Genetic Structuralism and the Analysis of Social Consciousness

Genetic Structuralism and the Analysis of Social ConsciousnessAuthor(s): William W. MayrlReviewed work(s):Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1978), pp. 19-44Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657023 .Accessed: 15/09/2012 12:04

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GENETIC STRUCTURALISM AND THE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS*

WILLIAM W. MAYRL

Shortly before his death in 1970 Lucien Goldmann reflected on the work he had done in the past twenty-five years. His goal had been the development of a dialectical method for the analysis of literary creativity which would lead first to a scientific sociology of knowledge and from there to a dialectical study of human reality in general.1 Although his efforts were cut short, Goldmann did leave a theoretical model which has applications far beyond the sociology of literature. In what follows, I will describe the model Goldmann referred to as genetic structuralism, and I will show how its creator was able to use it to generate several provocative hypotheses on the relations between human consciousness and social organization.

The Theoretical Orientation

The immediate philosophical precursors of Goldmann's structuralist method are the Marxism of the early Georg Lukacs and the genetic psychology and epistemology of Jean Piaget. However, the intellectual roots of the model extend deep into 19th century German idealism, especially that of Kant and Hegel. In fact, the methodological and epistemological presuppositions of genetic structuralism can be explicated most clearly in terms of Lukacs' and Goldmann's revision of Hegel's interrelated notions of totality and identity.

The concept of the totality involves the dimensions of structure and history. Translated into a methodological prescription, the former states that a crucial step in the scientific analysis of any social phenomenon is its insertion into a structured whole of which it is a part and where it has a function. The idea of function plays a central role in genetic structuralism. In the first place it provides an important point of departure for an explanatory understanding of

Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

*I wish to thank Ino Rossi for hlis helpful comments.

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social phenomena. Secondly, it introduces the acting subject - which, for Goldmann, is a collective or transindividual subject - into the social system. In this respect, the function of a social event or process is defined in terms of the comportment of social subjects who are attempting to adapt to, or transcend, their natural and social environments.

The historical aspect of the totality involves the methodological mandate that, in addition to being grasped in its structural context, a phenomenon must be understood as the totality of its moments of change and development, i.e. as "structuralization" and "de-structuralization." Central to this genetic dimension is the idea that the very laws of structure are historical.

The principle of identity is both epistemological and methodological. As epistemology it refers to overcoming the separation of the subject and object of social research which exists in formalist and empiricist approaches to social inquiry. As methodology the principle of identity gives rise to the principle of potential consciousness which is, according to Goldmann, the most important contribution of a dialectical perspective to social science.

Totality as Structure

Most Marxist analyses in the past fifty years have stressed the structural aspect of the totality, i.e., the interdependence of the parts and the whole with the ultimate predominance of the latter. This seems to have been a response to the persistent hegemony in Western thought of individualistic orientations, particularly logical empiricism. Thus, after having described the "all-pervasive supremacy of the whole over the parts" as the "essence of the method which Marx took over from Hegel," Lukacs observed,

In Marx the dialectical method aims at understanding society as a whole. Bourgeois thought [i.e. positivism] concerns itself with objects that arise either from the process of studying phenomena in isolation, or from the division of labour and specialization in the different disciplines.2

Goldmann followed Lukacs in this respect, although he was always careful to distinguish between the effectiveness of "bourgeois" thought in the physical and the social sciences. In an early monograph, originally intended as a dialogue with Georges Gurvitch, he noted,

The second precept of the Cartesian method-'to divide each of the difficulties . . . into as many parts as possible, and as might be required for an easier solution' - valid up to a certain point in mathematics and the

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physico-chemical sciences, is virtually useless in the human sciences. Here the progress of knowledge proceeds, not from the simple to the complex, but from the abstract to the concrete through a continual oscillation between the whole and its parts.3

The idea of a conceptual oscillation between the whole and its parts provides the foundation for Goldmann's attempt to unite the processes of interpretation and explanation. First, he reasoned, social and cultural phenomena must be understood in terms of the structure of their internal organization. Such an understanding results from a careful description of the object or process under study. The researcher attempts to discover how the various elements hang together, how they form and maintain the particular whole which characterizes the object in question. This is the interpretive phase of analysis.

However, Goldmann realized that, by itself, interpretive understanding is abstract. In order to grasp a social event or process in its totality one must move beyond description to explanation. This, in turn, requires that the phenomenon under study be related to factors external to it. These factors may be prior conditions or states, as in the case of liistorical analysis, or they may consist of elements to which the phenomenon relates in a functional way. The comprehension of a social fact in terms of either its historical or functional significance permits the researcher to grasp what Goldmann refers to as its "objective sense."4

The procedure by which social facts are explained is not radically different from the method of interpretation. Rather, it is a continual widening of the method's application. In fact, when the idea of the levels of analysis, or what Radnitzky has referred to as "altitude,"5 is taken into account, interpretation and explanation are seen to be merely different aspects of the same process. In Goldmann's words,

Interpretation and explanation are not two different intellectual proce- dures but one and the same procedure referred to different coordinates. Interpretation involves the illumination of a significative structure which is immanent to the object under study .. . Explanation is nothing more than the insertion of this interpreted structure, as a constitutive and functional element, into an immediately englobing structure which the researcher does not necessarily study in a detailed manner but only enough to render intelligible the genesis of the object under study. It is possible, moreover, to take the englobing structure as an object of interpretive study. In that

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case, that which was explanation becomes interpretation and the explanatory research must relate itself to a new structure which is even wider.6

Goldmann used his own research in the area of the sociology of literature to illustrate this process. The interpretation of the Pensees of Pascal or the Tragedies of Racine, he suggested, involves an understanding of how a "tragic vision" runs through these works and ties them together. This tragic vision, according to Goldmann's analysis,7 had its origin in extremist Jansenism. Thus, to interpret the structure of extremist Jansenism is to explain the tragic vision of the Pensees and the Racinian Tragedies. In like manner, to interpret the situation of the noblesse de robe of 17th century France is to explain the genesis and function of extremist Jansenism. Social research continues to unfold in this way with interpretation becoming explanation. And each successive stage of analysis moves closer to the totality.

Several critics have argued that this methodology fails to overcome the traditional dichotomy between interpretation and explanation. For example, George Huaco notes that Goldmann's proposal "effectively excludes any causal explanation in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions."8 Others have suggested that since Goldmann's concept of explanation is different from that used by proponents of the traditional dichotomy, i.e. it fails to specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of the "explained" phenomenon, he does not really address the issue.9 While this criticism makes good sense from a logical empiricist perspective, it is unlikely Goldmann would have considered it relevant to his own work. He did not believe explanations in the cultural sciences should be causal in the sense many empiricist philosophers of science have given that term. For causal explanations in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions rely upon universal, permanent, law-like propositions and thereby effectively exclude the genetic and historical understanding which constitutes an important goal of the cultural sciences.

However, while the explanatory moment of Goldmann's methodology is not adequate in the logical empiricist sense, it does find an analogue in traditional Western sociology. Functional explanation, variations of which appeared in Spencer's social evolutionism, were articulated in Durkheim's "positivistic" rules for a sociological method, and have been a major component of the system paradigm which dominated American sociology for two decades following World War II.10 Indeed, there are important similarities between Goldmann's conception of functionality and Talcott Parsons' recent reflec- tions on the idea of function for a system of action. Writing of the categories of structure and process, Parsons noted:

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The concept of function is not correlative with structure, but is the master concept of the framework for the relation between a living system and its environment. Functions are performed, or functional requirements met, by a combination of structures and processes.11

There is distinct affinity between Parsons' notion of an action system (which is a subset of a living system) and Goldmann's trans-individual subject. Each of these constructs is the dynamic agent in its system, and the behavior of both is understood largely in teleological terms. It is on the issue of the specific end of teleological acts where the two positions begin to diverge. Parsons views activity primarily in terms of its adaptive function; pattern- maintenance is its defining goal. Goldmann recognized the importance of pattern-maintenance as an action orientation. However, he argued that there can also be an aspect of transcendence (depassement) in human activity, which can have the effect of overcoming an existing situation and establishing new boundaries and modes of organization.12 Parsons' emphasis is problematic in that it is difficult to use the concept of adaptation in the explication of such phenomena as utopian religious or political movements, certain avant garde literary trends, etc. The notion of "adaptive upgrading" which Parsons used to derive change from adaptation does not really help much in this respect. Due to its close ties with the idea of "evolutionary differentiation," it can only explain structures more complex than the previous ones.

In any event, regardless of the direction or result of functionality, the mere existence of this concept is enough to distinguish Goldmann's structuralism from that associated with Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser and other "formal" structuralists. The latter, Goldmann argued, have removed the acting subject by eliminating the concept of function from their systems. For Goldmann, the point was not merely to determine that this event or that process has a function, but to ascertain the specific character of its function, i.e. for which subject does it function and why ?

Goldmann often credited his teacher and friend Jean Piaget with the idea that social processes or cultural productions should be explained in terms of their functional contribution to the relationship between a subject and its environment.13 Goldmann maintained that Piaget, like Hegel, Marx and Lukacs before him, understood that the behavior of living beings involves a "cyclical process of adaptation".14 The living system-for Piaget the human individual, for Goldmann the collective subject-attempts to transform the ambient world to accord with its needs or desires. Patterns of activity which are constructed to this end constitute the structures to be investigated.15 Thus the significance of a given structure refers to its solution of a problem or

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series of problems (i.e. its functionality). The affinity of this formulation to the ideas of Hegel and Marx lies in its dialectical consequences. Significative structures are not static. The world often resists being transformed, thus forcing a modification in the behavior patterns of the living system. And when the world is successfully assimilated to the desires of the subject, new structures must be developed out of the old to solve new problems. In brief, Goldmann concluded that from both Marx and Piaget we get an image of man in the world as being neither an all powerful creator nor a simple spectator but rather an actor who transforms the world and modifies himself in the process.16

Totality As History

The historical dimension of totality is based on the Hegelian insight that the essence of any phenomenon is as much historical as it is ontological.17 As a methodological principle this means that in addition to being understood in a structural context, a social phenomenon must be grasped as the totality of its moments of change and development. Owing to its Hegelian roots this perspective goes beyond mere historical description. As Georg Lukacs observed, "history does not resolve itself into the evolution of contents, of men and situations, etc., while the principles of society remain eternally valid."18 The very conceptual schemes and empirical typologies of a genetic structuralism must constantly be open to revision in the light of continuing analysis. In one of his last papers, published posthumously under the title "La dialectique aujourd'hui", Goldmann wrote:

... the term 'capitalism' which was well used by Marx during his time when there was only liberal capitalism, was already inadequate for Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg who had to speak of imperialist capitalism; and we now have need of three different terms because the term imperialist, in the meaning Lenin gave it, has become inadequate to characterize the recent developments in capitalism.19

Later in the same essay Goldmann began to develop a preliminary conception of bureaucracy in its historical movement. He suggested that since Max Weber's classic analyses at least four distinct types of bureaucratic organiza- tions have emerged. These new types, which correspond to changes in socialist economies as well as developments within the capitalist world, defy explication in Weber's original terms. Further research is required to construct conceptual schemes relevant to current organizational arrange- ments. Goldmann certainly should not be interpreted as saying that the

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researches of the early Marxists and of Weber are no longer useful to an analysis of contemporary economic systems and modes of administration. The concepts which currently aid the study of technological capitalism and its forms of administrative organization were not created ex nihilo. They are terms developed by Marx and Weber which have matured through subsequent research to deal with the changing reality.

Because of the genuinely historical character of all social facts, the more sociology becomes a science of societal forms, the less it is able to tell us about social reality. However, a certain number of universal principles are necessary in any systematic, scientific discipline, and genetic structuralism is no exception. Such notions as the identity of the subject and object of social knowledge, the social and historical character of all things human, and social self-creation through labor are judgments of fact whose validity, with respect to human subjects and their history, transcends spatial and temporal limits.20 While propositions derived from these judgments are not devoid of empirical content, because of their general nature they are virtually useless as tools for the explanation of particular phenomena. Their research value derives almost exclusively from their role as general orientations for social inquiry. On a philosophical level these principles constitute the genetic structuralist theory of human nature.

In order to elaborate on what might be called the "transient validity" of concrete (social) scientific propositions it will be necessary to move to the second fundamental conception of genetic structuralism, the principle of identity. Actually, this principle is inseparable from the notion of totality. Indeed, identity totalizes the concepts of structure, function and history by exposing their unity in the collective subject.

Identity as Epistemology

For Hegel the identity of the subject and object of thought was total since he considered all reality to be subjective, i.e. rational. Goldmann modified the Hegelian formula by introducing the notion of a "partial identity," an identity which applies only to thought in the human realm. In this respect he was again following Lukacs who had observed:

We can see ... the necessity of separating the merely objective dialectics of nature from those of society. For in the dialecties of society the subject is included in the reciprocal relation in which theory and practice become dialectical with reference to one another.2l

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The epistemological implications for social inquiry are clear. "If humanity is historical, if the subjects of action, creation and praxis are social groups ... [and] if these groups are collective subjects, then all thought on history and society is both science and consciousness, the group that thinks is the subject and object of the thought."22 As a consequence there can be no objective, value-free human science. The sociologist cannot separate himself from his subject matter; regardless of the researcher's intention, all social inquiry starts from the interior of society and it cannot help but have an effect on social processes themselves. Thus, for example, Goldmann suggests that even the knowledge of long past events has practical implications for our activity:

We learn from [this knowledge] about men who, in different circumstances and with different means for the most part inapplicable in our own time, fought for values and ideals which were similar, identical, or opposed to those of today; and this makes us conscious of belonging to a totality which transcends us, which we support in the present and which men who come after us will continue to support in the future.23

In brief, the consciousness of the totality engendered by an awareness of humanity's past activity is a form of self-consciousness which itself can become a part of social praxis. The notion that social practice is an epistemological category along with its dialectical correlate that knowledge defines the character of human activity makes an examination of the degree and nature of collective self-awareness a central part of the analysis of any social group. On a methodological level, the principle of identity has to be translated into a framework for the classification and explanation of the different possible forms of social consciousness.

Identity As Methodology

The development of a typology of social consciousness-Goldmann referred to the mental structures which underlie various modes of thought as "world visions" (visions du monde)-is essentially a matter of positive socio-historical research. Goldmann felt that an examination of the symbolic structures corresponding to a wide range of socio-economic formations would reveal a limited number of world visions.24 His own analyses of seventeenth and eighteenth century French and German thought resulted in the identification of five major significative structures: rationalism, empiricism, romanticism, the tragic and the dialectical.25 While these particular visions of the world certainly do not exhaust the possible forms of mental structures, they are likely to recur in the service of different collective subjects in other social and historical situations. Thus, for example, Irving Zeitlin has shown that the

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critical-dialectical perspective of the emerging bourgeois classes of the eighteenth century was taken over and modified by the revolutionary proletariat in the period following the supersession of capitalist over feudal social relations. A significant segment of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, tended to take on organistic modes of thought which were, in many respects, variations of earlier forms of romanticism.26

In order to achieve a fuller understanding of the relationship between symbolic and social structures it is necessary to describe the functions of social consciousness and to establish the likely course of its development in any given situation. In this regard, the conception of potential consciousness provides the methodological foundation for the transition from classification to explanation. Earlier I suggested that within the genetic structuralist perspective the function of an event or process is defined in terms of the comportment of social subjects who are adapting to or transcending their environments. In order to analyze symbolic structures in this frame of reference, it is necessary first to inquire into the adequacy of the consciousness of the subject under study relative to the objective socio-historical environment. As a preliminary step in this regard, Goldmann, following Lukacs, offered the interrelated distinctions between "real" (for Lukacs, "empirical" or "psychological") and "possible" ("ascribed" or "potential") consciousness.27 Empirical consciousness refers to the actual feelings and attitudes about the social, political and economic environment which the members of a society have at any given time. It can be observed by means of such techniques as opinion surveys and interviews as well as in certain types of artistic production. Potential consciousness, on the other hand, is an ideal-typical construct which rests, in Lukacs' words, on the "category of objective possibility":

By relating consciousness to the whole of society it becomes possible to infer the thoughts and feelings which men would have in a particular situation if they were able to assess both it and the interests arising from it in their impact on immediate action and on the whole structure of society. That is to say, it would be possible to infer the thoughts and feelings appropriate to their objective situation.28

According to the concept of objective possibility, there is a limit to the potential awareness of typical actors in any situation, or a maximum of possible consciousness for each social group. Goldmann thought that the concept of maximum possible consciousness provided an important tool for the analysis of the relations between social structures and the structures of social knowledge.

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In a paper written in 1965 Goldmann related the concept of maximum possible consciousness to contemporary information theory. He noted that there were at least four levels of empirical analysis which dealt with the

problem of the inability of particular subjects to receive certain messages or communications. The first, and sociologically least interesting, level applies to the common situation where the potential receiver simply lacks the requisite prior information. Thus, while a message consisting of a complex mathe- matical formulation will not be fully received by a layman this situation could be altered merely through the application of technical training.29 A second, more important, although not properly sociological, level deals with

psychological resistance to particular communications. This kind of study, best illustrated by Freud's work in psychoanalysis, is concerned with the

development of subconscious blocks to the reception of certain messages.30 The third and fourth levels of analysis deal with inhibitions to the reception of certain messages rooted in group life. The difference between these two levels lies in the fact that in some cases it is possible to remove the inhibitions without altering the essential character of the group in question. Goldmann illustrated this situation through the example of a team of researchers who are committed to a particular school of scientific thought and who thereby refuse-or are, in fact, unable-to consider new theories. It is theoretically possible for such a team to maintain its basic identity and at the same time overcome its resistance to the new knowledge.31 It is only on the fourth level of analysis, dealing with the situation where the reception of certain types of

knowledge requires the dissolution of the group in question, that we reach the notion of maximum possible consciousness in its fullest sociological sense. Thus, for example, information which challenges a literal interpretation of

the bible is fundamentally incompatable with both the ideological and

organizational structure of chiliastic religious movements. In like manner, there are theories-e.g. magical, theological-which, if accepted by our team of researchers, would alter their essential character as researchers.

Clearly we are dealing here with the often nebulous area wherein differences of degree become transformations of kind. Yet, it is precisely in this area where careful analyses using exact definitions along with the category of objective possibility can make contributions to sociological knowledge which are excluded from strictly positivist analyses. For example, Goldman observed32 that a social scientist limited to the consideration of the real consciousness of

the French peasants or artisans of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in 1789 or of the Russian peasants in January 1917 would likely have been completely un- prepared for the drastic changes which occurred in the thinking of both

groups within a year. On the other hand, a researcher guided by the concept of potential consciousness along with an understanding of the economic conditions underlying the relationship between the social classes in question

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could have imaginatively constructed the possible responses of the particular groups to hypothetically changed circumstances.

The concept of potential consciousness along with the notion that all social activity has a meaningful, i.e. functional, structure enabled Goldmann to develop several provocative hypotheses concerning the nature and role of cultural productions in advanced industrial societies. His approach to these productions differed not only from traditional positivistic sociologies of art and literature but also from most Marxist analyses of aesthetic creativity.

Literature and Social Structure

Goldmann maintained that art and literature provide as useful an indicator of the collective consciousness as crime rates, suicides, or any of the other demographic measures commonly employed. Indeed, Goldmann felt that intellectual productions might be even more suited to this purpose. He believed the researcher could find the most coherent expression of a group's world-view and, consequently, a clue to its maximum possible consciousness, in its outstanding literary, artistic and philosophical works.33

Goldmann's first rule for the sociology of literature was that the essential relationship between social life and literary creation was not to be found primarily in the content of the work under study but rather in what he called "the form of the content."34 This form refers to the mental categories which organize the empirical consciousness of a particular group as well as the imaginary universe created by the writer.35 Thus, for example, Goldmann observed of the relation between the theatre of Racine and the tragic vision of radical Jansenism that ".. . it is not the Christian dramas like Esther and Athalie, but the pagan plays like Andromaque, Britannicus and Phedre which prove to be most closely linked to [Jansenist] theology," for it is these latter plays which, in spite of their manifest content, most clearly evidence a "hidden god who demands absolute obedience to contradictory obligations, and who is manifest, each time that man must act in the world, through precisely this contradiction."36

A second principle of genetic structuralist literary analysis is that the individual artist does not create world-visions; rather, he or she expresses the collective mental production of a group. The structures of consciousness are thoroughly social.37 This being the case, Goldmann reasoned, the highest literary creations of any group, its classics, were especially well suited as sociological data. He felt that those works judged outstanding by standards of literary criticism (i.e. in terms of their immanent aesthetic value) are likely to

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articulate most clearly the efforts of a collective subject to cope with or transcend its environment.38 Most sociologists of literature focus on mediocre works, Goldmann argued, because they feel it is necessary to relate the content of the piece under study to the empirical content of the collective consciousness. It is not that this kind of analysis cannot be done; indeed, positivistic sociology has had extraordinary success with mediocre literature, because every writer puts into his work something of what he has lived through. However, the more mediocre the writer is, the less he has invented and the more his work merely reflects the ambient empirical consciousness.39 Thus, if the researcher wishes to go beyond the mere description of social consciousness to an understanding of the possibilities contained within it, then he must focus upon a group's greatest literature (and art and philosophy) in terms of the structure of its content. At this point, however, we run into some difficulty. For the art and literature of contemporary industrial societies present several rather unique problems for this mode of analysis.

Mass Society and Mass Consciousness

Early in 1961 Goldmann and his associates at l'Institute de Sociologie de l'Universite Libre de Bruxelles commenced a project to study the novels of Andre Malraux. This project, which represented the first attempt to apply the genetic structuralist method to contemporary aesthetic production, gradually took Goldmann beyond Malraux to the New Novel, the avant-garde theater and even to modern cinema. One of the most amazing results of these researches was the seemingly non-Marxist and non-sociological hypothesis that authentic cultural creations in contemporary industrial societies are not linked to the consciousness-even the potential consciousness-of any particular social group.40 In order to clarify this proposition it will be necessary to look briefly at some Lukacs' and Goldmann's conclusions concerning the relations between social structures and the structures of consciousness in previous periods of Western capitalism.

Earlier we saw that within the theoretical orientation of genetic structuralism conscious structures are functional. They represent patterned modes of thought developed by social groups to come to grips with their human and natural environments. Artistic and literary creations range from simple reflec- tions of empirical social consciousness, as in the case of mediocre work, to imaginary transpositions of conscious structures at an extremely advanced level of coherence.41 Coherent expression of world views has been achieved historically by what Goldmann refers to as "privileged social groups whose thought, affectivity and comportment are oriented towards a global organization of interhuman relations and relations between men and nature.42 The

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priviledged social groups are intellectuals attached to particular collective subjects, especially social classes. The determination of which world vision belongs to which social group was accomplished through the methodology of explanation discussed earlier. After describing the significative structure, i.e. the form of the content, which runs through a particular work of art or school of philosophy, the researcher attempts to find the particular group to which the work corresponds in a functional way. If the researcher is success- ful, a careful description of that group's relations with its social and natural environments will yield an explanation of the work or school. At the same time the work of art will have sensitized the researcher to an aspect of social structure he might not otherwise have noticed. This method worked quite well on cultural creations done prior to the emergence of modern capitalism.

The most important quality of capitalism with regard to social consciousness is that the market economy comes to exert more and more influence over the whole of society. The process by which this occurs was described by Marx as commodity fetishism and by Lukacs as the phenomenon of reification. Scholars like Max Weber and Georg Simmel also observed how the rationality of capitalist exchange tended to permeate all areas of social organization and how the modern mentality seemed to be structured increasingly by the quantitative and calculating character of relationships based on money. Cultural creativity cannot but be affected by this state of affairs. For in a society where, relative to exchange, use has become secondary, or "implicit," to use Goldmann's term, the creative individual, who is almost by definition oriented toward use-values, tends to become marginal and problematic.43 Furthermore, because authentic values are gradually rendered implicit and then eliminated altogether from the collective consciousness, literary characters tend to become negative. As the products of creative, i.e. marginal, individuals, they tend to express an opposition between the writer and the social group which has elaborated the categories structuring his or her work.44 It is in the sense that all authentic creativity, by its very nature, stands against reification by upholding values not effectively held by any group that genuine art becomes separated from modern social consciousness.45 This separation, which has become most complete in contemporary industrial societies, can be traced in the evolution of Western capitalism and its corresponding forms of thought.

The earliest stage of modern capitalism, its liberal phase, lasted until roughly the turn of the present century. The most important characteristic of this period was the emergence of a new form of production for exchange in a market which was unencumbered by traditional feudal and religious norms. The disappearance from the collective consciousness of all transindividual

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authority regulating production and distribution was duplicated in the intellectual sphere by a growing confidence in the autonomy of the individual and a gradual loss of the sense of community or totality.46 Although the two dominant philosophical currents of liberal capitalism, rationalism and empiricism, seem to take opposite positions on almost every major issue, their common origins in bourgeois market relations is evidenced by their sharing the same fundamental concept: "the treatment of the individual consciousness as the absolute origin of knowledge and action."47

In the context of the diminution of all transcendent values except for the value of individual autonomy, a negative literary form peopled by problematic characters emerged: the novel. Its heroes were marginal people, lunatics, fools, criminals, engaged in what Goldmann, following Lukacs, called a "degraded search for authentic values."48 Although the search took a variety of paths in different novels-e.g. from Cervantes' active hero Don Quixote, whose consciousness was too narrow for the surrounding world, to Gon- charov's passive character Oblomov, whose consciousness was, in a sense, too broad-the structure of the content was the same. In each case the individual attempted to orient himself to his environment in a qualitative way, while the world defied this attempt. For in a society increasingly characterized by the reification of human relationships after the fashion of quantitative market relations, authentic and qualitative values turn out to be, in Goldmann's words, "false consciousness, pure subjectivity, or even nonsense [bavar- dage] .,,49 Indeed, even in the quest for the one positive value of liberal capitalism, personal development and individual autonomy, the hero fails. In this respect the novel was critical. The most creative literary minds of the period had come to recognize that any society which values a radical separation between the individual and the community actually inhibits the possibility of personal development and individual self-realization.

The second major phase of Western capitalism, from about 1910 to the end of the Second World War, was characterized by frequent and serious social and economic crises. The almost complete control of the economy by large monopolies and trusts resulted in the gradual devaluation of individual enterprise and personal autonomy. Meanwhile the old control mechanisms of the liberal market broke down in the face of monopoly economic relations. The consequent economic and political shocks contributed to a sense of uncertainty and frustration within the collective consciousness. The most characteristic philosophy of this period, existentialism, attempted, in the final analysis, to deal with the crisis of individuality in an unpredictable and seemingly uncontrollable world. The most significant literature was marked by the absence of heroes (corresponding to the disappearing value of the

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individual) and by themes of anguish, death and nothingness.50 As examples of this genre Goldmann suggested the works of Kafka and Joyce along with certain writings of Camus (e.g. I'Etranger) and of Sartre (Le Nausee). As important as the second period and its literature and philosophy has been in the development of capitalism and its mental structures, it is only of transitional value to our concern with mass society and mass consciousness. It is the third stage of capitalist development, the present era, which has witnessed the most extreme and extensive form of reification.

In the period since the Second World War the capitalist world has become increasingly stable. The last vestiges of the liberal free market have been

replaced by sophisticated control mechanisms which are adapted to the needs of the large monopolies. Meanwhile, the market has continued to define the character of social structure in general. A new, technical rationality has come to influence virtually all spheres of life. However, in contrast to the previous phases of capitalism, the collective consciousness of the contemporary era is marked by a growing sense of totality. Yet, far from reflecting the unity of a human community, the current sense of the whole is rooted in the need of modern capitalism to organize and rationalize production and consumption on a global level. The most significant philosophies of this period reflect this concern with the organization of the whole. In spite of their differences, modern functionalism and structuralism along with the various systems theories are similar in their opposition to earlier forms of rationalism, empiricism and existentialism. The dominant philosophies of the current

phase are thoroughly holistic. Gone is the focus on the autonomous individual part; the stress is now on the interrelation of the units of the system rather than on the units themselves. This change has been especially apparent in the human sciences where structuralism has implied a totality which, for all practical purposes, is devoid of human beings.

Goldmann's general assessment of the social structure and consciousness of modern industrial society is similar in many respects to the well known analyses of David Riesman, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas.s5 In- creasing prosperity in the developed capitalist world has raised the standard of living of all but its most marginal inhabitants. Rather than the continued polarization of workers and capitalists which was anticipated in most Marxist analyses during the period of capitalism in crisis, the modern class structure is tending to divide into executives and executants. The last remnants of either the autonomous individual or the opposition class are being replaced every- where by highly trained and specialized but basically passive technicians. Although living at a higher level than ever before, the populations of the developed capitalist world have been reduced to consumers of mass educa-

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tion, mass media and mass leisure. The major consequence of this state of affairs for the collective consciousness has been a decline in the ability

to

handle critical messages. There has been a general contraction of potential

consciousness. Even the apparent rejection of society that is manifested in the increased use of consciousness altering drugs and alcohol and the emergence

of youth countercultures has been absorbed into the existing totality. Indeed,

these phenomena have had an adaptive function for a system which annually

increases its production of gin and psychedelic gadgets; they are profitable

forms of tension management. It seems that modern societies are becoming

isomorphic with structural-functional models of sociological analysis.

It was noted earlier that the major problem of critical intellectual expression in advanced .capitalist society is that it must situate itself

outside the

dominant values of the system and risk, at the same time, either the mis-

understanding of the public or absorption into the market. This problem in

mass society goes beyond the simple contradiction between use value and

exchange value which has plagued artistic creation throughout the capitalist

period. It involves the fact that in a society in which the value of the

autonomous individual has disappeared from both the market place and the

collective consciousness, it is no longer possible to present the problems of

human beings in the world by means of easily perceived, concrete stories. In

Goldmann's words, "the biography of a character can only be anecdotal."

"To discuss things and events at the level they are immediately lived is to risk

confining oneself to miscellaneous facts which have no essential signifi-

cance."s2 This is why the popular literature of advanced industrial societies

cannot grapple with human problems in any more than a superficial way. By

and large, this literature offers the collective consciousness romanticism and

evasion. In contrast, any attempt to address the overall problems of modern

social structures has to move beyond the immediate experience to a level of

abstraction which defies the ready comprehension of the collective conscious-

ness.

The dilemma of modern critical expression is one of the major causes of the pessimism which generally pervaded the writings of the

mass society theorists.

Yet in the early 1960's, while many of his friends and colleagues had virtually

abandoned the possibility of the development of critical forces within tech-

nological society, Goldmann was becoming convinced on the basis of his

research into contemporary forms of cultural creation that critical works

which were penetrating the essence of modern society were indeed being

developed. Moreover, he began to recognize that although the traditional

working class seemed to have lost its revolutionary potential there was a new

stratum-the growing numbers of highly trained and well paid "technicians"-

35

that had the potential consciousness to receive critical messages, especially on the level of culture and style of life.

Goldmann noted that there are two essentially different, yet complementary, ways in which modern art has been critical. First there has been a revolt of form. In this type, society is not so much exposed by the content of the work as by its mode of expression. For example, in his book La Jalousie, New Novelist Robbe-Grillet writes "Les chaussures legeres a semelles de caoutchouc ne font aucun bruit sur le carrelage du couloir." On the level of immediately lived and perceived experience, Robbe-Grillet's actual mode of expression is usually ignored. The passage is interpreted to mean merely that a jealous husband walks softly so as to surprise his wife. However, Goldmann. argued that on a more profound level the author is pointing out that in modern society "the motor of events is no longer man but inert objects."53 Robbe-Grillet did not write "a man walks softly" but rather "the light, rubber soled shoes make no noise .. ." In today's world the shoes which carry the man are primary to the man himself even though on the level of the immediately perceived it is, of course, the man who wears the shoes.

The second kind of revolt in contemporary art has been carried out on the level of theme. In this case the major problems of the society structure the content of the piece. Goldmann believed that the greatest living creator of themes of revolt was the French novelist and playwright, Jean Genet. In his four outstanding plays Les Bonnes, Le Balcon, Les Negres and, most notably, Les Paravents, Genet was able not only to describe the major problematic of modern society but also to assess the difficulties and the possibilities of revolt. Several persistent themes structure the content of these plays. In the first place they are peopled almost entirely by collective characters, e.g. the maids, the characters of the balcony, the blacks and whites, the colonists and rebels. Genet is the first major avant-garde writer to give thematic recognition to the fact that the forces acting on history are not individuals but groups. "Individual time is only biography whereas historical time is the time of groups," wrote Goldmann.s4 And, as we noted earlier, in contemporary society biography loses all significance, it becomes mere anecdote.

A second persistent characteristic of these plays is that the relations between the collective personages involve opposition and conflict between dominators and the dominated. The conflict which tends to be viewed from the perspective of the dominated is marked by hate and fascination: the dominators are hated for what they are but are objects of fascination because of the power they hold. This fascination is clearly justified. For example, in Les Bonnes, the maids' efforts to kill the Madame are continually thwarted; in Le Balcon, the rebels are unable to destroy the established order.

36

The elements of hate and fascination lead to a third important theme in Genet, that of ritual. The fascination with the power of the dominators leads the dominated to identify with them in ritual sequences. At the same time it is only in ritual that the dominators are destroyed. In Les Bonnes, for example, the maids play at being Madame and at killing her. In Le Balcon the populace plays at being the powerful and, at the same time, at destroying them by revolution. The same situation holds for Les Negres where Genet has the blacks played by masked white actors and the whites by masked black actors in order to facilitate the transition from reality to ritual. This continual movement from reality to ritual led Goldmann to two important observations. First, that reality tends to be false and odious in Genet's plays, whereas ritual seems to manifest real and profound emotions and authentic values. It is primarily in the ritual sequences that Genet presents the possibilities of human community and collective liberation. This, in turn, led Goldmann to observe that the major problematic in Genet's work involves the attempt to pass from the imaginary to the real. Failing to appreciate this problemmatic, many critics have suggested that Genet's endings, which often involve suicide, self-mutilation or some other form of destruction of the dominated, are the weak points of his plays. But Goldmann interpreted these endings as the logical outcome of the despair of the dominated who are unable to make the passage from ritual to reality. In this respect, they articulate the possibilities and problems of a society whose major potential for revolt-the movements of youth, students, racial minorities and rank and file unionists-has failed to move from the level of fantasy to effective political action.

Goldmann felt that his thesis-that the study of the work of an outstanding artist often can tell us as much about society as sociology can tell us about the work of art-was supported by events in France seven years after the appearance of the last of Genet's four great plays, Les Paravents. Like the three other plays, Les Paravents is guided by the theme of opposition between the dominated and the dominators. However, this time the dominated win and begin to establish a free world where, in Goldmann's words, "non-conformity is not only possible but has a right and a recognized function."55 Goldmann maintained that Les Paravents was one of the first optimistic developments in recent French theater. It was "animated by faith in the possibilities of man to resist order and constraint."56 The hero57 of the play was "probably the first positive character in contemporary avant-garde literature ... the world of freedom [was] affirmed through him as something which can open up a hope for the future."58 In 1966, at the conclusion of a study of Genet's theatres9 Goldmann asked, "is Les Paravents only an isolated and accidental phenomena? Or like the first swallow that announces the

37

coming of Spring does it represent a turning point in intellectual and social life?" He was convinced that the uprising and strike of millions of intellectuals and young workers two Springs later was an answer to his question. For unlike other strikes in this period which had been based on reformist economic and political demands, the revolution of 1968 seemed to express a general critique of cultural exploitation and domination. Moreover, the fact that the uprising was instigated and led by the stratum Goldmann had previ- ously selected as possessing the potential for revolt lent further support to his assessment of modern capitalism and its structures of consciousness.

Goldmann continued to analyze the art and literature and especially the theater of contemporary society for two and a half years following the Strike. His premature death in October of 1970 was doubly tragic: not only did it end a brilliant intellectual career at its height, but it also came just at the time sociologists in the West were returning to questions of art and the cultural superstructure. The revival of interest in the aesthetic analyses of the Frankfurt School and the writings of Antonio Gramsci on cultural hegemony and the function of intellectuals, for example, has focused the attention of a number of scholars to many of the issues with which Goldmann was concerned. If he had lived he would have been able to contribute substantially to the evaluation of the potential of his own work.

The Potential of Genetic Structuralism

The potential of any method can probably be best assessed in the light provided by its critics. Although genetic structuralism can be criticized on a number of points, I discuss two areas which I believe will be special concern to American social scientists: first, the difficulty of defining many of Gold- mann's crucial concepts with the precision required for replicable social research and second, the general problem of values throughout his work.60

Goldmann's hypotheses concerning the relations between society and artistic expressions are plausible and worthy of further research. However, his terms will require considerable clarification. One example should suffice. Gold- mann's suggestion that we distinguish between cultural productions which reflect social consciousness and those which transcend it, is useful only if we can obtain separate indications of each. The suggestion that mediocre art represents the former function whereas great works represent the latter is helpful. However, in order to avoid the danger of tautology, definitions of mediocre and great art independent of their imputed functions will have to be developed. Goldmann's writings indicate two criteria of greatness: first, the work must be judged aesthetically superior by accepted standards of literary

38

or artistic criticism, and second, the work must receive more or less persistent acclaims from the public. For example, Goldmann suggested that the fact that Genet's Haute Surveillance is rarely performed whereas the four plays we discussed earlier are being staged continually throughout the world is a measure of the greatness of the latter plays.61 But while these criteria avoid tautology, they raise several additional problems. In the first place, it is hardly likely that most social scientists would accept the opinion of art critcs on the classification of cultural products. Secondly, Goldmann's own hypothesis that the contemporary art of revolt risks misunderstanding by the public would seem to undermine his "frequency of performance" criterion. Goldmann would probably respond that contemporary audiences often appreciate great art on aesthetic grounds even if they fail to receive its critical message. Thus he suggested of Genet's audiences that they tend to find the plays poetic and beautiful even though they do not fully understand them.62 However, Goldmann never fully developed either a theory of aesthetic judgment or of the public reception to art. Until acceptable answers in both areas are produced, Goldmann's provocative hypotheses will remain, at best, on the level of plausibility.

The question of values in genetic structuralism is more crucial than that of conceptual clarification. For, in the minds of many social scientists, the fact that a researcher is committed to non-verifiable, admittedly ideological premises is enough to completely nullify the results of his investigation. George Steiner has written that while Goldmann's analyses of literary works are generally scholarly and thorough there are times when his Marxism has obtruded on the integrity of his judgment.63 This is by no means an isolated observation. Goldmann himself often noted that he had been accused of "starting from preconceived ideas and values" in his work.64 Moreover, Goldmann contended that all research in the human sciences must start from pre-factual premises which are impregnated with values.

Earlier we saw that Goldmann's studies of literature began with the minimal judgments that 1) human behavior is significant in that it seeks to maintain or establish an equilibrium in its relations with the environment and, 2) humans strive for coherence in their thoughts, feelings and behavior. While occasional- ly Goldmann referred to these judgments as "hypotheses," it is clear that they do not conform to the generally accepted use of that term. Statements of this nature cannot be falsified. However, this does not mean that they have no demonstrable rationale or function. As we noted earlier, Piaget's researchers, among many others, have indicated the reasonableness and the usefulness of these orientational statements. Moreover, in spite of the fact that Goldmann's prefactual propositions cannot be disproven by anything

39

like a critical experiment they are nonetheless open to revision and even elimination. If there is a prolonged and unexplained discrepancy between the facts and the theoretical orientation, Goldmann maintained, then the orientation and not the facts must be modified.65 However, this leads to two rather basic problems. First, is it not likely that the values which inform the prefactual judgments will bias the selection and interpretation of the facts themselves? And, second, how does one evaluate contending value positions on human nature and social reality?

Most sociologists would probably agree with Max Weber's well-known view on values and social research: there is no such thing as a valueless selection of problems for study. By the very fact that the investigator chooses one rather than another topic he makes a value commitment. However, Weber maintained, once the problem is selected it is possible to study it in an objective, i.e. value free, manner. While Goldmann agreed that a researcher must try to avoid "any distortion due to personal sympathies and antipathies" in the description of the facts, he felt it would be naive to suppose that social values are not involved in social research from beginning to end. Indeed, the very concepts which structure one's interpretation of the facts, e.g. whether one proceeds from a structural-functional or conflict perspective, are relevant to real struggles in society. This, of course, is consistent with the principle of identity we discussed earlier. Since all knowledge in the human realm-even, as we saw, the knowledge of events long past-has practical implications, then the findings of social research cannot but have relevance to particular human values. One of the major differences between the natural and social sciences, in this regard, is that the former are often able to appeal to almost universal human needs and desires. For example, one will find substantially the same physics, chemistry and biology in Washington, Moscow, Tokyo and Paris. In advanced industrial societies there is among virtually all strata the desire to control nature, to cure disease, etc. However, the human sciences present an entirely different situation. The goals served by an understanding of social processes vary with different social groups. Consequently, even if the researcher is able to eliminate completely all personal bias, the results of research are going to be relevant to value conflicts.

Now if values are involved in all phases of research from the selection of the topic to the implication of the results, then the use of facts to correct and modify theoretical perspectives is rather limited in scope. It is true, as we noted earlier, that every perspective or world vision has to be minimally adequate to the objective socio-historical environment. This means that there is a point beyond which facts cannot be distorted by any given value position. A conservative economist, for example, is limited in the extent to which he

40

can use models based on the markets of 19th century capitalism to interpret present-day market realities. The same would apply, of course, to a socialist thinker who attempted to understand contemporary labor union activities in terms of a model based on the absolute emmiseration of the proletariat. However, in both cases it would be possible to adjust the model to accord with the facts without affecting the value position per se. For example, the modern socialist might argue that the increased pauperization of the proletariat refers only to that segment of the working class which is permanently marginal to a changing technical economy.66 If this is what Goldmann meant by the modification of prefactual models, he has hardly penetrated the problem of the evaluation of value judgments which influence social research. If value oriented theoretical models have to conform to objective reality only in this most general sense, then how is it ever possible to select one model over another?

Goldmann recognized that there was a serious problem here. And he explicit- ly agreed with thinkers from Kant to Poincare who had maintained that, beyond the very broad limits mentioned above, one cannot derive conclusions in the imperative from premises in the indicative.67 However, this does not mean that we cannot judge value premises relative to one another; it only implies that recourse to the "pure and simple" facts will not help us in this judgment. Just as the principle of identity defines the extent to which values permeate social research, the principle of totality offers a means by which value positions can be evaluated. In brief, Goldmann contended that an ideology's ability to account for social reality can be determined by examining its relation to other ideologies:

When it is a question of determining which of two conflicting sociologies has the greater scientific value, the first step is to ask which of these permits the understanding of the other as a social and human phenomenon, reveals its infrastructure, and clarifies, by means of an immanent critical principle, its inconsistencies and its limitations.68

Thus, to the extent that one value-oriented model is able to englobe another and to account for its view of the facts as partial truth within a wider totality, it is superior to it. I doubt that Goldmann's solution will satisfy most empirically-minded sociologists. After all, does not the decision as to which of several models is genuinely more total merely push the value question back one step further than did the factual modification? Conservative and radical sociologies certainly provide analyses of each other as ideologies. It would seem that the reasonableness of one over the other would have to depend, in the final analysis, on the value commitment of the evaluator. But while

41

Goldmann's discussions are not likely to put an end to the "value dispute" in contemporary sociology, they do introduce a new dimension to the debate. The dialectic of identity presents an alternative not only to the traditional conception of scientific value-neutrality but also to the more enlightened position of Max Weber. Indeed, I think that in a sense, this is the kind of contribution made by Goldmann's work in general. By providing a self- consciously sociological articulation of an orientation which heretofore has been worked out largely by philosophers, aestheticians and political activists, Goldmann has enabled interested social scientists to evaluate an Hegelian- Marxist perspective in their own terms. In effect, he has brought dialectical philosophy and non-critical sociology into dialogue on the field of empirical social research.

The recent renewal of interest in Marxism and, most notably, the work of the Frankfurt School, among many American sociologists indicates an intellectual atmosphere conducive to a reorientation of the dominant paradigms of social inquiry. There seems to be a growing sensitivity to the conception of societies as historical and structural totalities and of social subjects which seek to transcend as well as to adapt to their environment. There seems also to be an increasing recognition within the social scientific community of the role of the social researcher as an integral part of the social process he studies, i.e., as both a subject and object of inquiry. Lucien Goldmann is among the few scholars whose empirical and methodological researchers are guided by systematic attention to the above concerns. Hopefully, as more of his work becomes available in English it will take its place among the foundations of a critical and self-conscious sociology.

NOTES

1. Lucien Goldmann, Structures mentales et creation culturelle (Paris, 1970) p. 11. 2. Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness (London, 1971) pp. 27-28. 3. Lucien Goldmann, The Human Sciences and Philosophy (London, 1969)

pp. 85-86. 4. Lucien Goldmann, La creation culturelle dans la societe moderne (Paris, 1971)

p. 162. 5. Gerard Radnitzky, Contemporary Schools of Metascience, Vol. II (New York,

1971) p. 37. 6. Lucien Goldmann, Marxisme et sciences humaine (Paris, 1970), p. 66. 7. Lucien Goldmann, The Hidden God (New York, 1964). 8. George Huaco, "Ideology and Literature," New Literary History, IV (1973),

pp. 434-435. 9. M. de Gandillac, L. Goldmann, and J. Piaget, Entretiens sur les notions de genese et

de structure (Paris, 1965) p. 22. 10. Robert Friedrichs, A Sociology of Sociology (New York, 1970).

42

11. Talcott Parsons, "Some Problems of a General Theory in Sociology," in J.C. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakian, eds., Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York, 1970) p. 35.

12. Goldmann, 1971, op. cit., pp. 132-133. 13. Lucien Goldmann, Recherches dialectiques (Paris, 1959) pp. 129ff.; and Marxisme

et sciences humaines, op.cit., pp. 95ff. 14. Goldmann, 1959, op.cit., p. 129. 15. Lucien Goldmann, "Structure: Human Reality and Methodological Concept," in

Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, The Structuralist Controversy (Baltimore, 1972) p. 98.

16. Goldmann, 1959, op.cit., p. 130. 17. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (Boston, 1960) p. 149. 18. Lukacs, op.cit., p. 47. 19. Goldmann, 1971, op.cit., pp. 159-160. 20. Goldmann, 1959, op. cit., pp. 13ff. 21. Lukacs, op. cit., p. 207. 22. Goldmann, 1971, op. cit., pp. 162-163. 23. Goldmann, 1969, op.cit., p. 29. 24. Goldmann, 1959, op.cit., pp. 107-117. 25. Goldmann, 1964, op.cit., and "Genetic Structuralism in the Sociology of Litera-

ture," in Elizabeth and Tom Burns, Sociology of Literature and Drama (Baltimore, 1973).

26. Irving Zeitlin, Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968).

27. Goldmann, Marxisme et sciences humaines, op.cit., pp. 121ff. 28. Lukacs, op.cit., p. 51; see also Goldmann, ibid., p. 124. The affinity of this

formulation to the thinking of Max Weber on ideal types and objective possibility is not accidental. In a footnote to the quoted passage Lukacs notes that the thinking of his friend and colleague, Weber, represents the "comparable trend in bourgeois thought" to dialectical materialism.

29. Goldmann, 1971, op. cit., p. 11. 30. Ibid., p. 12. 31. Ibid., p. 13. 32. Goldmann, 1969, op. cit., p. 47. 33. George Lichtheim makes an interesting observation which links Lukacs' and Gold-

mann's use of aesthetic production as an indicator of a group's potential consciousness to the idealism of Kant, Fichte and Hegel: "Central to all forms of German idealism is the conviction that humanity is destined to impose form and meaning upon a universe which is his own unconscious creation. Man goes to the limit of his potentialities, and while in the sphere of work he necessarily interacts with a given material environment, he is genuinely free in the realm of art. The ultimate significance of artistic creation is thus ontological: art discloses the true nature of man as species being," in George Lichtheim, George Lukacs (New York, 1970) p. 77. On the other hand, it is important to note that Goldmann does not accept the position that aesthetic praxis is superior to other modes of human expression. The sociological values of artistic activity is that it can be among the clearest expressions of social consciousness.

34. Goldmann, 1972, op.cit., pp. 106ff. 35. Goldmann, Marxisme et sciences humaine, op.cit., p. 57. 36. Goldmann, 1973, op. cit., p. 121. 37. Goldmann, Structures mentales et creation culturelle, op. cit., p. 58. 38. Goldmann, The Hidden God, op.cit., p. 17; The Human Sciences and Philosophy,

op.cit., p. 59; Marxisme et sciences humaine, op.cit., p. 58.

43

39. Goldmann, 1972, op.cit., p. 109. 40. Lucien Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du Roman (Paris, 1964), p. 44. 41. In this respect, important artistic work represents an intersection of individual and

collective consciousness. Its effect is to push social consciousness to a degree of unity and coherence toward which it is spontaneously tending but which might never be attained without the intervention of an individual act of creation. See Goldmann, 1971, op. cit., p. 99.

42. Ibid., p. 95. 43. Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du Roman, op.cit., p. 38. 44. Goldmann, 1971, op.cit., p. 106. 45. Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du Roman, op.cit., p. 43. 46. Lucien Goldmann, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)

p. 20. 47. Ibid., p. 19. 48. Goldmann, Pour une sociologie du Roman, op.cit., p. 23. 49. Goldmann, 1971, op.cit., p. 100. 50. This period also saw some experimentation with collective heroes and positive

themes (e.g., Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga and Malraux's La Condition humaine) related to the emergence of socialist thought as ,an important force in the West. Ultimately, however, this turned out to be a transitional phase. The socialist revolution did not proceed as expected and the novel of the collective hero did not become a dominant or lasting literary form. See Goldmann, 1971, op.cit., pp. 53ff.

51. David Riesman, et.al., The Lonely Crowd (New York, 1953); Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston, 1972); and Jurgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society (Boston, 1972).

52. Goldmann, 1971, op.cit., p. 63. 53. Ibid., p. 65. 54. Ibid., p. 73. 55. Ibid., p. 92. 56. Goldmann, Structures mentales et creation culturelle, op.cit., p. 56. 57. Although the hero, Sai'd, is an individual, Goldmann noted, "he defines himself in

relation to collective forces and moreover he is not completely individual in that he is a part of a group formed by himself, his mother and his wife, Leila." (1971, op.cit., p. 73).

58. Ibid., pp. 92-93. 59. Goldmann, Structures mentales et creation culturelle, op.cit., p. 301. 60. The most numerous attacks on Goldmann have been from the pens of other

Marxists. His first critics were orthodox Stalinists who reacted to his use of the perspective and method of the early Lukacs (History and Class Consciousness appeared in 1923 and was immediately criticized as idealistic by the leading intellectuals of the CPUSSR). More recently he has been attacked by Structural Marxists as a "left Hegelian" who places too much stress on the role of consciousness in history. Other critics have noted that Goldmann's contention that "the new working class" of highly skilled technicians and intellectuals represents the major critical potential in modern society reflects an essential elitism on his part, a separation from the masses. For a representative cross section of these and other criticism see George Steiner, "Marxism and the Literary Critic," in Elizabeth and Tom Burns, eds., Sociology of Literature and Drama (Baltimore, 1973); Miriam Glucksmann, "Lucien Goldmann: Humanist or Marxist?" New Left Review 56 (July-August, 1969), pp. 49-62; Marc J. Zimmerman, Genetic Structuralism: Lucien Goldmann's Answer to the Advent of Structuralism (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at San Diego, 1974) especially pp. 225-268.

61. Goldmann, 1971, op.cit., p. 72.

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62. Ibid. 63. Steiner, op.cit., p. 167. 64. Goldmann, "Genetic Structuralism in the Sociology of Literature," in Elizabeth

and Tom Burns, eds., op.cit., p. 110. 65. Ibid, p. 111. 66. Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory Vol. I (London, 1968), p. 151. 67. Goldmann, 1969, op.cit., p. 37. 68. Ibid., p. 52.

Article Contentsp. 19p. 20p. 21p. 22p. 23p. 24p. 25p. 26p. 27p. 28p. 29p. 30p. 31p. 32p. 33p. 34p. 35p. 36p. 37p. 38p. 39p. 40p. 41p. 42p. 43p. 44

Issue Table of ContentsTheory and Society, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1978), pp. i-xii+1-140Front Matter [pp. i - 126]Towards an Agenda for Social Theory in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century: An Editorial [pp. vii - xii]Civilizations and Modes of Production: Conflicts and Convergences [pp. 1 - 10]Political Economy and Class Unconsciousness [pp. 11 - 18]Genetic Structuralism and the Analysis of Social Consciousness [pp. 19 - 44]Emile Durkheim and the Historical Thought of Marc Bloch [pp. 45 - 73]Heterogenistics and Morphogenetics: Toward a New Concept of the Scientific [pp. 75 - 96]Two Concepts of Coercion [pp. 97 - 112]Ladies, We've Been Framed! Observations on Erving Goffman's "The Arrangement between the Sexes" [pp. 113 - 125]Discoveries... The Theory & Society Book Catalogueuntitled [p. 127]untitled [pp. 127 - 129]untitled [pp. 129 - 131]untitled [p. 131]untitled [pp. 132 - 133]untitled [p. 133]untitled [pp. 133 - 134]untitled [p. 134]

The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: A Review [pp. 135 - 138]Back Matter [pp. 139 - 140]

Documents

Genetic Structuralism and the Analysis of Social Consciousness