Читать книгу Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction - Annika Gonnermann - Страница 11

To measure the life ‘as it is’ by a life ‘as it might or should be’ is a defining, constitutive feature of humanity. The urge to transcend is nearest to a universal, and arguably the least destructible, attribute of human existence. (Bauman, “Utopia with No Topos” 11)

Critique, in the words of Tom Boland, is an integral part of what defines human beings; he writes that critique is “part of our cultural history, a tradition which constitutes us as thinkers” (Spectacle 1). Dystopia partakes in this long-standing tradition since it can be classified first and foremost as a literary expression of criticism.1 The novels dedicated to the socio-cultural analysis of the status quo serve as a “mouthpiece for social critique” (N. Wilkinson and Voigts 95), meaning that they criticise socio-political developments of their time of origin and are in turn shaped by political, economic, religious and ethical discourses of their respective contexts. Yet, while these novels are eager to paint the future in the bleakest colours possible, they are equally careful to establish causal-logical references linking back to their authors’ respective reality (cf. Sargent 27).2 As Terry Eagleton claims, they are “really devices for embarrassing the present” (“Utopias”).3 Each futuristic nightmare is thus in fact a moral enquiry into the state of affairs of the present, highlighting the weaknesses of the socio-cultural reality via extrapolation. This technique has been analysed by Darko Suvin, who frames it under the concept of ‘cognitive estrangement’ (cf. Metamorphoses 4ff.). This approach is best summarised as “a reflecting of but also on reality,” which forces readers to adopt an estranged perspective on the familiar. It constitutes a form of cognitive analysis that tends “toward a dynamic transformation rather than toward a static mirroring of the author’s environment” (ibid. 10). As Christopher Ferns claims,

dystopian fiction posits a society which – however outlandish – is clearly extrapolated from that which exists. […] [T]he dystopian writer presents the nightmare future as a possible destination of present society, as if dystopia were no more than a logical conclusion derived from the premises of the existing order, and implies that it might very well come about unless something is done to stop it. (107)

Fundamentally, dystopias exhibit a mirroring quality, reflecting the devolutionary tendencies of their time (cf. Tuzinski 32).4 Suvin goes one step further still and declares that “there is little point in discussing utopias as separate entity, if their basic humanistic, this-worldly, historically alternative aspect is not stressed and adopted as one of their differentiae genericae” (Metamorphoses 42, emphasis in the original). Utopian writing – as an exercise in fictional sociology – then always has a clear connection to the present, although it is mostly set in the future (cf. Bauman, Freedom 89).5

Formulating criticism, however, is only one of two functions dystopian narratives usually exhibit. When Han, Triplett, and Anthony argue “that some aspect of critique is at least implicit within all types of dystopian works” (“Introduction” 4), it is vital to remember that these books are never a neutral inquiry into the states of things, but actually burdened with normative standards circling around the question of the good life. It is therefore imperative “to recognise the partiality of theoretical and political positions” (Pinder 257) to be found in dystopian writing. Dystopias are always defined by their didactic warning function;6 both Christine Lehnen and David Lorenzo even consider the warning effect a prescriptive feature of their genre definitions; dystopias are narratives that “serve as warnings regarding the future of contemporary society” (Lorenzo 6), and “can be seen as the epitome of literature in its role as social criticism” (Booker, Literature 3). They are the product of vigilant social analysts constructed as a warning, a “prophetic vehicle, the canary in a cage, for writers with an ethical and political concern” (Baccolini and Moylan, “Introduction” 2). Referring back to the “sociopolitical tendencies that could, if continued, turn our contemporary world into the iron cages portrayed in the realm of [e]utopia’s underside (ibid.),7 dystopian fiction is always meant as a normative criticism of the socio-cultural and historical characteristics of the time of its own origins. Yet, while many critics take this circumstance for granted, no study has yet attempted to classify the use of criticism in dystopian fiction. It is therefore worthwhile to investigate the construction of critique in these novels as such an analysis would allow the reader insights into the hidden agenda of a given text. Without a thorough examination of the criticism employed, the warning function of dystopian fiction might vanish into thin air.

Suitable for this endeavour is Rahel Jaeggi’s taxonomy of criticism, which provides a fruitful template for the analysis of dystopian fiction on a non-content level, illuminating the narrative structures and elements and opening them up for analysis. Her Kritik von Lebensformen (2014, trans. Critique of Forms of Life, 2018), originally written as an attempt to return the critical theory of the Frankfurt School to the attention of philosophical and social analysis, thematises modes of criticism, the good life, and the seeming impossibility of criticising 21^st-century life styles without resorting to a patronising, prescriptive, often westernised discourse of how individuals should live. She disagrees with the liberal notion and “widespread relativism which maintains [that] we are in no position to criticise particular cultures or societies or ways of life” (Wilding), insisting that we must continue to criticise one another based on the criteria of how successful certain life forms are in terms of problem-solving. Jaeggi claims that if a certain form of life is obviously no longer able to process arising problems sufficiently, critique is not only justified but imperative. By delineating a discourse which is not defined by content but rather discussing forms of life abstractly, Jaeggi manages to venture forth against “ethical abstinence,” i.e. against a laissez-faire mentality (cf. Jaeggi, Critique 1–3), while simultaneously refraining from partaking in a patronising Western discourse.

Her inquiry into forms of life and what constitutes the ‘good life’ (cf. Arentshorst 274) introduces an innovative taxonomy of criticism that is also directly applicable to dystopian fiction. Understanding criticism as an initiative and “impetus for transforming a (social) formation based on reasons” (Critique 84), Jaeggi establishes a meta-language to critically evaluate the formation of criticism. Her taxonomy differentiates between ‘external,’ ‘internal,’ and ‘immanent criticism.’ The most basic form of criticism with the most obvious result is what Jaeggi terms ‘external criticism.’ This form imposes external standards onto an item or construct, questioning it in its entirety by championing an alternative to the status quo. The two – reality and alternative – are usually mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled, meaning that the critic aims to overcome the original target of criticism (cf. ibid. 177). As Jaeggi writes,

external criticism applies an external normative standard to an existing society. This standard is external in the sense that it is supposed to be valid regardless of whether it already holds within an existing community or an existing social institutional structure and of whether it is ‘contained’ in a given state of affairs, and it judges the given situation according to whether it satisfies this standard. Criticism in this case aims to transform, supersede, or reorient what is given on the basis of norms that are brought to bear on it from the outside. (Critique 178)

Intending to harvest the power of external criticism, the critic is defined by her reluctance to share the norms and values esteemed in the given society and thus chooses to distance herself from that society (cf. ibid.). While Jaeggi herself does not illustrate her argument, it is an easy task to conceive of one oneself: the West criticising the role of women in Arab countries externally, for instance, is a relevant and highly debated example in the context of post-colonial criticism and the supposed moral superiority of the West.

Jaeggi goes on to introduce her next category, which she terms ‘internal criticism’ – a category related to an everyday understanding of critique and frequently used to detect inherent contradictions. This form of criticism assumes that “although certain ideals and norms belong to the self-understanding of a particular community, they are not actually realized within it” (ibid. 179). Jaeggi introduces examples to make her point clear: the Christian community which preaches the gospel yet rejects refugees; or a CEO who champions women’s rights in public, yet favours male employees when hiring new staff (cf. ibid. 179f.). Contrary to external criticism, which imposes its standards externally, ‘internal criticism’ rests on the conviction that “the standard of criticism resides in different ways in the matter itself.” (ibid. 180, emphasis in the original) Criticism grows out of promises made but not kept, general principles, or norms that might have been proclaimed, however which are not (fully) realised by the community. Internal criticism is at its heart a conservative technique, advocating the re-establishment of certain norms and practices by illuminating “an inconsistency either between assertions and facts, between accepted norms and practices, between appearance and reality, or between claim and realization” (ibid.). It does not champion an alternative system, but rather results in upholding of the status quo (cf. ibid. 182) – the source of its persuasiveness and power. Jaeggi argues that this type of criticism is employed regularly, for it demands very little effort. Its “practical and pragmatic advantages” (ibid. 183, emphasis in the original) lie in the fact that this type of criticism merely reminds the community of what they signed up for in the first place: “[n]o one, we assume, can wish to remain in an internal contradiction” (ibid.). Essentially, critic and the object of criticism are part of the same in-group since they belong to a community that has already accepted certain norms and values.

Jaeggi’s third and most ambitious type of criticism is subsumed under the term of ‘immanent criticism.’ Similar to internal criticism, this mode appeals to a normative yardstick already inherent in the object/person they want to criticise. This form of criticism is thus “not conducted from an imagined Archimedean point outside of the reality to be criticized“ (ibid. 190) like external criticism. But, as Jaeggi claims, immanent criticism is “normatively stronger” than external or internal criticism for it “find[s] the new world through criticism of the old one” (190). As Hans Arentshorst summarises,

[i]mmanent criticism differs from both these approaches because it starts from the problems and [inherent] contradictions of a life-form. In this sense it is more negativistic and formal than internal criticism: it is not interested in recovering certain values, but it wants to contribute to the transformative potential of a life-form by raising consciousness about its internal problems and contradictions. In this sense, immanent criticism is context-dependent, since it analyzes the internal problems and contradictions of a life-form, but it is also context-transcending because it aims at the transformation of the current life-form in order to overcome its problems. (273)

Assuming that the standards set by the object of criticism are “contradictory in themselves” (Jaeggi, Critique 190, emphasis in the original), immanent criticism, then, anchors its method within the criticised reality itself, encountering it (ideally) without any ideologically framed preconceived ideals. It is therefore a new type of criticism due to its inherent objectiveness.8 It does not “merely proceed from the critic’s subjective critical intention” (ibid. 191f.) but creates parameters for the object of criticism to criticise itself. Fundamentally, immanent criticism is only possible in constellations, in which “the object of criticism […] has succumbed to a crisis of itself” (ibid. 192). Immanent criticism operates thereby to a certain degree outside of any ideology, since it refrains from approaching the object of criticism with preconceived normative standards.

Applying a theoretical framework, the critic’s task is to – so to speak – ‘detect’ a crisis: “the crisis qua crisis of the objects (as a problem lying in the social relations) must always be analyzed and uncovered in the first place at the theoretical level” (ibid.). Therefore, it is imperative to frame the criticism theoretically: “[w]hereas internal criticism is a mundane procedure that is applied in one way or another in a variety of situations, immanent criticism is guided by theory” (ibid. 191). Immanent criticism constructs links and connections between two seemingly unrelated phenomena and thus originates in the school of thought of dialectics as popularised by Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic (1813). This philosophical method “relies on a contradictory process between opposing sides” (Maybee), that is to say, observing two seemingly antithetical concepts, such as life and death. Upon closer inspection, however, Hegel argues that binary distinctions are dissolved into a continuum, in which one concept embodies the other: life depends on death (in the form of digestion, consumption); death does not exist without life (cf. R. Winter); conceptual boundaries merge and flow into another until they are declared invalid and shown to spring from one origin.

Jaeggi’s immanent criticism docks onto Hegel’s idea of ‘positive Vernunft.’ This mode of criticism refuses to remain caught in dichotomous patterns. On the contrary, the aim of immanent criticism is to decipher when and how concepts flow into each other, showing “that there is a connection here at all, and in doing so to distinguish the two (‘separated’) moments as part of this connection, which as a result is marked by a contradiction” (Jaeggi, Critique 198). Eventually, without immanent criticism and the use of theoretical analysis, certain co-dependant phenomena might not become visible at all. Jaeggi calls them ‘genuinely immanent problems,’ shortcomings arising out of the inconsistencies of a system. Contrary to problems that have their cause externally (a people suffers from starvation because of a draught) or internally (a people suffers from starvation because they struggle with the climatic conditions and fail to make adequate provisions in form of food reservoirs etc.; cf. ibid. 165ff.), these problems are a direct result of systematic inconsistencies and only perceivable by thinking consequently in dialectics. These problems arise because of and out of a given form of life and are therefore to be analysed according to the standards of immanent criticism (cf. ibid. 167f.).9

Fleshing out her ideas, Jaeggi introduces Karl Marx’ critique of bourgeois society, arguing that his criticism of capitalist society relies on the technique of immanent criticism. Criticising the capitalist system, Marx points out the immanent inconsistencies of the system. He talks about the ‘laws of motions,’ for instance, the paradox of social relations within free-market capitalism: while the system encourages people to cut off their social ties and propagates individual responsibility within the market in order to prosper from rags to riches, it paradoxically relies fundamentally on the safety net that is constituted by the social unit of the family.10 Mark Fisher has summarised the points made by Marx quite concisely:

The values that family life depends upon – obligation, trustworthiness, commitment – are precisely those which are held to be obsolete in the new capitalism. Yet, with the public sphere under attack and the safety nets that a ‘Nanny State’ used to provide being dismantled, the family becomes an increasingly important place of respite from the pressures of a world in which instability is a constant. The situation of the family in post-Fordist capitalism is contradictory, in precisely the way traditional Marxism expected: capitalism requires the family (as an essential means of re-producing and caring for labor power; as a slave for the psychic wounds inflicted by anarchic social-economic conditions), even as it undermines it (denying parents time with children, putting intolerable stress on couples as they become the exclusive source of affective consolation for each other). (32f.)

Immanent criticism, then, approaches the item on display supported by the help of theory in the above example, a Marxist reading of bourgeois society.

Ultimately, the aim of any criticism is a transformation of the status quo. While external criticism always argues from a normative point of view, meaning it needs an alternative for its very existence and function, internal criticism can draw its persuasiveness from the criticised object itself, simply by holding it to claims previously made. Immanent criticism does not immediately offer a ready-made alternative because it “is oriented less to the reconstruction or redemption of normative potentials than to the transformation of existing conditions in ways that are facilitated by the immanent problems and contradictions of a particular social constellation” (Jaeggi, Critique 190f., emphasis in the original). This means, at first glance, immanent criticism is not overly productive in terms of alternatives. It might therefore disappoint those social reformers looking for ways to radically challenge the big picture and search for new models for society as a whole. But Jaeggi argues that we must reconsider our conception of ‘alternative.’ Immanent criticism produces an alternative ex negativo and should be thought of as transformative criticism: “the transformation process is suggested by the situation itself to a certain extent; it is prefigured in the situation, even if it exceeds the latter” (ibid. 209). For this most ambitious type of criticism, the performative gesture of critique suffices. Assuming that the criticised community can transform, immanent criticism does not need to spell out an explicit alternative to function successfully, for it “construes the crisis-prone contradiction that confronts it and confronts us not only as necessary but also – in contrast to the procedure of internal criticism – as productive” (ibid.). Jaeggi asserts that “the possibility of resolving [the contradiction] follows from criticism of the deficient state itself” (ibid.). To cite the words of Theodor W. Adorno: “[t]he False, once determinately known and precisely expressed, is already an index of what is right and better” (Critical Models 288).11 Knowing what we do not want prefigures what is desirable: dystopia prefigures eutopia.

	Basis of Criticism	Character	Role of Theory
External criticism	Contradiction between external standard and existing practices	Constructive	Normative theory as ‘judge’
Internal criticism	Contradiction in the sense of inconsistency between internal ideals and reality	Reconstructive	None
Immanent criticism	‘Dialectical’ contradiction within the constellation, crisis	Transformative	Necessity of analysis to demonstrate contradiction in crisis

Fig. 1: Rahel Jaeggi – Models of Criticism (excerpt, cf. 213);

With her taxonomy of criticism, Jaeggi has provided the necessary tool for analysing the difference between classical and contemporary dystopian fiction. Applying her terms, the following analysis will show that progressive contemporary dystopian fiction relies on immanent criticism, whereas classical dystopian fiction is connected to external criticism. This, as will be argued, is due to the change in focus and object of critique: from totalitarianism to neoliberal free market philosophy. In order to trace this shift, the following two sub-chapters will focus on what I call classical dystopian fiction, its focus on totalitarianism, and its use of external criticism. I will trace the function of critique within the classical fiction by Orwell, Huxley, and Co. before comparing their approach to the different methods and styles of contemporary dystopias and their immanent criticism strategy targeted at a neoliberal market ideology.12