Review article
Lenin’s Legacy: The Theory of Social Formations as a Theory of Artistic Production
Nikola Dedić
; Faculty of Music University of Arts in Belgrade
Abstract
As is well known, Louis Althusser did not elaborate any systematic theory of art/literature. He gave only more incidental remarks and a relatively fragmentary definition of art in terms of its relationship to ideology – art is part of ideology, but it also has the possibility of criticizing that same ideology. The theory of art was elaborated only by the successors of his thought. In this context, the central author is Pierre Macherey, who in the 1960s published one of the more influential works of Althusserian theory of art – A Theory of Literary Production. The paper analyzes the extent to which Vladimir Lenin’s ideas were significant for Althusser’s thought, and for Macherey’s Althusserian theory of literature. Leninist theses about social formation (in a given social formation there are a number of modes of production that are overdetermined by a single mode as dominant) and contradiction (in a given formation there are a number of contradictions but one is imposed as a determinant in the last instance, each contradiction is therefore overdetermined contradiction) are elaborated. The difference between Lenin’s i.e. Althusser’s concepts of social formation, contradiction, i.e. overdetermination and the post-structuralist concept of difference is emphasized. It is elaborated that the evolution of Macherey’s theory of literature after A Theory of Literary Production was marked by the transition from the concept of contradiction to the concept of difference and a kind of abandonment of the Leninist theoretical horizon. The consequence of this is a kind of literalization of the theory and the impossibility of further understanding the connection between literary and capitalist production as a relationship of overdetermination. It points to the fact that Althusserian theory of art and literature is not possible without its Leninist basis, and that Lenin is the constitutive author for Althusser and for any theory of art and literature inspired by Althusser.
Keywords
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin; Louis Althusser; theory of art; literary production; social formation; contradiction; overdetermination; difference; Marxism, historical materialism
Hrčak ID:
309950
URI
Publication date:
20.11.2023.
Visits: 614 *