsci is, Can a hegemonic language be structured more like the novel, with a unity that does not repress the social diversity of speech and languages? See Raymond Williams, 'The Uses of Cultural Theory,' New Left Review 158 (JulyAugust 1986): 19-31, and Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Tony Bennett, 'The Politics of "the Popular" and Popular Culture,' in Popular Culture and Social Relations, ed. Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer, and Janet Woollacott, (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), 6-21; Charles Woolfson, 'The Semiotics of Working Class Speech,' Working Papers in Cultural Studies 9 (1976): 163-97. DiN, 270-2. V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 23-4 (hereafter cited as MPL). Tihanov points out that Bakhtin scholarship has made the idea of dialogue the undisputable emblem of his thought, but also too often over simplifies the complex and often contradictory themes that Bakhtin gave it, Master and the Slave, 187-215. By dialogical here, I mean one broad theme that accounts for much of the attraction of Bakhtin, being able to interact and communicate without suppressing different voices, perspectives, and positions. See especially Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 27-45; and Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 178 (hereafter cited as SCW). I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Q and then the section number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published; Q6§71. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, 4 vols., ed. Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975). Gramsci notes that the metaphors Marx and Engels use provide a clue to the 'vital nexus' between structure and superstructure and the further development of the conception of ideology and superstructures. Gramsci suggests that the use of'anatomy' as a metaphor for the role of the economy in civil society must be coupled with the real-

194

11 12

13

14

15

Notes to pages 55-6

ization that 'in the human body one certainly cannot say that the skin (and even the historically prevalent type of physical beauty) are mere illusions and that the skeleton and the anatomy are the only reality ... By highlighting the anatomy and the function of the skeleton no one was trying to assert that man (and still less woman) can live without the skin.' Gramsci reminds us that with 'the claim that the economy is to society what the anatomy is in the biological sciences - one must remember the struggle that went on in the natural sciences to expel from the scientific terrain the principles of classification that were based on external and mutable elements. If animals were classified according to the color of their skin, or of their hair or their plumage, these days there would be a general protest.' Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Derek Boothman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 397 (hereafter cited as FSPN), Q10II§41. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 5, 11, 48. For a few examples, Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism (London: Routledge, 1979); Graham Pechey, 'Boundaries versus Binaries: Bakhtin in/against the History of Ideas,' Radical Philosophy 54 (1990): 23-31, and 'Bakhtin, Marxism, and Post-Structuralism,' in The Politics of Theory, ed. Francis Barker et al. (Colchester: University of Essex Press, 1983), 234-47; David Forgacs, 'Marxist Literary Theories,' in Modern Literary Theory, ed. Ann Jefferson and David Robey (London: Batsford, 1982), 13469; Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); Julia Kristeva, 'Word, Dialogue, and Novel,' in Desire in Language, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 64-91; and Michael Gardiner, The Dialogics of Critique: M.M. Bakhtin and the Theory of Ideology (London: Routledge, 1992). Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 274, 256, and 151; Woolfson, 'Semiotics of Working Class Speech,' 170-1; Brandist, 'Ethics, Politics and the Potential of Dialogism,' 235, 249. See Robert Young, 'Back to Bakhtin,' Cultural Critique 2 (1985-6): 71-92, and Allon White, 'The Struggle over Bakhtin: Fraternal Reply to Robert Young,' Cultural Critique 8 (1987-8): 217-41. Also see Caryl Emerson, 'Keeping the Self Intact during the Culture Wars: A Centennial Essay for Mikhail Bakhtin,' New Literary History 27 (1996): 107-26, and Emerson, The First Hundred Years, 22. See Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 146-70; Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 101-20; Irwin R. Titunik, 'Bakhtin and/or Volosinov and/or Medvedev: Dialogue and/or Doubletalk?' in Language and Literary Theory, ed. Benjamin A Stolz et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1984), 535-64; Irwin R. Titunik, 'The Baxtin Problem: Concerning Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist's Mikhail Bakhtin? Slavic and East European Journal

Notes to pages 56-9

195

30 (1986): 91-5; Nina Perlina, 'Bakhtin-Medvedev-Voloshinov: An Apple of Discourse,' University of Ottawa Quarterly 53, no. 1 (1983): 35-47; and Ken Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 126-40. 16 Maria Shevtsova, 'Dialogism in the Novel and Bakhtin's Theory of Culture,' New Literary History 23 (1992): 748-9. See also Tihanov, Master and the Slave, 102. 17 Antonio Gramsci, 'La taglia della storia [The Ransom of History], L'Ordine nuovo (Milan: Edizione del Calendario, 1969 [7 June 1919]), 31-2. 18 Williams, Proletarian Order, 100.

19 SPW2, 426-40. 20 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: Interational Publishers, 1971), 155 (hereafter cited as 5PjV);Q§34. Brandist compares diis distinction to that of Bakhtin's notion of monologic versus polyphony in Dostoevsky's novels, 'The Official and the Popular,' 70. 21 Hirschkop argues that Bakhtin's noble family origins are a myth perhaps of his brother's making; nevertheless, his father was a bank manager and grandfather a merchant. Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 111-12. 22 Medvedev and Volosinov were more involved in the institutions of Soviet cultural life. See Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 135. 23 Caryl Emerson notes that Bakhtin was unique in being what she calls a survivor of the Soviet period rather than either a collaborator or a martyr. Emerson, The First Hundred Years, 8. 24 Tihanov, Master and the Slave, 12-14. Hirschkop also notes that during the 1920s Bakhtin 'stayed out of sight and out of print until the end of the decade.' Mikhail Bakhtin, 158. 25 Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 169. It is true that Gramsci noted Lunacharsky's good judgment in art on his appointment as Commissar of Education in 1917, cited his speech in an article in 1921 on how Futurism is related to Communism, and discussed his critical exchange with Croce; SCW, 38, 49, 95. 26 See Holub, Antonio Gramsci, 18-19, and Germino, 134-47. 27 Bakhtin or one of his colleagues may have been aware of Gramsci's letter to Trotsky on Italian Futurism, which was published in 1923 as an appendix to Trotsky's Literature and Revolution (although not included in the English translation). SCW, 52-4. 28 Hirschkop exposes as a myth the extent of Bakhtin's obscurity before he was rediscovered by Vadim Kozhinov and Sergei Bocharov in 1961. Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 114-24. 29 Brian Poole has shown both that Bakhtin's later works were substantially influenced by Ernst Cassirer and argued that the 'early works' are more phenomenological than usually understood. Poole, 'Bakhtin and Cassirer' and 'From Phenomenology to Dialogue.' Tihanov also emphasizes the intersections among neo-Kantianism, German Lehensphilosophie, and Hegelianism that influenced Bakhtin, Master and the Slave, 2138 and 246-91.

196

Notes to pages 59-62

30 Brandist, 'The Official and the Popular,' 59. 31 M.M. Bakhtin and P.N. Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert Wehrle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 6. I have cited this following the publisher's format but this does not mean I attribute the work to Bakhtin. Hereafter cited as FM.

32 FM,6.

33 FA/,68. 34 For a detailed discussion of this, see Wlad Godzich, foreword to FM.

35 SCW, 47. 36 SCW, 52-4. For a succinct summary of the politics of Italian Futurism, see Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, 'The Artist to Power? Futurism, Fascism and the Avant-Garde,' Theory, Culture and Society 13, no. 2 (1996): 39-58. 37 SCW, 51. Emphasis in original. 38 SCW, 51. Note that Gramsci specifies that this 'destruction' pertains to the 'spiritual hierarchies, prejudices, idols and ossified traditions' and 'does not mean to deprive humanity of the material products that it needs to subsist and to develop.' 39 FM, 171. 40 Gramsci's position on Sorel locates the same concerns. While he uses Sorel's 'myth' to interpret Machiavelli's Prince, he asks why Sorel stops short, achieving at its highest point only the 'passive activity' of a general strike, the withholding of labour. As with the Futurists, this step is necessary but merely preliminary because it does not 'envisage an 'active and conscious' phase of its own.' SPN, 127; Q13§1. Not to engage in this active and conscious phase paradoxically hides purely mechanistic assumptions and an implicit determinism covered by a theory of spontaneity. SPN, 128-30; Q13§1. 41 Volosinov's account of Saussure is less than generous and tends to obscure the extent to which Saussure himself attempted to overcome some of the problems in comparative philology that Volosinov finds in 'abstract objectivism.' As Paul Thibault shows, Saussure exhibits a more subtle and nuanced theory of sign production. But as Thibault admits, the aspects of Saussure's work that emphasize the stark nature of such divisions as langue versus parole, and synchronic versus diachronic approaches, have become what Saussure is known for, especially as taken up in structuralism. Paul Thibault, ReReading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (London: Routledge, 1997). 42 Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); Jonathan Culler, Saussure (London: Fontana Press, 1976). Culler's second chapter provides much greater detail about the influence of the Neogrammarians on Saussure, but the book as a whole emphasizes Saussure's break with previous linguistics. Part of the problem is viewing Saussure not from the perspective of linguistics but rather from that of social theory concerned with structuralism. As Paul Thibault argues, 'Saussure was steeped in the very traditions of historical and comparative linguistics to which a certain structuralist reading would oppose him.' Re-Reading Saussure, 81.

Notes to pages 62-8 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51

52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

197

MPL, 52. Emphasis in original. Ibid., 73. Emphasis in original. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 77. Emphasis in original. Ibid., 62. FM, 9,15. Note that this difference between Volosinov's and Medvedev's characterizations of the Neogrammarians would be difficult to explain if one argued that Bakhtin had authored both texts. Ibid., 9. Indeed, VoloSinov's term 'individual subjectivism' is coined in the context of Eichenbaum's castigation of the Symbolists' 'aesthetic subjectivism,' which needed to be fought in order to 'bring [poetry] back to the path of scientific study.' As quoted by Galvano Delia Volpe, 'Settling Accounts with the Russian Formalists,' New Left Review 113-14 (January-April 1979): 134. FM,37. The Formalists push to an extreme Locke's insistence, adopted also by Saussure, that the relationship between words and the ideas they represent is arbitrary. SCW, 51. Just less than two years after writing this, in 1922, Gramsci describes the dissolution of Futurism by noting that it is now led by 'students who think that Futurism is the same as ignorance of Italian grammar.' SCW, 53. Thus, he finds that there is more to separating sound and meaning than simply breaking grammatical rules. Medvedev oversimplifies at least the more sophisticated aspects of Formalist theory. See Delia Volpe, 'Settling Accounts'; Bennett, Formalism and Marxism, especially 33; and Ben Brewster, 'From Shklovsky to Brecht: A Reply,' Screen 15, no. 2 (1974): 82102, especially 86. As quoted in FM, 62. FM.63. Bennett, Formalism and Marxism, 45. FM, 137. Ibid., 89. See Bennett, Formalism and Marxism, 24-5. FM, 136. Ibid., 70. MPL, 83. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology: Part One (New York: International Publishers, 1991), 50-1. Ibid., 51. What Marx and Engels mean here by 'need' is of great importance to considerations of language. As will be discussed below, whether language originates and is recreated from 'need' or 'passion' is a debate that divides most Romanticist theories of language from rationalist ones.

198

Notes to pages 68-70

67 Benedetto Croce, The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General, trans. Colin Lyas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 156. 68 Ibid., 160. 69 Karl Vossler, The Spirit of Language in Civilization, trans. Oscar Oeser (London: Kegan Paul, Tench Trubner, 1932), 7. Craig Brandist correctly draws attention to Vossler's often ignored criticisms of Croce. But he assumes, with little evidence, that Gramsci was aware of, and in agreement with, these criticisms. Brandist, 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' 98-100. 70 MPL, 84-5, emphasis in original. Vossler actually does not fall so easily into this criticism, given the importance of the idea of language community which he uses to criticize Croce. Vossler, Spirit of Language, 175. 71 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Linguistic Variability and Intellectual Development, trans. George Buck and Frithjof Raven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 34.1 investigate the manner in which this notion of Humboldt's has been pervasively influential and show Gramsci's undermining of it in Peter Ives, 'The Grammar of Hegemony,' Left History 5, no. 1 (1997): 30-47, reprinted in Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments, vol. 2, ed. James Martin (London: Routledge, 2001), 319-36. 72 Brandist argues that Gramsci and Bakhtin adopt Vossler's picture of linguistic environment and translation in a modified form, 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' 98-9. This seems misleading, given that such modification would have to include Gramsci's and Volosinov's (if not Bakhtin's) explicit rejection of the very movement from, in Volosinov's words, 'inner something which is expressible to its 'outward objectification.' MPL, 84. Chapter 3 explains how Gramsci's notion of translation is at odds with Vossler's. Where VoloSinov does discuss intentional meaning it needs to be understood with the phenomenological emphasis that does not fall into the inner/outer dualism that he rejects in all idealist theories of expression. 73 MPL, 86. Emphasis in original. Note the similarities with Gramsci's discussion of normative grammar as reciprocal monitoring and censorship, discussed in chapter 1. 74 Humboldt, Linguistic Variability, 11. 75 There are important metaphorical similarities between 'depth' and Ascoli's notion of the linguistic substratum discussed in chapter 1, pages 25-6. Gramsci's conceptualization of the co-existence of normative and spontaneous grammar within the same language to move away from Ascoli's reductionism is not unlike Volosinov's double-sided word. However, Gramsci's formulation calls for a more explicit understanding of the grammar that structures even the speaker's side of the act of uttering. Volosinov's notion of the two-sided act could lead one to believe that the speaker is only constrained, restricted or 'coerced' by those pressures exerted from the addressee(s), whereas Gramsci shows great attunement to the integral relationship between consent and coercion by defining both sides of the double-sided word as 'grammar.' 76 Humboldt's movement from depth to surface is replicated by Noam Chomsky, who

Notes to pages 70-5

77

78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87

88

89

199

acknowledges his Humboldtian premises. Noam Chomsky, Knowledge of Language (New York: Praeger, 1986), 30; John Joseph, 'Ideologizing Saussure: Bloomfield's and Chomsky's Readings of the Cours de linguistique general*1 in Ideologies of Language, ed. John Joseph and Talbot Taylor (London: Routledge, 1990), 51-78. Note the similarity between this argument and Volosinov's critique of psychoanalysis in his book on Freud, V.N. Volosinov, Freudianism, trans. I.R. Titunik (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976). MPL, 98. Emphasis in original. SCW, 180-2; Q29§2. See chapter 1, 42-7. SCW, 177;Q6§71. SPN, 375-77; Ql 1§63. See discussion of language in previous chapter. Tihanov, Master and the Slave, 99. He also argues that VoloSinov's solution to problems of seeing language as superstructural leads him to theorizing that language is a master code. He further argues that ideology, linguistically constructed, is contrasted, by Volosinov, to nature, 92-3. Chapter 3 will argue that Gramsci cannot be said to follow this route. For example, see DiN, 272-5, 288. See Emerson, The First Hundred Years, 8-10. This perspective is evident throughout Emerson's work. See, for explicit examples, The First Hundred Years, 22, 77. Brandist, 'The Official and the Popular,' 72. Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 11, 14-15, 129-30, 224. Moreover, many of Hirschkop's insightful criticisms of Bakhtin revolve around his avoidance of rooting the ethical convictions about dialogism in their political, non-literary contexts. See 221, 223, 245, 252-3. Ken Hirschkop makes a similar argument. 'For if Bakhtin suggested that language, novels, or societies themselves could be thought of as dialogues, it was at the price of making it less clear why dialogues could be thought of as dialogues.' Mikhail Bakhtin, 4. Volosinov uses the phrase 'isolated monologic utterance' as an abstraction that is opposed to the actual reality of language-speech. For him there are no historical examples of actual language-speech that are monological. Instead, monologic language only pertains to the degree of abstraction in the realm of studying language. Bakhtin uses 'monologic' in this way as well, but he also uses it to describe actual conditions of the status of language in a given epoch, for example, in 'Epic and Novel,' 14, and 'From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,' 61-2, both in The Dialogic Imagination. In Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems ofDostoevskys Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) (hereafter cited as PDF), Bakhtin uses 'monologic' to describe both particular novels (which do not live up to the novel's true essence) and relations, world views, and other elements. While Bakhtin does not use the term 'monologia' in Rabelais and His World, he describes (although not in detail) a

200

90 91 92

93

94 95 96

Notes to pages 75-8

state out of which Rabelais's work marks the passage. This prior condition of language seems to lack any interaction (or dialogue) between Latin (official culture) and the vernacular languages (unofficial culture). Moreover, vernacular languages do not have dialogue or exchange among each other in this period. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hdlene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954). Hereafter cited as RHW. Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 218-19. DiN, 270-1. Ken Hirschkop, 'Introduction: Bakhtin and Cultural Theory,' in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, ed. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepard (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 5. This problem is exacerbated if we agree with Holquist's argument that the centrifugal forces associated with heteroglossia are more powerful and always in praesentia as opposed to the centripetal forces associated with monologia. See Michael Holquist's Introduction to The Dialogic Imagination, xix. Chapter 4 relates these assumptions about language to Habermas's position. Hirschkop, 'Introduction,' 4-6. Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 220.

97 Ibid., 242-3. 98 Bakhtin does not use 'polyphony' as synonymous with 'heteroglossia.' It is not specifically related to the diversity of speech styles or languages but is a characterization of the author's position with reference to the text and its characters. 99 Tony Crowley, 'Bakhtin and the History of the Language,' in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed., ed. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 194. See also Tony Crowley, Language in History: Theories and Texts (London: Routledge, 1996), especially chapter 2, 30-53. 100 Crowley, 'Bakhtin and the History of the Language,' 195. 101 Holquist, Dialogism, 34. 102 Young, Back to Bakhtin, 74. 103 While beyond the scope of this work, this issue relates directly to debates around 'humanism' and 'anti-humanism.' Within that context, the position that humans are inherently dialogical begs the question of what is the non-human that is nondialogic?

104 DiN, 273. 105 Tihanov offers quite a different reading, arguing that for Bakhtin - at least in his 1929 study of Dostoevsky - 'dialogue, then, can easily be the battlefield of dark forces, and will remain itself a destructive power, unless it is enlightened and ennobled by the saving grace of monologue.' Tihanov, Master and the Slave, 200. Such a reading positions him closer to Gramsci's advocacy of a unified national language but leaves Bakhtin's writings more enigmatic. 106 Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 30. They also suggest that 'centrifuge' might

Notes to pages 78-82

201

be a misleading analogy on Bakhtin's part since it suggests an organization of lines of force radiating outward from a centre. Instead, they argue, Bakhtin means the 'essential messiness of the world.' See 139-41. 107 Central to Morson and Emerson's entire conception of Bakhtin as the philosopher of the 'prosaic,' this position leads them into murky waters of utilizing everything from James Gleick's pop-science of 'chaos theory' to Gregory Bateson's argument that while there are many ways for things to be messed up and chaotic, there is only one way for them to be ordered. That is, as Morson and Emerson summarize, 'order needs justification, disorder does not,' Mikhail Bakhtin, 30. Anyone interested in political or social order realizes that there are many ways for things to be ordered, and that disorder also needs justification.

108 DiN,29S. 109 This is why Bakhtin criticizes poetry as being monologic because the 'poet is a poet insofar as he accepts the idea of a unitary and singular language and a unitary, monologically sealed-off utterance.' Bakhtin assumes, however, that poetry is somehow unnatural or inimical to the essence of language, because it is the poet who 'strips the word of others' intentions, he uses only such words and forms (and only in such a way) that they lose their link with concrete intentional levels of language and their connections with specific contexts.' DiN, 296-7. Thus, while he explains that the diversity in language derives from diversity of people using languages in different concrete contexts, he assumes that this diversity is 'natural' or 'essential' to language. The reverse, monologia, only occurs, for him, when language is 'stripped' - that is, when it is lessened and controlled by the individual poet. 110 DiN, 300-7. 111 Note here that ideological signs, for Volosinov, do not contain or carry 'meaning' or a denotation of another object or referent. They reflect and refract other realities. 112 MPL, 11. 113 Ibid., 23. 114 Ibid., 23. 115 Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Principle, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 57. 116 DiN, 270. 117 This strong link between language and society in the definition of'heteroglossia' also helps explain Bakhtin's contention that Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel could only have arisen with the advent of capitalism. PDP, 62.

118 DiN, 271.

119 S/W,135;Q13§20. 120 This distinction has parallels with Hirschkop's distinction discussed above, between historical and normative conceptions of heteroglossia. 121 This distinction is akin to Gramsci's concepts of'passive' versus 'active' revolutions.

202

122 123 124

125

126 127 128 129

130 131 132

Notes to pages 82-7

Brandist argues that this distinction of Gramsci is evident in Bakhtin's analysis of Dostoevsky, but because Bakhtin's distinction lies only within literary analysis, it does not seem to be applicable to the question of unified national languages. Brandist, 'The Official and the Popular,' 70. 5CWT182;Q29§2. The individual/collective distinction is important and will be discussed with reference to Benjamin's discussion of poetry and translation in chapter 3. As mentioned earlier, Tihanov rejects this common reading of Bakhtin, concluding that for him, 'true dialogue should be resolved, at the end of the day, into a monologue. The task of dialogue is to enact a cathartic deliverance from the plurality of voices besetting the inner world of the characters, so that they can arrive at adequate self-knowledge' Master and the Slave, 199-200. If this reading is sustainable, the political question that Gramsci's work interrogates is how such cathartic deliverance arrives, given that like the 'final analysis,' the 'end of the day' never actually comes except perhaps in literary works. Gramsci castigates not only Manzoni's administrative solution to the questione della lingua but also his novel, The Betrothed, for its elitist depiction of the 'humble' subaltern characters (see SCW, 288-97; Q23§51, Q7§50, Q21§3, Q14§39, Ql4§45, Q15§37). Manzoni is a perfect example of an author who explicitly made, and remade, a choice about the unified language in which the novel was to be presented. M.M. Bakhtin, 'The Problem of Speech Genres,' in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 77-80. Ibid., 84. Galin Tihanov, as mentioned earlier, represents perhaps the most thorough exception. See M.M. Bakhtin, 'From Notes Made in 1970-71,' in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 147. Bakhtin's rejection of'dialectics' is perhaps due to its previous accentuation by Stalin's 'Marxism-Leninism.' DiN, 338. Ibid., 262. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 92.

133 RHW,3. 134 For a thorough discussion of the relationship between Bakhtin and recent literature on the public sphere, see Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 249-71. 135 See for example, RHW, 412. 136 Ibid., 17-18. Emphasis added. 137 Bakhtin never uses the terms 'monologic' or 'heteroglossia' in this work, although many commentators have assumed these concepts refer to the major themes that he explores in it.

138 RHW, 274.

Notes to pages 87-93 139 140 141 142 143

144 145 146 147 148 149

150 151

152 153 154

155 156 157 158 159

203

Ibid., 275. Ibid., 453. Ibid., 453-4. Ibid., 454. As quoted in ibid., 450. Like Machiavelli writing just a few decades earlier, Rabelais's merit is that he saw that the role of the people would become paramount for progressive and regressive regimes alike. RHW, 450-1. Ibid., 465. Ibid., 468. Ibid., 468-71. SCW, 167-71;Q3§76. Ibid., 168; Q3§76. Gramsci states that, 'from 600 A.D. in Italy, when one can presume that the people no longer understood learned Latin, up to 1250, when the vernacular begins to flourish (i.e., for more than 600 years), the people could not understand books and were unable to participate in culture.' SCW, 169;Q3§76. Besides providing one of the earliest treatises on language, including a theorization of its origin and a typology of Italian dialects, Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia calls for an - as yet, non-existent - 'illustrious vernacular.' It would combine various aspects of the Italian dialects into a single, unified national language. Such a national language would not be the triumph of a particular region of Italy over others. De Vulgari Eloquentia was written in Latin. However, The Divine Comedy is an attempt at achieving this vernacular that met with remarkable success. Although Gramsci's framework does not seem to fall into the ambiguities of the concept of'refraction.' This seems to be his position in M.M. Bakhtin, 'From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,' in The Dialogic Imagination, 41-83, see 61-2. Philippe Wolff, Western Languages AD 100-1500, trans. Frances Partridge (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 133-96. Linguistically, the changes that amount to the shift from Old English to Middle English occurred around the eleventh century. German and French made this shift around the twelfth century. Nor could the reverberations in languages of the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula be described as static during this period. RHW, 47\. SPN, 196; Q3§48. I mean 'subaltern' as including all classes subordinate to the aristocracy. In this context it includes the bourgeoisie. RHW, 4. Gardiner, The Dialogics of Critique, 186. Of course, I hope the previous discussion

204

Notes to pages 94-8

presents a more nuanced understanding than a dichotomy between monologism's menacing threat and the trope of heteroglossia as necessarily healthy. 160 As Chomsky's work shows, these languages can produce an infinite number of new sentences at the individual level, but this says nothing about social progress.

161 SCW, 177-8; Q6§71. 162 5PA^,450;Q11§24. 163 DiN, 270-2. Chapter 3: Translating Revolution: Benjamin's Language and Gramsci's Politics 1 Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Derek Boothman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 307 (hereafter cited as FSPN). I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Q and then the section number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and in the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published: Ql 1§47. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, 4 vols., ed. Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), hereafter cited as QC. 2 Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, trans. James Fentress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 351. 3 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Linguistic Variability and Intellectual Development, trans. George Buck and Frithjof Raven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). 4 Of course, Eco addresses translation thoroughly in his other writings, specifically in his Experiences in Translation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). But even here he addresses the topic explicitly as an individual author whose work has been translated and as an individual translator (6). This approach separates him from 'translation' as developed by Gramsci and Benjamin. He does note that there is a type of translation aimed at changing both source and target languages (21), although he insists that translation should not go beyond the intentions (as distinct from the interpretations) of the author. This, as we shall see, is at odds with Gramsci and Benjamin's position (45-6). His investigation of Roman Jakobson and Charles Pierce's interplay between translation and interpretation (67-130) also raises many of the points to be made below. Moreover, his study is an excellent exploration of another aspect of Gramsci and Benjamin's 'translation' - that it cannot be seen as simple transferal from one language to another but necessarily involves cross-cultural analysis. So my point here is not that Eco as a thinker ignores translation, but that his image as presented here obscures the power relationships central to Gramsci. 5 Walter Benjamin, 'The Task of the Translator,' trans. Harry Zohn, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 75. Hereafter cited as TT.

Notes to pages 98-9

205

6 Eco introduces this problem with reference to Benjamin's 'The Task of the Translator,' and proposes to solve it with a 'comparative tool, not a language itself, which might (if only approximately) be expressed in any language, and which might furthermore, allow us to compare any two linguistic structures that seemed, in themselves, incommensurable.' Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, 349. 7 They part company with Luther where he gives extreme preference to the target language of translation to such an extent that a good translation should read as if it had been written in the source language. 8 To list just a few, Rodolphe Gasche", 'Saturnine Vision and the Question of Difference: Reflections on Walter Benjamin's Theory of Language,' Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 11, no. 1 (1986): 69-90; Andrew Benjamin, Translation and the Nature of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), 86-108; Jacques Derrida, 'Des Tours de Babel,' trans. Joseph Graham, in Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph Graham (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 165-205; Paul DeMan, '"Conclusions": Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator," Messenger Lecture, Cornell University, March 4, 1983,' Yale French Studies 69 (1985): 25-46. 9 Gerratana's critical apparatus of the Quaderni del carcere does not include 'tradurre' in its otherwise comprehensive subject index. But even an incomplete list of references indicates the importance of the concept for Gramsci. Omitting the sections to be discussed at length below and their A-texts, where Gramsci explicitly develops the concept of translation, a partial index entry would read as follows: Q3§48 (SPN, 200), Q6§87 (FSPN, 17), Q10I§5 (FSPN,339), Q10I§6(FSPN343), Q10I§71S7 (FSPN, 344) Q10I§11 (FSPN, 355), Q10IIS9 (SPN, 400-1), Q10II§28 (FSPN99), Q10II§31 (FSPN385), Q10II§41 (FSPN, 403), Ql 1§12 (SPN, 325), Ql 1§25 (SPN, 429), Qll§65 (SPN, 403), Q13§13 (SPN, 143), Q15§61 (SPN, 417), Q19§24 (SPN, 78). These sixteen references encompass Gramsci's historical, sociological, and cultural reflections, his notes on Croce, and his reading of Marx. SPN refers to Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971). 10 Derek Boothman, 'Translating Signal to Sign: The Case of Gramsci's Quaderni,' in Miscellanea fra linguistica e letteratura, ed. Antonio Loprieno (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1988) 57-81; Maurizio Lichtner, 'Traduzione e metafore in Gramsci,' Critica Marxista 39, no. 1 (1991): 107-31; Andre Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano filosofia della prassi,' Marxismo Oggi 1(1996): 49—67, especially 62-7. For an early and brief, but also insightful and conjectural commentary on Gramsci's use of'translation,' see Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State, trans. David Fernbach (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), 367-71. See also the section 'Science, Logic and Translatability,' in FSPN, 278-325.

11 SPN, 238;Q74§16.

206

Notes to pages 100-2

12 Gasche", 'Saturnine Vision,' 72. 13 FSPN, 306; Ql 1§46. See also the A-text, Q7§2, where Gramsci puts Lenin's supposed words as a quotation and writes 'Europee' in scare-quotes: 'Vilici disse e scrisse: "non abbiamo saputo 'tradurre' nelle lingue 'europee' la nostra lingua."' 14 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 33 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 430-2. Elsewhere, Lenin discusses the 'translation' of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' into modern languages with the spread of Soviets throughout the world. He compares it to translating Latin into a language that is comprehensible to the masses. Collected Works, vol. 28 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 455-6.

15 FSPN, 306-18; Q10§6, Qll§47-50, Q17S18, Q15§64. 16 See Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State, 123; and Camilla Ravera, Diario di trent'anni 1913-1943 (Rome: Riuniti, 1973), 18. 17 As with the debates over Gramsci's use of'hegemony,' sometimes used in the traditional sense even late in his prison years. William Hartley, 'Politics and Culture in Antonio Gramsci's Quaderni del carcere (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1985), 90 2. Gramsci also uses 'tradurre'in a common-sense way as synonymous with 'interchangeability' and even 'reduction.' See, for example, QC 468; Q4§42; Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 2, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) 192. See also FSPN 308; Ql 1§48. Yet in Q10II§28, Gramsci opposes 'tradurre'with 'interpretare'[to interpret]. FSPN, 99. Such inconsistencies, while causing some confusion and inaccuracy, seem to suggest little except to remind us of the conditions under which Gramsci was writing. 18 My thanks to Jeremy Stolow bringing this to my attention. 19 Lichtner provides an interesting development of Gramsci's use of'metaphor' as it relates to translation. He suggests that for Gramsci, metaphor often works better than a precisely defined theory because the philosophy of praxis is really a philosophy of activity that cannot be understood purely by 'theory.' Metaphor, he argues, is a vital instrument for integrating practice with theory. 20 For a brilliant discussion of the gendered nature of this bind that rests on the notion of translation as feminine and secondary to the original, masculine activity of creative production, see Lori Chamberlain, 'Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,' in Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 1992), 57-74. 21 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, ed. Quintin Hoare, trans. John Mathews (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 34-7. Hereafter cited as SPWl. Admittedly, Gramsci developed a more nuanced understanding of the Bolshevik Revolution and Marx's Capital after this famous article of 1917. 22 See the famous opening to Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1934), 10. 23 TT, 69.

Notes to pages 102-3

207

24 Of course, neither Benjamin nor Gramsci would suggest that the details of context are 'inessential' in themselves: quite the contrary. 25 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 384-5 (hereafter cited as SCW), Q16§21. Likewise, Gramsci argues that before the Fascist educational reforms, 'Pupils did not learn Latin and Greek in order to speak them, to become waiters, interpreters or commercial letter-writers. They learnt them in order to know at first hand the civilization of Greece and of Rome - a civilization that was a necessary precondition of our modern civilization: in other words, they learnt them in order to be themselves and know themselves consciously.' SPN, 37; Q12§2. 26 Boothman provides a thorough reading of this aspect of translation in Gramsci's work, and illustrates it with the translation of the term 'intellettuale tradizionale'into the British context. Boothman, 'Translating,' 57-81. 27 For a discussion of these terms in Croce, see Maurice Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 48. 28 This addition is especially evident after reading Lenin's statement emphasizing that foreigners will not understand the resolution and thus will not be able to carry it out. Lenin goes a few steps down the road of Gramsci and Benjamin on translation by noting that the lack of understanding is 'not because it is written in Russian - it has been excellently translated into all languages.' Rather he faults it for being too long and 'too Russian'; thus, even if a foreigner understands it 'he cannot carry it out.' Lenin's solution is to study with foreign comrades; this includes much effort on the part of the Russians. Furthermore, foreigners 'must assimilate part of the Russian experience.' Lenin, Collected Works 33: 430-2. 29 An early example of this is evident in Gramsci's analysis of the Moderates and the Action Party in the Italian Risorgimento. As opposed to the Action Party, Gramsci argues, for many of the leaders of the Moderates 'an identity was realized between the represented and the representative, the expressed and the expressor; that is, the Moderate intellectuals were a real, organic vanguard of the upper classes because they themselves belonged economically to the upper classes.' Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Buttigieg, trans. Joseph Buttigieg and Antonio Callari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 137: Ql§44. See also Lichtner, 'Traduzione e metafore,' 113-14, where he discusses the distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals as a relation of continuity and change between form and content, and literary expression and conceptual content. 30 Buci-Glucksmann argues that most of the emphasis on Gramsci's original contribution is an attempt to oppose Gramsci to Lenin and is based on underestimations of the place of'hegemony' in Lenin's theory. See especially Gramsci and the State, 174-95. Other interpretations of Gramsci as fundamentally Leninist include those of Palmiro

208

Notes to pages 103-5

Togliatti, Gramsci (Rome: Riuniti, 1967); Perry Anderson, 'The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,' New Left Review 100 (November 1976-January 1977): 5-78; and Paolo Spriano, Storia del Partita comunista italiano, vol.1 (Turin: Einaudi, 1967). The second camp is much more extensive, including a wide variety of interpretations. 31 For an exposition on Gramsci's 'subversion' of language, see Anne Showstack Sassoon, 'Gramsci's Subversion of the Language of Politics,' Rethinking Marxism 3, no. 1 (1990): 14-25. 32 See Benedetto Fontana, Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), especially his introduction and chapter 3. Gramsci also uses this method of comparison in the negative: 'Gioberti is not by any means the Italian Hegel.' FSPN, 442; Q7§79. 33 Antoine Herman's work on this question will be discussed below.

34 TT, 73. 35 TT, 74. Bassnett-McGuire relates this basic point to Saussure's analysis using the English word 'butter' and the Italian 'burro,' which denote the same object but can signify almost opposite meanings given the different roles of butter in Italian and English society. Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 1991), 18-19. Benjamin's example hints at his awareness that the word-object relation is perhaps not the central one in the production of meaning, to which we shall return below. 36 Eugene Nida, Towards a Science of Translating: With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translation (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964), especially 120-44. For a good overview of the practical problems of translation and how translation the ory has understood them, see Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, 13-37; and Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories (London: Routledge, 1993). 37 Walter Benjamin, 'On Language As Such and on the Language of Man,' in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books 1978), 315-16. Hereafter cited as OLAS. 38 OLAS, 315-16; Edward Sapir, The Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Cul ture and Personality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), and Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956).

39 rr,72. 40 Thus, it has nothing to do with the idea of a universal grammar or some underlying, hard-wired, language structure or human faculty on which all languages are based, such as Chomsky or others propose. 41 TT, 73-4. Note here that the necessity of translation is not considered an obstacle or barrier, as Eco shows us is the legacy of Babel. Linguistic diversity is a wholly positive circumstance. 42 Like Esperanto, Volapiik is an artificial language for international communication invented at the end of the nineteenth century.

Notes to pages 105-7

209

43 FSPN, 303-4; Ql 1§45, and A-text version Q7§3. Lichtner's exegesis of this passage leads to the same conclusions as I draw here, 121. 'Historicism' is a difficult issue between Gramsci and Benjamin, since they use the term quite differently, as will be evident below. 44 Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano,' 63-4. 45 In a letter of 22 September 1930, Gramsci complains that a Pushkin translation is 'stupidity,' 'silly,' 'rubbish,' and 'literary teratology,' but he still maintains it will be useful to help him understand the original (in Russian, which clearly he could read). Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 1, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 351. 46 Barbara Godard, 'Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation,' Tessera 6 (1989): 50. 47 Ibid., 47. 48 Gramsci's development of translation further questions Laclau and Mouffe's contention that he presupposes the proletariat as the subject of revolution. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), especially 65-88. Even in the relatively limited space and time span that separated the October Revolution from the hoped-for Italian one, the translation was active enough to affect the make-up of the hegemonic subject of revolution. I am not suggesting that Gramsci was not thoroughly convinced that for Italy during his lifetime the proletariat was the only social group that could lead a communist revolution. 49 FSPN, 308-9; Ql 1§48. Gramsci is very clear at other points in this passage that Einaudi's starting point 'is very limited and refers not so much to the languages of different national cultures as to particular languages of different scientific personalities.' 50 Lichtner, 'Traduzione e metafore,' 122.

51 QC, 851; Q7§1. 52 See Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano,' 61. 53 FSPN, 403-4; Q10§41. This is Gramsci's more general theme that Croce's philosophy is the retranslation into speculative language of Marxism's insights. See FSPN, 355;Q10I§11. 54 The method of comparing the earlier notebooks and the A-texts, especially Quaderni 4, 7, and 8, with the later notebooks and the C-texts, especially Quaderni 10 and 11, is used by Hartley, Lichtner, and Tosel to describe the development of Gramsci's various concepts, most explicitly 'hegemony,' 'immanence,' and the 'philosophy of praxis' respectively.

55 /S/W,312;Q11§49. 56 Ibid., 315: Qll§50. 57 Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano,' 58-9.

58 Ibid., 64-5. 59 SCW, 168-70; Q3§76. 60 SPN, 10-14; Q12§1.

210

Notes to pages 107-9

61 SPW\, 163-5. Gramsci details how changes in production and the new knowledge of the workers over the production process altered the role of technicians, once the industrialists' allies, but afterwards redundant. See also 171, and Gramsci's discussion of the Workers' Schools, 122.

62 QC, 2357. 63 /5/W, 308-9: Qll §48. 64 Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 2, ed. Frank Rosengarten, trans. Raymond Rosen thai (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 207. From Gramsci's word ing here, we see that he is not as extreme as Benjamin that the transmission of information is bad translation. For Gramsci, it is not so much a distinction as a continuum between translations that transmit information, and those that translate. 65 TT, 71. Benjamin's point is then the opposite of Renan's 'a work not translated is only half published,' as quoted by Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 178. 66 QC, 1468: Ql 1§47. I have altered the translation from FSPN, 307, slightly using 'phase' rather than 'stage' for the Italian 'fuse. 'This does not get around the question of the extent to which Gramsci is suggesting a 'stagist' theory of social development. As Gramsci himself indicates with his scare-quotes, what does it mean to say the '"basically" identical cultural expression'? Fundamental to answering this question is that the philosophy of praxis alone can effect such a translation between cultures. It is tempting to read this as economic reductionism on Gramsci's part; however, as shall be clear below, this would be to misunderstand Gramsci's emphasis on 'translation,' especially in its philosophical sense. 67 One important implication of these arguments, which goes against most contemporary theories of language, is that not all complete natural languages can describe everything. Thus, Gramsci and Benjamin agree on this point with the conservative and racist theories of language which place languages in a hierarchy. While it is important to be aware of the dangers of such positions, the significant question is how the evaluation of languages is made, and this is where neither Gramsci nor Benjamin subscribes to a developmental or stagist model of language development. 68 As quoted by Benjamin, 77781. 69 I do not mean that given the two choices, leading the foreign to the reader or leading the reader to the foreign, Benjamin would favour an extreme of the latter. Instead, he focuses on the extent to which the target language is revolutionized, which depends on its own circumstances as well as its relationship to the source language. 70 77;76. 71 See Berman, Experience of the Foreign, 69-86, and 184. 72 Ibid., 100. 73 Rodolphe Gasche", 'The Sober Absolute: On Benjamin and the Early Romantics,'

Notes to pages 110-11

74

75

76 77

78 79 80

81

211

Studies in Romanticism 31 (1992): 434-5. For a different argument explicitly contrary to Gasche's, see Ian Lyne, 'Walter Benjamin and Romanticism: The Romantic Tradition,' Philosophy Today (1995): 391-407. See also Walter Benjamin, 'The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,' trans. David Lachterman et al., Selected Writings, vol. 1, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 116-200. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1977), 160, 182. The translation of the title of this work, 'Ursprungdes deutschen Trauersfiels,'is unfortunate, since one of Benjamin's main objectives is to distinguish the German Trauerspiel from tragedy. So I will translate this title as The Origin of German Trauersfiels but use Osborne's translation, to be cited as TS for Trauerspiel. Berman, Experience of the Foreign, 99. The identity of poetry and translation is directly related to A.W. Schlegel's view of language as the product of human work, as artificial; see Berman 133. While Gramsci agrees with Schlegel on this point, Benjamin's theory of language, as we shall see, is premised on language as given by God or, in his later essays, as the 'natural' product of mimesis and onomatopoeia, as discussed below. Gasche, 'The Sober Absolute,' especially 448-53. Berman, Experience of the Foreign, 7-8. This argument is supported by analysis throughout the work in the context of the early Romantics (with sporadic references to Benjamin). For a good discussion of this process of social analysis and translation, see Boothman, 'Translating Signal to Sign.' Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Studies, 185. Andre" Lefevere and Susan Bassnett, 'Introduction: Proust's Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights - The "Cultural Turn" in Translation Studies,' in Translation, History and Culture, ed. Susan Bassnett and Andre" Lefevere (London: Pinter, 1990), 1-13. Bassnett-McGuire traces this 'turn' in the English-speaking world to Catford's 1965 point that, 'In translation, there is substitution of TL meanings for SL meanings: not transference of TL meanings into the SL. In transference there is an implantation of SL meanings into the TL text. These two processes must be clearly differentiated in any theory of translation." As quoted by Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, 6. See also Barbara Godard, 'Culture as Translation,' in Translation and the Multilingualism in Post-Colonial Contexts, ed. Shantha Rama Krishna (Delhi: Pencraft, 1996), 157-83. Such ideas, of course, have precursors. See Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, 445. Andre" Lefevere argues that since the European culture of scholars, ecclesiastics, or literati was bilingual or multilingual, the main purpose of translations was not to make foreign language texts accessible. Andre Lefevere, 'Translation: Its Genealogy in the West,' in Translation, History and Culture, 14-29. But equivalence was certainly cen-

212

Notes to pages 111-13

tral to traditional understandings of translation when Gramsci and Benjamin were writing. 82 Mary Snell-Hornby, 'Linguistic Transcoding or Cultural Transfer? A Critique of Translation Theory in Germany,' in Translation, History, and Culture, 79-86; and Mary Snell-Hornby, Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1988), especially 13-22. 83 Douglas Robinson, The Translator's Turn (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Antoine Berman states that the second hypothesis of the interdisciplinary study of translation is that, 'translation ... plays a role that is not merely one of transmission: On the contrary, this role is tendentially constitutive of all literature, all philosophy, and all human science,' Experience of the Foreign, 183. 84 For example, Jacques Derrida, 'Des Tours de Babel,' and The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, ed. Christie McDonald (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).

85 FSPN, 307-9, Ql 1§48; FSPN, 310, Ql 1§49; FSPN, 313, Q17§18; FSPN, 319, Q10II§60. 86 QC, 2486-7. As translated from German in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Holy Family: or, Critique of Critical Critique (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), 55. 87 JF5/W,311;Q11§49. 88 FSPN, 371-2; Q10II§4. See also Lichtner, Traduzione e metafore,' 120. 89 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1986), 110-20 [155-69]. 90 JF57W,312;Q11§49. 91 SPN, 399-400; Q10II§9. 92 Ibid., 400; Q10II§9. For a detailed examination of the concept of'immanence,' see both Lichtner, 'Traduzione e metafore' and Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano.' 93 SPN, 401; Q10II§9. 94 Ibid., 394; Q16§9. Gramsci roots this in Croce's analysis as typified by Erasmus's dictum, 'ubicumque regnat lutherismus, ibi literarum est interitus [wherever Lutheranism reigns, there is the death of letters].

95 Ibid., 395; Q16§9. 96 For example, can the cultural politics of the feminist and gay and lesbian movements that reveal the limits of 'equality' be 'translated' into other 'languages' such as economics and science? I am thinking of the early work of Donna Haraway critiquing the gender categories of primatology, Primate Visions (New York: Routledge, 1989). AIDS and the gay and lesbian communities' response also seem to indicate that the social context of disease is much more important than traditional biomedical paradigms account for. Feminist critiques of economics could also be seen as a kind of 'translation' of cultural politics into economics. If these 'equations' are legitimate,

Notes to pages 113-15

97

98

99

100

101

102 103 104

213

Benjaminian and Gramscian 'translation' would require that we take them farther than the borrowing of ideas. It calls for a much more thorough translation affecting entire languages. For example, Gramsci makes arguments such as, 'Even if one admits that other cultures have had an importance and a significance in the process of "hierarchical" unification of world civilisation (and this should certainly be admitted without question), they have had a universal value only in so far as they have become constituent elements of European culture, which is the only historically and concretely universal culture - in so far, that is, as they have contributed to the process of European thought and been assimilated by it.' SPN, 416; Q15§60. The term hierarchical suggests that he is equating this process with bureaucratic centralism rather than democratic centralism. Nevertheless, if translation by the philosophy of praxis is to be thorough, organic, and democratic, it cannot be so Eurocentric. This comparison is also important in raising questions of Habermas's separation of Benjamin's type of criticism from what he considers the proper Marxist framework of ideology critique. Jiirgen Habermas, 'Walter Benjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique,' in Philosophical-Political Profiles, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 154. As we shall see in the following chapter, this argument presumes much about ideology critique that Gramsci would reject. The importance of this question is heightened by Benjamin's insistence on the role of language in the Trauerspiel. He writes: 'How language can fill itself with sadness, how language can express sadness, is the basic question of the mourning play ... Language in the process of change is the linguistic principle of the mourning play.' Walter Benjamin, 'The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy,' trans. Rodney Livingstone, Selected Writings, 1: 59-60. See Benjamin's oft-quoted letter to Scholem of September 1924, Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin Briefevol. 1, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1966), 355; and Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 112. Benedetto Croce, The Aesthetic as the Science of Expression and of the Linguistic in General, trans. Colin Lyas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 76. For an analysis of the phrase 'ugly but faithful, or beautiful but faithless,' see Chamberlain, 'Gender and the Metaphonics of Translation.' Rainer Rochlitz, The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin, trans. Jane Marie Todd (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 36. Benedetto Croce, The Essence of Aesthetic, trans. Douglas Ainslie (London: William Heinemann, 1921), 57. In a letter of 19 February 1925, Benjamin described this study as 'a kind of second stage of my early work on language ... with which you are familiar, dressed up as a theory of ideas.' As quoted in Rochlitz, Disenchantment of An, 33. Thus for

214

105 106

107

108 109

110 111 112

113

Notes to pages 115-17

Benjamin there was a close relationship between this work and his essays on language. Croce, The Essence, 57. Quoted by Benjamin, TS, 45. I will follow the standard practice of capitalizing 'History' to refer to Croce's philosophy of history. Sieburth notes that the 'Epistemo-Critical Prologue' is like both the 'Task of the Translator' and 'Konvolut "N"' in that it provides a theory of knowledge upon which Benjamin's more descriptive analyses are based. Leigh Hafrey and Richard Sieburth, 'Translators' Introduction to "N,"' in Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, ed. Gary Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 38—42. John Osborne translates Benjamins 'ubereinkommt'as 'can be reconciled with.' Because 'reconciliation' seems to carry with it a philosophical weight that would normally be conveyed with the German word 'versohnen,' I have modified the translation to 'agrees with.' As Victoria Heftier also pointed out to me, 'ubereinkommt'is not in the passive, nor does it connote the sense of possibility which 'can be reconciled' contains. This is important because Benjamin argues that his distinction between 'origin' and 'genesis' puts 'genetic classification' (i.e., History) into a relationship with an idealist theory of art. Reconciliation implies an initial incongruence that Benjamin would be required to harmonize. TS, 45. A minor exception to this is Enrico Guglielminetti, who shows some awareness of the Crocean context. See Enrico Guglielminetti, Walter Benjamin: Tempo, ripetizione, equivocita (Milan: Mursia, 1990), 102-4. For two examples of extended discussions of this passage that fail to mention Croce, see Samuel Weber, 'Genealogy of Modernity: History, Myth and Allegory in Benjamin's Origin of the German Mourning Play,' MLNIQ6, no. 3 (1991): 465-500; and Wolin, Walter Benjamin, 96-7. Weber,'Genealogy,'468-72. TS, 58. The etymological connection between the German 'Sprung' of 'Ur-sprung,' meaning 'spring' or 'leap' fits well into the metaphor of the stream and the English meaning of'spring' as the 'origin' of a stream. The water from a spring comes from somewhere and the locating of its 'source' tells us little about the rest of the stream except that it has no 'up-stream' before the spring where it comes out of the ground. The 'origin' of the stream in a spring has little to do with the combination of hydrogen and oxygen that is the genesis of water. Jeremy Stolow has pointed out to me that 'Sprung also resonates in 'aujzusprengen [blasting out], used by Benjamin to characterize his well-known idea of now-time [fetztzeit] in his Fourteenth Thesis on 'The Philosophy of History' that begins with a quote from Karl Kraus, 'The origin [Sprung] is the goal.' Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History,' in Illuminations, 261. Benjamin's approach is almost diametrically opposed to Croce's development of all

Notes to pages 117-19

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

124 125 126 127 128

215

history as 'contemporary history.' Croce argues that without documents there can be no historical narrative; instead there is nothingness. And this nothingness does not trouble Croce since all knowledge must be certain knowledge (uncertain knowledge is not knowledge). His concern is to overcome such 'remains' of forgotten history and realize that 'we know at every moment all the history we need to know; and since what remains over does not matter to us, we do not possess the means of knowing it.' See Benedetto Croce, Theory and History of Historiography, trans. Douglas Ainslie (London: George Harrap, 1921), especially 11-56. His notion of historical narrative is directly at odds with Benjamin's notion of history as images developed in the Arcades project, and with Gramsci's emphasis on 'historic blocs' and the formation and dissolution of historical epochs. SPN, 125-33. Q13§20. Croce, The Essence, 58. Ibid., 60. G.W.F Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 10. Croce, Theory and History, 18-19. Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History,' 262. FSPN, 378;Q8§210. Although in Italian 'salto' [spring or leap] is distinct from 'fonts' [spring as the source of a stream]. FSPN, 351-4; Q10I§10; and Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, trans. Lynne Lawner (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 237-8. See also FSPN, 160; Ql 1§5. Gramsci notes that Croce periodizes his histories beginning in 1815 and 1871 such as to avoid the moment of struggle where one ethico-political system is dissolved and another arises. FSPN, 348-50; Q10I§9. Walter Benjamin,'N,'43-83. Benjamin,'Theses,'261. TS,48. See Gasche", The Sober Absolute,' 449. It is beyond the scope of this work to explore how the allegorical for Benjamin relates to the rise of nation-states, the Restoration, secularization, and the dominance of writing in modernity and how these motifs are connected to Benjamin's concerns with Kabbalah and theory of language. But we can say that Benjamin distinguishes allegory from symbol to show how 'allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.' TS, 178. Just as ruins hold more insights into history if they are uncovered than original blueprints of a building would, allegory provides greater insight into the condition of the modern world than symbol. See also 227 and 232-5, where Benjamin relates the allegorical to the possibility of revolution and salvation.

216

Notes to pages 120-3

129 Benjamin, 'Theses,' 254. 130 It must be remembered that the context of Marx's famous metaphor of religion as the opium of the people is that religion is an expression of, and real protest against, real suffering. Karl Marx, 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction,' in Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans. T.B. Bottomore (London: C.A. Watts, 1963), 43-4. 131 Benjamin, 'Theses,' 253. For a detailed reading of the ambiguity in Benjamins First Thesis, see Ian Balfour, 'Reversal, Quotation (Benjamin's History),' MLN 106, no. 3 (1991): 622-47. Balfour points out that the relationship of the hunchback (theology) guiding the puppet (historical materialism) is reversed in the last line of the thesis. Agreeing with Balfour, Rebecca Comay contends that we cannot just see this thesis as an unmasking or a plea for the mutual cooperation of Marxism and theology. See Rebecca Comay, 'Benjamins Endgame,' in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, ed. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (London: Routledge, 1994), 251-91. Whatever interesting connections can be made starting from these perplexities, they seem to overcomplicate Benjamin's First Thesis where historical materialism and theology are playing for the same side of the chessboard. 132 Fontana demonstrates how Gramsci's critique of liberal and bourgeois ideology in the concept of hegemony develops from his interpretation of Machiavelli as the 'Italian Martin Luther,' Hegemony and Power, 35—51. 133 SPN, 339; Qll§12. Emphasis in original. 134 Ibid., 338; Qll§12. 135 Ibid., 340; Qll§12. 136 FSPN, 338-9; Q10I§5. He argues that Croce's position needs to be 'brought clearly out into the open' in that Croce understands that 'a conception of the world cannot prove itself worthy of permeating the whole of society and becoming a "faith" unless it shows itself capable of substituting previous conceptions and faiths at all levels of state life.' 137 Hartley, 'Politics and Culture,' 331-5. 138 S/W1.330.

139 Ibid., 332-3. 140 FSPN, 17; Q6§87. See also 74-5 (Q3§140), where Gramsci argues against the dualism between Thought and the Church as proposed by 'our idealists, secularists, immanentists, and so on.' 141 Walter Benjamin, 'Theologico-Political Fragment,' in Reflections, 312-13. 142 Walter Benjamin, 'On the Program of the Coming Philosophy,' in Benjamin Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, 1-12, here 4. 143 Ibid., 9. 144 This argument is strikingly similar to chapter 3 of Tullio De Mauro, Ludwig Wittgen-

Notes to pages 123-6

145

146 147 148 149

150

151 152 153 154

155

156 157 158

217

stein: His Place in the Development of Semantics (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing, 1967). Benjamin was not alone in using Jewish Messianic motifs to reject the interpretation of Judaism as the 'religion of Reason,' as propounded by a host of Jewish intellectuals, especially Herman Cohen, but also by Socialists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein. In the climate of continuing anti-Semitism, a whole generation of Jewish intellectuals turned to Messianic influences. Anson Rabinbach, 'Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism,' New German Critique 34 (1985): 78-124. See also Jiirgen Habermas, 'The German Idealism of Jewish Philosophers,' in Philosophical-Political Profiles, and Rochlitz, Disenchantment of Art, 6. OLAS, 314. Ibid., 315. Ibid., 327. Note that Benjamin's critique of the arbitrary nature of language is based only on the relationship between word and referent, whereas Saussure's notion of arbitrary is the relationship between signifier and signified, and not referent. OLAS, 322. Of course, the special status of language as the defining aspect of humanity is a central tenet of Western philosophy. Gramsci's interpretation of Marx's point that humans are an ensemble of relationships does not rely on this assumption (except in that some of the relations are linguistic and it is through language that other relations are recognized). See SPN, 351-6; Q10II§54, Q7§35; and SPN, 359; Q10II§48. OLAS, 323. Note that this 'knowledge' is a different type of knowledge than that of judgment of good and evil. Ibid., 323. Ibid., 320. Walter Benjamin, 'On the Mimetic Faculty,' Reflections, 333-36, 336. Hereafter referred to as OME Walter Benjamin, 'Doctrine of the Similar,' trans. Knut Tarnowski, New German Critique 17 (1979): 65-9. The question of how this 'non-sensuous similarity' is related or opposed to Marx's notion of'sensuous human activity' is an important question that Benjamin does not explicitly address. Walter Benjamin, 'The Doctrine of the Similar,' 66. QA0J334. Charles Taylor, 'The Importance of Herder,' in Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 81, 79-99. Taylor argues that while Herder did not solve this problem, his recognition of it constituted a hinge on which modern understanding of language is different from premodern ideas. Benjamin did not seem to be aware of this important aspect of Herder's writings.

218

Notes to pages 126-9

159 In the 'On Language' essay, Benjamin asserts that his argument is not biblical interpretation but is rather the 'discovery of what emerges of itself from the biblical text with regard to the nature of language; and the Bible is only initially indispensable for this purpose.' But without this initial indispensability, it is difficult to see how Benjamin would support his view of language. OLAS, 322. 160 SCW, 176; Q6§20. Saussure argues against onomatopoeia on 69 [102]. 161 David McNally argues that these essays contain a Marxist theory of language hinging on mimesis. David McNally, Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor and Liberation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 161—228. I disagree that Benjamin's mimesis offers an adequate replacement of poststructuralist theories of language; see my review essay, 'Three Interventions on Cultural Difference,' Studies in Political Economy 68 (2002): 107-25. Chapter 4 also provides a Gramscian critique of mimesis. 162 Habermas,'Walter Benjamin,'154. 163 Brewster and Buchner make some insightful comments about Benjamins 'mimesis' moving beyond Humboldt in positing a truly dialectical relationship between energia and ergon, and between experience and expression. These may provide the bases for a more materialist interpretation of Benjamin's writings on language. But they also argue that for Benjamin, meaning cannot be directly produced in the way that value is produced by labour. If they are correct, this separates Benjamin from Gramsci. Philip Brewster and Carl Howard Buchner, 'Language and Critique: Jiirgen Habermas on Walter Benjamin,' New German Critique 17 (1979): 15-30. 164 Walter Benjamin, 'Curriculum vitae [3],' in Ecrits autobiographiques, trans. C. Jouanlanne and J.-F. Poirier (Paris: Christian Bourgeois, 1990), 31; quoted in Rochlitz, Disenchantment of Art, 45. 165 FSPN, 281-2: Q6§180. 166 Ibid., 294-5: Qll§39. 167 See David F. Noble, Progress without People: New Technology, Unemployment and the Message of Resistance (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1995).

168 FSPN, 295: Qll§39. 169 A.S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (London: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 1-2. As quoted by Gramsci, FSPN, 286; Ql 1§36.

170 FSPN, 286-7; Qll§36. 171 SPN, 440-1 ;Q11§17. 172 Ql 1§17. Emphasis added. Hoare and Nowell Smith translate this passage as 'man found the world all ready made,' SPN, 441. While an interesting solution to a translation problem, this sounds like the typo of the English 'already.' The Italian '/'/ mondo gia bell'epronto' includes the English idioms 'already' and 'ready,' 'gia' and 'pronto.' Where 'gia' can be translated 'already,' 'pronto' is more literally 'ready' for action. Gramsci also points out that science cannot provide proof of the objectivity of

Notes to pages 130-2

219

the external world 'since this objectivity is a conception of the world, a philosophy and thus cannot be a scientific datum.' FSPN, 291; Ql 1§37. 173 /SP./V, 291-2; Qll §37. 174 This is why Gramsci claims, 'to base oneself on this experience of common sense in order to destroy the subjectivist conception by "poking fun" at it has a rather "reactionary" significance, an implicit return to religious feeling.' SPN, 441; Qll§17. Gramsci also connects this perspective to Kantianism: 'The question of the "external objectivity of the real" in so far as it is concerned with the concept of the "thing in itself" and of the Kantian "noumenon." It is difficult to exclude the assumption that the "thing in itself" is a derivation from the "external objectivity of the real" and from so-called Graeco-Christian realism (Aristotle, Aquinas). This derivation can also be seen in the fact that an entire tendency of vulgar materialism and positivism has given rise to the neo-Kantian and neo-critical school.' SPN, 367-8; Ql 1§15. 175 Esteve Morera, Gramscis Historicism: A Realist Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1990), 46-8, 65-6.

176 5/W,438;Qll§15. 177 Tosel, 'II lessico Gramsciano,' 65. 178 FSPN, 291;Q11§37. 179 SPN, 445; Qll§17. Emphasis in original. Gramsci proceeds to emphasize that this cultural unification cannot be seen as a point of departure, cannot be forecast, and is not determined by present or past conditions. If he did take such a position, as often attributed to Marxim, he would fall back into the mythical conception of the world as the conglomeration of fixed laws unfolding. 180 SPN, 341; Ql 1§12. Of course, by 'democratic' I do not mean voluntary decision of the majority of the people. This adhesion is not a question of what people want to believe. It is a question of what people actually believe. 181 Ibid., 438; Qll§15. 182 Ibid., 171;Q15§50.

183 /75/W,291;Qll§37. 184 SPN, 438;Q11§15. 185 FSPN, 292; Ql 1§37. The question of meaning is critical here since it mediates between questions of ontology and epistemology. As with Wittgenstein, Saussure, and semiotic perspectives, the focus is on the production of meaning. 186 Ibid., 293: Ql 1§38. Esteve Morera offers a thorough opposition to much of this interpretation of Gramsci's epistemology. Morera emphasizes that many of Gramsci's statements that seem to reject common sense notions of science are directed more narrowly at positivism and that Gramsci is not rejecting such central tenets as the correspondence theory of truth, nor is he positing his own sophisticated theory of meaning. Rather than engaging explicitly in debates between Morera and Leondaro Salamini, Thomas Nemeth, and others around Gramsci's epistemology, my more explicit focus on language addresses these issues from a different set of questions.

220

Notes to pages 132-5

187 Tosel, '11 lessico Gramsciano,' 60. 188 FSPN, 306; Q10II§6.

189 Ibid., 303-4; Qll§45. 190 Tosel, '11 lessico Gramsciano,' 62-4. Chapter 4: Language and Reason: The Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Gramsci 1 Jiirgen Habermas, A Berlin Republic: Writings on Germany, trans. Steven Rendal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 149. 2 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 8 (hereafter cited as SPN). I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Qand then the section number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published: Q12§1. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni delcarcere, 4 vols., ed. Valentino Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), hereafter cited as QC. 3 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), 567. 4 SPN, 9;Q12§1. 5 Ibid., 326; Qll§12. 6 Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Derek Boothman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 56-7; Q16§1; 74-5; Q3§140; 298-305; Qll§4l-5; 338; Q10I§4; 439-40; Q14§38 (hereafter cited as FSPN); SPN, 244-5; Q15§10; 362; Q10II§35; 437-48; Qll§15, Qll§17-20; and Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 422-3; Q24§8 (hereafter cited as SCW). Maurice Finocchiaro points out eleven different concepts of 'science' that Gramsci uses in order to criticize positivism and metaphysical dogmatism, to demarcate the limits of empiricism, and to expand the philosophy of praxis's notion of'science' to mean a 'serious approach' to the subject under examination. Maurice Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 76-93. 7 Benedetto Fontana offers some caution to my contention here. He distinguishes between logos as transcendental reason and logos as language and speech and argues that 'while the primacy of reason reveals the idealistic nature of Gramsci's hegemony, his historicism and radical anti-essentialism firmly locate the logos within social and material reality. Indeed, while thinkers from Plato to Croce have sought to maintain the integrity of reason, and to preserve its autonomy by circumscribing its activity within an aristocratic culture, in Gramsci the logos is transformed into a hegemony described by the synthesis of philosophy and politics, thought and the people-

Notes to pages 135-8 221 nation.' If one is looking for such a transformation of reason, then perhaps Gramsci does have a complex conception of reason. In this sense, Fontana's analysis concurs fully with my position and supports my Vernacular materialist' approach. Benedetto Fontana, 'Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony, 'Journal of the History of Ideas 62(1) (2000): 314.

8 5O^383;Q16§21. 9 See SPN, 339; Ql 1§12; and FSPN, 338; Q10I§4, where Gramsci argues that philosophy can only be experienced as, and becomes, 'faith,' discussed in chapter 3. 10 A different, and also fruitful, approach is taken by Finocchiaro. In his discussion of Gramsci's concepts of'logic' and 'dialectic,' which are distinct but not opposed to one another, Finocchiaro details how 'logic' for Gramsci refers to 'reasoning' in the sense of systematic and sound argumentation, whereas 'dialectic' refers to the simultaneous ability to distinguish and also relate different elements. Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, 155-8. 11 Of course, this relationship is already found in the Greek term logos, which combines the concepts of language and reason. 12 Philip Brewster and Carl Howard Buchner, 'Language and Critique: Jiirgen Habermas on Walter Benjamin,' New German Critique 17 (1979): 19. 13 SCW, 180; Q29§1. See also chapter 1, p. 41. 14 A literature review of this work warrants a project all of its own. For a succinct overview, see Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Other examples of such work include Luce Irigaray's readings of Plato, Hegel, and Freud in Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian G. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), and Anne Phillips, 'Universal Pretensions in Political Thought,' in Destabilizing Theory, ed. Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 10-30. 15 See, for example, Joan Cocks, The Of positional Imagination (London: Routledge, 1989); Michele Barrett, The Politics of Truth (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); and Mary O'Brien, 'Hegemony and the Reproduction of Patriarchy,' in Reproducing the World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), 223-58. 16 Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), and Aspects of the Fre nch Revolution (New York: G. Braziller, 1968). For a more recent line of argument that separates bourgeois democracy from capitalism, see Ellen Meiksins Wood, Democracy against Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and 'Modernity, Postmodernity, or Capitalism?' Monthly Review 48, no. 3 (1996): 21-39. 17 For example, see George Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution (London: Verso, 1987). 18 Paul Ginsborg, 'Gramsci and the Era of the Bourgeois Revolution in Italy,' in Gramsci and Italy's Passive Revolution, ed. John Davis (London: Groom Helm, 1979), 31-66.

222

Notes to pages 138-42

19 Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). 20 FSPN, 406-9; Q10II§41; and 24; Q4§75. 21 Gramsci does not go as far as Ferruccio Rossi-Landi in trying to apply Marx's economic categories to language through what he calls the 'homology' between economics and linguistics. See Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Language As Work and Trade, trans. Martha Adams et al. (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1983), and Ferruccio RossiLandi, Marxism and Ideology, trans. Roger Griffin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 22 It seems that the only work that Gramsci was familiar with by anyone associated with the Institute for Social Research was Henryk Grossmann's. Gramsci comments on a review of Grossmann's book, Das Akkumulations undZusammenbruchsgesetz des kapitalischen Systems, QC, 1279, Q10§II33, and QC, 2878. 23 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Buttigieg, trans. Joseph Buttigieg and Antonio Callari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 120; Ql§33. 24 Jennifer Stone, 'Italian Freud: Gramsci, Giulia Schucht, and Wild Analysis,' October 28 (1984): 107. Also on the relation between Gramsci and Freud, see Christine BuciGlucksmann, Gramsci and the State, trans. David Fernbach (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), 86-91. 25 Stone makes some excellent observations, including the importance of Croce's advocacy of Freud and implicit connections between the unconscious and cultural analysis. But she seems to be stretching the limits of Gramsci's few remarks on Freud in arguing that 'Gramsci provided, in Italy, a link between the theories of Marx and Freud (just as Louis Althusser did in France)' 'Italian Freud,' 107. 26 See Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1992), 69-92. 27 Max Horkheimer, 'The End of Reason,' in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982), 34. 28 For a detailed description of how the two research projects of the Institute - one on dialectics and the other on anti-Semitism - yielded the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a preliminary report of a work still in progress and, significantly, as a prelude to the more positive depiction of'enlightenment' to follow, see Rolf Wiggerhaus, The Frankfurt School, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 291-350. 29 Of course, Adorno and Horkheimer's narrative of the beginning of the dialectic of enlightenment is not a historical moment, but the description of the genesis of the illusion of an original unity between humans and nature. Their analysis shows how the 'always-already' character of this dynamic is rooted firmly at the centre of bourgeois reason.

30 SPN, 171; Q15§50; and SPN, 244-5; Q15§10. 31 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Gumming (New York: Continuum, 1987), 3. Hereafter cited as DoE.

Notes to pages 142-4 223 32 Ibid., 6. 33 Ibid., 16. 34 Wiggerhaus's general assessment of Horkheimer as the administrator whose intellectual themes always played second fiddle to Adorno's leaves us with this impression. This is also the perspective in the collection of essays in On Max Horkheimer, ed. Seyla Benhabib, Wolfgang Bonfi, and John McCole (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), with the notable exception of Alfred Schmidt's contribution. 35 Max Horkheimer, 'Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History,' in Between Philosophy and Social Science, trans. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew Kramer and John Torpey (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 313-88, here 314. Originally published as Anfdnge der biirgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930). 36 Giambattista Vico, The New Science ofGiambattista Vico, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 60. 37 Ibid., 116. 38 Horkheimer, 'Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History,' 380. 39 DoE, 15. 40 Ibid., 188-9. 41 Ibid., 187. 42 For a comparable argument to Gramsci's epistemology, see Max Horkheimer, 'Tradition and Critical Theory,' in Critical Theory, trans. Matthew O'Connell et al. (New York: Continuum, 1989), 199-202. 43 Max Horkheimer, 'On the Problem of Truth,' in Between Philosophy and Social Science, 182. See also DoE, 8. 44 See Benedetto Fontana, 'The Concept of Nature in Gramsci,' Philosophical Forum 27, no. 3 (1996): 220-43. 45 Fontana, 'The Concept of Nature in Gramsci,' 225. 46 Theodor Adorno, 'The Idea of Natural History,' trans. Bob Hullot-Kentor, Telos 60 (1984): 116-17. 47 Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics (New York: Free Press, 1977). Habermas offers the most obvious example of just this neglect. Jiirgen Habermas, 'Remarks on the Development of Horkheimer's Work,' in On Max Horkheimer, ed. Benhabib et al., 49-66, especially 56. 48 While in some senses Habermas's engagement with hermeneutics might trouble such a distinction, his consistent focus in his writings on language contends that external nature is only involved in communicative relationships among subjects as objects whose nature can be agreed upon by the subjects. Thus, not unlike Lukdcs, human understanding of the external world changes, but it cannot be said to be in a dialectical relationship with humanity. This is of the utmost importance when ethical determinations are based on the boundary between human and non-human. 49 See especially Horkheimer, 'Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History,' 314-7.

224

Notes to pages 145-8

50 Ibid., 317. 51 DoE, 12.

52 5/W,125;Q13§l. 53 Ibid., 134-5; Q13§20. 54 Ibid., 133; Q13§20. For a thorough analysis of Gramsci's reading of Machiavelli, see Benedetto Fontana, Hegemony and Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 55 Horkheimer, 'Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History,' 323. 56 One can, of course, ask which of these interpretations is supported by the evidence of Machiavelli's texts. I agree with Finocchiaro's argument that the burden of proof lies on the more critical interpretation, in this case Horkheimer's. Because Gramsci's evaluation is positive, whether or not it has sufficient textual evidence, it can be evaluated on the merits of its own substance. Finocchiaro, Gramsci andthe History of Dialectical Thought, 141. 57 Habermas's reading of Machiavelli is closer to Horkheimer's in emphasizing the divorce between politics and ethics caused by the 'scientific' study of society. Jiirgen Habermas, 'The Classical Doctrine of Politics,' in Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 49-60. 58 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 210, see also 230. 59 For example, see DoE, 9. 60 Alfred Schmidt, 'Max Horkheimer's Intellectual Physiognomy,' in On Max Horkheimer, ed. Benhabib et al., 25-47; and Habermas, 'Remarks on the Development of Horkheimer's Work,' 57-66. 61 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 204. 62 The place where there might be a conflict is in the 'Culture Industry' chapter, where such insights are not taken into account. See below, pp. 151-3. 63 Horkheimer seems to agree with Gramsci's perspective when he castigates Hegel's idealism for presenting ideals 'as though they were ideas with an existence independent of man.' But he does not follow this argument as far as Gramsci. Max Horkheimer, 'Materialism and Metaphysics,' in Critical Theory, trans. Matthew O'Connell (New York: Continuum, 1989), 46. 64 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 215. 65 Ibid., 216. 66 Ibid., 232. This is the corollary to the above-stated argument that Fascism arose directly from the ideology of nineteenth-century liberalism but relies less overtly on coercion to police its own population. 67 5/W,7;Q12§l. 68 Ibid., 8;Q12§1. 69 Ibid., 5; Q12§1. This distinction of Gramsci's is not a dichotomy but rather, as one might expect, a dialectical one. As with the distinction between spontaneous (or

Notes to pages 148-54

225

immanent) and normative grammars, this distinction is based on historical precedence. The strata of traditional intellectuals are nothing other than strata of organic intellectuals adapting to historical changes. 70 SPN, 10;Q12§1. 71 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 213. 72 Ibid., 215. 73 Ibid., 229. 74 FSPN, 283-4; Q17§23. This point is similar to Barthes's notion of myth as discussed in chapter 1, pp. 39-40. 75 Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, 78. 76 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 224-5. 77 SPN, 430;Q11§26. 78 Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 1990), 107. 79 Jameson's argument might obscure the extent to which Adorno and Horkheimer present poor analyses of cultural phenomena, themselves overemphasizing, for example, the commercialization of jazz at the expense of its innovative and vernacular character. See DoE, 122-53, and Theodor W. Adorno, 'Perennial Fashion: Jazz,' in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 119-33. 80 Habermas also senses this emphasis in Adorno and Horkheimer s work, with his argument that they follow Weber's theory of rationalization too closely. Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy, vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 332-4. 81 Theodor Adorno, 'Cultural Criticism and Society,' in Prisms, 17-34. 82 Theodor W Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1990), 3. Hereafter cited to as ND. See also Adorno, 'Cultural Criticism and Society,' 29-30. 83 Of course, this remark is directly related to Gramsci's intense interest in the relationship between science and religion, reason and faith. FSPN, 18; Q8§97, Q6§139; 56-7; Q16§1; 74-5; Q3§140; and SCW, 380-5; Q16§21. 84 Jameson, Late Marxism, 180. 85 SPN, 348-9; Q10II§44; 445; Qll§17; and SCW, 124; Q14§61. 86 Jameson, Late Marxism, 102. 87 DoE, xii, 17, 147. 88 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 'Essay on the Origin of Languages," in On the Origins of Language, trans. John H. Moran and Alexander Code (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 5-72. 89 SPN, 349; Q10II§44. 90 Teresa De Lauretis, for example, argues that while Umberto Eco attempts to develop a historical materialist semiotics that 'bridges the gap between discourse and reality,' he

226

91 92 93 94

95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

104 105

Notes to pages 155-6

fails to depict the subject along with social reality as semiotic entities. His omissions lie in emphasizing the productive element of semiosis to the exclusion of processes of 'habit' formation and what De Lauretis calls 'experience.' See Teresa De Lauretis, Alice Doesn't (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984): 172-83, and Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976). While attempting to link discourse and reality through processes of semiosis, Eco still abstracts the two by assuming that discourse is somehow 'unreal.' Gramsci and De Lauretis present an alternative option. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Continuum, 1972), 179. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 179. V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 9-10. Note that Volosinov emphasizes that the physical object that becomes a referential sign does not cease to be a part of reality itself. By not paying attention to this, Adorno and Horkheimer end up hypostatizing language and reality. This argument is similar to Charles Taylor's argument that Herder criticized Condillac's false explanation of how language originated. That is, if the 'origin' of language is to be explained, what requires explanation it precisely how a sound or symbol is used to indicate something else. Adorno and Horkheimer ascribe this moment to a 'deity,' making them susceptible to Gramsci and Marx's critique of the search for origins as being a religious or metaphysical formulation rather than a historical materialist one. See chapter 1, p. 18, and Charles Taylor, 'The Importance of Herder,' in Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 79-99. DoE, 15. For his discussion of mimesis within this relation, see ND, 14, 45, 269-70. As we shall see below, Habermas uses communication among scientists as one of the prime examples of non-instrumental communicative action. DoE, 18. Ibid., 164-5. Ibid.,xii. Ibid., xiv. Similarly, Adorno discusses the extent to which all minds within contemporary democracy are 'moulded' to such an extent that they are unable to criticize. ND, 41. SPN, 235; Q13§24. Gramsci presents the primacy of the 'war of position' in the 'West' as a pragmatic consideration aimed at achieving power in the long term. SPN, 235-9; Q13§24, Q6§138. He also maintains that counter-hegemonic forces should not follow the same methods as the ruling classes for strategic reasons. SPN, 232; Ql§133. But these strategic considerations have a moral and ethical element as argued with reference to Manzoni, Esperanto, and bureaucratic centralism in chapter 1, p. 50.

Notes to pages 157-62

227

Communist hegemony has to avoid being falsely 'universal,' and must be democratic. These themes grew out of Gramsci's concern over the PCI being a 'collection of dogmatists or little Machiavellis,' not organically tied to 'all the oppressed classes.' See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings, 1910-1920, ed. Quintin Hoare, trans. John Mathews (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 307-9. 106 Jameson, Late Marxism, 66-8, 103-5. 107 SPN, 450-1; Ql 1§24. See chapter 1, pp. 35-6. 108 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: New York, 1977), 183. 109 Ibid., 178. 110 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 250-302. 111 Max Horkheimer, letter to Adorno, 14 September 1941, quoted in Wiggerhaus, The Frankfort School, 505. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid.,506-7. 114 Theodor Adorno, letter to Horkheimer, 23 September 1941, quoted in ibid., 506. 115 Max Horkheimer, letter to Leo Lowenthal, 23 May 1942, quoted in ibid., 314. 116 Finocchiaro argues that Gramsci uses Croce's own earlier analysis of religion as world views containing ethics in order to criticize Croce's later interpretation of Marxism. From this argument, Gramsci also criticizes Croce's failure to engage in disseminating his philosophy among the popular masses. See Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, 14-15. 117 Benedetto Croce, The Conduct of Life, trans. Arthur Livingston (New York: Harrap, 1924),300; see also 296. 118 SPN, 422; Ql 1§13. Gramsci attributes this phrase to Croce and then totally redefines its meaning. 119 Gramsci makes this argument in many different notes to varying degrees. For example, see FSPN, 300-3; Ql 1§44, and the collection of sections in SPN, 325-43. 120 Croce, The Conduct of Life, 27-33. 121 FSPN, 338; Q10I§5; and 55-8; Q16§1. See also Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, 3, 11-20. 122 SPN, 329-30; Qll§ 12. 123 Ibid., 331; Qll§12. Gramsci points out the problem that 'common sense' does not always leave behind the sources for a reconstruction and that the history of philosophy has been much more thoroughly documented. 124 Nancy Fraser, 'What's Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender,' in Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 113—43; Iris Marion Young, 'Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory,' in Feminism as Critique, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987), 56-

228

125

126

127

128 129 130

131 132

133

Notes to pages 162-5

76; and many of the articles collected in Johanna Meehan, ed., Feminists Read Habermas (London: Routledge, 1995). Habermas has responded and adapted to many of these criticisms; see Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996). Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 65-186; Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 273-337, hereafter cited as TCAl; Jurgen Habermas, 'What Is Universal Pragmatics?' in Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 14-20; and Jurgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, trans. William Hohengarten (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 57-114. Jurgen Habermas, 'Modernity: An Unfinished Project,' trans. Nicholas Walker, in Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity, ed. Maurizio d'Entreves and Seyla Benhabib (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 38-58. Jurgen Habermas, 'A Positivistically Bisected Rationalism,' in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, ed. Theodor Adorno et al., trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby (London: Heinemann, 1976), 198-225, especially 218-25. For a discussion of what Habermas accepts of Popper's philosophy, see Ingram, Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason, 28-31. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 91-112. Umberto Eco, Teresa De Lauretis, and others argue that the 'proper' conclusions of Peirce s work are very different and much more in line with materialist theories of language. For just a couple of examples of very different readings of Peirce, see Eco A Theory of Semiotics, and De Lauretis, Alice Doesn't, especially 158-86. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 137. Habermas, TCAl, 366-99; and Jiirgen Habermas, 'The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,' in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 106-30. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 46-63.

134 TCAl, 143-272. 135 Ibid., 335. 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143

Ibid., 288. Ibid., 99, 286-337. Ibid., 304. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 62-3. Ibid., 7-24. FSPN, 315-6; Qll §50. SPN, 37, Q12§2; and 33, Q12§1. This should not, however, undervalue the important role that Habermas has taken as a public intellectual in Germany.

Notes to pages 166-72

229

144 Habermas most recently repeated this point in 'Questions of Political Theory,' in A Berlin Republic, 148. 145 William Rehg argues that Habermas's communicative action can and must take into account the aesthetic dimension and normative account of 'the good life' more than Habermas admits. William Rehg, Insight and Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), especially Part II, 89-172. Nevertheless, Rehg's reconstructed Habermas still rejects Adorno and Horkheimer's insights into bourgeois reason. 146 'Mimesis' is not mentioned in the 1969 essay, Jiirgen Habermas, 'Theodor Adorno: The Primal History of Subjectivity - Self-Affirmation Gone Wild,' PhilosophicalPolitical Profiles, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 99110. But by the time he publishes the Theory of Communicative Action, 'mimesis' is central to his critique. See Habermas, 'The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment,' 106-30, and TCAl, 345-99. 147 TCAl, 382. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 Ibid., 389-90. 151 Ibid., 379. 152 Habermas, 'Theodor Adorno,' 108. Here Habermas reduces Marx's category of labour purely to the relationship between humans and nature conceived undialectically. Gramsci's notion of labour is much more expansive. 153 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 314. 154 Jiirgen Habermas, 'The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-Reading Dialectic of Enlightenment,' trans. Thomas Levin, New German Critique 26 (SpringSummer 1982): 30. I use Levin's translation instead of the previously cited translation by F. Lawrence because instead of using 'unforced force,' Levin uses 'noncoerced coercion,' which corresponds to the translation of other works and to my earlier discussion. 155 SPN, 419-22; Qll§13. 156 Ibid., 326; Qll§12.

157 SCW, 130; Q14§65. Conclusion 1 These new language questions include the possibility of between 80 and 90 per cent of the world's languages dying out in the next hundred years. A fear that has been expanded by the United Nations Environmental Program's recent research connecting loss of linguistic diversity with a decrease in biodiversity, see Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, 'Murder That Is a Threat to Survival,' Guardian Weekly: Learning English, Supplement, 22 March 2001, 3.

230

Notes to pages 172-5

2 David Crystal, English As a Global Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 5. 3 Ibid., viii-ix, 7-8, 20-22 and 24-63. Crystal is quite concerned about smaller languages dying out and argues that they can and should be protected. The root of his approach is his belief that 'global English,' which he advocates, is not at odds with linguistic diversity. 4 For his discussion of the relationship between studies of politics and linguistics see Noam Chomsky, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use (New York: Praeger, 1986). 5 See Introduction, 4—7. 6 In this way, Gramsci's work has productive affinities with the work of Tove SkutnabbKangas connecting linguistic discrimination with the inefficacy of human rights. See Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson, eds., Linguistic Human Rights: Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994). 7 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), 142-9. 8 Joseph Buttigieg, 'Gramsci's Method,' Boundary 2, 17, no. 2 (1990): 79-80. See also Joseph Buttigieg, 'Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks,'' Boundary 2, 21, no. 2 (1994): 98-138. 9 Tullio De Mauro, preface to Lingua Intellettuali Egemonia in Gramsci, by Franco Lo Piparo (Bari: Laterza, 1979), ix. 10 Franco Lo Piparo, 'Studio del linguaggio e teoria gramsciana,' Critica Marxista 2/3 (1987): 167-75. 11 This work hardly constitutes organic intellectual activity. In this sense, I use 'translation' in a much more limited way than Gramsci does (see chapter 3).

Index

Adorno, Theodor, 3, 15, 96, 100, 170-1, 174, 176, 223n46, 225; Dialectic of Enlightenment, 139-68, 222n31; Negative Dialectics, 144, 151-2, 155, 225n82 Ahmad, Aijaz, 180nl4 Althusser, Louis, 18, 138, 173 Ambrosoli, Luigi, 184n9 Anderson, Perry, 6, 12, 16, 34, 177, 181nl6, 183n2, 185n24, 208n30 Aristotelian poetics, 81-2 Ascoli, Graziadio Isaia, 18, 21, 22, 25-8, 29, 31-6, 42, 45, 50, 51, 63, 81, 100, 185n26, 188n59. See also substratum Augustine, 82 Austin, John, 162 Babel, 97-8, 105 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 2, 12, 15, 53-9, 60-1, 66, 71-96, 138, 159,163,174,176, 182n26, 196n31, 199n89, 202; 'Discourse in the Novel,' 56, 60, 75, 78-9, 192n4; Rabelais and His World, 8, 56, 83-95, 199n89 Bakhtin Circle, 7, 14, 53-61, 71, 99, 175. See also Bakhtin; Volosinov; Medvedev Balfour, Ian, 2l6nl31

Bally, Charles, 62 Barrett, Michele, 180n8, 221nl5 Barthes, Roland, 18, 39-40, 135, 164, 169, 173, 189n94, 225n74, 230n7 Bartoli, Matteo, 16, 17, 21-30, 31, 33-4, 36, 38, 41, 50, 51, 54, 63, 81, 90-1, 186n34 base (economic). See superstructure and economic structure or base Bassnett-McGuire (Basnett), 111, 208n35, 211n80 Benjamin, Andrew, 205n8 Benjamin, Walter, 3, 7, 15, 39, 96, 98-133,143,157,159,162,165,168, 174-6; conception ofjetztzeit, 118, 2l4nl 12; 'On Language as Such ...,' 104-5, 124-6, 208n37; 'On the Mimetic Faculty,' 125-7, 217nl54; The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 109-10, 113-20 , 211n74; The Task of the Translator,' 98, 102-5, 108-11, 123-4, 204n5 Bennett, Tony, 53, 55, 66, 179nl, 193n5, 194nl2 Berman, Antoine, 109-10, 210n65, 212n83 Bertoni, Giulio, 24, 29, 187n52

232 bible, the, 8, 9, 125, 127 Boas, Franz, 21 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 8 Boothman, Derek, 184nlO, 205nlO Bopp, Franz, 13 Bordiga, Amadeo, 59 Borghese, Lucia, 17, 183n6 Bourdieu, Pierre, 6, 181nl8 Brandist, Craig, 59, 69, 73, 175, 183n8, 185n32, 192nl, 192nl Brewster, Ben, 197n55, 221nl2 Brewster, Philip, 218nl63 Brugmann, Karl, 21 Buchner, Carl Howard, 136, 218nl63 Buci-Glucksmann, Christine, 17,205nlO, 207n30, 222n24 Buck-Morss, Susan, 144 Bukharin, Nikolai, 9, 34, 35, 40, 169, 181nl5 Buttigieg, Joseph, 173-4, 182n28, 230n8 Callinicos, Alex, 7 capitalism, 19, 24, 51, 73, 130, 137-8, 154, 159, 163, 172 carnival, 54, 73, 86-7, 89, 92-3 Carrannante, Antonio, 183n9 centralism. See democratic centralism Chamberlain, Lori, 206n20 chaos, 24, 57, 73, 92, 170, 210nl07 Chomsky, Noam, 12, 23, 46, 162, 172, 186n37, 191nl22, 198n76, 204nl60 church. See Roman Catholic Church civil society, 4, 16, 18-19, 30, 49, 51, 72, 99, 122, 135, 156, 178, 182n37, 193nlO Clark, Katerina, 75-6, 78, 86, 194nl2 class, 6, 18, 33, 36, 41, 43, 44, 53, 73, 80, 85,92, 121, 146-50, 157, 165 Cobban, Alfred, 137, 221nl6 Cocks, Joan, 221 nl5

Index coercion, 11-12, 24, 28, 30, 45, 77, 121-2, 132, 134, 136-7, 148, 162-3, 168-9, 198n75 collective will, spirit. See national popular (collective) will Comay, Rebecca, 216nl31 common sense, 4, 11, 12, 41, 51, 67, 71, 92, 121, 124, 127, 129, 132, 147, 153, 160, 170, 227nl23 Comninel, George, 221nl7 conformism, 41, 147, 149 consent, 11-12, 24, 28, 30, 45, 48, 121-2, 136, 162, 169, 77, 198n75 Cornforth, Maurice, 180n7 Croce, Benedetto, 8, 9-10,18, 19, 51, 59, 60-1, 64,67-70, 79, 93, 96,103,106, 109, 113-19,121-2,127-8,133,148, 160-1, 177, 180nlO, 182n27, 186n37, 189n85, 198n67, 212n94, 215nl23, 220n7, 227nl 17; on language or Crocean linguistics, 22-9, 31, 33, 36-43, 170; on translation 113-15, 209n53; on Vico and Machiavelli, 143-5 Crowley, Tony, 77-8, 200n99 Crystal, David, 172, 230n2 Culler, Jonathan, 62, 196n42 culture, 4, 8, 56, 60-1, 85, 106, 108, 147, 151, 161; culture industry, 142, 150-1, 155-6; folk culture, 89; and language, 12, 19, 21, 25-6, 28, 34-6, 41, 54, 68; official and unofficial, 86-7, 92; popular culture, 53, 89, 151, 171; See also national popular (collective) will Dante, Alighieri, 8, 90, 203nl51 deconstruction, 3, 5. See also Derrida De Felice, Renzo, 183n9 De Lauretis, Teresa, 225n90, 228nl30 Delbruck, Berthold, 21 Delia Volpe, Galvano, 197n51

Index De Man, Paul, 205n8 De Mauro, Tullio, 17, 175, 184nll, 185n22, 216nl44, 230n9 democracy, 5, 19, 48, 54-5, 73, 76, 79, 82, 89, 95,131,136-8, 145,163,172, 176-8, 192n2, 227nl05 democratic centralism vs bureaucratic centralism, 57, 82, 85, 213n97, 227nl05 Derrida, Jacques, 5, 18, 111, 136, 173, 180nl2, 191nl21, 205n8, 212n84 Devoto, Giacomo, 20, 185n25 dialogue, dialogic, 54, 56, 73-5, 77-8 discourse, 3, 13, 158, 181nl7, 226n90 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 58-9, 73, 83-4, 95 d'Ovidio, Enrico, 28 Dupre, Louis, 7, 181n21 Durkheim, fimile, 186n34 Eagleton, Terry, 55, 180nl4, 194nl2 Eco, Umberto, 97-8, 105, 204, 208n4l, 225n90, 228nl30 economic structure. See superstructure and economic structure or base Eddington, A.S., 128, 218nl69 Emerson, Caryl, 56, 73-4, 77-8, 84, 86-8, 192nl, 194nl4, 194nl5 Engels, Friedrich, 68, 98, 112, 137, 197nn51,65-6, 212n86 Enlightenment, the, 15, 136-7, 139, 141-3, 156, 162-3, 171, 182n27 epistemology, 5-7, 9, 52-3, 96, 98, 120, 122, 131, 151, 162, 168, 181n20, 223n42 Esperanto, 19, 31-3, 36, 51, 83, 90, 105, 132, 154, 177, 182n31, 188n72, 208n42, 227nl05

233 Femia, Joseph, 11,28, 182n32, 187n42 feminism, 20, 98, 136-7, 162, 212n96 Finocchiaro, Maurice, 149, 207n27, 220n6 folklore, 34, 41, 47, 85, 87. See also culture, folk Fontana, Benedetto, 144, 208n32,220n7, 223n44, 224n54 Fordism and Taylorism, 42, 99, 140 Forgacs, David, 16, 55, 183n5, 194nl2 formalism, 59-61, 65-6, 68 Foucault, Michel, 5,158, 173, 180n9-10, 187n39, 227nllO Frankfurt School, the, 140-1. 5«-Adorno; Horkheimer; Habermas Fraser, Nancy, ISOnll, 227nl24 Frege, Gottlob, 13 Freud, Sigmund, 140, 222n24 futurism, 60-1, 64-5, 85, 195, 196n40, 197n54

Gardiner, Michael, 55, 93, 194nl2 Gasche", Rodolphe, 100, 109, 205n8, 210n73 gay and lesbian movements, 20, 212n96 Gensini, Stefano, 183n9, 184nl3 Gentile, Giovanni, 11, 43, 49, 51, 148 Gentzler, Edwin, 111, 208n36 Geras, Norman, 181 n!7 Gibson-Graham, J.K., 180nl3 Gillieron, Jules, 22, 25, 27 Ginsberg, Paul, 138, 221nl8 Gleick, James, 201 nl07 global English, 172, 177 Godard, Barbara, 105, 209n46, 211n80 Godzich, Wlad, 81, 196n34 Goidanich, Pier Gabriele, 29 faith, 9, 100, 120-1, 127, 135, 143, 156, Golding, Sue, 180n8 Gorky, Maxim, 58 169-70, 225n83 grammar, 17, 30, 37, 71, 154, 156, 164, Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta, 196n36

234 189; normative and spontaneous or immanent, 9, 14, 19, 23, 37-52, 72, 109, 161, 164,169, 173,176, 178, 224n69; universal grammar, 12, 82, 104-5 Gramsci, Antonio: background, 20, 57-9; early studies in linguistics; 21-30 Gramsci, Teresina, 43 Grimm, Jacob, 13 Guglielminetti, Enrico, 2l4nl09 Habermas, Jiirgen, 3, 6, 7, 12, 15, 23, 96, 100, 122, 126-7,134-40, 146, 158-9, 162-71, 174-5, 181nl9, 191nl22, 213n98, 220nl, 222nl9, 223n47, 225n80, 229nl46 Hall, Stuart, 3, 175, 179nl Haraway, Donna, 212n96 Harris, Roy, 182n33 Hartley, William, 121, 187n42, 206nl7 Hegel, G.W.F., 9, 56, 59, 69, 93, 112, 165, 168, 215nll7 hegemony, 3, 5, 9, 11, 16-19, 23-4, 30-1, 33, 37, 45, 49-52, 72, 112, 130, 135, 137-8, 156, 171, 177-8; linguistic roots, 14, 16-19, 27-8, 35, 40, 95; progressive versus regressive, 12, 30, 37, 51-4, 83, 85, 121-2, 127, 136, 151. See also coercion; consent Helsloot, Niels, 17, 19, 45, 183n6, 186n34 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 13, 126, 226n95 heteroglossia, 54, 56, 72, 75-9, 81, 86, 93, 176, 192n4, 202nl37 Hirschkop, Ken, 55, 73-4, 77-8, 192n2, 200n92 historical materialism, 3-7, 9, 33, 64, 70, 76, 106-7, 118, 121, 127, 129, 137, 152-3, 172-3

Index historic bloc, 72, 107, 137 Hoare, Quintin, 11 Holderlin, Friedrich, 110 Holquist, Michael, 75-6, 77-8, 86, 194nl2 Holub, Renate, 30, 58, 175, 183n8, 188n65,192n3, 222n26 Horkheimer, Max, 3, 96, 100, 139-64, 166-71, 174, 176, 223n35; Dialectic of Enlightenment, 139-68, 222n31 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 67, 69-70, 82, 97, 110, 198n71,204n3 idealism, 6, 8-9, 12, 19, 23, 33, 42, 67-8, 114-15, 118, 128, 144, 165, 170, 182n27; in linguistics, 22-5, 28-31, 42, 59-60, 67-72. See also Croce ideology, 24, 53, 60, 71, 73, 75, 79, 132, 150, 161, 169, 174, 176, 181nl7 intellectual activity, 134-5, 160, 171 intellectuals, 16, 29, 30, 36, 71, 121, 135, 139; organic and traditional, 10, 19, 45-6, 57, 82, 107, 129, 133, 141, 147-50, 160-1, 164, 166, 169-70, 178, 192nl23 Irigaray, Luce, 221 nl4 Ives, Peter, 198n71, 218nl6l Jakobson, Roman, 60 Jameson, Fredric, 62, 151, 157-8, 196n42, 225n78 Jankowsky, Kurt, 187n51 Jay, Martin, 193n8 Joseph, John, 199n76 Kant, Immanuel, Kantianism, 9, 59, 76, 106, 112, 122-3, 126, 159, 162, 164, 165, 167-8, 170, 192n2, 219nl74 Kaye, Harvey, 184nl9 Kierkegaard, Soren, 124

Index Kristeva, Julia, 55, 194nl2, 194nl2 labour, 6, 7, 139, 164, 176 Labriola, Antonio, 18 Lacan, Jacques, 136, 173 Laclau, Ernesto, 4, 5, 47, 180n8, 181nl7, 190nll5, 209n48 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, ISOnll language: artificial, 33, 154; dialects of, 31-6, 43-4, 89-90, 94, 191nll9; as nomenclature/representation, 12-13, 27, 35, 64-5, 96, 103, 107, 143, 154-5, 158, 182n33; standardization, 6, 8, 20, 77, 193n4; unified and national unity, 14, 20, 31-6, 44-8, 52, 54, 58, 73-4, 77, 81-3, 89-90, 95-6, 106-7, 132, 177, 184nl6. See also Esperanto; grammar, normative; parthenogenesis in language language question, 4, 14, 20, 30-4, 97, 100, 107, 172, 177, 184nl6 Latin, 8, 21, 28, 44, 49, 55, 85, 89-90, 94, 101, 103, 151-2, 160, 179nl Lefevere, Andre, 111,21 Inn80-l Leibniz, 82 Lenin, V.I., 15, 16, 18, 56, 57, 99-103, 111-12, 133, 206nl4 Leskien, August, 21 liberalism, 11, 43, 52, 109, 224n66 Lichtner, Maurizio, 106, 184nlO, 205nlO linguistic diversity, 98-100, 105, 174-5 linguistic turn, 3, 9, 12-13, 34, 135 Lloyd, Genevieve, 221 nl4 Locke, John, 104, 134-5, 186n37, 197n53, 220n3 Lo Piparo, Franco, 16-17, 19, 24, 28, 33-4, 36,46, 48-9, 175, 183n3, 230nlO Lowenthal, Leo, 160

235 Lukacs, Georg, 54, 114, 133, 144, 166, 193n8, 223n48 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 58, 195n25 Luria, Isaac, 123 Luther, Martin, 8, 98, 103, 110, 113 Lyne, Ian, 21 In73 Machiavelli, Niccol6, 28, 30, 46, 82, 103, 117, 143-8, 160, 178, 196n40, 203nl43, 216nl32 Mansfield, Steven, 186n35 Manzoni, Alessandro, 8, 19, 20, 30, 31, 36, 47, 50-1, 100, 154, 177,184nl6, 202nl25, 227nl05. See also substratum Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 60 Marr, Nikolai, 62 Marx, Karl, 5, 7, 16, 18, 19, 55, 68, 72, 98, 102, 106, 108, 111-12, 120, 130, 137-9, 145, 163-5, 173, 176, 179n5, 184nl8, 197nn51, 65-6, 206n22, 212n86, 2l6nl30, 222n21 materialism. See historical materialism matter, 5-8, 129, 143, 181nl5 McNally, David, 183n8, 218nl6l Medvedev, Pavel, 53, 55-7, 59-61, 64-7, 72, 85, 174, 196n31 Meillet, Antoine, 22, 46, 186n34 Merlo, Clemente, 29 metaphor, metaphorical, 4, 14-15, 19, 33-6, 52, 54, 55, 69, 74, 80, 93^, 99, 101, 107, 114, 122, 136, 157, 175, 193nlO, 206nl9 Migliorini, Bruno, 184nl6 mimesis, 125-7, 153-5, 166-8 Moliere, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 41 Morera, Esteve, 7, 130, 181n20, 182n24 Morson, Gary Saul, 56, 77-8, 84, 86-8,194nl5 Mouffe, Chantal, 4, 5, 47, 180n8, 181nl7, 190nll5, 209n48

236 Mussolini, Benito, 59, 60, 141 myth, 40, 117, 142-3, 168, 196n40, 225n74 nation (nation-state), 8, 32, 36, 89, 136, 215nl28. See state; national popular national popular (collective) will, 14, 30-1,36,45,47,49,51, 131, 177 Neitzsche, Friedrich, 157 Neogrammarians, 19, 21-2, 25, 29, 37, 40, 46, 61-6, 68, 96, 196n4l, 197n49 Nida, Eugene, 104, 208n36 Noble, David, 128, 218nl67 Novalis, 110 Nowell Smith, Geoffrey, 11, 16, 183n5 objectivity, 7, 15, 67, 93, 99, 122-3, 127-33, 144, 153. See also epistemol-

°gy

O'Brien, Mary, 221nl5 onomatopoeia, 126 organic, 44—5 organic intellectuals. See intellectuals Osthoff, Hermann, 21, 185n27 Panzini, Alfredo, 41 Pareto, Vilfredo, 28 parthenogenesis in language, 29, 54-5, 75, 91,93-4, 98, 105, 188n59 Passaponti, M. Emilia, 183n9 passive revolution, 46, 48-9, 57, 95, 141, 177, 201nl21 Pechey, Graham, 55, 194nl2 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 12-13, 162 Perlina, Nina, 195nl5 Petrarch, Francesco, 8 Phillips, Anne, 221 n 14 philology, 4, 10-11, 39, 60, 62-3, 68, 145, 173-4 Pirandello, Luigi, 30

Index Plato, 9, 168, 220n7 Poole, Brian, 192n2 Popper, Karl, 162 popular collective spirit, 30-1. See national popular (collective) will popular culture. See culture positivism, 9-10, 19, 23, 28, 60, 65, 67, 114-15, 118, 141, 155, 162, 170 post-Marxism, 4-5, 7, 13, 19. See also Laclau; Mouffe postmodernism, 3, 6, 18, 19, 137 poststructuralism, 6, 9, 10, 14, 18, 23, 54, 71-2, 137, 172 prediction, 94, 131, 141 psychoanalysis, 3, 140, 199n77 public sphere, 15, 138-9, 163, 202nl34 Rabelais, Francois, 14, 73, 83-95, 138 Ravera, Camilla, 206nl6 reflection and refraction in language, 79-80 Reformation, 8, 113, 138 Rehg, William, 229nl45 relativism, 13, 53, 104, 108, 123, 130. See also epistemology; objectivity religion, 8, 9, 41, 47-8, 74, 121-2, 125, 127, 129, 133, 143, 160, 225n83. See also Roman Catholic Church; bible; faith Renaissance, 8, 89-90, 94, 113, 138 revolution, 15, 57-9, 61, 100-5, 109, 112, 118, 120-2, 133, 187n42; bourgeois, 137-8; French, 106, 112; Russian, 15, 57-9, 100-3, 108-9, 113, 120 Risorgimento, 30, 46, 57, 141, 207n29 Robinson, Douglas, 212n83 Rochlitz, Rainer, 115, 213n 102 Roman Catholic Church, 8, 9, 120-2, 149

Index Romanticism, 8, 13, 67, 85, 110, 117, 119, 133, 197n66 Rosiello, Luigi, 25, 183n9 Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio, 180n7, 182n37, 222n21 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 13, 153, 176, 225n88 Ryan, Michael, 180nl3 Salamini, Leonardo, 17, 19, 183n6, 186nn34-5 San Juan, jr., E., 183n8 Sapir, Edward, 104, 186n37, 208n38 Sassoon, Anne Showstack, 17, 183n7, 208n31 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 9, 12-13, 14, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 44-6, 51, 60-3, 65-9, 72-5, 112, 136, 173, 182n36, 185n29, 186n35, 191nl21, 208n35, 219nl85 Sayers, Sean, 7, 181n22 Schaff.Adam, 180n7 Schleicher, August, 13 Schmidt, Alfred, 224n60 Schucht, Giulia (Julca), 59, 108 Schucht, Tania (Tatiana), 17, 24, 30 science, 19, 22, 28-9, 34, 46, 71, 87, 117, 124, 127-33, 135, 143-5, 149-50, 155, 165, 185n28, 220n6, 225n83 Searle, John, 162 semiotics, 13, 80, 127, 157, 173, 182n37, 219nl85 Shevtsova, Maria, 56, 195nl6 Shklovsky, Viktor, 65-6 Sieburth, Richard, 2l4nl06 Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove, 229nl, 230n6 Smart, Barry, ISOnlO Snell-Hornby, Mary, 111, 212n82 Sorel, Georges, 121, 196n40 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 180nl3

237 spontaneity, 11, 40, 42, 92. See also grammar, spontaneous Spriano, Paolo, 208n30 Stalin, Joseph, 59, 72-3, 120 Stallybrass, Peter, 194nl2 state, 11, 19, 30, 32, 36, 44, 49, 51, 81, 98-9, 118, 121-2, 135-6, 156, 176 Steinthal, Heymann, 37-38, 189n91 Stone, Jennifer, 140, 222n24 structuralism, 3, 6, 9, 13, 18-22, 54, 72, 136, 173, 186n34 subaltern, 8,10, 24, 41, 44, 54, 73, 92, 114, 120-1, 138, 150-1, 157, 173, 202nl25, 203nl57 substratum, 25-6, 33, 42, 50, 198n75 superstructure and economic structure or base, 4, 19, 32, 34, 72, 106-7, 132, 182n37, 193nlO Taylor, Charles, 13, 126, 182n34, 217nl58, 226n95 Taylorism. See Fordism Thibault, Paul, 196n4l Tihanov, Galin, 58, 72, 192n2 Timpanaro, Sebastiano, 25, 184n20, 185n26, 187n42 Titunik, Irwin, 194nl5 Todorov, Tzvetan, 81, 201 n i l 5 Togliatti, Palmiro, 57, 208n30 Tosel, Andre", 105, 107, 130, 132, 175, 184nlO, 205nlO translation, 96, 97-133, 137, 175, 177-8, 205n9 Trotsky, Leon, 60, 195n27 truth. See objectivity epistemology Vale"ry, Paul, 39, 109 vernacular, 3-15, 67, 74, 85, 87, 89-91, 122, 138, 151, 160, 171, 173, 179nl Vico, Giambattista, 11, 142-5, 223n36

238 Volosinov, Valentin, 7, 9, 23, 53-7, 59-64, 67-72, 75, 80, 82, 85, 91, 95, 155, 163, 174, 176, 186n34, 193n5, 199n77, 226n94 Vossler, Karl, 22, 23, 24, 29, 38, 60, 64, 67, 69-70, 185nn31-2, 198n69 Vygotsky, Lev, 180n7 war of position/manoeuvre, 36, 156, 178, 226nl05 Weber, Max, 163, 166 Weber, Samuel, 116, 214n 109 White, Allon, 55, 194nl2 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 104, 208n38

Index Wiggerhaus, Rolf, 159, 222n28 Williams, Gwyn, 57 Williams, Raymond, 3, 7, 53, 55, 151, 175, 179nl, 181n21, 193n5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 12-13, 55, 162, 182, 194nll,219nl85 Wolff, Philippe, 203n 154 Wolin, Richard, 213nlOO Wood, Ellen Meiksins, 6, 181nl7, 221nl6 Woolfson, Charles, 186n36, 193n5 Young, Iris Marion, 227nl24 Young, Robert, 77, 194nl4

CULTURAL SPACES Cultural Spaces explores the rapidly changing temporal, spatial, and theoretical boundaries of contemporary cultural studies. Culture has long been understood as the force that defines and delimits societies in fixed spaces. The recent intensification of globalizing processes, however, has meant that it is no longer possible — if it ever was — to imagine the world as a collection of autonomous, monadic spaces, whether these are imagined as localities, nations, regions within nations, or cultures demarcated by region or nation. One of the major challenges of studying contemporary culture is to understand the new relationships of culture to space that are produced today. The aim of this series is to publish bold new analyses and theories of spaces of culture, as well as investigations of the historical construction of those cultural spaces that have influenced the shape of the contemporary world. Series Editors Richard Cavell, University of British Columbia Imre Szeman, McMaster University Editorial Advisory Board Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University Hazel V. Carby, Yale University Richard Day, Queen's University Christopher Gittings, University of Western Ontario Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina Mark Kingwell, University of Toronto Heather Murray, University of Toronto Elspeth Probyn, University of Sydney Rinaldo Walcott, OISE/University of Toronto Books in the Series Peter Ives, Gramsci's Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School