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

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Ives, Peter R., 1968Gramsci's politics of language: engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School! Peter Ives. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-3756-9 1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937

Contributions in political science. 2. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937 - Knowledge - Linguistics. 3. Communism and linguistics. 4. Bakhtin, M.M. (Mikhail Mikhailovich), 1895-1975 - Friends and associates. 5. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940. 6. Frankfurt school of sociology. 1. Title. HX289.7.G73I842004

335.4'01'4

C2003-903298-1

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

final stages of this work, my new colle Winnip eg provided a very congenial environ ment. Gramm atAn earlier version of the last section of chapter 1 was publishe d as 'A 10, no. 1 Marxism ing Rethink in Theory' ical Introdu ction to Gramsci's Political 'Transas d publishe was 3 chapter of version ted (1998): 34-51, and an abbrevia ny 3 -Hegemo Counter in ors' Metaph ic Linguist lating Revolution: Gramsci's those include to me ing permitt for journals both (Spring 2000). My thanks to from the sections here. This book has been publishe d with the help of a grant d by provide funds using , Canada of on Federati Humani ties and Social Sciences Ontario The . Canada of Council Research ties the Social Sciences and Humani Gradua te Scholarship funded much of the research. could not Bringing this project to book form has been a long journey that I Perry, for Adele of support and ionship compan the have complet ed without me helping for Nell, r, daughte my to work this dedicate I which I am grateful. keep my perspective and for filling my days with joy.

philosophy of praxis - a 'living philology' as he calle~ i~2 -: invol:ved language. . 'Vernacular materialism' is taken from Cramsci s insights mto the conflict between bourgeois popular views of the world as expressed in th~ ve~na:ular and the aristocratic feudal world view of Latin - a conflict that remams sigmficant to this day.3 .As an introduction to this work, I will lay out the many levels .at which vernacular materialism characterizes Gramsci's approach. These constitute the guiding threads of this book.

The Vernacular Approach 'Vernacular materialism' is a play on the term 'vulgar materialism.' While 'vulgar' is nearly synonymous with 'vernacular' - meaning the common or ~veryday language of a region or country" - it has come t~ be attached to a :e~slOn of Marxism that is deemed simplistically economic, overly mechanistic and overly influenced by positivism. 5 Gramsci notes that although the word 'dis-aster' ~o longer means a misalignment of the stars, it still contains traces of astrology's his6 torical importance to our language and world view. Following this example, the mutations of ,vulgar' can illuminate the relationship between language and Marxism. 'Vulgar Marxism' privileges the economic realm (w~i~h some see as ~e material realm par excellence) over politics, culture, and reh~iou~ or other SOCi~ relationships. It also relegates language itself to the (superficial) superstructure. But this vulgar opposition between the 'real' or natural w~rld and l~guage also permeates many non-econornistic Marxist and non-Marxist perspectives. It has come to be a part of what Gramsci would call 'common sense.'? Ironically, then, vulgar Marxism sheds its etymological meanings of both language and popularization. Vernacular materialism is an attempt to recover these aspects. The synonymy between 'vulgar' and 'vernacular' also responds to certain postMarxist readings of Gramsci as launched in 1985 by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal

are free,' 'cost nothing to produce,' and can be 'manipulated at will.' Third, speech is 'axiomatically individual,' in contrast to 'collective' subjects such as nations, classes, castes, groups, and generations. 16 Anderson mobilizes these presumptions to criticize poststructuralism, The same three points often inform arguments for free speech, some education policies, and other 'common sense' notions of language. , Chapter 1 addresses Gramsci's position on whether language is comparable to other social institutions and practices. It examines his views on whether language changes more slowly over time than other social institutions, whether it can be produced and manipulated freely, and to what extent it can be seen as individual. By investigating the processes of language 'standardization' in Italy and Gramsci's position in relation to various schools of linguistics at the time, chapter 1 presents the foundations of Gramsci's approach to language. It also introduces a historical materialist view of language that refutes each ofAnderson's points. Yet scholars as thorough and meticulous as Ellen Meiksins Wood have followed Anderson in his unsupported concept of language and used it to 'defend' Marxism.V Instead of protecting Marxism against the deluge of so-called postmodernism and all the apocalyptic visions this spectre seems to conjure up, this perspective has helped demote Marxism to an outmoded tradition that cannot speak to the realities of

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the present. Other responses to the question of how the study of language relates to Marxism implicitly or explicitly assume that language is an antonym to the 'matter' of materialism. This is perhaps best seen in the theories of Jiirgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu who fault Marx's philosophy for failing to account for communicative action or symbolic/linguistic interaction. Bourdieu contends that Marxist conceptions of class neglect symbolic and linguistic power. IS Similarly, Habermas contends that Marx's central concept of labour must be augmented with a concept of communicative action. 19 Instead of expanding or reinterpreting Marx's framework, both these influential thinkers approach language as a topic that can-

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or nation. This is central to Gramsci's engagement with the Italian novelist and language policy advisor Alessandro Manzoni, discussed in chapter 1. The hist~r~­ cal transformation from Latin to the vernacular is intricately linked to the political negotiations between the Roman Catholic Church and secular leaders conducted while Italy was emerging as a nation-state in the nineteenth century, the implications of this have extended to the present. While political authority in Italy has been faced with the problem of the Vatican, all the nations of modern Europe have been affected by the shift from Latin to vernacular, secular, national languages. Tracing these dynamics farther back historically, we see important religious overtones in relation to the Vulgate and vernacular Bibles. This is a second reason to note the distinction between vernacular and linguistic materialism. Gramsci praises the intellectual advances of the Renaissance but also notes that it failed t? bring about reform in any but the upper classes, and often only among traditional intellectuals. Benedetto Croce criticized Martin Luther and the Reformation for being primitive and crude; Gramsci defended both, insisting that unlike the Renaissance and Croce's Idealist philosophy, they had a greater impact on 25 society at large. They were vulgarized - that is, popularized. It is no coincidence that this vulgarization required the vernacular. In this sense, vernacular gives us a more specific way to comprehend Gramsci's writings on subalterniry, which have been so influential, especially in colonial and postcolonial studies. A focus on Gramsci's vernacular materialism brings his concerns into the ambit of the historical processes of popular languages that pervade high culture, as investigated by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World. 26 These dynamics are directly connected to the historical dimension of Gramsci's important distinction between organic and traditional intellectuals, a distinction examined in chapter 4. The question of religion and its opposition to science runs parallel to the dichotomy between 'matter' and language and raises a third way in which 'ver-

1920s and 1930s it was already difficult to maintain a technical distinction between linguistics as the study of language and philology as the study of texts, or literature. Historically, philology included the study of grammar and language as much as texts and literature. Moreover, philology was used by nineteenth-century European scholars to describe comparative and historical grammar and thus was almost interchangeable with the term linguistics. But it is important to note the general shift in terms whereby philology was 'narrowed' to make way for a 'science' of language with no particular reference to either individual written documents or 'living' utterances of speech. We may be able to distinguish Gramsci's philological method/" from the influences of his studies in linguistics; by the same token, his own desire to use language to connect the various aspects of his research project as will be discussed in chapter 1 - would seem to warn against this. But more importantly, Gramsci uses 'philology' to engage subaltern experiences and world views against any elitist vanguardism, especially of the Marxist sort. It is worth a long quotation to emphasize how Gramsci connects this critique of positivist Marxism to the role he has assigned to organic intellectuals in overcoming the gap between 'leaders' and the masses: Knowledge and a judgement of the importance of this feeling on the part of the leaders is no longer a product of hunches backed up by the identification of statistical laws, which leaders then translate into ideas and words-as-force. (This is the rational and intellectual way and is all toO often fallacious.) Rather it is acquired by the collective organism through 'active and conscious co-participation,' through 'cornpassionality,' through experience of immediate particulars, through a system which one could call 'living philology.' In this way a close link is formed between great mass, party and leading group; and the whole complex, thus articulated, can move together as 'collective-man.'29

tution and not a faculty of the mind or a biological capacity? What does it mean that Gramsci always sees languages as they exist in history? These are two of the guiding questions of this work. He never postulates a transcendental 'essence' or core of language outside of history. He has no concept of a meta-language or a universal grammar of all languages. From his perspective, any notion oflanguagein-general runs the risk of ahistorical abstraction and idealistic presupposition. These positions raise a question: Are these just negative positions from which it is impossible to articulate the relationship between language and political struggle? It might seem obvious that a historical approach to language would avoid presuppositions about language's inherent, atemporal characteristics. But my discussion in chapter 2 will show how modern-day interpretations of Bakhtin use his work to argue that language is inherently based on dialogue and that this presupposes some ethical relation among speakers. Likewise, Habermass communicative action postulates a transcendental 'essence' of language, as will be discussed in chapter 4. These approaches to language, and many others as diverse as those of Noam Chomsky and Perry Anderson, assume non-historical and non-materialist views of what language is. Central to Gramsci's approach is his rejection of the idea that language is primarilya medium in which reality is reflected or re-presented. The simplest version of the theory of language as representation is the idea that language is nomenclature - that words are labels for either things or ideas. Gramsci is far from unique in rejecting this view, even though it is still a prevalent assumption of 'common sense,' just as it was during Gramsci's life. Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language, the pragmatics of C.S. Peirce, and (most influentially) Saussure's linguistics all, with important differences, reject this view of language as nomenclature. What is often forgotten when we focus on 'the linguistic turn' is that in linguistics and philosophy, language as nomenclature was not the dominant view by

means when he describes language as historically metaphoric and by investigating his concepts of 'normative' and 'spontaneous' grammar. Preview

Chapter 1 focuses on the continuity of Gramsci's approach to language. It provides the context of la questione della lingua in Italy in the first decades of the twentieth century. I also place Gramsci within the various schools oflinguistics of the time. From these settings, I trace his ideas about language in his journalism, political writings, and Prison Notebooks. The chapter concludes with an in-depth reading of Quaderno 29, 'Notes for an Introduction to the Study of Grammar,' written in 1935, which relates Gramsci's concepts of 'spontaneous' or 'immanent' and 'normative' grammar to his renowned theory of hegemony. Taking off from this framework, chapter 2 asks how Gramsci defines linguistic creativity, and what he means when he contends that language is not parthenogenetic - that is, does not reproduce on its own. This chapter explores in greater detail Gramsci's notion of 'unity,' which is central to his concept of a 'unified national language,' as well as his idea of creating a 'national popular collective will' on which the Communist Party should base itself and which it should foster. To carry out this investigation, I utilize the work of the Bakhtin Circle. By noting the close parallels between Gramsci's and Volosinov's critiques of the prevalent schools of linguistics, I flesh out the implications of some of Gramsci's more fragmentary comments. This aim is also supported with reference to Medvedev's analysis of formalism. This raises a question: If Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle have such similar responses to certain problems of linguistics, why do they arrive at such opposite positions with regard to unified national languages? To answer this question, the second part of chapter 2 turns to Bakhtin's analysis of Francois Rabelais. In this context I clarify what Gramsci means by

One of the great intellectual 'regrets' of my life is the deep wound I inflicted on my dear professor at the University of Turin, Bartoli, who was convinced I was the archangel sent to destroy the nco-grammarians once and for all .., Antonio Gramsci 1

In 1976, Perry Anderson complained that 'nothing reveals the lack of ordinary scholarship from which Gramsci's legacy has suffered more than this widespread illusion' that the concept of hegemony is 'an entirely new coinage - in effect, his own invention.'2 This is as true today as it was then, but not - as Anderson would have it - because of ignorance of this term's history in the Russian Social Democratic movement. Instead, it is due to the lack of attention paid to the connection between 'hegemony' and Gramsci's studies in linguistics. Franco Lo Piparo has demonstrated thoroughly how Gramsci developed 'hegemony' substantially from concepts and concerns that he first encountered in turn-of-the-century Italian linguisticsr' He argues convincingly that 'the early source of [Gramsci's] philosophy should not be searched for in Marx or Lenin or in any other Marxist, but in the science of language." He documents the rel- . atively matured nature of Gramsci's conceptualizations of hegemony, civil society, and intellectuals in the course of his academic studies in linguistics with his professor, Matteo Bartoli, in Turin, and in his journalism prior to 1918. We do not have to pit Gramsci's Marxism against his pre-Marxist preoccupations so dichotomously to realize that his studies in linguistics are central to his entire thought. The most widely read secondary literature in English cognizant of Lo Piparo's argument is David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's introduction to their section 'Language, Linguistics and Folklore' in Selections from Cultural Writings. 5

of the origins of concepts. If the search for the origins of 'hegemony' is an attempt to get at its 'essence,' then, using Marx's language from the Sixth Thesis, 'hegemony' can only be comprehended as an 'internal dumb generaliry.l'' Struggles over the origin of 'hegemony' are more fundamentally struggles over what 'hegemony' means, how we use it, and what we can accomplish using it in the future. As I will show, Gramsci's approach to all language is that it produces meaning historically; thus, changes in meaning are as important as a term's origins, if not more important. More telling than a concept's origins are its vicissitudes. These are ultimately questions of political theory and political strategy. The difficulties of interpreting Gramsci's concepts are especially extreme given the unfinished and eclectic nature of his prison writings. Earlier debates over the extent to which Gramsci is Leninist or Crocean have now given way to comparable polemics that use different terminology and take place on different terrains. These have included the opposition of British cultural Marxists to the structuralism of Louis Althusser. 19 'Hegemony' has also been used on one hand to position Gramsci's writings as the passageway to various 'post-Marxisms,' and on the other to keep the political struggle of the working class at the forefront. Clearly, the argument that 'hegemony' has roots in linguistics has implications that are far from politically neutral, especially in the context of debates around poststructuralism or 'postmodernism,' in which language plays a significant role. My objective is not to make Gramsci out to be a non-Marxist; on the contrary, it is to show how he integrated the ideas of a certain school of linguistics (and in the case of Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, ideas that were certainly informed by socialist syrnpathies)2o into a Marxist framework. This integration of linguistics into Marxism does not leave that framework unaffected. Instead, it fundamentally changes what Gramsci's Marxism or 'philosophy of praxis' (the term Gramsci used for Marxism, which he appropriated from Antonio Labriola) is and what it must include. It does not mark a turn away from social analyses that have at their base

language question,' la questione della lingua, was certainly not novel. When Italy was politically unified in 1861, only about 2.5 per cent of Italians were able to use any language that could be considered 'standard' Italian, and about 75 per cent were non-literate.ff The lack of a national language, especially in comparison with France and England and to a lesser extent Germany, was seen as a serious social and political problem. The linguistic situation was one of many profoundly important issues (including emigration, internal migration, urbanization, the introduction of mandatory schooling, and industrialization) that occupied intellectuals and politicians in the wake of political unification, during Gramsci's early life. By 1911, when Gramsci moved from Sardinia to Turin, the non-literacy rate for Italy as a whole had been reduced to about 40 per cent. In Sardinia it had dropped from 90 per cent in 1861 to 58 per cent; the equivalent figures for Piedmont were 54 per cent and 11 per cent. 23 This is just one indication of how questions of language must have struck the Sardinian student as a i T unn. . 24 rwenry-year-o ld In The specific debates over Alessandro Manzoni's strategy of using the Tuscan dialect as 'standard' Italian and expanding its use throughout Italy waned somewhat after the turn of the century. But as Giacomo Devoto notes, 'Manzoni had given to the theory of the literary language an interpretation that was no longer artistic but juridical and political.'25 Gramsci's attention to language is very much a reflection of his place as a Sardinian confronting 'standard' Italian in a relatively new nation. These Italian concerns with language took place during a time of important shifts in European linguistics. Between 1906 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure delivered the lectures that were to become his Cours de linguistique generale, which inaugurated synchronic linguistics so influential to structuralism and poststructuralism. Also around this time, Idealist linguistics was giving way to various other perspectives, including Saussure's.

Croce argues that there is no division between language and the aesthetic and that 'the science of art and the science of language, the Aesthetic and the Linguistic, conceived as true and proper sciences, are not two distinct things but one single science.'3o Thus, language is pure expression, nothing other than the conglomeration of individual acts of speech. Vossler compares language to climate as opposed to meteorological phenomena. Climate is an abstraction that does not exist in time but only in space; weather is a meteorological phenomenon that does exist in time as well as space. Likewise, conversation is the phenomenon that exists in time and space but language is that abstract thing which exists over time. 31 Idealist linguistics gives great precedence to the aesthetic act of speakingan act that is ultimately unrepearable, From this perspective, language itself, like climate, is a generalization that must always be questioned and evaluated based on the aesthetic creativity of speech. Moreover, it is false to separate the content of the expression from the act of expression.Y Croce argues: 'The Linguistic has itself discovered the principles of the irreducible individuality of aesthetic entities when it has asserted that the word is what is actually spoken, and that no two words are really the same; thus eliminating synonyms and homonyms and demonstrating the impossibility of correctly translating one word into another, or a so-called dialect into a so-called language, or a so-called mother tongue into a so-called foreign language.'33 This view of language opposes the geographic linguistics of Jules Gillieron and Meillet, which is based on the notion that a word or linguistic form can have a translation in another language. Similarly, it rejects the Neogrammarian notion that a word or linguistic form can have an equivalent at a different historical time. Gramsci is at the nexus between Crocean Idealist linguistics and positivist linguistics as represented by the Neogrammarians. This mirrors Gramsci's more general position in opposition to both Crocean Idealism, as a whole system of philosophy, and economic positivistic Marxism; it also is reminiscent of V.N.

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crete notion of how this effort should proceed, Gramsci used many of the concepts that were introduced to him by Bartoli. Linguistic Conflict and Bartoli's Theory of Irradiation A year before Gramsci began attending Bartoli's courses in linguistics, Bartoli coined the term neolinguistica. Bartoli used the term until 1934, when he abandoned it because 'among other things it was irritating to esteemed colleagues of the older schools.'40 From this time on he used the term linguistica areale or spaziale- that is, area or spatial linguistics. As Lo Piparo documents, this change in terminology was related to his increasing unease with the position of his Neolinguist colleague, Giulio Bertoni. And this was in part a distancing between Bartoli and the Crocean-based linguistics of both Bertoni and VosslerY Contrary to the claims of several scholars, Gramsci's training in linguistics should not be seen as .an insignificant or youthful idealist phase that he overcame in his later materialist thought. 42 In fact, there are continuous themes that develop from his studies with Bartoli through his journalism to his prison writings. Moreover, in 1935, when his fascist prison guards softened their repression, he did not choose to write explicitly on political issues of the sort that would have been prohibited under prior censorship. Instead he chose to write about grammar! As we shall see at the end of this chapter, his discussion of grammar in his final writings is very much in line with his earliest concerns. As Franco Lo Piparo documents thoroughly, in a very real sense this leader of the Italian working class was a linguist throughout his adult life. In his letter to Schucht of 19 March 1927 - after the section regularly quoted by commentators about wanting to accomplish something 'fUr ewig'as the genesis of his research program in prison - Gramsci lists four main ideas for his plan of study. The second is, as he describes, 'a study of comparative linguistics, nothing

mixing of two or more languages. The political overtones of this are quite evident in Ascoli's preface to his journal, Archivio glottologico italiano. He argues that linguistic change 'is a question, in other words, of new ethnic individuals that develop from the fusion of two diverse national entities. One of these national entities, whether its population is lesser or greater, is victorious when its words are adopted, and when the other adapts its speech to the right situations.' Ascoli explains how this process is always complex. For example, in the case of GalloRoman there is 'contamination between the grammar of the victors and those of the defeated.' The new idiom is the result of the various forces at work in the conflict between the two cornmunities.Y Bartoli developed the concept of prestige in an attempt to explain why certain groups adopt other people's languages; that being said, this concept's beginnings can be found in the naturalistic and sociolinguistic writings of Ascoli. Although not articulated in these terms, both Ascoli's theory and Bartoli's sub. sequent work rely on the proposition that there is conflict and competition between word forms; it follows that both are based on the idea that different word forms are identical to each other in some way (whereas Croce would argue that each and every word is always unique when it is uttered). Put another way, words in conflict are synonymous, or function in the same manner within the system of language. The conflict lies in the implicit idea that words maintain their positions in language - and can relate harmoniously with other words only because they are distinctive relative to those other words. While all languages have synonyms, if there is absolutely no difference in implication, context, or overtone between two words, one word will fall out of use in favour of the other. This theory of historical linguistic change has strong affinities with Saussure's contention (although in synchronic linguistics) that 'in the language itself, there are only differences ... and no positive terms.'49 In this respect, both perspectives differ from one holding that linguistic forms or words are rhernselves

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at the very heart of Gramsci's use of 'hegemony' in the prison notebooks for theorizing the relationship and tensions between coercion and consent. Of course, this relationship had occupied Italian political thought from Machiavelli to Pareto. It is evident that Gramsci's concern, from his early studies in linguistics to his last writings in prison, is exactly the issue that Joseph Femia describes as the problematic of hegemony: 'Social control, in other words, takes two basic forms: besides influencing behaviour and choice externally, through rewards and punishments, it also affects them internally, by moulding personal convictions into a replica of prevailing norms.'56 It was Ascoli, d'Ovidio, Bartoli, and other linguists who first introduced Gramsci to a method for investigating these dynamics of social control. Lo Piparo demonstrates how Bartoli's alliance with the Crocean Idealists was akin to Gramsci's use of several strategies to work against both positivist science and the vulgar materialist Marxism of the Second International.57 The Crocean . theory that language and historical change in language are the result of conscious spiritual creation was used to counteract the fatalistic conception that there are natural laws or physiological explanations which determine without exception how languages change and develop. The Bartolian conception of how language functions and Bartoli's battle against the mechanistic positivism of the Neogrammarians are both consistent not only with Gramsci's early writings but also with the arguments presented throughout the Quaderni. Quaderno 6, written between 1930 and 1932, states: 'In language too there is no parthenogenesis, language producing other language. Innovations occur through the interference of different cultures, and this happens in very different ways: it still occurs for whole masses of linguistic elements as well as happening in a molecular way {for example: as a "mass," Latin altered the Celtic language of the Gauls, while it influenced the Germanic language "molecularly," by lending it individual words and forms).'58 The question of lan-

'feuilletons' (serials) and popular taste in literature. He remarks to Schucht, 'Really, if you look closely at these four arguments, a common thread runs through them: the popular collective spirit, in its diverse phases of development, is equally present in each.'64 As Renate Holub points out, this complex term 'popular collective spirit' is the leitmotif of Gramsci's entire research in prison. 65 It connects the four points of the initial scheme for his research. It is also a cornerstone of his much expanded research project, which includes studies of the Italian Risorgimento, Machiavelli and the Modern Prince, and Croce; a critique of economic and mechanical Marxism; and an ambitious attempt to renew Marxism as a tradition of thought and a plan of action with concrete historical roots. As Holub shows, when we view Gramsci's work as an investigation into the 'popular collective spirit,' we can see why his study of Manzoni is not - as one might expect, strictly literary, but instead focuses on non-literary or only semi-literary arguments. From Gramsci's method of inquiry in the prison writings, it is clear that he is not interested in Manzoni's work solely as the product of a novelist, poet, or dramatist; also central is Manzoni's relationship to la questione della lingua. 66 Of course, Gramsci's commentary on Manzoni's work - including TheBetrothed but also his linguistics and his political activities - entails an analysis of Manzoni's aesthetic product. But Gramsci weaves this aesthetic analysis into his various other interests, primarily through the sociological questions contained within the examination of the popular collective spirit. 67 Hegemony is typically defined as coercion plus consent, or the State plus civil society; but it is also very much related to 'popular collective spirit.' Hegemony can also be understood as the progressive creation of a 'popular collective spirit' or as an impediment to such a spirit in the masses. When there is a lack of a progressive hegemony, regressive hegemony can be imposed from above on the majority of people in such a way that they consent to that ruling force. ,As long as

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This highlights two fundamental yet often subtle features of Gramsci's thought. The first is that his advocacy of something is never separate from his attention to how it is to be achieved. Gramsci knew that a unified Italian language would benefit the various peoples of Italy, yet this never overshadowed his awareness that a unified language should not be foisted on a people - rather, it must be created by them. Second, Gramsci did in fact have a philosophy of language, of how it functions and develops; otherwise he could not have been so ardently opposed on political grounds to the specific creation of a national language. In the terms of the above quoted article, he would have no criteria for distinguishing between 'artificially' created languages such as Tuscan (which is precisely not artificial to Tuscany) and an organic unified national language for Italy. Esperanto is an even more extreme case of an attempt to create a language without reference to the daily productive activity of a people. In refuting the request that the Milan section of the Socialist Party become an official champion .of Esperanto, Gramsci writes: The Socialists are struggling for the creation of the economic and political conditions necessary to install collectivism and the International. When the International is formed, it is possible that the increased contacts between peoples, the methodical and regular integration of large masses of workers, will slowly bring about a reciprocal adjustment between the Aryo-European languages and will probably extend them throughout the world, because of the influence the new civilization will exert. But this process can then happen freely and spontaneously. Linguistic pressures are exerted only from the bottom upwarda."

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

viduals who have total control and freedom over that production. The methodological component of Gramsci's linguistics also includes the application of linguistic paradigms (namely Bartoli's Neolinguistics) to political and sociological questions. Thus, Lo Piparo contends that Gramsci sees the relationship between national language and dialect as isomorphic with the relationships between city and country and also the relationship between official culture and folklore.75 Here we must make an important theoretical point. In the notion of the 'linguistic turn' in the social sciences, two aspects are often conflated. One is the role of language in political-cultural analyses of society, and the other is the use of methodologies developed in linguistics to examine political-cultural phenomena. For Gramsci, these two aspects fold in on each other. The linguistic model he is applying cannot be fully developed in an isolated realm of language precisely because it leads to a rejection of the boundary between language and nonlanguage. The problem that needs to be addressed regarding the second aspect is whether the linguistic paradigm is adequate to the phenomenon under study, or whether its application is necessarily forced so that it misses some important aspects of the phenomenon. Gramsci's awareness of this problem is evident in a statement from his critique of Bukharin: 'Every research has its own specific method and constructs its own specific science, and ... the method has developed and been elaborated together with the development and elaboration of this specific research and science and forms with them a single whole. To think that one can advance the progress of a work of scientific research by applying to it a standard method, chosen because it has given good results in another field of research to which is was naturally suited, is a strange delusion which has little to do with science.'76 We could read Gramsci as ignoring his own advice in applying a methodolgy of linguistics to other questions. Or we could interpret his doing so as an asser-

Thus, in Quaderno 3, around 1930, he writes: 'I feel that if language is understood as an element of culture, and thus of general history, a key manifestation of the "nationality" and "popularity" of the intellectuals, this study [of the history of the Italian language] is not pointless and merely erudite.'82 By investigating language, Gramsci hopes to shed some light on a whole array of issues. As he writes in his last prison notebook, 'the linguistic fact, like any other historical fact, cannot have strictly defined national boundaries.'83 He is consistent throughout his life in viewing linguistic facts as belonging to a larger class of historical facts. And although here he means national boundaries quite literally, for our purposes the metaphoric overtones ring true. With these points in mind, let us take heed of Lo Piparo's suggestion that Quaderno 29 - the final ten pages of the more than two thousand that Gramsci wrote while in prison, which have been all but ignored by many Gramsci scholars - constitute an introduction to all of Gramsci's work and makes it clearer and .more understandable. 84 The crucial concepts that form the rest of Cramsci's prison writings and that have attracted so much attention from political scientists, sociologists, cultural theorists, and literary critics, can be seen quite easily in the dynamics and processes Gramsci describes in Quaderno 29. The central problematic is the question of how a 'collective popular will' is formed. That is, how are heterogeneity and multiplicity transformed into a collective unity? Put another way, what is the difference between a state that is the expression of the collective will of the multitudes who constitute it and a state that represents the will of only a specific group and forces that group's conception of the world onto other social groups? This question is analogous to a narrower question: What is the difference between an artificial language such as Esperanto or even Tuscan relative to the rest of Italy, and an organic national language created by a 'real' unification of Italy in what Gramsci terms a war of position? Of course, Gramsci is not just making theoretical distinctions. On the con-

tualize the sentence, even if not to the extent that Gramsci demands. Croce also discusses the possibility of using this sentence to represent an incoherent mind: 'If I want to give concreteness to the image of this proposition, I should consider it, for example, as intentionally constructed to represent an incoherent mind; that is to imagine the arbitrary act of someone who combines voices barren of sense.'89 Thus, he does not fall prey to Gramsci's contention that 'in Croce's essay the error comes from this, that such a proposition can appear in the descriptions of a "madman" or an abnormal person, and acquire absolute expressive value; how else can we represent someone who is not "logical" except by making him say "illogical things?"'9o Gramsei's critique falls flat. Is his inadequate criticism a result of his lack of direct access to the essay while in prison? Or did he mean to develop his notes more fully? Given that Croce's essay is only a few pages long, perhaps Gramsci overestimated the simplicity of Croce's argument.i" So are we to ignore section 1 of Quaderno 29? But this is not the only place where Gramsci gives great weight to this essay. For example, in Quaderno 3 he uses it as the starting point for a discussion of the relationship between Vossler and Bartoli. 92 And he states in a letter to Schucht dated 12 December 1927: At this point I have abandoned my plan to write (by force majeure, given the impossibility of getting the necessary writing materials) a dissertation on the theme and with the title: 'This Round Table is Square,' which I think would have become a model for present and future intellectual prison endeavors. The question, unfortunately, will remain unsolved for some time yet and this for me is a cause for real regret. But I assure you that the question does exist and already has been discussed and dealt with in several hundred academic dissertations and polemical pamphlets. And it is not a small question, if you consider that it means: 'What is grammar?' and that every year, in all the countries of the world, millions upon millions of textbooks

they philosophical, sociological, or cultural. Gramsci's criticism of Croce is actually connected to his more substantial point, which is that the structure of language, as evident in grammar, documents a society and illustrates aspects of its history as well as existing power relations. It is the first step in his answer to the question that he claims Croce failed to answer: 'What is grammar?' For Croce, grammar is a technical matter of little significance outside the narrow bounds of pedagogy. For Gramsci, grammar is the outcome of social and political history, and it enables or obstructs future possibilities. Gramsci's distinctions between types of grammar constitute the ground on which historical analysis interacts with future moral and political actions.

The Grammatical Approach to Hegemony In order to adequately define grammar - which Croce failed to do - Gramsci develops the terms 'immanent grammar' and 'spontaneous grammar' (which he uses synonymously) and 'normative grammar.' It is important to keep both 'spontaneous' and 'immanent' in mind in order to connect them with his discussions of spontaneity and immanence. Here I will use 'spontaneous grammar' to avoid awkwardness. The distinction between spontaneous and normative grammar provides important insight into Gramsci's political theory, most specifically his concept of hegemony. Gramsci developed his concept of grammar as part of a double-pronged critique of Crocean linguistics and Neogrammarian positivist linguistics. This is mirrored in his dialectical incorporation, critique, and supersession of both Crocean philosophy and the mechanistic positivism of economic Marxism as expressed by Bukharin. Under the heading 'How Many Forms of Grammar Can There Be?' Gramsci states: 'There is the grammar "immanent" in language itself, by which one speaks

and its total 'linguistic volume,' to create a unitary national linguistic conformism, that elsewhere places expressive 'individualism' at a higher level, because it creates a more robust and homogenous skeleton for the national linguistic organism of which every individual is the reflection and the interpreter. (Taylor system and selfeducation).lol

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

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

needed, in other words that we are dealing with a political act.'1l2 To exclude political questions from the science of language (as the Neogrammarians, Saussure, and many other linguists including Chomsky do) would be to render it wholly sterile and to neglect all the points of interest to science (at least, to Gramsci's conception of science - see chapter 4). As Lo Piparo contends, for Gramsci 'the articulation of linguistic power is isomorphic to the articulation of political power.,l13 Thus, to subtract considerations of linguistic power from synchronic linguistics would have to entail more than just narrowing one's field of inquiry for practical purposes. It would also have to mean ignoring the essential feature of synchronic linguistics the linguistic power that makes such an approach possible by defining what the system is. This linguistic power is also required in order for us to understand how specific linguistic forms function within the linguistic system, because it is linguistic power that defines what the system is and what it is not. Gramsci is not rejecting normative grammar as a practice of regressive force imposed on the speakers. On the contrary, his interest in a national, unified Italian language represents perhaps the strongest analogy to both his critique of the Italian Risorgimento as a 'passive revolution' and his interest in Machiavelli as accurately diagnosing Italy's need for a strong and active unity. As in Gramsci's political theory, linguistic national unity always raises the question of international relationships: 'Historical grammar cannot but be "comparative": an expression that, analysed thoroughly, indicates the intimate con.sciousness that the linguistic fact, like any other historical fact, cannot have strictly defined national boundaries, but that history is always "world history" and that particular histories exist only within the frame of world history.'1l4 This may seem to be a technical aspect of linguistic methodology that can be supported empirically by the linguistic atlases of Meillet, for example. But it also introduces the concept of 'world history.' World history is significant ro Gram-

mediated by State institutions

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

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

immanent or spontaneous grammar. It is this pressure that 'creates friction particularly in the popular masses.' The practical and moral question then becomes how to relieve this pressure. I contend that this is the central question of hegemony and its various uses throughout Gramsci's writings. Hegemony is the relationship between spontaneous grammar and the prevailing normative grammar. The goal of the Communist Party, the workers' movement, or any progressive social force is to relieve this tension by paying careful attention to the formation of the normative grammar in the first place. For Gramsci, spontaneous grammars are not - as they are for Ascoli's substratum - pregiven, preconstructed, or fixed structures. 122 On the contrary, they are historical entities that are themselves partly the products of the various normative grammars combined with a host of other elements that have been sedimented onto the languages used. Much of the confusion surrounding Gramsci's use of 'hegemony' arises because he is using the term to describe both how a normative grammar has been imposed and how friction among different immanent or spontaneous grammars and normative grammar continues to lie unresolved. But it is also an attempt at a projected solution of this problem - a solution that involves relieving the tensions. The direct pressure from various spontaneous grammars on national normative grammar must be either relieved or quelled, sedated, and repressed if normative grammar is to remain in power. Of course, many strategies can be used to maintain the power of normative grammar, from a rigid educational system that imposes a normative grammar such as Manzoni's, to a military regime. Such strategies are more likely to succeed if the normative grammar has little organized opposition and the pressure against it is to some extent counteracted by various forces among the various spontaneous grammars. But the consequences of such a situation are morally and practically troubling to Gramsci. Another strategy for maintaining a normative grammar's hegemony would be to keep its rules and

mony as being regressive or progressive. To put this another way, the process advocated by Gramsci to form a much-needed Italian unified popular languagewhich serves as a metaphor for a 'national popular collective will' - needs to recognize the conflicts out of which it arises, and needs to relieve the tension created by these conflicts. In short, Gramsci's national unified language cannot be a homogeneous language; instead, it must be able to embrace diversity in its unity. It is this issue that chapter 2 takes up.

ous grammar, but its implications and its relationship to more recent debates around structuralism and poststructuralism will become more apparent, and cast Gramsci in a more semiotic light. Yet all these comparisons raise a number of potential problems and confusions for Gramsci's position. Most obviously, Bakhtin and Volosinov rejected unified national languages as necessarily 'monologic' and as suppressing heteroglossia." How does this challenge my previous chapter's argument that Gramsci sees the possibility of rejecting the method by which Italian was standardized - a regressive form of hegemony - while offering a better, Marxist method for creating a national unified language - the model of a laudable hegemony? The key to this distinction, as I detailed, is that the national unified language should not be based on the exclusion and repression of previous languages and of the world views of subaltern social groups contained in them. But what would such a language look like? This is central to Gramsci's political theory, since, I argue, unified national language is both a metaphor and a literal component of the hegemony that he urged the Communist Party to construct. It is also an integral part of presenting language as an element of social praxis rather than a realm outside of praxis where meanings are transmitted. Can Gramsci's hegemony be dialogical in Bakhtin's sense?? This is an essential aspect in the issues of unity and 8 totality that, especially since Lukacs, have been seen as so central to Marxism. Gramsei does not use the term 'totality'; instead he takes language as the model of what unity means. This is important to understanding his political theory. Underlying these questions is a tension that arises in Gramsci's own writings. If language is a historical institution without 'natural laws' or essential characteristics beyond history (as I argued in the last chapter), what accounts for his contention, taken from Bartoli, that languages are the result of conflict and struggle among past languages rather than simply the continuous creation and expansion of human ingenuity? This is the question of parthenogenesis.

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question: What can we learn about both Bakhtin (whose specific political stance is at best inexplicit and ambiguous) and Gramsci (whose Marxism can be.interpreted in various ways but not denied) by asking them to speak to each other in dialogue? What are their presumptions about language and how it functions? How do these presumptions relate to their respective notions of culture and politics? There is considerable debate over whether it was actually Bakhtin who authored Marxism and the Philosophy ofLanguage, which was published under Volosinov's ls name, and The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, attributed to Medvedev. Given my purposes here, one might think that I must come down on one side of this debate or the other. It could be argued that if Bakhtin did not author these texts, the tension between their critiques oflinguistics and the rejection ofa unified language might not seem as enigmatic as I suggest, But much of the content o~ the critique of Indo-European linguistics, as well as many of the general contentions about the relationship between language and culture, can certainly be found throughout those works which Bakhtin definitely did author. As Maria Shevtsova and others contend, elements of a theory of culture found latent in the texts whose authorship is contested are indispensable to the development of the concepts 'speech genre,' 'heteroglossia,' and 'dialogue' in Bakhtin's essays 'Discourse in the Novel' and 'Forms of Time.'l6 The discrepancies between the central terms of Rabelais and His World and the other texts that everyone agrees were authored by Bakhtin are greater than the differences between some of the disputed and the undisputed texts. Thus, at least for the issues under discussion here, it makes little difference whether Bakhtin was the sole author of the disputed texts. IfBakhtin did not write these texts - which I believe to be the case - he was clearly influenced by them, and he developed some of their themes in several of his later works. It is useful to note before we continue that the concepts of 'unity,' 'organization,' and 'language' do not exist in a vacuum separate from the life and circumstances of the thinkers we are about to discuss. These concepts take on different

almost inverse position to that of the Sardinian, Gramsci, when he moved to Turin. Furthermore, Bakhtin was in the 'prestigious' minoriry.i' In contrast, Gramsci -like many other immigrants to Turin from Italy's south - was a member of a minority social group. However, he also belonged to the oppressed majority caught up in the processes of linguistic and cultural unification after political unification in 1861. He was from one of the social groups that was to be brought into national unity. The Bolshevik Revolution that Gramsci hoped to translate into Italian historical conditions was not an event in which Bakhtin participated actively.22 Rather, it was a tumultuous historical transition that he experienced directly and that would define his life personally and incellectually.r' By the time Gramsci was a Commintern delegate of the Communist Party of Italy to Moscow between May 1922 and November 1923, during the high tide of revolutionary change in the Soviet Union, Bakhtin had published only one article - two pages in a local . journal in Nevel- and he was unable to find stable employment. Galin Tihanov surmises that Lukacs would not have known of Bakhtin even in the 1930s: 'Bakhtin's intellectual career .., was evolving far from the noise and struggles of official circles. He was detached, reserved, and apparently disinterested in suecess.'24 It was not until 1929 that Bakhtin would publish anything, at least under his own name. That year, his book on Dostoevsky was published, but only after his arrest for being allegedly active in the Russian Orthodox Church, which had gone underground. That Maxim Gorky participated in the campaign to reduce his sentence suggests that Bakhtin had already attracted some respect for his work. Adding to the success of this campaign was a favourable review of 25 Bakhtin's book by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commisar of Education. But this was three years after Gramsci's own imprisonment and six after he left Moscow. As Renate Holub notes, we have little information about Gramsci's eighteen months in Moscow, so we don't know if he made any contacts with anyone asso-

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Jakobson). I will argue later that this latter trend should also include nineteenthcentury comparative philology. Medvedev describes his supersession of these twin crises as 'uniting a wide synthesis and general philosophical orientation with a mastery of the material diversity and historical generation of ideological phenomena.'32 This describes not only Volosinovs project as well, but also Gramsci's. Gramsci's critique of Croce is far from an obliteration of Croce's position; rather, it requires us to work through Croce's problematics. In the same way, the critiques by Medvedev and Volosinov are not purely negative; rather, they pay great attention to the contributions made by the various perspectives they encounter. For example, Medvedev castigates Marxists for not taking the Formalists' position seriously enough, for creating an 'amicable division of the historical and literary material that amounted to saying: "You take the extrinsic, I'll take the intrinsic," or "I'll take the content, you get the form. "'33 As the subtitle to his . book indicates, Medvedev worked through the Formalists' positions in an effort to introduce a fully constituted methodology of 'sociological poetics.'34 Italy did not have a Formalist movement in literature in the way that Russia did. Thus, Gramsci laments, 'So far, the Futurists have had no intelligent critic: that is why no one has paid any attention to them.'35 Perhaps one of the greatest differences between Italian and Russian Futurism is that the latter had intelligent critics. As Gramsci noted in a letter to Trotsky, this lack of intellectual substance may account in part for the short-lived alliance between Marinetti and Mussolini, 36 as well as for Futurism's fragmentation into Fascism and reaction. In Russia, the Formalist movement relied heavily on Russian Futurism, and Formalists functioned as Futurisms critics. But Formalism outlasted Futurism and had a more profound influence. Both Gramsci and Medvedev praise the Futurists of their respective countries for their critiques of culture and ideology. However, both also fault Futurism for failing to create future possibilities. In 1921, Gramsci extolled the Futurists:

V ing the Neogrammarians, as much as it does Saussure. Volosinov defines abstract objectivism as a tradition that takes as its object of study 'the linguistic system asa system ofthephonetic, grammatical, and lexical[arms of language.'43 These stable structures ensure the unity of a language so that all members of a speech community can understand whenever various elements of these structures are used by particular speakers. Emphasis is placed on the identity between the various and different uses of the same phoneme, word or grammatical form. No weight is given to different particular usages of the same form, nor to the generation of new forms. Instead, speakers find language ready-made and use the system of signs based on arbitrary and conventional meanings. The ideological value or individual subjectivity of the speaker is unimportant to this approach. While Volosinov discusses in detail problems associated with Saussure's new 'synchronic' approach, the central attribute of abstract objectivism is that it treats language as a dead, alien, and objective structure. This approach allows for the abstraction of both synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics. As Volosinov writes, 'The isolated, finished, monologic utterance, divorced from. its verbal and actual context and standing open not to any possible sort of active response but to passive understanding on the part of the philologist - that is the ultimate "donnee" and the starting point of linguistic thought [of abstract objectivism].'44 Volosinov marshals the work of Nikolai Marr against Indo-European linguistics to analyse the implications of this starting point. He traces its roots back to the concerns of priests with sacred writings, whose mystery and need to be deciphered derived from their foreign origin. This perspective has as its centre the discovery of Sanskrit, which fostered comparative philology. According to Volosinov, Indo-European philology was 'formed and matured over concern with the cadavers of written languages.'45 Viewing words as 'alien' is in direct opposition to seeing them as 'native.' The

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precedents and that his thought displayed little continuity with past traditions of linguistic thought. Volosinov is correct in pointing out that the Neogrammarians locate phonetic laws in the physiology of the individual, yet he creates confusion by suggesting that they fit his typology between the two trends, given their construction of abstract, invariable natural scientific laws.48 The Neogrammarians focused on individuals at the biological level, neglecting variations between individuals that were not physiological. Their physiological reductions took place only at the level of biologically determined group attributes, not at the level of individuals, as occurs in Crocean and Vosslerian linguistics. Thus it would be more accurate to characterize them, as Medvedev does, as naturalistic positivists or mechanical materialists. 49 With the emphasis of Volosinov's analysis of abstract objectivism clarified to include both the Neogrammarians and the tradition of comparative philology, we can see that his critique of this trend is - as we saw of Gramsci's writings part of a larger general critique of positivism. As Medvedev explains, no variant of positivism can properly understand ideological objects because it falsely conflates them with either natural and physical bodies, instruments of production, or .items 0 f consumption. . 50

Medvedev's Critique of Formalism Medvedev's critique of Formalism helps us understand Gramsci's work by providing for a deeper analysis of Gramsci's rejection of language as a medium of representation for reality. It also shows how Gramsci's critique of Crocean aesthetics fits into his wider philosophy and is related to his linguistics. Chapter 3 will describe Gramsci's epistemology, which undermines the very idea of a realm external to language that is to be represented in language. When we consider the parallels between Gramsci's assessment of Italian Futurism and Medvedev's read-

to what is commu nicated. of the On this point, Medvedev's argume nt is the same as Gramsci's critique for account cannot Neogram marians . The self-consciousness of the Formalists of unity the of anding human agency and creativity, nor can it provide an underst 59 society. a of epoch either a novel as an undivid ed piece of work, or of a given l' 'practica its to The focus given to the poetic nature of language - as opposed been has which that atize nature - 'is only able to "make strange" and deautom . If ,60 . d I . ot h It oes not create new construc tions itse . systems. er anguage created In but rather as The Formalists underst and literatur e not as 'organiz ing' the world room for scant leaves this and 'disorganizing' our customa ry understa ndings of it, 61 on, percepti created already on human creation. Thus, literature only works conits not but nature cted constru undoing it, highligh ting its convent ional and of creating structive potentialities. Literature, underst ood this way, has no means l lanpractica of realm the to left is sort new perceptions. Instead, creation of any indithat e languag l practica in only guage as distinct from poetic language. It is of objects new create and e languag on . viduals or groups can exert agency . purview its of out percepti on. Formali sm leaves this realm l language Accordi ng to Medvedev, this same rift between poetic and practica than the other ng somethi as novel the prevents Shklovsky from underst anding conunity novel's a him, For life. everyday amalgam ation of various materials of is novel the of view This s.v' elemenr these of sists solely in the stringin g together in genre supreme the is novel the that nt in stark contrast to Bakhtin's argume it, but does so that it unifies the various and heterog lot elements that constitu te of unificatype special this below, see shall we without subordi nating them. As . It Bakhtin to g accordin genre, ic novelist the of tion is the defining characteristic i. Gramsc for unity of tation interpre is also a model that will inform my mechan Shklovsky lacks a concept of unity other than chance occurre nce and al ahistoric sts' Formali the es intensifi this and ical synchro nicity in literature, epochs l historica of anding underst any reach point of view. It also places beyond

abstract ions of objectivism whether in its Neogram marian or Saussur and Engels's From this insight, Gramsci and Volosinov further develop Marx 'practical connotion that consciousness is not 'pure consciousness' but rather 65 coupled with sciousness,' which is identified with language. This is, of course, in order to requisite awareness of the (structural) interrela tionship s among people 'exists also sness further two of Marx and Engels's content ions: practical consciou lly as persona me for other men [sic], and for that reason alone it really exists for , necessity the need, well'; and 'language, like consciousness, only arises from the of intercou rse with other men [sic] .'66 of language These tangenti al remarks of Marx and Engels on the relationship were writov Volosin to consciousness had not been publishe d when Gramsc i and ive, we perspect this From ing, yet they are precisely what both aim to develop. can be ideology of underst and language as the terrain on which the question to culture and culture to addressed. It also reveals the importa nce of language IdealGerman against politics. Marx and Engels made their remarks in a polemic be to fall into ism in which they implied that the response to idealism should not that language ive perspect the opposit e errors, such as 'abstrac t objectivism.' The approaches alist structur the by is key to underst anding ideology is strength ened overcomof method a requires it of Saussure and the Russian Formalists; even so, and the Saussure seen, have we As ing their positivistic and mechan ical aspects. Croce escape. to ing attempt are Formalists end up replicating the problem s they i and Gramsc how anding underst is perhaps the most sensible starting point for Volosinov avoid this mistake. chapter 1, Croce's identific ation oflangu age with art and aestheti c activity (see e as an languag views that ive perspect p. 22) constitu tes a radical rejection of the on. expressi for e languag of use al's objective structur e separate from the individu which sounds of n emissio M c: Croce equates the Linguistic with the Aestheti is articulated, does not express anythin g is not language: language is sound that s that 'Iancontend He on.'67 expressi marked off and organised for the purpose of

to be - is an obstacle to understanding language from a historical materialist perspective.76 'Individualistic subjectivism' is perhaps a misnomer if one opposes the individual to the social group, community, or nation (indeed, this dynamic occupies much of Humboldt's work). If one takes 'individual' to be the indivisible whole (person, nation, or community) from which language is supposed to emerge, Volosinov' s label has greater clarity. The structural component of abstract objectivism is what enables Volosinov and Gramsci to counteract individualistic subjectivism's movement from some sort of internal, non-linguistic depth to the linguistic expression that communicates this non-linguistic content in the form of language. 77 And yet, individualistic subjectivism allows them to see the fallacy of viewing language as solely an external, objective, and fundamentally alien structure. Both these approaches falsely divide form from content. By working the two trends in the philosophy of language against each other, Volosinov derives a theory of language that is true to the tenets of historical materialism. It is worth quoting Volosinov's outline of five basic propositions about language: 1. Language as a stable system of normatively identical forms is merely a scientific abstraction, productive only in connection with certain particular practical and

theoretical goals. This abstraction is not adequate to the concrete reality of language.

2. Language is a continuous generative process implementedin the social-verbal interac-

tion ofspeakers. 3. The lawsofthegenerative process oflanguage arenot at all the lawsofindividualpsychology, but neither can they be divorced from the activity ofspeakers. The laws of language generation are sociological laws. 4. Linguisticcreativity does not coincide with artistic creativity nor with any othertype

Gramsci. And both their descriptions of how such struggles over language take place is then essential to all ideology critique. The second implication of the confluence of Gramsci's theory of language with Volosinov's is that while Gramsci did not use the semiotic terminology of signs and systems, his concept of normative grammar and the historical (what Saussure called 'arbitrary') connection between language and meaning incorporates what is often seen as the structuralist and poststructuralist view of language as a system of signs that produces meaning through its relations to other linguisti~ ele~ents, not some non-linguistic, 'real,' physical or material world, as examined III the introduction of this work (pp. 5-7). The implicit critique in Volosinov of those variations of structuralism and poststructuralism that deny people's historical and political role and agency in creating meaning and languages is also evident in Gramsci's notion of spontaneous grammar and the choices involved in forming normative grammars.

The 'Heteroglottic' Nature of Language Gramsci's double-pronged critique of Crocean linguistics and the Neogrammarians is strikingly similar to the Bakhtin Circle's proposal (especially in the work of Volosinov and Medvedev) for overcoming the equally flawed perspectives of individualistic subjectivism and abstract objectivism; however, their concordance wanes when we begin to consider unified national languages. Gramsci's advocacy of a unified national language - which I have argued is a metaphor for hegemony - is met by Bakhtin with an almost equally strong disdain. How can we reconcile such different accounts of unified language projects that develop from almost identical critiques of various schools of linguistics? And how can this divergence help clarify Gramsci's and Bakhtin's conceptions of unity? As noted earlier, Bakhtin is absorbed with Stalin's centralization of everything

But because he focuses on literary works, he never confronts the substantial questions of social heterogeneity and operations of power that Gramsci raises. Moreover, because he does not problematize 'unification,' commentators use his work to naturalize just this question, and in doing so reduce centralizing or organizing forces to regressive political projects and laud all practices of destabilization and centrifuge. The extent to which this is a result of the politics within Bakhtinian scholarship, or Bakhtin's own tendency, is not my focus. My aim is to use Bakhtin's work as commonly interpreted (sometimes suggesting where reinterpretation is necessary) to clarify tensions in Gramsci's writings regarding the relationship between language and diversity.

Dialogue and Language Any discussion of Bakhtin and language must account for the importance of'dia. logue,' as exemplified by the Bakhtin industry's obsession with the term 'dialogism.' The specific way that Bakhtin articulates 'dialogue'. and. what ~e describes as 'dialogic' is what makes his work so attractive. Bakhtin relies heavily on 'dialogue' as a primary element in literature, first and foremost, but also as a metaphor for ethical behaviour, as an epistemological premise, and ultimately ~s human ontology. The multiplicity of meanings assigned to the term makes 1t compelling to many different (and sometimes opposed) projects, from Marxist theories of literature to pluralist theories of democracy to religious and theological relations between individuals and God. In the spheres of ethics, religion, philosophy, and even literature, the term 'dialogic' functions differently than it does in the study of language. In the ~ormer spheres, dialogue is a metaphor for rethinking earlier ways of understanding. In contrast, language is the terrain from which the term dialogue is derived. There can be dialogue without philosophy or religion or even ethics. But dialogue with-

theological and ahistorical theories of language. The first problem is, Where does this transhistorical 'essence' of language come from, and where does it exist, if language is a human institution? The second problem is that it leads to the position of several Bakhtin scholars (see below) who place the questions of human morality and ethics outside of human agency and turn dialogism into some technical attribute of language. It is as if the orders a soldier gives a prisoner at the point of a gun are somehow less linguistic - untrue to the 'essence' of languagethan a mutually enriching exchange between interlocutors. It presupposes that verbally abusive language is somehow less real language than supportive language. We might agree that orders given at gunpoint are morally reprehensible. But that they go against the essence of language is a different and unsupportable contention. Moreover, this position tends to reduce moral and political issues to linguistic and technical ones. These assumptions have no empirical evidence, and more importantly, they predispose inquiry into language use toward actions we deem ethically positive and idealized. They obscure the real power relationships among speakersr" Hirschkop identifies a related problem with Bakhtin's conflation of philosophy and empirical cultural analysis. According to Hirschkop, heteroglossia is at once historically descriptive and ahistorically normative without making any distinction between the two. 95 Clark and Holquist concur that Bakhtin's conception of language is normative, and specifically politically laden: 'Language invokes the political concept of freedom because language is struggle against the necessity of certain forms.'96 Moreover, they argue that monologism is comparable to despo97 tism, whereas heteroglossia and dialogism are democratic. It might not be difficult to argue that significant social resistance to oppression always involves the use of language, at least to a degree. That said, the quelling of progressive struggle, even in its violent forms, also involves language, if for no other purpose than for the soldiers or the police to communicate. To.place [an-

of whether the root of this moral judgment is some kind of natural law (heteroglossia in language is good because it is the natural condition of language, and it is both futile and bad to fight this) or some unstated belief in pluralist politics. There is some evidence in Bakhtin's texts for these valuations of heteroglossia and dialogism. His discussion of centripetal versus centrifugal forces implies that the former are dogmatic and the latter favourable. In 'Discourse in the Novel,' Bakhtin criticizes European linguists srylistics, and philosophy of language for being 'born and shaped by the current of centralizing tendencies in the life of language .., For this very reason, they could make no provision for the dialogic nature of language.'I04 In direct and indirect ways, Bakhtin repeatedly favours that which supports heteroglossia and casts aspersions on centripetal forces as detrimental abstractions. I05 Yet Bakhtin's texts seem more persistent in arguing that heteroglossia is not an inherent aspect of language itself, but rather an aspect of the social world in which language resides. The related but distinguishable concept of polyphony is a facet of the relationship between different aspects (characters' and author's voices) within the novel. Dialogue, while technically occurring only among real, living individuals (with respect to the novel, between the reader and the author and characters) is the premise on which both heteroglossia and polyphony are based. Morson and Emerson exhibit a clearer notion of heteroglossia than Clark and Holquist when they define it as 'Bakhtin's term for linguistic centrifugal forces and their products [that] continually translates the minute alterations and reevaluations of everyday life into new meanings and tones, which, in sum and over time, always threatens the wholeness of any language.'I06 Heteroglossia here does not lie in the realm of language itself, or in the structure of human perception. I07 Rather, it is derived from everyday life and re-evaluations within it. Bakhtin discusses how the 'seeds of social heteroglossia [are] embedded within words.'I08 Thus, social diversity and heteroglossia are manifested in languages but are not inherently a part of language. This line of argument is more than a simple exege-

cultural product that reflects another reality - that is, between the materiality of the actual sign (or signifier to use Saussure's term) and the reality it reflects, Volosinov contends that 'every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also itself a material segment of that very reality.'112 In this way, all language by definition has a double character. Gramsci makes a crucial intervention, or clarification, to this idea with his insistence that language is historically metaphorical (see chapter 1, pp. 35-6). In order not to fall into the abstract dualism between social reality and language - the materiality of the signs and non-signs - the social reality outside the sign that is reflected in the sign cannot just be seen as outside of language. It includes other signs, that is, includes language. . Besides pointing to this double character of language, whereby the sign exists in itself and also reflects, Volosinov insists that signs do not merely reflect but also refract existence: a sign 'may distort that [other] reality or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special point of view.' That is, reflection is non-distorting, whereas refraction is perception from a particular standpoint (i.e., distortion). Refraction occurs because 'various different classes will use one and the same language,' thus producing differently oriented accents within the same signs. This is what makes the sign an 'arena of the class struggle.' It also 'makes the ideological c' . me d'rum, ,113 G ramsign vital and mutab1e' as we11' as a rerracnng an d diistorung sci's insistence, discussed later and also in chapter 1 (pp, 46-7), that all language usage involves a 'choice' undermines the extent to which 'reflection' exists totally free of 'refraction.' From Gramsci's perspective, 'reflection' is always 'refraction.' The malleability or multiaccentual aspect of the sign is central to what Volosinov calls 'the capacity for further development.' In an argument that foreshadows Bakhtin's disdain for all unified language projects, Volosinov argues that the sign's multiple accents are resisted by the ruling class, which 'strives to impart a supraclass, eternal character to the ideological sign, to extinguish or drive

are discussed at greater length at chapter 4. And (see chapter 1, pp. 37-49), Gramsci makes a similar argument against those who support a normative grammar as somehow the natural or pure state of a language. In his view, they are doing so without realizing that they are making a political argument. Despite this strong connection in practice between traditional philosophy of language and the institution and maintenance of a language, it is important to retain the distinction between the two. 120 Bakhtin often obscures the line between the two by focusing on how the imposition of national languages often relies on the failures oflinguists and intellectuals, to present the real mutability of language. Instead, to use Gramsci's terminology, linguists and philosophers of language have functioned as traditional intellectuals, by obscuring challenges to the status quo. Bakhtin does not allow any role for organic intellectuals, who could highlight this mutability of language and still work toward creating a unified language by different means. Connected to this possibility for Gramsci is another central distinction that Bakhtin never makes. That is Gramsci's explanation of bureaucratic (regressive) versus democratic (progressive) projects of instituting common or national Ianguages. 121 Gramsci totally agrees with Bakhtin about the 'political' nature of all normative grammars (to use Gramsci's terms). In effect, Bakhtin accuses Aristotle and Augustine through to Leibniz and Humboldt of forgetting, as Gramsci argues, that 'written normative grammar .., always presupposes a "choice," a cul1-cu 1tura1 po 1"rues. ,122 For . tural tendency, and is thus always an act 0 f natrona Gramsci, this is a 'choice' everyone must make. Such choices are made by both individuals and collectivities. 123 Sometimes they are more conscious, other times they are tacit implications of behaviour. But these choices cannot be avoided altogether. In Volosinov's terms, by using language you always accent it, or reinforce a certain accent. From Gramsci's perspective, such choices, if conducted consistently and consciously, contribute to the unification of language. But Bakhtin does not discuss the possibility of democratic or progressive cen-

in Bakhtin's study of Rabelais, which is often singled out as his most extreme embrace of bacchanalian carnavalesque chaos. It is ironic that Morson and Emerson hold this work out, along with 'Epic and Novel,' as anomalous because of its extreme overemphasis on 'unflnalizability.' According to them, in the Rabelais book, 'everything completed, fixed, or defined is declared to be dogmatic and . of all extant or concerva . bl e norms has vaIue.'132 repressive; only the destruction They find Bakhtin's emphasis on excess and carnivalesque language to be aberrant to the rest of his career, especially because it neglects the 'ethical' aspect of the self/other relationship that he presented in his early work. This emphasis on destruction is similar to the previous discussion about Gramsci and Medvedev's attraction to, and critique of, Futurism. Yet as I shall show, it is a grave misreading of Bakhtin's analysis to think that he disagrees with Medvedev and Gramsci about the insufficiency of pure negation. On the contrary, Bakhtin's study of Rabelais hinges on the shift from the relegation of carnival and folk culture to inconsequential, limited arenas of life to their entrance into the major organizing images of society at large. This shift marks a transition into a diversity-in-unity model that we can use to support Gramsci's notion of a democratic hegemony.

Rabelais and His Language Bakhtin's study of Rabelais was his first book translated into English. In the early 1940s he had submitted it as his doctoral dissertation, and it went through an arduous defence process that dragged out over five years of political intrigue. The resulting book, The Work ofFrancois Rabelais and Folk Culture oftheMiddleAges and Renaissance, argues that all previous scholarship on Rabelais had misunderstood the most important aspects of his work. Specifically, it argues that Rabelais's 'grotesque realism' is a unified system of images that is not wholly negative. As with many dissertations, Bakhtin's starts with a review of the literature. It is

aspect of the world, presentedin isolatedfragments ... The peculiarityof comic imagery, which is one in spite of its variety and is inherent to medieval folk culture and generally foreign to modern times (especially to the nineteenth century), was also

not understood.136 The position taken by most Bakhrin scholar, including Morson, Emerson, Clar~, and Holquist, that this work is a defence or description of extreme heterogl~ssla against unifying tendencies - that it is part of the boundless argument for dialo. oversta t ed: 137 gism that ., IS un f illalitzabili iury, - seems qUite Bakhtin seems to be promising us that the carnivalesque can overcome the oppressiveness of 'official culture' and liberate the popular masse~; ~owe:er,. the status of this promise, its role within the analysis of language, and ItS Impl~catlons have led some commentators to see it as anomalous with respect to hIS other works. The exceptionality of this promise is positive for some, negative for others. Morson and Emerson, exemplary of the latter camp, condemn the work's atypicality. They see it as contrary to several of the important themes that tie the rest of Bakhtin's life's work together. Instead of condemning or extolling Rabelais and His World on the basis of the success of the carnivalesque as a concept, we should understand it as an investigation into the historical transformation of medieval society. According to Bakhtin, Rabelais's novels express a shift from one manner of organizing society to another _ a shift that affects, most importantly, society's imagination, its imagery, and its way of understanding the world with all the objects it contains (most especially the human body). The heteroglottic moment cannot be understood as the moving force that brought down 'officialdom.' If anything, h~ter~glossia.mi~ht be related to the outcome of the toppling of the former orgamzatlonal principle. It does not mean that the state of topsy turvy, inverted, and 'free' carnival can itself work as a utopian image. Bakhtin is not as interested in the actual states of 'offi-

loophole [that] opens on the distant future and that lends an aspect of ridicule to the relative progressiveness and relative truth accessible to the present or to the immediate future.' According to Bakhtin, Rabelais 'never exhausts his resources in direct statements,' and it is toward his indirect images that we should look for true significance. 142 Thus, in these pages, Bakhtin is arguing that the content ~f Rabelais's political progressiveness is relatively trivial, as well as unrelated to his real contribution in the realm of style, approach, and imagery. Such themes are .. clearly the source of Morson and Emerson's interpretation. ., However, when we examine the actual relationship between Rabelais s politics and his method, we find that Bakhtin himself encounters a completely different relationship. He identifies Rabelais's serious progressive politics and derives them from real historical events. Bakhtin argues that Pantagruel's military methods are modelled on those used in the occupation of Piedmont by Seigneur de Langey, Guillaume du Bellay, a good friend of Rabelais. Thus, Rabelais eulogizes Du Bellay's politics in Pantegruel's position: In order to instill and maintain obedience in a newly-conquered people, the one thing a monarch must avoid is pillaging, harrying, vexing, oppressing, and tyrannizing them. The rod or iron will not work; woe to the conqueror who swallows the nation in his maw ... Conquered nations are newborn babes; as such they must be given suck, they must be rocked, fondled and amused. Like newly planted trees, they must be supported, propped up, protected from all tempests, injuries and calamities. Like convalescents from lengthy illness, they must be nursed, coddled and cherished. 143

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

variety was gradually unveiled.' Bakhtin describes a new situation, the formation of Renaissance consciousness, as the intense interorientation of dialects, 'a complex intersection of languages, dialects, idioms, and jargons,' where languages struggle with one another. 147 Not surprisingly, Gramsci also concerns himselfwith this transition in the relationship between Latin and vernaculars. His description of the struggle among literary Latin, vulgar Latin, and the vernaculars is very similar to Bakhtin's. In his analysis, the medieval ages were marked by the crystallization of literary Latin into 'middle-Latin,' a language used by scholars and intellectuals in everyday life. 148 Gramsci is especially interested in how this language is not a living language of the people or a nation, but rather is cosmopolitan and 'artificial.' He compares it to Esperanto as opposed to a national language. Gramsci relates the separation between vernacular languages and middle-Latin to the split between the people and intellectuals. 149 The fall of what he calls middle Latin and the rise of the communes - especially Florence - are historical precedents for his conception of organic intellectuals. He distinguishes between intellectuals from the popular (bourgeois) classes and those 'who are the product of the absorption and assimilation of single individuals into a traditional hierarchy that has its own conception of the world. 150 For Gramsci, like Bakhtin, this transition in the relations among languages is intricately linked to larger ideological and social changes. It is also exemplified by the movement of vernacular into writing, from the oath of Strasbourg in 842 to literary, poetic, and artistic realms of culture in later centuries. Gramsci invokes Dante's phrase 'illustrious vernacular' (de vulgari eloquentia) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a literary manifestation of this transition. 151 The description of struggle among languages with the advent of the Renaissance is also similar to the basic presumptions of Bartoli's linguistics (see chapter 1). Both Bartoli and Gramsci focus on the competition among languages and

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changes that made them possible, the real confrontation, interaction, and interchange among the various aspects of these two worlds occur. This is what is worth celebrating. One may object to this reading of Bakhtin by pointing to his emphasis on Rabelais's 'last word' as a 'gay loophole' that is directed toward the future, and is thus unfinalizable, But the bulk of his analysis of Rabelais places this loophole toward the future in a very specific context. It is a reduction to understand this loophole, this unfinalizability, as favouring chaos or all indetermination or even general 'openness.' This reductive meaning contravenes the rest of Bakhtin's work and especially Medvedev's. The loophole is invoked precisely at the point where, as a result of the combination and unification of diverse aspects of folk culture, the 'official world' has been forced to engage in struggle. To read this loophole as support of all things not unified in this way is to totally neglect Bakhtin's distinction between his own reading of Rabelais and that of previous scholars. Instead, Bakhtin is making a point akin to Gramsci's: 'Spontaneity is therefore characteristic of the "history of the subaltern classes," and indeed of their most marginal and peripheral elements.' However, this is not a point to be celebrated, and it is certainly not one to be prolonged; rather, it arises from the fact that these classes, these 'unofficial cultures,' have been unable to achieve 'any consciousness of the class "for itself," and consequently it never occurs to them that their history might have some possible importance, that there might be some value in leaving documentary evidence of it.'156 Rabelais and the passing of these undocumented folkloric aspects of billingsgate language, carnival, and laughter into literature into written documentation - raise 'unofficial culture' to a new importance. But this only occurs because of the unification (and presumed increased power) of these previously diverse and fragmented elements. Rabelais's novels mark a progress in the subaltern cIasses"achi ac ievement 0 f consci conSCIOusness. 157 I n G ramsci.,s terms, the chaotic elements of 'common sense' are organized in a manner that

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The statement 'in language there is no parthenogenesis' contains ambiguity, as we have seen through Bakhtin, because it is a descriptive, non-normati~e statement; however, it takes on normative overtones, or has inherent normative presumptions. If language were inherently non-parthe~ogenetic, i~ would be useless to resist this nature. It might also be immoral, if such futile efforts wasted resources and caused suffering. But this is not Gramsci's position. Its logic goes against Gramsci's entire method of incorporatin~ objectivity i~t~ subjectivity. While Gramsci is consistently aware of the normative Side of empirical arguments (his discussion of 'prediction' is a very.good example): .the logic i~ n~ver that .t~e normative is determined by or subservient to the empmcal- that is, Because it is it ought to be,' or 'Because it is ontologically, or essentially, then we must wor~ to actualize it historically.' This is antithetical to Gramsci's whole modusoperandi. Gramsci is not suggesting that we open ourselves to the multiaccentuality or metaphoricity of language because it is language's essence or ontology: Instead, he .organizes, describes and defines that which is 'new' at the level of SOCiety (not t~e individual) - the 'progress' that ought to be - as that which is the meeting of di~­ ferent perspectives, the interfering of one culture with another, the metaphoric use of language. This is a political and moral argument, not a factual o~e. . Bakhtin is not always as consistent as Gramsci on this matter. In his Rabelais book he traces the historic specificity of the relationships among Latin and vernacular languages as they relate to changes in the imagery of these different languages - that is, what they describe and how they descri~e it. H~ describes t~e transitional moment of the Renaissance as the fall of medieval Latin and the nse of both classical, pure, dead Latin and the competing and all-pervasive dialects. This is a historic transition and, furthermore, a transition that Bakhtin welcomes as moral progress. He is not arguing that language did not exist before this period, or did somehow exist but was not true to its essence or. ontol~gy. He never describes 'perversion' or 'abuse' of language in the rnonologic officialdom.

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tivism' into a non-alien word without obliterating its alien-ness? It would be possible to pursue the question of translation by further developing the connections between Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle. But if we turn to the influential writings of Walter Benjamin on translation, we can emphasize more clearly that Gramsci's 'translation' is not a question of transferring content from one language to another. Benjamin's work will also provide a contrast that we can use to highlight Gramsei's complete rejection of language as nomenclature, as well as traditional philosophy's obsession with the relationship between subject and object. This will provide a context for exploring Gramsei's epistemology; it will also set up a framework for discussing the work of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas in chapter 4.

constitutes a threat or a hindrance, and asks whether we can learn to listen to and understand languages in which we will never be able to express our own thoughts and feelings. However commendable the general project, and however brilliant his examination of underlying assumptions about linguistic diversity through the centuries, Eco's vision seems to obscure the power struggles inherent in languages. In striving to retain the particularities of all the peoples who make up this 'new' Europe, this conversation misunderstands - while trying to exalt and preserve - the significant differences among diverse groups of people. Eco circumvents the problem of translation. 4 Translation is no longer necessary if it is possible for us to understand others without being able to speak their language. Yet if, as Walter Benjamin says, 'all translation is only a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages,'5 at least translation identifies and attempts, however imperfectly, to come to terms with the differences between languages. In .contrast, Eco aspires to come to terms with foreignness by avoiding the foreignness of languages, by evading translation. 6 The problems of translation - and the faith its success promises - are only obscured by Eco's 'polyglot Europe.' As we shall see in the writings of both Gramsci and Benjamin, translation as is a fundamentally political and perhaps spiritual question - if we are very careful about the many meanings of 'spiritual.' In contrast to those who consider translation a 'literary' endeavor or a technical problem, Gramsci and Benjamin follow Martin Luther in seeing it as a political act.? Moreover, both of them reject commonsense notions of translation as the transference of something from one language to another. Instead, they have more in common with recent trends in translation theory (especially feminist approaches), which forgo translation as an attempt to overcome the obstacle, or curse, of linguistic diversity by creating an equivalent expression in a different language. Benjamin and Gramsci - especially the latter - undermine the usual opposition between the creative production of

Gramsc i a t ways. The bility of both revoluti on and revelation, but in conside rably differen of what has tension between revolution and revelation - change and recovery i and Benalways been there - characterizes the discrepancy between Gramsc in's faith, jamin. But translati on is also where Gramsci's politics meet Benjam vital for is revealing how faith (especially in the form of optimis m of the will) . Marxism on Gramsc i and the aspects of Benjamin's theory of language that bear in's Benjam of As Rodolph e Gasche argues, 'difference' is the persistent concern finds this and is based in the concrete act of revolt. It is no acciden t that Gasche list' writ'materia 'difference' most clearly explicated by Benjam in not in his later and Such as e ings but in his theory of language, especially his essays 'On Languag 2 (1923).1 tor' the Language of Man' (1916) and 'The Task of the Transla e della From a Gramsc ian perspective, Eco's propose d 'solution ' to la question to Latin of ction introdu lingua that has been surfacing in Italy at least since the little do to seems words) as the peninsu la (i.e., before 'italia'and 'italiano' existed between intelmore than Manzon i's 'solution' to address the real issue of the gap i's 'solutio n,' Manzon about lectuals and the general populat ion. As Ascoli argued . But Eco problem l historica it is an artificial response to a very real political and conbeen has diversity c provides the initial turn in underst anding how linguisti rconside neutral merely a beyond sidered a curse. Gramsci and Benjam in take us on. revoluti of ns conditio very ation of linguistic difference, and see in it the

Translating Revolution in dealing Loosely translati ng Lenin, Gramsc i notes: 'In 1921 Vilich [Lenin], have not we this: less) or (more said with organisational questions, wrote and actunot did Lenin 13 ' Europe. of those into been able to "translate" our language resthe with action dissatisf his describe ally employ the concept of translati on to which to 1921" in ional Internat the olution passed by the Third Congress of

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mitted into a different context, a different society. It is itself a relational concept. Its referent is not a static object, state, idea, blue-print, or theory, but rather a dynamic relationship among elements within a society. As Benjamin says of bad translations, 'any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information - hence, something inessential.'23 The history of Russia and the contextual details of the October Revolution cannot be separated from that revolution. But translation is precisely the realization that there is something 'inessential' about the context of that which is to be translated. That is, there is something that relates the two lan24 guages beyond the particularities of an individual text. Translation necessarily interrogates the relationship between similarity and difference that occurs at different levels of analysis and of activity. As we saw in chapter 1, Gramsci looked to linguistics for ways to think about these dynamics of identity and difference. Within the linguistic paradigm he studied, the historical identity of an idiom or linguistic form is always seen in relation to (or defined against) the changes it has gone through. One of the main features of Gramsci's translation is that it must take into account the entire structure of both the source language and the target language. Gramsci's rendition of Lenin emphasizes the inability 'to translate our language' not a single event, not our words, but the entire structure. As Gramsci explains in the more narrowly linguistic context: 'The language exercises that one does in the grammar school make it apparent after a time that in Latin-Italian and GreekItalian translations there is never identity between the terms of the languages placed side by side, or at least that what identity there seemed to be at the beginning of the exercise (Italian "rosa" = Latin "rosa") becomes increasingly complicated as the "apprenticeship" progresses, moves increasingly away from the mathematical scheme and arrives at a historical judgement.'25 The task of translation requires and enables a comprehensive analysis of both

tial to the translation. Benjamin supplies us with the explicit reasoning for this position - reasoning that is only implicit in Gramsci's writings. . . Benjamin points out that translations are made after the originals, nor~.ally when the original has achieved some fame. In the time lapsed, the original changes if for no other reason than the context changes. The aim of trans~ission will always run into the unsolvable problem that styles change; thus, What sounded fresh once may sound hackneyed later; what was once current may someday be quaint.'34 Even with simple examples of names of objects, the ai~ o~ transmission is impossible. Benjamin uses the example of the German word 'Brat and the French word pain.' Both 'intend' the same object, but 'Brat' has an entirely different meaning to a German than does 'pain's» the French. 35 Instead of attempting a practical method for overcoming these problems, such as Eugene . diicanons 0 f Nida's model of encoding and decoding, 36 Benjamin ta k es t h em as m a different task for translation. Translation is not a transference, a lateral movement from one context to another. This is because, as Benjamin argued in his earlier essay on language, language is not simply a medium through which thought can be transferred (as in Locke's theory oflanguage).37 . ., In a position similar to the linguistic relativism of E.dward Sapir ~nd B~nJami.n Lee Whorf, Benjamin argues instead that 'mental being communicates itself tn language and not through language.'38 But for Benjamin, as for G.ram~ci: the p~o­ cess of translation points in exactly the opposite direction from linguistic relativism's denial of translation: 'Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between 1anguages. '39 Thiis ~e lati ~tionship or kinship is not based on some likeness between languages, some mirumum requirements or 'universal grammar':40 'it cannot be defined ade~u~tel~ by identity of origin' or by historical considerations. On the contrary, kmsh.ip of ~an­ guages rests in the intention underlying each language as a whole - an mtenuon,

mean in this context? Maurizio Lichrner has explained that far from aiming at perfection, Gramsci's notion of translation is rich with complications, theoretical knots, and limits that cannot be transcended. 50 In Quaderno 7, Gramsci explicitly states that the limits of translation are reached in attempting to translate traditional philosophy into historical materialism. Such translation is 'impossible,' he states. 51 It is impossible primarily because Croce - traditional philosophy's main proponent - could not avoid the impasse of Liberal Italy, which reinforced the disjunction between the intellectuals and the masses.52 When Gramsci rewrites the passage in Quaderno 10, more substantially than many other rewritten sections, he omits the assertion that such translation is impossible. He makes many additions, and he reorganizes the passage almost beyond recognition. So it is difficult to determine whether this omission signifies an explicit and conscious rejection of his earlier position that traditional philosophy cannot be translated into historical materialism. It is possible that he merely thought this point no longer fit with his more general attack on Croce's rendition of Marxism. 53 However, the change in his evaluation of the impossibility of translation is better explained by his development and expansion of the concept of translation so that it includes social change as well as literary and analytic activity.54 Perhaps Gramsci's most explicit description of translation is 'that two fundamentally similar structures have "equivalent" superstructures that are mutually translatable, whatever the particular national language. Contemporaries of the French Revolution were conscious of this fact, and this is of the greatest interest.'55 Thus, traditional philosophy is not translatable into historical materialism, because each belongs to superstructures of fundamentally different structures (bourgeois capitalism and a projected and hoped for communism). But lest we take from this description a static or deterministic structure/superstructure model, Gramsci devotes the very next section of Quaderno 11 to the dangers of

such a translator should have a critical knowledge of two civilizations and be able to acquaint one with the other by using the historically determined language of the civilization to which he supplies the informative material.'64 Sociocultural analysis can overcome the imperfections in translation by making them evident and thus open to change. For Gramsci, like Benjamin, translation is not just the transmission from one language to another, or making accessible a text to people who do not happen to speak the language in which it was written. For both Benjamin and Gramsci, the circumstances leading to the need for such (bad) translations preclude their success. Both argue that not every work is translatable and that translation also depends on the languages and cultures from which and into which the translation is to be made. 65 But Gramsci's concern is less with the quality of what is to be translated than with the two (or more) cultures involved (although these positions become distinctions of emphasis): 'Translatability presupposes that a given phase of civilization has a "basically" identical cultural expression, even if its language is historically different, being determined by the particular tradition of each national culture and each philosophical system, by the prevalence of an intellectual or practical activity etc.'66 Here Gramsci comes very close to Benjamin's position 67 that the content of what is to be translated cannot be the question. Translation is not solely a matter of communicability. If Gramsci had been worried only about the comparative analyses of societies as a question of possible communication among them (i.e., questions of linguistic relativism), his primary and opening example would not have been the October Revolution and the possibility or failures of attempts to translate it.

Individual Creation versus Social Production From the argument that translation is not the communication of content, Benjamin derives a clear distinction between works of art and poetry produced by

Absolute.7 His concept ion of appraisal of the early Romantics' notion of criticism. on in the It is perhaps useful to heed Berman's analysis of the role of translati Berman what exhibits it as ly especial ] [Bildung develop ment of German culture for a search this s separate Berman on.'?? translati of calls the 'metaph ysical aim ethical the calls he what from s language al empiric 'truth' beyond all natural and culture to the translat ion that attempt s to overcome ethnoce ntrism by opening a lly, on historica ished distingu ics Romant early the 'Other.' Berman argues that linHolder and ldt Humbo by other, the on and Goethe, one side, by Luther and little has argues, Berman aim, This aim.' ysical 'metaph reduce translat ion to one and societies to do with the cultural relationships between the languages German Bilmoves only that foreign generic a becomes involved. The foreign e. Absolut dung closer to the and 'On If Benjam in errs toward this dynami c in the 'Task of the Transla tor' in culLanguage as Such' by emphasizing 'pure language,' his increasing interest traject rural analysis which culminates in the 'Arcades Project,' suggests a differen in these two tory, one that is equally rooted in these earlier essays. Moreover, n is an open earlier essays, the extent to which he actually errs in this directio in any simple question . It would be a mistake to think of 'pure language' as 'truth' manner , or as what the early Romantics called the Absolute. seriously Yet Berman's position contains insights that can lead us to take more s. As we than Benjam in the intricacies of his metaph or of kinship among language positive always know, kinship is a metaph or loaded with complex - and not work 's Berman er, relations among the member s along kinship lines. Moreov and interillustrates the importa nce of Gramsci's emphasis on cultural analysis relations actual the on change. Benjamin's 'Task of the Transla tor' does not focus ed with, concern is i among differen t languages and societies; in contrast, Gramsc es differenc and ies for example, both Italy's relationship to Russia and the similarit 78 this ting Comple between the Italian hegemo nic make-u p and the Russian.

man philosophy.Y Thus, as Gramsci suggests elsewhere, the unity of theory and practice advanced by the philosophy of praxis was inherent in Hegel even if it was not emphasized correctly and was obscured by his Idealism. 88 This notion of translation is central to Gramsci's reading of Marx, with its emphasis on the Eleventh Thesis. It also brings to the fore what equivalence of translation means for Gramsci. How is the French political idea of equality equivalent to the German philosophical concept of self-consciousness? Moreover, how are we to understand those particular equivalences (whether concepts of equality or self-consciousness or events such as revolution) that make the entire languages of French politics and German philosophy translatable? Certainly, here the form or mode of politics is so different from philosophy that it is difficult to see this as the transference of something into a different geographic or national context. This notion of equivalence must be closer to the literal meaning of 'equally valenced' within the structure akin to Saussure's concept of 'linguistic value.'89 As argued earlier, taking revolution as a relational concept, in this example Gramsci finds analogies between 'the political upheaval in France in its entirety' and 'the philosophical reform in Germany in its entirety.'9o As Gramsci's discussion indicates, this includes the actual influences that passed between the two nations (as German philosophy - not to mention the French Revolution - also clearly influenced the Italian Risorgimento). He also indicates the more general manner in which bourgeois hegemony - resulting from changes throughout central Europe from before 1789 through the nineteenth century - brings about a synthesis of French political innovations and German philosophical advances. Of course, Marx and Engels add the English changes in political economy to the equation. Gramsci uses Marx and Engels's equation to ask how we are to understand Lenin's assertion that the philosophy of praxis originates on the terrain of the highest development of nineteenth-century European culture as represented by

tique of Croce, he does not fill out the implications as thoroughly as Benjamin. Elaborating this point reveals the full significance of Gramsci's subversion of Croce's position that translation is impossible. It also shows how the collective process of coping with the historical fragmentation of subaltern consciousness is, for Gramsci, intricately connected to his theory of language. Croce's rejection of translation grows out of his more general critique of genre, which Benjamin seems to wholly adopt in the 'Epistemo-Critical Prologue' to The Origin ofthe German Truerspiels. The question has to be asked: What is the extent and nature of Benjamin's use of Croce's theory of ideas, if this same theory leads Croce to deny translation?99 In this section, by responding to this question, I will stipulate how Benjamin's theory of knowledge (which he then recognized through Lukacs as a position that theory is bound up with praxis)100 uses - but also is critical of Croce's critique of genre. Croce argued: Every translation, in fact, either diminishes or spoils the original, or the translation creates an entirely new expression by putting the original expression back into the crucible and mixing it with the personal impressions of the one who calls himself the translator. In the first case the expression stays the same as it was originally, the other version being more or less inadequate, that is to say, not properly expression: in the other case there will indeed be two expressions, but with different contents. 'Ugly but faithful, or beautiful but faithless'; this proverbial saying neatly captures the dilemma with which every translator is faced. Nonaesthetic translations, like those that are literal or periphrastic, are then to be considered simply as commentaries on the original. 101

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

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The agreement between 'genetic classification' and an idealist theory of art forms (especially if it is seen as a 'reconciliation,' as Osborne's translation suggests) seems an unlikely goal, given Benjamin's critique of Historicist Idealism. Thus, the significant enigma is how his conception (or problem) of origin reveals the relationship between genetic classification or History and an idealist theory of art forms if origin and genesis have nothing to do with each other. The only way to explain Benjamin's reference to Croce is that he is practising a Gramscian-like methodology of thoroughly subverting Croce's position. He is not reconciling his methods with any idealist theory of ideas; rather, he is using Croce to attack positivistic theories of genre. Benjamin must be arguing that those aesthetic productions which are simply existent and factual - which have corne into being through history (conceived as chronology or the passing of time, what Benjamin calls 'empty time') and which still exist manifestly - can be categorized after the fact. Because such aesthetic works have a genesis, they can be categorized genetically. This is Croce's conception of genetic classification as History. Benjamin agrees to the extent that he is not engaged in subjecting individual works of art to the general categories of genres. Benjamin is not engaged in the search 'for schools of poetry, epochs of the oeuvre, or strata of individual works, as the literary historian quite properly might.'l11 He is using Croce to support this rejection of literary history. Benjamin parts company with Croce because his search for origins (Ursprungen)112 is aimed at those works in need of recovery. This recovery cannot assume that the origin is the beginning of the process of development by which what exists has corne into being, especially if that process is seen as a causal one. Instead, origins are like eddies. Like Croce's aesthetic expressive activities, they are singular unique events. But unlike Croce's historicism, Benjamin's 'history' recognizes the 'flow' or 'stream' within which origins and eddies are contained. Moreover, for Benjamin and especially Gramsci, those origins and eddies contain

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Hi because Benjamin, like Gramsci, rejects idealist versions of historicism precisely events of march The history. in survive and appear art only certain works of the buries ons instituti state and social ve oppressi of on especially the successi Trauerspieli. aesthetic expression of many (which is Benjamin's concern with the y, especreativit aesthetic of ty possibili the suppress societies Moreover, capitalist rs. oppresso the of also but groups d cially of those oppresse me') In Benjamin's later writings, he introduces the concept ofJetztzeit ('now-ti linear of the to expand (or explode) history beyond the simple positivistic limits calls 'empty he what of years and days, , minutes of on successi chronological l history, as time.' Ironically, Croce's Idealist version of history, which is universa history,'1I8 described in the phrase 'History is living chronicle, chronicle is dead in argues: has in effect the same problems as the positivistic perspective. Benjam it musters a 'Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; distinction . mass of data to fill the homogenous empty time.'1I9 Croce's only approached. between chronicle and history relates to the spirit by which they are In effect, they are indistinguishable from empty chronological time. whether Gramsci's critique of Croce's notion of History also considers closely ive progress of history is a progression of events one after another or a series and history 'leaps,' as Benjamin understands [etztzeit: 'If the discussion between only in an anti-history is the same as whether nature and history may proceed to remind "evolutionary" fashion or may do so by "leaps," it would be salutary i.e, "leaps," Croce that even the tradition of modern idealism is not against reformagainst "anti-history" ... We are then dealing with the discussion between ment and ists and revolutionaries about the concept and fact of historical develop .'120 progress. The whole of historical materialism is a reply to this question of being Mirrori ng Benjamin's concern with 'leaps,'121 Grarpsci accuses Croce as history of unable to distinguish philosophy from ideology because he sees all

residues of past cultural struggles that contain the possibility of reconstructing a subaltern history from which to mount revolution. As Benjamin shows in his later 'Theses on the Philosophy of History,' his concern is for the redemption of the Trauerspiel and allegory for the present, because 'only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments.'129 This citation enables social change. Gramsci's attempt to translate the October Revolution, although it does not focus on hopes of a Benjaminian redemption, is connected to Italian history and the success of the Soviet Union itself. As twentieth-century history has made all too clear, because it was never successfully translated into other parts of the world, that revolution's survival was always highly doubtful. Very early in Soviet history, once Stalin took the position of 'communism in one country,' the October Revolution's afterlife faded. In Gramsci's writings, the necessary utopian element is never expressed in terms of 'redemption' or 'recovery' of what has been lost; rather as we shall see below, it is equated with the dynamic of tradition! change, or revolutionlrestoration, and with examining the fragmentary nature of the experiences of subaltern social groups. Gramsci's own dual movement between tradition and revolution is tied to his epistemological stance - specifically, to the struggle between the Church and the Communist Party for the realm of the 'faith' of the people.

Faithand Politics Next to Gramsci's pragmatic political concerns, Benjamin's concern with redemption and the Messiah might seem to be a form of opiate, 130 one that is a dangerous distraction from political or revolutionary action. However, we must remember how much importance Marx always placed on religious critique. We must remember, too, that by the time Benjamin wrote 'Theses on the Philosophy

involved as distinct from individual creativity or expression. I have also specified a critique of idealist historicism advanced by both Benjamin and Gramsci. This led to my suggestion that Benjamin's allegory has some similarities with Gramsci's idea that language is historically metaphoric and that faith is an essential sub. ject for the historical materialism of both Gramsci and Benjamin. All of these congruencies should not lead us to neglect the theological chasm separating these two authors. In this next section, I argue that while Benjamin agrees with Gramsci in locating the problem with bourgeois philosophy's subject! object dichotomy, he does not overcome that problem. Moreover, his philosophy of language actually reinforces the split between subject and object because his task of translation is directed at revelation. In the final two sections of this chapter, using Benjamin's position as a contrast, I highlight how Gramsci's epistemology places objectivity on a continuum with subjectivity. ?ramsci's theoriz~tio.n.of revolution relies on this continuum replacing the oppositton between objectivity and subjectivity that is inherent in revelation. I do not want to oversimplify Benjamin's position. He explicitly argues that the Messianic cannot be the goal of history and that 'the quest of free humanity for happiness runs counter to the Messianic direction.'141 My point is not to close down the possible insights that" Benjamin's complex dynamics can yield. Rather, I want to highlight how, even given the congruities between Benjamin and Gramsci regarding translation, language, and their critiques of Croce, Gramsci's epistemology is distinctly 'vernacular' in its approach to subjectivity and objectivity. This distinction between Gramsci and Benjamin will lay the groundwork for chapter 4's argument that Gramsci's vernacular epistemology distinguishes him from the Frankfurt School, including Habermas. In his 1918 essay 'On the Program of the Coming Philosophy,' Benjamin explicitly roots his projected plan for philosophy in a critique of the Kantian system. He contends that Kant was unable to ultimately overcome his 'conception of knowledge as a relation between some sort of subjects and objects or subject

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language for merely instrumental purposes of transferring information, with increasing neglect of the name. But even after the Fall, human language is still in its essence the language of names. Humans can perform their role of naming things, translating the language of things to the 'language of man.' In highlighting the differences between the first and second creation stories in Genesis, Benjamin argues that both vouch for 'a special relationship between man and language resulting from the act of creation.'150 In Genesis 2, Benjamin emphasizes, man is the only creation that God forms out of the material of the dust, and He 'expresses his will' by breathing life into man. Here language is a gift of God to man. In this version it is Adam, not God, who gives all the living creatures their names. Genesis 1 tells of God naming everything as part of the threefold process of creation: 'Let there be' _ He made (created) - He named. But even in this version, Benjamin argues, humans have a special relationship to God. This is shown in the break of the previous threefold process of creation. Benjamin interprets Genesis 1:27 as follows: 'God did not create man from the word, and he did not name him. He did not wish to subject him to language, but in man God set language, which had served Him as medium of creation, free.' i 'in w hi1C h G 0 d IS ' creator. ,151 Thus, 'Man is the knower .in th e same anguage This creative language of the divine word is the language of the proper name, and in comparison it shows that 'the infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature.'152 Even after Adam's Fall and the introduction of the judgment of good and evil and instrumental abstract language, human language retains a connection to the divine word within the proper name. Through his insistence that knowledge is tied to creativity, Benjamin rejects the secular, 'scientific,' and 'common sense' notions of an objective, eternal, and already created world accessible to knowledge but not changed by that knowledge. The role of translation in 'On Language' is similar to that in the 'Task of the Translator.' Translation among languages is what points to the existence of 'pure

entrails, and the natural world, in ways not altogether different from the ways we read human language that is written. In this way, Benjamin is trying to bridge the gap between symbol, metonymy, or simile On the one hand, and denotation on the other. He is pointing to what Charles Taylor finds to be 'the importance of Herder' - that what needs to be explained about the origin of language is how humans understand 'what it means for a word to stand for something.'158 While this later version of Benjamin's theory of language does not rest on Biblical inrerpretacion.V'' it still rests on meaning as the relationship between name and thing. He describes how meaning derived from the name and the thing develops from onomatopoeia. Gramsci points out the problem with all onomatopoeic theories of the origin of language. He does this by recounting a joke: "Tn the beginning a piece of fruit fell, making the sound 'pum!' and so we have the word 'porno' [apple]." "And if a pear had fallen?" young Dossi asks.'160 In other words, onomatopoeia is not an explanation at all. The question is, Why and how did this sound get attributed to this fruit, of all the other similarities that could be made, and of all the other objects to which this sound could be applied? Benjamin's notion of non-sensuous similarity and his mimetic theory of language do not succumb to this criticism of simple onomatopoeia theories to the extent that he focuses On the historical developments that follow such origins. But this compels us to consider the relationship between mimesis and 'nonsensuous similarity,' which results in language with seemingly arbitrary (i.e., historical and conventional) relationships between words and their meanings. These later writings of Benjamin come closer than his earlier writings on language to his project, set forth in 'The Coming Philosophy,' of overcoming Kant's shortcomings through a theory of language. It is difficult to figure out the implications of Benjamin's insights in these two short essays.161 Yet 'On the Mimetic Faculty' and 'The Doctrine of the Similar' do help explain why, as Habermas points out, Benjamin was not 'concerned with a critique of necessarily false conscious-

and neutral method of apprehending the world. Gramsci notes that what is often seen as science is actually a fetishization of the methods of the physical and natural sciences.165 And this 'superficial infatuation for the sciences' is accompanied by a lack among the popular masses of real knowledge about scientific facts and the real conduct of scientific inquiry.166 In an argument that sounds much like David Noble's critique of current science and technology,167 Gramsci contends: 'Scientific progress has given birth to belief in and the expectation of a new Messiah who will bring about the Land of Cokaygne on this earth ... This infatuation - the abstract superficial faith in humanity's miracle-working ability -leads paradoxically to the sterilisation of the very bases of this ability and to destruction of all love for concrete and necessary work in order to indulge in fantasies, as if one has been smoking a new type of opium.'168 Gramsci uncovers the nonsense of some of the popular science of his day, for example, Arthur Stanley Eddington's writings on atomic physics. He points out that the following assertion made by Eddington - 'If we eliminated all the unfilled space in a man's body and collected his protons and electrons into one mass, the man would be reduced to a speck just visible with a magnifying glass' is virtually meaningless. 169 Gramsci first notes the fanciful and abstract nature of such a proposition, given that it could never be carried out. The very terms 'mass' and 'unfilled space' are what the theories of Rutherford and Bohr redefine. Moreover, unless some people were magically left out of the science fiction of getting rid of all the unfilled space, nothing would change perceptibly: the relations between the elements would remain the same. The point of Gramsci's criticism here is that, although popularizing statements such as Eddington's sound like dramatic statements of cutting-edge theoretical physics, actually they amount to ientiflC diiscovenes. . 170 silly word-play, and serve on Iy to con fiuse peop Ie about SCIent!

over, such commonsense belief in an external world plays into quietism and justifications of bourgeois hegemony, complete with its economic defense of capitalism. This does not mean that Gramsci is against the practice of science or does not believe the knowledge it produces. The above arguments pertain to popular understandings, to how science operates in society, and to the non-scientific nature of the philosophical question of an objective external world. As Esteve Morera notes, he does not launch an attack on science per se.175 Gramsci further relates this epistemological position to all those which attempt to 'predict' the future based on determining causal relations. He argues that disinterested prediction leads to the search for essential causes, which is akin to the . . t h e ' unmove d re1·IglOUS quest Lror t h e 'fiirst cause, ' t h e ' cause 0 f causes,176 t hat IS mover.' Commonsense conceptions of science presuppose a religious metaphysical position regarding the world's creation before and separate from human creation; furthermore, this presupposition leads to a view of subjectivity as the opposite of objectivity. For Gramsci, the translation of subjectivity into objectivity is central to understanding Marx's Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach - that is, that philosophy can go further than interpreting the world: philosophy can change the world. Gramsci's Science and Subjective Objectivity Gramsci does not simply reject commonsense notions of science, objectivity, and prediction; he redefines these terms so that they cohere with the philosophy of praxis. Andre T osel argues: 'The function of the philosophy of praxis is not to liquidate common sense as deteriorated ideology, but to transform and amend it.'l77 Gramsci's definitions are not ex nihilo; rather, they are derived from previous commonsense definitions and modify and replace them. For .Gramsci,

Again, meaning is the central category, especially in defining science. Science is historical, but it is also an ideology, a superstructure. Its privileged location derives from its history within any given society, not from some ontological proximity to the 'eternal truth' of the universe. 186 Tosel argues: 'Philosophy is not then something incredibly difficult or specialized: determining the certainty of theoretical truth, but it is above all the socialization of truth already discovered.'187 This is also true of the philosophy of science. Gramsci's notion of science coincides with his concern over the division between the specialized knowledge of intellectuals and common understandings of the world. Once again, dispelling or modifying any mechanical distinction between structure and superstructure, Gramsci argues: 'The theory of the superstructures is the translation in terms of realist historicism of the subjective conception of reality.' 188 It is worth repeating a passage quoted earlier to emphasize in this context Gramsci's reliance on language to describe his position in relation to science: 'From the incomprehension of the historicity of languages and therefore of philosophies, ideologies and scientific opinions, there stems a tendency that is characteristic of all forms of thought (including idealist-historicist ones) to build themselves up as an Esperanto or Volapuk of philosophy and science.'189 Just as a language cannot be created ex nibilo, and just as the imposition of a language not organically related to people's lives requires undue coercion, so too philosophical and scientific perspectives must be created organically by transforming previous conceptions, by absorbing them into the philosophy of praxis. As T osel demonstrates, this process is conceived by Gramsci - especially throughout Quaderni 10 and 11 - as a process of translating the disjointed languages of common sense into a collective human conception of the world, a unified language - that is, into good sense.190

Even today we must be able to form our convictions on the basis of the best available knowledge and arguments, without being coerced; that is, without being coerced except by the noncoercive coercion exercised by the better argument. ]iirgen Habermas l

The most widespread error of method seems to me that of having looked for this criterion of distinction [of 'intellectuality'] in the intrinsic nature of intellectual activities, rather than in the ensemble of the system of relations in which these activities (and therefore the intellectual groups who personify them) have their place within the general complex of social relations. Antonio Gramsci2

The word 'reason,' in the English language, has different significations: sometimes it is taken for true and clear principles; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from those principles; and sometimes for the causes, and particularly the final cause. johnLocke''

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

stand the political importance of mass consent, it does not provide a space free of coercion (or free of what Habermas would have to call 'coerced coercion,' as opposed to the uncoerced coercion mentioned in the opening quotation). On the contrary, Gramsci's concern with language shows the extent to which, because meaning is socially produced in history, consent is the product of past coercive and non-coercive structures, the history of which might have been forgotten to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, instead of providing the potential for 'noncoerced coercion' and the 'rational' recognition of the 'better argument,' Gramsci's insights into language show that all debate is framed by political relations and that even perfectly 'reasonable' and often necessary statements such as 'What did you mean to say?' 'What do you mean?' and 'Make yourself clearer' are forms of censorship and monitoring, replete with power dynamics among the speakers.l' Moreover, language is a site of conflict among different social groups. These conflicts can yield passive consent to regressive hegemonies or they can create new hegemonic formations to which previously subordinated social groups consciously contribute. Thus, Gramsci shows us that all meaning production, distribution, and reception takes place within socio-political contexts, outside any 'universal' frameworks-of ethical behaviour. Since Saussurean structuralism, Lacan's psychoanalytic version of linguistic difference, and Derrida's 'differance,' social and political theory has been concerned with how longstanding notions of 'reason' - especially as proffered by the Enlightenment - rely on the identity/difference distinction that is at the centre of semiotic understandings of language. Feminists have also taken up these concerns, demonstrating that most conceptions of reason in Western philosophy are buttressed by gendered metaphors and implicit masculinist arguments. 14 Moreover, social issues from abortion and wife abuse to gender-based pay inequities have shown that it is not so easy to separate 'rationality' from our bodies and our real lives.

nomic logic of capitalism. Instead, I will limit myself to explicating the connection between language and reason in Gramsci's writings. I will build on . the previous chapter's examination of translation as a means to approach the relationship between the economics of capitalism and bourgeois culture in a manner that does not falsely equate the two but does indicate why they cannot be simply severed in order to reject the domination inherent in the former while celebrating the potential democracy of the latter. Gramsci's notions oflanguage and reason, in contradistinction to Habermas's, show how the concept of bourgeois hegemony is useful and entails capitalist economic structures as well as bourgeois cultural and political mechanisms of legitimation. This understanding of capitalist bourgeois hegemony runs counter to Habermas's exploration of the demise of the free, critical-rational debate - a debate that eighteenth-century bourgeois society made possible.V Gramsci's perspective does not obscure the achievements of the public spheres of bourgeois Europe; that being said, it never forgets that those achievements were exclusionary precisely because they did not extend to large sections of the general population. As Gramsci shows in his discussions of the Reformation versus the Renaissance, the extent to which an intellectual movement is 'vernacularized' is 2o an attribute that must be figured into our assessment of its merit. Moreover, as with Bakhtin's interest in Rabelais, Gramsci sees the positive potential of the interaction (including conflict) of a wide range of social groups. From this perspective, the intellectual activity of subaltern groups can be analysed in relation to elite philosophy. Habermas is, of course, fully aware of the historical limitations of bourgeois public-sphere communication, yet his theory of communicative action aims at reviving and adapting a form of bourgeois critical-rational debate for the purposes of expansive democracy. Gramsci would not want to ignore any of the advances of bourgeois capitalism, from the technical and scientific to the

can never be totally eliminated; furthermore, the conditions under which struggles are carried out are historically given and beyond the control of individuals or . groups of speakers.

Philosophical Tradition and the Institute for Social Research In the 1930s the Institute for Social Research - whose most renowned members have come to be called the Frankfurt School - faced the same perplexities as Gramsci over the rise of fascism. 22 To understand fascism, the ideological attraction of which orthodox Marxism could not explain, the Frankfurt School sought to combine philosophy with a wide range of social scientific disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach remained within rhe.academic sphere and would never achieve an extra-disciplinary relationship to political practice in the way that Gramsci's investigations did. Yet to a great extent, the Frankfurt School shared Gramsci's emphasis on the links between history, economics, politics, philosophy, psychology, and literary criticism. One of the major paths taken by the Frankfurt School was an analysis of the psyche. Several members attempted explicit syntheses of Marxism with Freudianism, and the entire 'school' was influenced to some degree by Freud's writings. Gramsci was intrigued by Freud's work but remained at the mercy of his selfacknowledged ignorance and inability to distinguish charlatans from legitimate h 'Gramsci.,s senous . practitioners of psychoanalysis. 23 Jennifer Stone conten dstat consideration of psychoanalytic theory was occasioned by his discontent with orthodox Marxism's failure to account for individualization and sexuality.'24 Stone overstates Gramsci's engagement with psychoanalysis'f: that being said, he was at least aware of the more psychological dimensions of cultural politics, as 6 especially evident in his writings on Fordism.2 The most significant congruence between Gramsci and the Frankfurt School regarding the rise of fascism is their mutual insistence that far from being an his-

example. The culture industry of the United States is an equally applicable one. Contrary to many current interpretations, which emphasize Adorno's hand in Dialectic ofEnlightenment and distinguish it from Horkheimer's earlier writings, the first thesis can be traced back to the latter's first monograph, Anfdnge der burgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie (Origins of Bourgeois Philosophy of History).34 This argument is important beyond the specifics of intellectual history. As we shall see later, what is at stake here is the possibility of rescuing Enlightenment reason through recourse to language. By charting Horkheimer's trajectory as discontinuous in the sense that his co-authored work with Adorno bears little relationship to his earlier work, Habermas claims to be continuing the Frankfurt School as outlined in Horkheimer's work prior to 1937. Thus, Habermas can basically disregard Dialectic ofEnlightenment and Adorno's work without relinquishing his claim to the Frankfurt School. Yet as we shall see, the very motifs of Horkheimer's work become the crucial elements of Dialectic ofEnlightenment. Horkheimer's Vichian 'Myth' In Origins of Bourgeois Philosophy, Horkheimer follows the notion of myth in Giambattista Vice's New Science as the anthropomorphic projection of human traits onto the non-human world through Machiavelli's proposition of extending the natural sciences to human societies. Horkheimer argues that Vice's 'treatment of mythology as a mirror of political relations is nothing short of brilliant.'35 He attributes to Vico the idea that the dynamics of reason constitute an attempt to overcome the fear of nature and dependence on it. Vico states: 'Because of the indefinite nature of the human mind, wherever it is lost in ignorance man makes himself the measure of all things.'36 Vico's quintessential example of this is the fear of thunder leading to the image ofJove. 37 These motifs of fear and projection are familiar to us from Dialectic ofEnlightenment and also from Eclipse ofReason.

Aesthetic Theory, has been examined in depth by Susan Buck-Morss.

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I do not mean to downplay the differences between Horkheimer and Adorno. But the continuities between Horkheimer's early period and Dialectic of Enlightenment most clearly align with many of Gramsci's concerns. This powerful agreement between Adorno and Horkheimer explains how they were able to work together so closely. They themselves proclaimed: 'No outsider will find it easy to discern how far we are both responsible for every sentence.' Gramsci, Adorno and Horkheimer's approach - including both the 1930s works and various writings from exile in the United States - to the 'natural' or 'external' world is distinct from that of other prominent figures of Western Marxism, most notably Lukacs and Habermas. 48 We must note, however, that Adorno and Horkheimer view reason's attempt to dominate nature as all-pervasive. In contrast, Gramsci emphasizes the disjunctures in all the various melanges of beliefs and ideas that make up the ways in which people of all different social strata of capitalist societies perceive the world. But with regard to their diagnoses of traditional philosophy and how it supports the domination inherent in the various veins of capitalist societies, the role of 'nature' is quite similar. Dominating the Nature of Society

In Origins of Bourgeois Philosophy of History, Horkheimer extends the Vichian concepts of myth and nature to social analysis through his interpretation of Machiavelli. His 'traditional' reading of Machiavelli is almost diametrically opposed to Gramsci's. Much like Croce, Horkheimer contends that Machiavelli was important mainly because he opened politics and human society to scientific methods, by drawing an analogy to the natural sciences based on humans' attempts to dominate other humans.V The consequence of this, Horkheimer argues, is that 'the proposition of the uniformity of events cannot be separated

approaches to society that treat humans as objects of knowledge. Scientistic methods relate knowledge about humans to the natural sciences that are themselves based on an anthropomorphic self/other distinction rooted in fear. Gramsci sees Machiavelli as agreeing with Horkheimer's later insistence on taking into account the subject of knowledge as well as the object. As the next section shows, when distinguishing traditional from critical theory, Horkheimer attributes to the latter the awareness that society is both the subject and object of social science. Horkheimer finds Machiavelli important because he systematized and made explicit the rules the ruling classes follow implicitly. Similarly, Gramsci's focus on the radical potentials of Machiavelli derive from his revelation of how power operates, especially for those dominated by its practice: H.or,kheim~r assumes (perhaps with some evidence) that the audience of ThePrince IS those In the know'; in contrast, Gramsci underscores the ability of the subordinated classes to gain access to knowledge that had been unobtainable. Even in his writings on Machiavelli in 1930, Horkheimer sees an analogy between the domination of nature and that of humans - an analogy that is the central theme of Dialectic of Enlightenment but _is ignored by Habermas (see below). In his 1937 essay, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' Horkheimer summarizes this sentiment by defining 'nature' as 'the totality of as yet unmastered elements with which society must deal.'58 This is one of the guiding motifs of Dialectic ofEnlightenment: 'nature' must be dominated because it is by definition that which has not yet been dominated. This is true of all that is 'natural,' be it 59 'human' nature, external nature, or the nature of social behaviour. As Habermas and Schmidt suggest, Horkheimer may have been more optimistic about the possibilities of correcting these tendencies or grounding a new type of science on different principles in the 1930s than he was after his collaborations with Adorno. His own lack of research in the postwar period may have been a result of his inability to cope with this tension. 6o But the dynamic of enlighten-

its very poss of the Gramsc i provides a more historical explana tion for this 'indepen dence' tual int~llec of intelligentsia. He argues that the purport ed historical continu ity Interests the to traditio n makes it seem that these social groups are not connect ed stics can 'ecclesia the though even that writes i Gramsc groups. social nt of domina arislanded the be conside red the category of intellectuals organically bound to historiupted tocracy, [they] experience through an "espritde corps" their uninterr es forward as cal continu ity and their special qualific ation, they thus put themselv h .Th' ,67 1 . . c aracteris IS autonom ous and indepen dent of the domina nt SOCIa group. is as true of tic of tradition al intellectuals is carried on into the secular realm and 68 Gentile and Croce as it is of the Pope. mous' Of course, Gramsc i distinguishes between these suppose dly 'autono to bound' ally 'organic strata (cetz) of intellectuals (however much they are really inithe with being into come the domina nt class) and the intellect ual strata that intellectuals' is tial emergence of particul ar social groups. This group of 'organic and also in group, social new necessary for the technica l ability required by the group can social the of needs order to organize society in such a way that the new business, his in s investor of nce" be met: 'He must be an organise r of the "confide nce, it domina attain to group social a of the custome rs for his product , etc.,69 For quicker made 'is this but uals, intellect must assimilate or conque r the traditio nal simultan eously and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in '70 al 11 " . . e1aborating its own orgamc inte ectu s. isie, yet it Gramsc i's descript ion focuses on the historical rise of the bourgeo the workfrom uals intellect organic applies equally to his own struggle to create al inteltradition te' 'assimila and r' ing class - specifically, his attempt to 'conque of south the in nt importa ly especial is lectuals for the commu nist cause. This local the by lized monopo strongly so are Italy, where the function s of intellectuals of the peasclergy that the formati on of a large stratum of organic intellectuals antry seems very difficult if not impossible.

The so-called laws of sociology which are assumed as laws of causation (such-andsuch a fact occurs because of such-and-such a law; etc.) have no causal value: they are almost always tautologies and paralogisms. Usually they are no more than a duplicate of the observed fact itself. A fact or a series of facts is described according to a mechanical process of abstract generalisation, a relationship of similarity is derived from this and given the title of law and the law is then assumed to have causal value. But what novelty is there in that? The only novelty is the collective name given to a . , 77 series of petty facts, but names are not an innovanon.

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

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central questions of Western philosophy, around which Ad d in the ented - the status of objective truth versus subjective thought . As explaine e' 'objectiv or 'real' the previous chapter, Gramsci contends that the question of poorly is time his in existence of the external world as formulated by philosophers ing to framed and ultimately rests on the same religious principles it is attempt can works aesthetic and overcome. From this perspective, Adorno's philosophical insight hasty i's Gramsc be read as critiques of how these questions are framed. or why it is that the question is 'poorly framed' does not lead him to ask how 83 analyses detailed provide poorly framed. In contrast, Adorno and Horkhe imer s and question hy's philosop of such inadequacies. They interrogate Western hes. approac these of s approaches, and they try to show the inheren t dialectic overcome The insight that the division between nature and history must be a.critique to turns Adorno happen. does not itself provide a clue to how this must the gap that ed convinc is i of the Western philosophical tradition; Gramsc popular the and , tradition this on between intellectuals, who create and rely considbe must that problem ental masses, who are affected by it, is the fundam ism as material lar vernacu a presents ered. This is another way that Gramsci lanin changes how with on fascinati his opposed to a Latin one. Judging from as sees he what in d intereste less is Gramsci guage are also changes within society, hy. philosop al tradition or culture 'high' of the Latinesque dialectical movements of world For him, this dichoto my between the keepers, interpreters, and creators is at the views world these accept to come views and the majority of those who theory between ion opposit This praxis. and root of the false separation of theory from separate is theory, like e, languag that idea and practice is reinforced by the my dichoto this how in is interest primary 's reality and represents reality. Gramsci nic hegemo ve alternati repel and power n allows regressive hegemonies to maintai forces. ions of As Jameson commen ts, Adorno makes no 'recourse to those concept Corthe cut to sought ways, t differen very in praxis whereby a Gramsci or Sartre,

These characteristics place Gramsci within current semiotic understandings of

Ianguage. 90 Although Gramsci never makes the specific argument, from his perspective one still might have a concern about language usage becoming mechanical and instrumental. For example, language may be used in situations where human interactions are constrained or repetitive or are required to follow defined sets of rigid procedures. Gramsci's critiques of Esperanto and Manzoni border on such concerns because these 'solutions' to fa questione della lingua would force the masses to speak 'artificial' and imposed languages. Their relationship to these languages would be 'instrumental' or 'mechanical,' whether the language itself was 'artificial' for everyone (like Esperanto) or only for some (like Florentine). That is, this lack of organic relation to the language would be a characteristic not of the language involved but rather of its social contexts. And in these contexts, people have a more difficult time using imposed languages to create meaning in their daily lives. Thus, such concerns are questions about the conditions under which it is possible to create meaning. In this way, seeing language as a type of labour does not reduce it to an instrument. On the contrary, seing language this way amounts to a rejection of such understandings. Making meaning in one's everyday life is a more immediate and practical, even vernacular, concern than philosophical abstractions about the relationship between words and some nonlinguistic reality or ontological truth - a relationship with which Horkheimer and Adorno are ultimately preoccupied. Moreover, from Gramsci's perspective, tendencies toward the instrumentalization of language would not be the result of autonomous laws inherent in language, but the result of human activity. They also would not be total or exceptionless. Horkheimer and Adorno do not conjecture that the instrumentalization of language is separate from its social context or the result of laws inherent in language outside of its human usage. On the contrary, they connect this process to capitalism and the dialectic of reason and domination. They do, however,

and poetry). And they extend this generalization beyond the specific practices of science and art to all language use in society. In their introduction they generalize this same devaluation oflanguage and loss of its original power and wholeness: 'There is no longer any available form of linguistic expression which has not tended toward accommodation of dominant currents of thought.'IOI Language has a central role, though not a causal one, in the inescapable process of Enlightenment turned bad: 'It is characteristic of the sickness that even the best-intentioned reformer who uses an impoverished and debased language to recommend renewal, by his adoption of the insidious mode of categorization and the bad philosophy it conceals, strengthens the very power of the established order he is trying to break.'102This helps explain some of the peculiarities in the method of Dialectic ofEnlightenment and Adorno's later writings: they do not follow traditional lines of philosophical or socially scientific argumentation; at times they even abandon basic grammatical rules. This goes hand in hand with their assessment of the successes of the 'totally administered society.'I03 Gramsci would agree with such an assessment of the implications of debased language. The structures of hegemonic world views are what require the wide, pervasive measures of counter-hegemony - the entire restructuring of how the world is understood even at the micro and prosaic level. That is why he insists that even if a proletarian seizure of power were successful in western Europe, it would be short lived because the 'defenders [of the old system] are not demoralised, nor do they abandon their positions, even among the ruins, nor do they lose faith in their own strength or their own future.'I04 For Gramsci, the seizure of the power of the state and the economy must be accompanied by changes in the consciousness of the masses and in the institutions of civil society. Every war of manoeuvre must be prepared for by a war of position. 105 Otherwise the change in power holders will not change the power relations and language that pervaded the old epoch.

Theory. This, of course, is precisely the route taken by Habermas. Besides the dynamic of language's expressive potentials being subsumed by its increasing instrumentalization, Horkheimer postulates that language itself inherently favours an ethics of cooperation and sincerity. He suspects that this aspect contains a potential corrective for instrumental reason. In a letter to Adorno, Horkheimer makes the point that in seventeenth-century France, raison was synonymous with discours, and that the latter was in fact used more often. Moving this insight in a different direction than Michel Foucault.v'" Horkheimer sees a way to ground reason in language. On 14 September 1941, Horkheimer wrote to Adorno: Language intends, quite independently of the psychological intention of the speaker, the universality that has been ascribed to reason alone. Interpreting this universality necessarily leads to the idea of a correct society. When it serves the status quo, language must therefore find that it consistently contradicts itself, and this is evident from individual linguistic structures themselves. I should like to hear your reaction to this idea, although I have only hinted at it rather formally and vaguely here. Because in this form I don't really trust it myself.I I I

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

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structures of society in which these bourgeois theories are created. But they fail to appreciate the complexities and inconsistencies of this movement, the various non-bourgeois ways of understanding reason, and how the sediments of past world views interact with the dominant conception of the world offered by traditional intellectuals. That is, they do not see the importance of the chaotic interaction among vernacular world views as they relate to Latinesque philosophy and social science. This tendency does not belong solely to Adorno, nor was it foisted by him on Horkheimer. Rather, as we have seen, it is evident in Horkheimer's early works - for example, in his reading of Machiavelli. On this account, Adorno and Horkheimer fall into a theory of ideas not unlike . " d by G ramsci.. 116 For C roce, 'h" Croce's approac h , whilC h was cnncize t e common sense" of the "man of common sense" is the heritage left by the philosophies preceding him,' and in this way philosophy passes into 'common sense.'117 Gramsci reinterprets the way in which this relationship between philosophy and common is a pnhil10S0pher. ,118 Reversmg . the ditreetiron 0 f movesense means that ' everyone IS ment, Gramsci emphasizes that common sense is a confusing, incoherent and contradictory collection of ideas from different world views sedimented from various times in history. Gramsci advocates a philosophy - the organic intellectuals' philosophy of praxis - that organizes the disparate elements of common sense into good sense. From (i.e., not against) the melange of ideas and beliefs of nonintellectuals, Gramsci wants to create good sense and then the philosophy of praxis.119 This is what I call vernacular philosophy. On a related note, Croce contends that to be effective in replacing religion, philosophy must provide for the same needs as religion. 120 This is one of the touchstones for Gramsci's analysis of religion. 121 But, Gramsci argues, because Croce and Italian Idealism have not attempted to develop philosophy in connection with

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or deliberative, consensual freedom. The heart of Gramsci's political theory - the dialectical relationship between coercion and consent - is precisely what is missing from Haberrnas's theory of society. This is why feminist commentators and others have been quick to criticize Habermas - he has failed to theorize relations of power. 124 Habermas looks toward a wide variety of philosophies of language in order to move beyond what he finds to be an impasse in the critical theory of Adorno and Horkheimer. His approach to language is influenced by Wilhelm Dilthey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Peirce, John Austin, John Searle, and Noam Chomsky.125 He uses and augments these philosophies of language in order to rescue a version of Kantian ethics - a connection made by Horkheimer, as noted earlier. This is Haberrnas's major reason for describing the Enlightenment as an 'unfin.h d . ,126 IS e project. Haberrnas's theory of communicative action has its roots in his response to Adorno's engagement with Karl Popper in the 'positivist dispute,' and also in Horkheimer's earlier debates with the Vienna Circle. 127 Habermas agrees with Adorno's rejection of Popper's critical rationalism, which strives for a value-free epistemology not directly related to the social conditions of those involved in the production of knowledge. 128 In this respect, Habermas, Adorno, and Horkheimer share Gramsci's critique of positivism, as well as all notions that knowledge can be considered 'true' based on its relation to some objective world external to humanity (see chapter 3). But influenced by Charles Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, Hab129 ermas derives a notion of scientific validity based on uncompelled consensus. He contends that had Peirce taken his propositions to their proper conclusions,130 he would have come to a concept of self-reflection and intersubjectivity that is the framework for the idea of communicative action: 'The communication of investigators [scientists] requires the use oflanguage that is not confined to the

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tics that is not at odds with Marx's philosophy. Gramsci's approach is congruent with Haberrnas's criticisms of Adorno and Horkheimer for rooting language in the relation of word and thing, or the philosophical abstraction of concept and reality. But as we have seen, Gramsci's linguistics had no recourse to Anglo-analytic language philoso~hy. or ~o .efforts to resurrect Kantian ethics through communication; rather, his 11llgUIStlCS developed from socio-historical investigations into language usage from the perspective of turn-of-the-century European historical linguistics. Language is not a source of hope for Gramsci, nor is it a vehicle for rescue. Habermas first detects communicative action in the conversations of scientists whom Gramsci would call traditional intellectuals; Gramsci focuses on the language use of a wide variety of social groups, and he specifically directs his attention to language use among different social groups. As shown in chapter 1, for Gramsci the structures oflanguage, far from offering 'universal' validity claims, signify what B~rthes calls :g~o­ bal significations.' That is, different normative grammars make different validity claims, and thus none of these claims are 'universal' in any true sense of the word. This awareness is precisely what enables Gramsci to approach language from a more materialist position and with a greater sense of linguistic activity as it actually occurs in history. Habermas's commentary on Adorno and Horkheimer is a specific application of his more general criticism of the inadequacy of Marxist categories for accounting for intersubjective communicative action. One of Habermas's guiding motifs is the distinction between work, labour, or instrumental activity and self-reflection, consciousness, or human interaction: If Marx had not thrown together interaction and work under the labelof social practice [Praxis]' and had he instead related the materialist concept of synthesis likewise to the accomplishments of instrumental action and the nexuses of communicative

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Habermas's Rejection of Mimesis Although Habermas did not write about Adorno and Horkheimer's notion of 'mimesis' until the 1980s, it then becomes the centre of his critique of Dialectic of Enlightenment.146 This later critique views most of the work that Adorno is known for as fundamentally mistaken. Not only is Dialectic of Enlightenment 'odd,' it 'does not direct our thought to the path that is nearest at hand, a path which leads through the inner logics of the different complexes of rationality and through processes of societal rationalization divided up according to universal aspects of validity, and which suggests a unity of rationality beneath the husk of an everyday practice that has been simultaneously rationalized and reified.'147 Of course, this other path is Habermas's own - a path that rejects much of the analysis of reason and myth examined earlier. Habermas argues that in locating rationalization much earlier in history than Lukacs or Weber, Adorno and Horkheimer expand the concept of instrumental reason to include all reason from its primordial beginnings. Emancipation must be connected to a reconciliation with nature, since that is what signifies the break with humanity. Habermas claims that for Adorno and Horkheimer, this reconciliation must rely on some form of 'truth' and 'reason' which they cannot articulate clearly. He contends that their critique of reason is directed not solely at instrumental reason, but rather at a reason before reason, at some opaque notion of primordial reason. And this 'placeholder' is the capacity of 'mimesis': 'As a placeholder for this primordial reason that was diverted from the intention of truth, Horkheimer and Adorno nominate a capacity, mimesis, about which they 8 can speak only as they would about a piece of uncomprehended nature.'14

tence' and evaluations of sincerity and appropriateness. He admits that these 'validity claims' are 'idealized' and that in actual speech situations they can never be met. And while he clearly rejects postulating a potential future language or time when these conditions will be met, he ultimately falls into non-materialist, non-empirically based notions of a 'pure' language that are similar in some respects to Benjamin's. Habermas concludes one of his critiques of Adorno and Horkheimer by stating that participants in discourse must assume that in the inescapable pragmatic presuppositions of rational discourse only the non-coercive coercion of the better argument gets a chance. But they know, or at least they are able to know, that even that presupposition of an ideal speech situation is only necessary because convictions are formed and contested in a medium which is not 'pure' nor removed from the world of appearance in the manner of platonic ideals. Only a discourse which admits this everlasting impurity can perhaps escape the myth, thus freeing itself, as it were from the entwinement of myth and Enlighrenmenr.Y'

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

of society comes to accept various and conflicting criteria for evaluating the better argument, he sees in language not potentials for universality and the resurrection of Kantian ethics, but the chaotic melange of the contradictions of modern capitalist society. Conclusion

It is one thing to object to how other social theorists and traditions of thought have formulated a concept as significant as 'reason.' Along with this, one can point out that Gramsci provides a framework, conceptual tools, and examples of social analysis that do not rest on any dubiously conceived notion of reason. But these points tell us what Gramsci avoids, they do not provide substantive insight into his perspective. By looking at the changing role of language within the Frankfurt School's approaches to reason, this chapter has illustrated precisely what is at stake in not presupposing that language is separate from 'reality' and has some privileged status (as it does for Habermas), or that it is thoroughly condemned as implicated in fully administered modern society (as Adorno and Horkheimer contend). Even Adorno and Habermas, both of whom understand the relationship between human history and nature dialectically, adopt idealist tendencies when considering language. Adorno's idealism takes the form of assuming that all language use is entwined in the subject/object tension of Western philosophy. Habermas moves beyond this notion, yet he too resorts to idealist contentions about the 'universal' structure of language use. Without seeing how this happens, it is more difficult to understand the power of Gramsci's perspective. We must not forget how Gramsci uses Croce's Idealist linguistics to show the abstractions of positivism, but neither must we forget that he is consistently aware of the need to provide an equally trenchant (if not more so) critique of linguistic idealism. As

While theoretical inquiries into language can become quite complex and abstract, Gramsci reminds us of that for which we should need no reminder: language is part of our everyday lives, our daily frustrations, and collective achievements. The spectre of globalization and reconfigurations of capitalism especially in cultural fields and electronic technologies have raised new language questions.' David Crystal illustrates how since 1950, English has become a truly 'global' language, but not because it has the most speakers (which it well may have, depending on how one defines 'speakers'), and not because it is the largest mother-tongue language in the world (since it is not). Rather, Crystal argues that a language becomes 'global' because of 'who those speakers are' who speak it. 2 Though he admits a confluence of English with colonialism, imperialism, and military power, Crystal applauds the advent of global English as a benefit to the world. Moreover, he contends that the increasing dominance of English is more or less inevitable. 3 Gramsci rejects this latter idea that language change is beyond human control. He also gives us the tools to go beyond simplistic options of accepting or rejecting 'global English.' His writings on language compel us to ask: How is the spread of English being achieved? Does it offer greater possibilities for active participation of people in the decisions that affect their lives? Or does it signal and support further separation of elites from everyone else - tendencies that can spell disaster for any hope of democracy? These questions are not limited to issues of 'global English'; they extend to the many sites of language politics, from the 'English only' movement in the United States, to separatisms as diverse as Quebecois, Basque, or Tamil. Throughout this work I have highlighted how Gramsci's theory of language provides the touchstone for a vernacular materialism that does not shy away from the links between language and politics. Noam Chomsky explicitly separates the two,4 and several Marxist positions neglect the former, and some posrstrucrural-

part of the twentieth century and that have been significantly transformed and taken on new meanings in the intervening time and space. The writings of Volosinov, Medvedev, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Hor~eime~, Adorno, and Habermas have proved invaluable for drawing from GramSCI a pOSItion that makes greater sense of his own political theory of hegemony as well as for relating his work to broader trends in social and political theory. These theorists have influenced much contemporary investigation into language, authorship, subjectivity and ideology. They have also provided contrasts from which to show Gramsci's unique position and his thorough insistence that language be understood as a human institution historically created through praxis without recourse to metaphysical and ahistorical presuppositions. Through Gramsci, I have insisted that linguistic praxis can only be separated (for purposes of devaluation or supervaluation) from all other social activity at the cost of further entrenching phantasmic abstraction. As in Marx's analysis of value relations within human economic systems, for Gramsci linguistic values and meanings are human creations that always exist within history. They are subject to human collective and individual manipulation within the parameters set by past human action. Thus, language is not a non-productive realm of communication or merely the transmission of information. On the contrary, language is continually involved in human production and is also a product of human activity itself. From this perspective, we can re.alize that the 'information age' or 'technological revolution' is not predetermined by laws beyond our control. Language products - whether Hollywood movies or computer programs - are constituted by language, and this requires that Marxism and all progressive social movements comprehend the importance of language to politics. As human institutions, language and linguistic behaviour have also served as metaphors for political action and reaction; here, we must not forget that these other actions and reactions always involve language in some manner.

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language. In commencing a dialogue among Gramsci, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas, I have emphasized how non-materialist concepts of language can in effect extract political struggles and power differentials from communication. This shows the importance of Gramsci's not basing language on any mimetic relationship between language and what language represents. Ironically, the position that Marx's philosophy cannot account for linguistic interaction can lead to a 'naturalization' or concealment of language as a site of political differences. These are all variations of the clarity gained through Gramsci's materialist historicism - above all, his insistence that language does not have an ahistorical essence but, like the economy and the state, is created by humans but not necessarily under conditions of our choosing. In contrast to any notion of language as representation or nomenclature, Gramsci's perspective presents language as one type of human labour. This becomes clear in contradistinction to Adorno and Horkheimer's view of language as falling on a Rousseauian continuum between language as expressive and language as instrumental. Instead of such a continuum or the choice between these two alternatives, Gramsci, like Volosinov, insists that idealist and positivist oppositions must be dialectically overcome. That is, the creative processes of language must be seen as social and as distinct from individual creativity and aesthetic production, but not as structures or the products of laws outside of human history. Language is not simply a medium or instrument that humans use to express themselves or to convey ideas, feelings, and emotions. In Gramsci's terminology, all language takes place within normative contexts, however spontaneous they may appear. The dialectical component comes from the idea that normative grammars are created from one or more spontaneous grammars. A language and its normative grammar are endlessly generative, and they change as unique speech utterances are produced and received. But these utterances are created only within systems of ideological meanings and values created by the structured differences among linguistic forms or signs.

e c e s m s p w d l c M m t s 'E r

g g l w a a r i 'g l

ing these concepts are at the heart of how we judge any political system - especially democracy - to be legitimate and justified. Gramsci's. dialectical and historical materialist approach to the relationship between coercion and consent is what makes his Marxist political theory as important today as it was in the 1930s. His writings are more important now than in his own time, provided we translate them in such a way as to produce better understandings of our own circumstances that cultivate critical change.

2

3

4 5

versity Press, 1991), especially chapter 5. 9 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books, 1973),250-302. See also his discussion about his relation to Marxism in Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx, trans. R. James Goldstein and James Cascaito (New York: Serniotextle), 1991), especially 103-13. 10 While beyond the scope of the current work, there is an interesting parallel between Foucault's analyses of epistemes and Croce's histories, which Gramsci criticizes for avoiding periods of conflict and change between one period of stability and the next. See Barry Smart, 'The Politics of Truth and the Problem of Hegemony,' in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed, David Couzens Hoy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 157-74. 11 Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe and Jean- Luc Nancy attempt to redress this avoidance of the political implications of deconstruction. See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and jean-Luc Nancy, Retreating the Political, ed. Simon Sparks (London: Routledge, 1997). For a discussion of their Center for Philosophical Research on the Political see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 69-92. 12 Jacques Derrida, Specters ofMarx, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994). See also Jacques Derrida, 'Politics and Friendship: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,' trans. R. Harvey, in TheAlthusserian Legacy, ed. E. Ann Kaplan and Micheal Sprinker (New York: Verso, 1993), 183-231. 13 To cite just a few examples with temporal diversity: J.K. Gibson-Graham, 'Haunting Capitalism ... in the Spirit of Marx and Derrida,' Rethinking Marxism 8, no. 4 (1995): 25-39; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Speculations on Reading Marx: After Reading Derrida,' in Post-Structuralism and the Question ofHistory, ed. D. Attridge et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987),30-62; and Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). 14 AijazAhmad, 'Reconciling Derrida: "Spectres of Marx" and. Deconstructive Politics,' New Left Review 208 (November-December 1994): 88-106, and Terry Eagleton, 'Marxism without Marxism,' Radical Philosophy 73 (September-October 1995): 35-7.

1

1

2

21

22 23

28

29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36

37

referring to the specific philosophy of a thinker like Croce, and use lower case to refer to the more general perspective - in the case of idealism, any system of thought that holds that reality is ultimately ideal in nature, defined by some entity (Reason, God, Providence, etc.) beyond the physical world that humans can experience within particular moments of time and space. See Joseph Buttigieg, 'Gramscis Method,' Boundary 2, 17, no. 2 (1990): 60-81, and 'Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks,' Boundary 2,21, no. 2 (1994): 98-138, especially 136-8. SPN, 429; Qll§25. See also Q7§6. SPN, 428; Qll §25. SPN, 35-6; QI2§2. As will be evident in chapter 1, this image of a cardboard schemata is analogous to Gramsci's critique of Esperanto and Manzoni. Joseph v. Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 35-50. Roy Harris discusses why both Wittgenstein and Saussure start with a caricature of the 'language as nomenclature argument.' Roy Harris, Language, Saussure, and Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1988). Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),248-55. In this connection, Michel Foucault's The Order o/Things is also illuminating. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953),8. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1986), 118 [166], italics in original. Numbers in brackets refer to the standard pagination from the French second edition. Ferruccio Rossi-Landi argues that Gramsci's 'civil society' comes close to a semiotic understanding of the mediation between base and superstructure. See his Marxismand Ideology, trans. Roger Griffin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990),60-6.

6

7 8

9

Lawrence and Wishart, 1980),9. 14 Ibid., 19. 15 Ibid., 8-9. 16 Italian language historians have been more attentive to this aspect of Gramsci's legacy. For example, in a general history of the Italian language one can find not only a summary of Gramsci's critique ofManzoni but also the insight that 'for Gramsci the questionedella linguawas to be identified with the questione dell'egemonia.' Bruno Migliorini, The Italian Language (London: Faber and Faber, 1966),472. See also Stefano Gensini, Elementi di storia linguistica italiana (Bergamo: Minerva Italica, 1982), which mentions Gramsci throughout. 17 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971),438. Hereafter cited as SPN. I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Q and then the section number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published: Q 11§ 15. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Q}taderni del carcere, ed. Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols, (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), hereafter cited as QC. 18 Karl Marx, 'Theses on Feuerbach,' in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology: Part One (New York: International Publishers, 1991), 122. Chapter 3 contains a more thorough discussion of this logic of 'essence' and 'origin.' 19 For an overview of the influence of Gramsci on British Marxist historians see Harvey Kaye, 'Political Theory and History: Antonio Gramsci and the British Marxist Histori-

3

ans,' Italian Quarterly 31, nos. 119-20 (1990): 145-66. 20 Sebastiano Timpanaro, 'Graziadio Ascoli,' Belfagor 27, no. 2 (1972): 149-76, espe-

3

cially 170. 21 The terms regressive and progressive are not meant to suggest a predetermined path or ideal outcome along which different types of hegemony can be placed. The whole point of the hegemony advocated by Gramsci, which I term progressive, is that such

3

eral' (SPN, 348, n32). Mansfield contends that this is Gramsci's distinction and that it is reminiscent of, but not equal to, that of Saussure's distinction between parole and langue, Steven B. Mansfield, 'Introduction to Gramsci's "Notes on Language,'" Telos 59 (1984): 119. Salamini argues that Gramsci was 'dependent' on Saussurean method due to his postulation of a static-dynamic approach to language that was set up by Saussure's distinction between parole and langage, 31. Helsloot correctly points out that Saussure's notion of langage includes both the systematic shared aspect of language

(langue) and the individual act of speech (parole). Relying on all of the above sources, he concludes that Gramsci borrowed this distinction directly or indirectly from Saussure. See Helsloot, 'Linguists of All Countries,' 553-4. Without entering into the debate about the (non-synonymous) oppositions synchronic/diachronic and langue/

parole, we shall see below that Gramsci did not dichotomize the synchronic (what he called 'normative grammar') and the diachronic (what can be seen as 'spontaneous grammar'). It also seems that he did not veer from the common (although inconsistent and overlapping) Italian usage of lingua meaning tongue or specific language (system) and linguaggio meaning the faculty of language, transmission of messages, verbal or otherwise, as Hoare and Nowell Smith state. 36 This assumption also seems to underlie much of Bakhtin's writings, or at least the influential interpretations of them, as we shall explore in the next chapter. It is also evident in Charles Woolfson's development of Marxist semiotics, 'The Semiotics of Working Class Speech,' Working Papers in CulturalStudies 9 (1976): 165. 37 Helsloot astutely argues that Gramsci is distinct from most others who approach language either from a rationalist perspective (including Descartes, Chomsky, speech act theory, empirical sociolinguists, and psycholinguists), or from an empiricist perspective (including Locke, Croce, Sapir, and Basil Bernstein) that attempts to establish an

a priori unity of language. Instead, for Gramsci, 'coherence [of language] has to be developed historically, [and] is never given. There is no pre-established consensus,' 'Linguists of All Countries,' 552.

38 SPN, 54-5.

60 Gramsci's critique of Bertoni and his puzzlement as to why even Croce is in agreement with Bertoni is borne out in 1941 when Croce wrote that Bertoni's work is 'the odious rhetoric of idealism.' See Lo Piparo, Lingua, 60. 61 SCW;-174; Q3§74. 62 Ibid. 63 This point is further supported by Gramsci's commentary on a review of Antonio Pagliaro's Sommario di linguistica arioeuropea (1930); Gramsci states: 'It appears to me that much has changed (judging from the review) but that the basis on which linguistic studies can be situated has not been found.' Sew;- 177; Q6§71.

64 LF, 80. 65 Holub, Antonio Gramsci, 54-5. 66 Ibid., 50-1. 67 Far from reducing Grarnsci's incredibly diverse corpus to only one term, in agreement with Holub I maintain that seeing the various connections between the diverse topics allows one to get a feeling for Gramsci's own method of analysis. Ibid., 49-67. 68 SCW;- 27. Emphasis in original. 69 SCW;- 28. 70 Quoted in Lo Piparo, Lingua, 98. 71 SCW;- 30. 72 The previous quotation raises questions about the possible difference between Manzoni's program or Esperanto and the extension throughout the world of a unified Aryo- European language. Gramsci's description of the interaction among AryoEuropean languages is of a 'reciprocal' process, yet this term is conspicuously absent in his description of the extension throughout the rest of the world of a proletarian language. Or does this passage infer that the world hegemony of a European proletariat is inherently more progressive than its capitalistic counterpart, but that there could be other more progressive movements that show greater reciprocity among the different peoples?

object, the use of 'a grammar of her own' is no less literal than 'his own.' For a discussion of the word ceto see FSPN, x. 102 Gramsci is actually unsure about the exact relationship between formal logic and the study of normative grammar. While he tends to think that there is a relationship and that it can be used at least for pedagogical purposes, he maintains that the question needs further study: 'One might debate whether this insertion [of elements of formal logic into the study of grammar] is or is not opportune, whether the study of formal logic is justified or not (it seems to be, and it also seems justifiable to attach it to the study of grammar, rather than to arithmetic, etc., because of its natural resemblance and because together with grammar the study of formal logic is made relatively more lively and easier), but the question itself must not be

11

11

12

evaded.' SCW:::-184; Q29§4.

103 104 105 106 107

SCW:::-185; Ibid., 187; Ibid., 186; Ibid., 187;

Q29§5. Q29§6. Q29§6. Q29§6.

109 110 111 112 113 114 115

Ibid., 52; Q25§5. SCW:::-181; Q29§2. Helsloot, 'Linguists of All Countries,' 553. SCW:::-182; Q29§2. Lo Piparo, Lingua, 252. SCW:::-181; Q29§2. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso,

12

LP1,89. 108 SPN, 37-40; Q12§2.

1985), 47-91.

116 QC, 2344; Q29§2. For a different translation, see SCW:::- 182. The sentence that immediately follows 'It is clear that with this set of problems the question of the national struggle of a hegemonic culture against other nationalities or residues of

12

Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory, ed. Craig Brandist and Galin Tihanov (New York: St Martin's Press, 2000). 2 Galin Tihanov's productive comparison of Bakhtin and Lukacs advances several Marxist questions around class, class consciousness, culture, genre, and reification in relation to Bakhtin, TheMaster and the Slave: Lukdcs, Bakhtin and the Ideas ofTheir Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). Ken Hirschop's argument that Bakhtin is directly relevant to theories of democracy and culture also brings Bakhtin's thought closer to the orbit of Gramsci's concerns. Mikhail Bakhtin:An Aestheticfor Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). However, both these works pay heed to Brian-Poole's recent research detailing the strong Kantian and neo-Kantian themes throughout Bakhtin's thought - themes that certainly distance him from Gramsci, especially on the question of materialism. Brian Poole, 'Bakhtin and Cassirer: The Philosophical Origins of Bakhtin's Carnival Messianism,' SouthAtlantic Quarterly 97, nos. 3/4 (1998): 537-78; and 'From Phenomenology to Dialogue: Max Scheler's Phenomenological Tradition and Mikhail Bakhtin's Development from "Towards a Philosophy of the Act" to His Study of Dostoevsky,' in Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed., ed. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 109-35. 3 Craig Brandist and Renate Holub have also made valuable contributions to comparing Gramsci and the Bakhtin Circle. Craig Brandist, 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' New Left Review 216 (March-April 1996): 94-109; 'The Official and the Popular in Gramsci and Bakhtin,' Theory, Culture and Society 13, no. 2 (1996): 59-74; and Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxismand Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1992), 18-19, 132-40. 4 Bakhtin uses the term 'heteroglossia' to describe the inevitable 'social diversity of speech types,' stratification within any language into dialects and different voices where historical and social context is central to meaning and nuance. He articulates this concept in theory of the novel as a unique genre that combines these 'subordi-

6

7

8

9

10

11 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe {New York: Macmillan, 1953),5,11,48. 12 For a few examples, Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism (London: Routledge,

21

1979); Graham Pechey, 'Boundaries versus Binaries: Bakhtin in/against the History of Ideas,' Radical Philosophy 54 (l990): 23-31, and 'Bakhtin, Marxism, and Post-Struc-

22

turalism,' in The Politics of Theory, ed. Francis Barker et al. {Colchester: University of Essex Press, 1983),234-47; David Forgacs, 'Marxist Literary Theories,' in Modern Literary Theory, ed. Ann Jefferson and David Robey (London: Batsford, 1982), 13469; Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, ThePolitics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

23

24

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); Julia Kristeva, 'Word, Dialogue, and Novel,' in Desire in Language, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez {Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981),64-91; and Michael Gardiner, TheDialogics of Critique: M.M. Bakhtin and the Theory ofIdeology (London: Routledge, 1992). 13 Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 274, 256, and 151; Woolfson, 'Semiotics of Working

25

Class Speech,' 170-1; Brandist, 'Ethics, Politics and the Potential of Dialogism,' 235, 249. 14 See Robert Young, 'Back to Bakhtin,' Cultural Critique 2 (l985-6): 71-92, and Allon

26 27

White, 'The Struggle over Bakhtin: Fraternal Reply to Robert Young,' Cultural Cri-

tique 8 (1987-8): 217-41. Also see Caryl Emerson, 'Keeping the Self Intact during the Culture Wars: A Centennial Essay for Mikhail Bakhtin,' New Literary History 27 (l996): 107-26, and Emerson, TheFirst HundredYears, 22. 15 See Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 146-70; Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation ofa Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 10 1-20; Irwin R. Titunik, 'Bakhtin and/or Volosinov and/or Medvedev: Dialogue and/or Doubletalki' in Language and Literary Theory, ed. Benjamin A Stolz et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1984), 535-64; Irwin R. Titunik, 'The Baxtin Problem: Concerning-Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist's Mikhail Bakhtin,' Slavic and EastEuropean Journal

28

29

37 SCW: 51. Emphasis in original. 38 SCW: 51. Note that Gramsci specifies that this 'destruction' pertains to the 'spiritual hierarchies, prejudices, idols and ossified traditions' and 'does not mean to deprive humanity of the material products that it needs to subsist and to develop.' 39 FM,171. 40 Gramsci's position on Sorel locates the same concerns. While he uses Sorel's 'myth' to interpret Machiavelli's Prince, he asks why Sorel stops short, achieving at its highest point only the 'passive activity' of a general strike, the withholding of labour. As with the Futurists, this step is necessary but merely preliminary because it does not 'envisage an 'active and conscious' phase of its own.' SPN, 127; Q13§1. Not to engage in this active and conscious phase paradoxically hides purely mechanistic assumptions and an implicit determinism covered by a theory of spontaneity. SPN, 128-30; QI3§1. 41 Volosinov's account of Saussure is less than generous and tends to obscure the extent to which Saussure himself attempted to overcome some of the problems in comparative philology that Volosinov finds in 'abstract objectivism.' As Paul Thibault shows, Saussure exhibits a more subtle and nuanced theory of sign production. But as Thibault admits, the aspects of Saussure's work that emphasize the stark nature ofsuch divisions as langue versus parole, and synchronic versus diachronic approaches, have become what Saussure is known for, especially as taken up in structuralism. Paul Thibault, ReReading Saussure: The Dynamics ofSigns in Social Life (London: Routledge, 1997). 42 Fredric Jameson, ThePrison-House ofLanguage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); jonathan Culler, Saussure (London: Fontana Press, 1976). Culler's second chapter provides much greater detail about the influence of the Neogrammarians on Saussure, but the book as a whole emphasizes Saussure's break with previous linguistics. Part of the problem is viewing Saussure not from the perspective of linguistics but rather from that of social theory concerned with structuralism. As Paul Thibault argues, 'Saussure was steeped in the very traditions of historical and comparative linguistics to which a certain structuralist reading would oppose him.' Re-Reading

Saussure, 81.

5

5

54

55

56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64

65

66

George Buck and Frithjof Raven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971),34. I investigate the manner in which this notion of Humboldt's has been pervasively influential and show Gramsci's undermining of it in Peter Ives, 'The Grammar of Hegemony,' Left History 5, no. 1 (1997): 30-47, reprinted in Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments, vol. 2, ed. James Martin (London: Routledge, 2001), 319-36. 72 Brandist argues that Gramsci and Bakhtin adopt Vossler's picture oflinguistic environment and translation in a modified form, 'Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony,' 98-9. This seems misleading, given that such modification would have to include Gramsci's and Volosinov's (if not Bakhrin's) explicit rejection of the very movement from, in Volosinov's words, 'inner something which is expressible' to its 'outwardobjectification.' MPL, 84. Chapter 3 explains how Gramsci's notion of translation is at odds with Vossler's. Where Volosinov does discuss intentional meaning it needs to be understood with the phenomenological emphasis that does not fall into the inner/outer dualism that he rejects in all idealist theories of expression. 73 MPL, 86. Emphasis in original. Note the similarities with Gramsci's discussion of normative grammar as reciprocal monitoring and censorship, discussed in chapter 1.

74 Humboldt, Linguistic Variability, 11. 75 There are important metaphorical similarities between 'depth' and Ascoli's notion of the linguistic substratum discussed in chapter 1, pages 25-6. Gramsci's conceptualization of the co-existence of normative and spontaneous grammar within the same language to move away from Ascoli's reductionism is not unlike Volosinov's double-sided word. However, Gramsci's formulation calls for a more explicit understanding of the grammar that structures even the speaker's side of the act of uttering. Volosinov's notion of the two-sided act could lead one to believe that the speaker is only constrained, restricted or 'coerced' by those pressures exerted from the addressee(s), whereas Gramsci shows great attunernent to the integral relationship between consent and coercion by defining both sides of the double-sided word as 'grammar.' 76 Humboldt's movement from depth to surface is replicated by Noam Chomsky, who

8 8

8

8

94 95 96 97 98

99

100 101 102 103

forces associated with heteroglossia are more powerful and always in praesentia as opposed to the centripetal forces associated with monologia. See Michael Holquist's Introduction to TheDialogic Imagination, xix. Chapter 4 relates these assumptions about language to Haberrnas's position. Hirschkop, 'Introduction,' 4-6. Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 220. Ibid., 242-3. Bakhtin does not use 'polyphony' as synonymous with 'heteroglossia.' It is not specifically related to the diversity of speech styles or languages but is a characterization of the author's position with reference to the text and its characters. Tony Crowley, 'Bakhtin and the History of the Language,' in Bakhtinand Cultural Theory, 2nd ed., ed. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 194. See also Tony Crowley, Language in History: Theories and Texts (London: Routledge, 1996), especially chapter 2,30-53. Crowley, 'Bakhtin and the History of the Language,' 195. Holquist, Dialogism, 34. Young, Backto Bakhtin, 74. While beyond the scope of this work, this issue relates directly to debates around 'humanism' and 'anti-humanism.' Within that context, the position that humans are inherently dialogical begs the question of what is the non-human that is nondialogic?

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

125

126 127 128 129

130 131 132 133 134

135 136 137

138

political question that Gramsci's work interrogates is how such cathartic deliverance arrives, given that like the 'final analysis,' the 'end of the day' never actually comes except perhaps in literary works. Gramsci castigates not only Manzonis administrative solution to the questione della lingua but also his novel, TheBetrothed, for its elitist depiction of the 'humble' subaltern characters (see SCW;288-97; Q23§51, Q7§50, Q21 §3, Q14§39, Q14§45, QI5§37). Manzoni is a perfect example of an author who explicitly made, and remade, a choice about the unified language in which the novel was to be presented. M.M. Bakhtin, 'The Problem of Speech Genres,' in Speech Genres and OtherLate Essays, trans. Vern McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 77-80. Ibid., 84. Galin Tihanov, as mentioned earlier, represents perhaps the most thorough exception. See M.M. Bakhtin, 'From Notes Made in 1970-71,' in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 147. Bakhtins rejection of 'dialectics' is perhaps due to its previous accentuation by Stalin's 'Marxism-Leninism.' DiN, 338. Ibid., 262. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin, 92. RHW,3. For a thorough discussion of the relationship between Bakhtin and recent literature on the public sphere, see Hirschkop, Mikhail Bakhtin, 249-71. See for example, RHW, 412. Ibid., 17-18. Emphasis added. Bakhtin never uses the terms 'monologic' or 'heteroglossia' in this work, although many commentators have assumed these concepts refer to the major themes that he explores in it. RHW, 274.

1

1

1

1 1

1

1 1

FSPN). I will also give the notebook number preceded by a Q and then the section

2 3

4

5

number so as to simplify locating the passage in anthologies and in the English critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been published: Q 11§47. The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, 4 vols., ed. Valentino Gerrarana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), hereafter cited as QC. Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, trans. James Fentress (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 351. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Linguistic Variability and Intellectual Development, trans. George Buck and Frithjof Raven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). Of course, Eco addresses translation thoroughly-in his other writings, specifically in his Experiences in Translation (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2001). But even here he addresses the topic explicitly as an individual author whose work has been translated and as an individual translator (6). This approach separates him from 'translation' as developed by Gramsci and Benjamin. He does note that there is a type of translation aimed at changing both source and target languages (21), although he insists that translation should not go beyond the intentions (as distinct from the interpretations) of the author. This, as we shall see, is at odds with Gramsci and Benjamin's position (45-6). His investigation of Roman Jakobson and Charles Pierce's interplay between translation and interpretation (67-130) also raises many of the points to be made below. Moreover, his study is an excellent exploration of another aspect of Gramsci and Benjamin's 'translation' - that it cannot be seen as simple transferal from one language to another but necessarily involves cross-cultural analysis. So my point here is not that Eco as a thinker ignores translation, but that his image as presented here obscures the power relationships central to Gramsci. Walter Benjamin, 'The Task of the Translator,' trans. Harry Zohn, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 75. Hereafter cited as TT.

1

1

17 As with the debates over Gramsci's use of 'hegemony,' sometimes used in the traditional sense even late in his prison years. William Hartley, 'Politics and Culture in Antonio Gramsci's Quadernidel carcere' (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1985),90-

2

2. Gramsci also uses 'tradurreui a common-sense way as synonymous with 'interchangeability' and even 'reduction.' See, for example, QC 468; Q4§42; Antonio

2

Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 2, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) 192. See also FSPN 308; Q11 §48. Yet in Q10II§28, Gramsci opposes 'tradurre'with 'interpretare'ius interpret]. FSPN, 99. Such inconsistencies, while causing some confusion and inaccuracy, seem to suggest little except to remind us of the conditions under which Gramsci was writing. 18 My thanks to Jeremy Stolow bringing this to my attention. 19 Lichtner provides an interesting development of Gramsci's use of 'metaphor' as it relates to translation. He suggests that for Gramsci, metaphor often works better than a precisely defined theory because the philosophy of praxis is really a philosophy of

2

activity that cannot be understood purely by 'theory.' Metaphor, he argues, is a vital instrument for integrating practice with theory. 20 For a brilliant discussion of the gendered nature of this bind that rests on the notion of translation as feminine and secondary to the original, masculine activity of creative production, see Lori Chamberlain, 'Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,' in

Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, ed. Lawrence Venuti (London: Routledge, 1992),57-74. 21 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, ed. Quintin Hoare, trans. John Mathews (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990),34-7. Hereafter cited as SPWl. Admittedly, Gramsci developed a more nuanced understanding of the Bolshevik Revolution and Marx's Capital after this famous article of 1917. 22 See the famous opening to Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1934), 10. 23 TT,69.

0/LouisBonaparte

30

34 TT,73. 35 TT, 74. Bassnett-McGuire relates this basic point to Saussure's analysis using the English word 'butter' and the Italian' burro,' which denote the same object but can signify almost opposite meanings given the different roles of butter in Italian and English society. Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 1991), 18-19. Benjamin's example hints at his awareness that the word-object relation is perhaps not the central one in the production of meaning, to which we shall return below. 36 Eugene Nida, Towards a Science of Translating: With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translation (Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1964), especially 120-44. For a good overview of the practical problems of translation and how translation theory has understood them, see Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, 13-37; and Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories (London: Routledge, 1993). 37 Walter Benjamin, 'On Language As Such and on the Language of Man,' in Reflections:

Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund jephcott (New York: Schocken Books 1978),315-16. Hereafter cited as OLAS. 38 OLAS, 315-16; Edward Sapir, TheSelected Writings ofEdwardSapirin Language, Cultureand Personality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), and Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956). 39 TT, 72.

48

49

50

51 52 53

54

40 Thus, it has nothing to do with the idea of a universal grammar or some underlying, hard-wired, language structure or human faculty on which all languages are based, such as Chomsky or others propose.

55

41 TT, 73-4. Note here that the necessity of translation is not considered an obstacle or barrier, as Eco shows us is the legacy of Babel. Linguistic diversity is a wholly positive

56 57

circumstance. 42 Like Esperanto, Volapuk is an artificial language for international communication

59

invented at the end of the nineteenth century.

58

60

half published,' as quoted by Antoine Berman, TheExperience oftheForeign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, trans. S. Heyvaert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 178. 66 QC, 1468: Q11 §47. I have altered the translation from FSPN, 307, slightly using 'phase' rather than 'stage' for the Italian Jase. 'This does not get around the question of the extent to which Gramsci is suggesting a 'stagist' theory of social development. As Gramsci himself indicates with his scare-quotes, what does it mean to say the "'basically" identical cultural expression'? Fundamental to answering this question is that the philosophy of praxis alone can effect such a translation between cultures. It is tempting to read this as economic reductionism on Gramsci's part; however, as shall be clear below, this would be to misunderstand Gramsci's emphasis on 'translation,' especially

75

76 77

78

67 One important implication of these arguments, which goes against most contempo-

79 80

rary theories of language, is that not all complete natural languages can describe everything. Thus, Gramsci and Benjamin agree on this point with the conservative and racist theories of language which place languages in a hierarchy. While it is important to be aware of the dangers of such positions, the significant question is how the evaluation of languages is made, and this is where neither Gramsci nor Benjamin subscribes to a developmental or stagist model of language development. 68 As quoted by Benjamin, TT, 81. 69 I do not mean that given the two choices, leading the foreign to the reader or leading the reader to the foreign, Benjamin would favour an extreme of the latter. Instead, he focuses on the extent to which the target language is revolutionized, which depends on its own circumstances as well as its relationship to the source language.

81

in its philosophical sense.

70 71 72 73

TT, 76. See Berman, Experience ofthe Foreign, 69-86, and 184. Ibid., 100. Rodolphe Gasche, 'The Sober Absolute: On Benjamin and the Early Romantics,'

85 86

87 88 89 90 91 92

biography, Transference, Translation, ed. Christie McDonald (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985). FSPN, 307-9, Q11§48; FSPN, 310, Q11§49; FSPN, 313, Q17§18; FSPN, 319, Q10II§60. QC, 2486-7. As translated from German in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, TheHoly Family: or, Critique ofCritical Critique (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), 55. FSPN, 311; Q11§49. FSPN, 371-2; Q10II§4. See also Lichtner, 'Traduzione e rnetafore,' 120. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1986), 110-20 [155-69]. FSPN, 312; Q11§49. SPN, 399-400; Q10II§9. Ibid., 400; Q10Il§9. For a detailed examination of the concept of 'immanence,' see

9

9

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both Lichtner, 'Traduzione e metafore' and Tosel, 'Illessico Gramsciano.'

93 SPN, 401; Q10Il§9. 94 Ibid., 394; Q16§9. Gramsci roots this in Croce's analysis as typified by Erasmus's dictum, 'ubicumque regnat lutberismus, ibi literarum estinteritus' [wherever Lutheranism

10

reigns, there is the death ofletters].

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

10

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10

to 'agrees with.' As Victoria Heftler also pointed out to me, 'ubereinkommt'ss not in the passive, nor does it connote the sense of possibility which 'can be reconciled' contains. This is important because Benjamin argues that his distinction between 'origin' and 'genesis' puts 'genetic classification' (i.e., History) into a relationship with an idealist theory of art. Reconciliation implies an initial incongruence that Benjamin would be required to harmonize. 108 TS,45. 109 A minor exception to this is Enrico Guglielminetti, who shows some awareness of the Crocean context. See Enrico Guglielminetti, Walter Benjamin: Tempo, ripetizione, . equiuocita (Milan: Mursia, 1990), 102-4. For two examples of extended discussions of this passage that fail to mention Croce, see Samuel Weber, 'Genealogy of Modernity: History, Myth and Allegory in Benjamin's Originofthe German Mourning Play' MLN 106, no. 3 (1991): 465-500; and Wolin, Walter Benjamin, 96-7. 110 Weber, 'Genealogy,' 468-72. 111 TS,58. 112 The etymological connection between the German 'Sprung' of 'Ur-sprung.' meaning 'spring' or 'leap' fits well into the metaphor of the stream and the English meaning of 'spring' as the 'origin' of a stream. The water from a spring comes from somewhere and the locating of its 'source' tells us little about the rest of the stream except that it has no 'up-stream' before the spring where it comes out of the ground. The 'origin' of the stream in a spring has little to do with the combination of hydrogen and oxygen that is the genesis of water. Jeremy Stolow has pointed out to me that 'Sprung' also resonates in auftusprengen' [blasting out], used by Benjamin to characterize his well-known idea of now-time Uetztzeit] in his Fourteenth Thesis on 'The Philosophy of History' that begins with a quote from Karl Kraus, 'The origin [Sprung] is the goal.' Walter Benjamin, 'Theses on the Philosophy of History,' in Illuminations, 261. 113 Benjamin's approach is almost diametrically opposed to Croce's development of all

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12 12 12 12

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ism and theology. See Rebecca Cornay, 'Benjamin's Endgame,' in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, ed. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (London: Routledge, 1994),251-91. Whatever interesting connections can be made starting from these perplexities, they seem to overcomplicate Benjamin's First Thesis where historical materialism and theology are playing for the same side of the chessboard. 132 Fontana demonstrates how Gramsci's critique ofliberal and bourgeois ideology in the concept of hegemony develops from his interpretation of Machiavelli as the 'Italian Martin Luther,' Hegemony and Power, 35-51.

.

133 SPN, 339; Qll§12. Emphasis in original. 134 Ibid., 338; Qll§12. 135 Ibid., 340; Qll§12. 136 FSPN, 338-9; QlOI§5. He argues that Croce's position needs to be 'brought clearly out into the open' in that Croce understands that 'a conception of the world cannot prove itself worthy of permeating the whole of society and becoming a "faith" unless it shows itself capable of substituting previous conceptions and faiths at all levels of state life.' 137 Hartley, 'Politics and Culture,' 331-5. 138 SPW1,330. 139 Ibid., 332-3. 140 FSPN, 17; Q6§87. See also 74-5 (Q3§140), where Gramsci argues against the dualism between Thought and the Church as proposed by 'our idealists, secularists, immanentists, and so on.' 141 Walter Benjamin, "Theologico-Political Fragment,' in Reflections, 312-13. 142 Walter Benjamin, 'On the Program of the Coming Philosophy,' in Benjamin-

Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, 1-12, here 4. 143 Ibid., 9. 144 This argument is strikingly similar to chapter 3 of Tullio De Mauro, LudwigWittgen-

tique of mimesis. 162 Haberma s, 'Walter Benjamin,' 154. 's 'mime163 Brewster and Buchner make some insightful commen ts about Benjamin between hip relations l dialectica truly sis' moving beyond Humbol dt in positing a the provide may These n. expressio energia and ergon, and between experience and . language on writings 's Benjamin of bases for a more materialist interpretation d in the But they also argue that for Benjamin, meaning cannot be directly produce n Benjami separates this correct, are they If way that value is produced by labour. Criand e 'Languag Buchner, Howard from Gramsci. Philip Brewster and Carl 17 (1979): tique: jurgen Haberma s on Walter Benjamin,' New German Critique

15-30. trans. C. jouan164 Walter Benjamin, 'Curricu lum vitae [3],' in Ecrits autobiograpbiques, in Rochlitz, quoted 1; 1990),3 s, Bourgeoi lanne andJ.-F. Poirier (Paris: Christian Disenchantment ofArt, 45. 165 FSPN, 281-2: Q6§180. 166 Ibid., 294-5: Q11§39. yment and the 167 See David F. Noble, Progress without People: New Technology, Unemplo 1995). Lines, the Between : Message ofResistance (Toronto 168 FSPN, 295: Q11 §39. ge University 169 A.S. Eddingto n, The Nature ofthe Physical World (London: Cambrid §36. Q11 286; FSPN, Gramsci, by Press, 1928), 1-2. As quoted 170 FSPN, 286-7; Qll§36 . 171 SPN, 440-1; Qll§17 . passage as 'man 172 Q 11§17. Emphasis added. Hoare and Nowell Smith translate this to a transsolution g interestin an While 441. SPN, found the world all ready made,' il Italian' The 'already.' English the of typo the like lation problem, this sounds and 'gill' 'ready,' and 'already' idioms English the mondogill bell'e pronto includes for 'pronto.' Where 'gill' can be translated 'already,' 'pronto' is more literally 'ready' ty of objectivi the of proof provide cannot science action. Gramsci also points out that

(hereaf and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: Internati onal Publishers, 1971),8 the then and Q a by preceded number k noteboo the give also will I cited as SPN'). English the and ies antholog in passage the locating simplify to as so section number d: Q12§ 1. critical edition, of which only the first two volumes have been publishe ed. Valentin o The definitive source is Antonio Gramsci, Q;taderni delcarcere, 4 vols., Gerratan a (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), hereafter cited as QC. t, NY: Prometh eus 3 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Amhers Books, 1995),5 67. 4 SPN, 9; Q12§1. 5 Ibid., 326; Qll§12 . and trans. Derek 6 Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from thePrison Notebooks, ed. Q16§1; 74-5; Boothma n (Minneap olis: University ofMinne sota Press, 1995),5 6-7; (hereafter cited as Q3§140 ; 298-305 ; Q11 §41-5; 338; Q10I§4; 439-40; Q14§38 20; and FSPN'); SPN, 244-5; Q15§10 ; 362; Q10II§3 5; 437-48; Qll§15 , Qll§17Geoffrey and Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs ty Press, Nowell-S mith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambrid ge: Harvard Universi out points aro 1985), 422-3; Q24§8 (hereafter cited as SCW). Maurice Finocchi m positivis criticize to eleven different concepts of ,science' that Gramsci uses in order expand to and sm, and metaphy sical dogmatis m, to demarca te the limits of empirici ' to the subthe philosop hy of praxis's notion of 'science' to mean a 'serious approach

ry ofDialectical ject under examina tion. Maurice Finocchiaro, Gramsci and theHisto Thought (Cambrid ge: Cambrid ge University Press, 1988), 76-93. shes o Fontana offers some caution to my contenti on here. He distingui Benedett 7 argues and between lOgos as transcen dental reason and lOgos as language and speech y, hegemon s Gramsci' that 'while the primacy of reason reveals the idealistic nature of and social within his historicis m and radical anti-essentialism firmly locate the logos to maintain sought have Croce to Plato from thinkers while Indeed, reality. material activity its the integrity of reason, and to preserve its autonom y by circumsc ribing y hegemon a into within an aristocratic culture, in Gramsci the logos is transform ed the peopledescribed by the synthesis of philosop hy and politics, thought and

taliscben Systems, QC, 1279, QI0§II33, and QC, 2878. 23 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Buttigieg, trans. Joseph Buttigieg and Antonio Callari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 120; Ql §33. 24 Jennifer Stone, 'Italian Freud: Gramsci, Giulia Schucht, and Wild Analysis,' October 28 (1984): 107. Also on the relation between Gramsci and Freud, see Christine BuciGlucksmann, Gramsci and the State, trans. David Fernbach (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980),86-91. 25 Stone makes some excellent observations, including the importance of Croce's advocacy of Freud and implicit connections between the unconscious and cultural analysis. But she seems to be stretching the limits of Gramsci's few remarks on Freud in arguing that 'Gramsci provided, in Italy, a link between the theories of Marx:and Freud (just as Louis Althusser did in France)' 'Italian Freud,' 107. 26 See Renate Holub, Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1992),69-92. 27 Max Horkheimer, 'The End of Reason,' in TheEssential FrankfurtSchool Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982),34. 28 For a detailed description of how the two research projects of the Institute - one on dialectics and the other on anti-Semitism - yielded the Dialectic ofEnlightenment as a preliminary report of a work still in progress and, significantly, as a prelude to the more positive depiction of 'enlightenment' to follow, see RolfWiggerhaus, TheFrankfurtSchool, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994),291-350. 29 Of course, Adorno and Horkheimer's narrative of the beginning of the dialectic of enlightenment is not a historical moment, but the description of the genesis of the illusion of an original unity between humans and nature. Their analysis shows how the 'always-already' character of this dynamic is rooted firmly at the centre of bourgeois

reason. 30 SPN, 171; QI5§50; and SPN, 244-5; QI5§10. 31 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic ofEnlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1987), 3. Hereafter cited as DoE.

on the merits of its own substance. Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History ofDialectical

Thought, 141. 57 Habermas's reading of Machiavelli is closer to Horkheimer's in emphasizing the divorce between politics and ethics caused by the 'scientific' study of society. [urgen Habermas, 'The Classical Doctrine of Politics,' in Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973),49-60. 58 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 210, see also 230. 59 For example, see DoE, 9. 60 Alfred Schmidt, 'Max Horkheimer's Intellectual Physiognomy,' in On Max Horkbeimer, ed. Benhabib et al., 25-47; and Habermas, 'Remarks on the Development of Horkheimer's Work,' 57-66. 61 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 204. 62 The place where there might be a conflict is in the 'Culture Industry' chapter, where such insights are not taken into account. See below, pp. 151-3. 63 Horkheimer seems to agree with Gramsci's perspective when he castigates Hegel's idealism for presenting ideals 'as though they were ideas with an existence independent of man.' Bur he does not follow this argument as far as Gramsci. Max Horkheimer, 'Materialism and Metaphysics,' in Critical Theory, trans. Matthew O'Connell (New York: Continuum, 1989), 46. 64 Horkheimer, 'Traditional and Critical Theory,' 215. 65 Ibid., 216. 66 Ibid., 232. This is the corollary to the above-stated argument that Fascism arose directly from the ideology of nineteenth-century liberalism but relies less overtly on coercion to police its own population.

67 SPN, 7; Q12§1. 68 Ibid., 8; Q12§l. 69 Ibid., 5; Q12§1. This distinction of Gramsci's is not a dichotomy bur rather, as one might expect, a dialectical one. As with the distinction between spontaneous (or

94 V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and thePhilosophy ofLanguage, trans. Ladislav Matejka and LR. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986),9-10. Note that Volosinov emphasizes that the physical object that becomes a referential sign does not cease to be a part of reality itself. By not paying attention to this, Adorno and Horkheimer end up hypostatizing language and reality. 95 This argument is similar to Charles Taylor's argument that Herder criticized Condillac's false explanation of how language originated. That is, if the 'origin' of language is to be explained, what requires explanation it precisely how a sound or symbol is used to indicate something else. Adorno and Horkheimer ascribe this moment to a 'deity,' making them susceptible to Gramsci and Marx's critique of the search for origins as being a religious or metaphysical formulation rather than a historical materialist one. See chapter 1, p. 18, and Charles Taylor, 'The Importance of Herder,' in PhilosophicalArguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 79-99. 96 DoE,15. 97 For his discussion of mimesis within this relation, see ND, 14,45,269-70. 98 As we shall see below, Habermas uses communication among scientists as one of the prime examples of non-instrumental communicative action. 99 DoE,18. 100 Ibid., 164-5. 101 Ibid., xii. 102 Ibid., xiv. 103 Similarly, Adorno discusses the extent to which all minds within contemporary democracy are 'moulded' to such an extent that they are unable to criticize. ND, 41. 104 SPN, 235; Q13§24. 105 Gramsci presents the primacy of the 'war of position' in the 'West' as a pragmatic consideration aimed at achieving power in the long term. SPN, 235-9; Q13§24, Q6§138. He also maintains that counter-hegemonic forces should not follow the same methods as the ruling classes for strategic reasons. SPN, 232; Q1§133. But these strategic considerations have a moral and ethical element as argued with reference to Manzoni, Esperanto, and bureaucratic centralism in chapter 1, p. 50.

126 Jiirgen Habermas, 'Modernity: An Unfinished Project,' trans. Nicholas Walker, in Habermas and the Unfinished Project ofModernity, ed. Maurizio d'Entreves and Seyla Benhabib (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996),38-58. 127 Jiirgen Habermas, 'A Positivistically Bisected Rationalism,' in ThePositivist Disputein German Sociology, ed. Theodor Adorno et al., trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby (London: Heinemann, 1976), 198-225, especially 218-25. 128 For a discussion of what Habermas accepts of Popper's philosophy, see Ingram, Hab-

ermas and the Dialectic ofReason, 28-31. 129 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 91-112. 130 Umberto Eco, Teresa De Lauretis, and others argue that the 'proper' conclusions of Peirce's work are very different and much more in line with materialist theories of language. For just a couple of examples of very different readings of Peirce, see Eco, A Theory ofSemiotics, and De Lauretis, AliceDoesn't, especially 158-86. 131 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 137. 132 Habermas, TCAl, 366-99; and Jiirgen Habermas, 'The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,' in The Philosophical Discourse ofModernity, trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 106-30. 133 Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 46-63.

134 TCA1, 143-272. 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

Ibid., 335. Ibid., 288. Ibid., 99, 286-337. Ibid., 304. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 62-3. Ibid., 7-24. FSPN, 315-6; Q11§50. 142 SPN, 37, Q12§2; and 33, Q12§1, 143 This should not, however, undervalue the important role that Habermas has taken as a public intellectual in Germany.

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Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson, eds., Linguistic Human Rights: OvercomingLinguistic Discrimination (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994). Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), 142-9. Joseph Buttigieg, 'Gramsci's Method,' Boundary 2, 17, no. 2 (1990): 79-80. See also Joseph Buttigieg, 'Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks,' Boundary 2,21, no. 2 (1994): 98-138. Tullio De Mauro, preface to LinguaIntellettuali Egemonia in Gramsci, by Franco Lo Piparo (Bari: Laterza, 1979), ix, Franco Lo Piparo, 'Studio dellinguaggio e teoria gramsciana,' Critica Marxista2/3 (1987): 167-75. This work hardly constitutes organic intellectual activity. In this sense, I use 'translation' in a much more limited way than Gramsci does (see chapter 3).

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Brugmann, Karl, 21 Buchner, Carl Howard, 136, 218n163 Buci-Glucksmann, Christine, 17, 205n10, 207n30,222n24 Buck-Morss, Susan, 144 Bukharin, Nikolai, 9, 34,35,40, 169, 181n15 Buttigieg, Joseph, 173-4, 182n28, 230n8 Callinicos, Alex, 7 capitalism, 19,24,51,73, 130,137-8, 154,159,163,172 carnival, 54, 73,86-7,89,92-3 Carrannante, Antonio, 183n9 centralism. See democratic centralism Chamberlain, Lori, 206n20 chaos, 24, 57,73,92, 170,210n107 Chomsky, Noarn, 12,23,46, 162, 172, 186n37, 191n122, 198n76,204n160 church. See Roman Catholic Church civil society,4, 16, 18-19,30,49, 51, 72, 99, 122, 135, 156, 178, 182n37, . 193n10 Clark, Katerina, 75-6, 78, 86, 194n12 class,6, 18,33,36,41, 43, 44, 53, 73, 80, 85,92,121,146-50,157,165 Cobban,Al&ed,137,221n16 Cocks, Joan, 221n15

121-2, 136, 162, 169, 77, 198n75 Cornforth, Maurice, 180n7 Croce, Benedetto, 8, 9-10,18,19,51,59, 60-1,64,67-70,79,93,96,103,106, 109,113-19,121-2,127-8,133,148, 160-1,177,180n10,182n27,186n37, 189n85,198n67,212n94,215n123, 220n7, 227nl17; on language or Crocean linguistics, 22-9, 31, 33, 36-43, 170; on translation 113-15, 209n53; on Vico and Machiavelli, 143-5 Crowley,Tony, 77-8, 200n99 Crystal, David, 172, 230n2 Culler, Jonathan, 62, 196n42 culture,4,8,56,60-1,85, 106, 108, 147, 151,161; culture industry, 142, 150-1, 155-6; folk culture, 89; and language, 12,19,21,25-6,28,34-6,41,54,68; official and unofficial, 86-7, 92; popular culture, 53, 89, 151, 171; Seealso national popular {collective} will Dante, Alighieri, 8, 90, 203n151 deconstruction, 3, 5. Seealso Derrida De Felice, Renzo, 183n9 De Lauretis, Teresa, 225n90, 228n130 Delbriick, Berthold, 21 Della Volpe, Galvano, 197n51

d d D d D D

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100, 122, 126-7, 134-40, 146, 158-9, 162-71,174-5, 181n19, 191n122, 213n98,220n1,222n19,223n47, 225n80,229n146 Hall, Stuart, 3,175, 179n1 Haraway, Donna, 212n96 Harris, Roy, 182n33 Hartley, William, 121, 187n42, 206n17 Hegel, G.W:F., 9, 56, 59, 69, 93, 112, 165, 168,215n117 hegemony, 3, 5, 9, 11, 16-19,23-4, 30-1,33,37,45,49-52,72,112,130, 135,137-8,156,171,177-8; linguistic roots, 14, 16-19,27-8,35,40,95; progressiveversus regressive, 12,30,37, 51-4,83,85,121-2,127,136,151. Seealso coercion; consent Helsloot, Niels, 17, 19,45, 183n6, 186n34 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 13, 126, 226n95 heteroglossia, 54, 56, 72, 75-9, 81, 86, 93,176,192n4,202n137 Hirschkop, Ken, 55, 73-4, 77-8, 192n2, 200n92 historical materialism, 3-7, 9, 33, 64, 70, 76,106-7,118,121,127,129,137, 152-3, 172-3

idealism, 6, 8-9, 12, 19,23,33,42,67-8, 114-15,118,128,144, 165,170, 182n27; in linguistics, 22-5, 28-31, 42, 59-60,67-72. Seealso Croce ideology, 24, 53,60, 71, 73, 75, 79, 132, 150, 161, 169, 174, 176, 181n17 intellectual activity, 134-5, 160, 171 intellectuals, 16,29, 30, 36, 71, 121, 135, 139; organic and traditional, 10, 19, 45-6, 57, 82, 107, 129, 133, 141, 147-50, 160-1, 164, 166, 169-70, 178, 192n123 Irigaray, Luce, 221n14 Ives, Peter, 198n71, 218n161 [akobson, Roman, 60 Jameson, Fredric, 62,151,157-8, 196n42, 225n78 Jankowsky, Kurt, 187n51 Jay, Martin, 193n8 Joseph, John, 199n76 Kant, Immanuel, Kantianism, 9, 59,76, 106,112,122-3,126,159,162,164, 165,167-8, 170, 192n2,219n174 Kaye, Harvey, 184n 19 Kierkegaard, Soren, 124

Nida, Eugene, 104, 208n36 Noble, David, 128, 218n167 Novalis, 110 Nowell Smith, Geoffrey, 11, 16, 183n5 objecriviry. Z, 15, 67, 93, 99, 122-3, 127-33, 144, 153. See also epistemology O'Brien, Mary, 221n15 onomatopoeia, 126 organic, 44-5 organic intellectuals. See intellectuals Osthoff, Hermann, 21, 185n27 Panzini, Alfredo, 41 Pareto, \Tilfredo,i8 parthenogenesis in language, 29,54-5, 75,91,93-4,98,105,188n59 Passaponti, M. Emilia, 183n9 passiverevolution, 46, 48-9, 57, 95, 141, 177,201n121 Pechey, Graham, 55, 194n12 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 12-13, 162 Perlina, Nina, 195n15 Petrarch, Francesco, 8 Phillips, Anne, 221n14 philology,4, 10-11,39,60,62-3,68, 145, 173-4 Pirandello, Luigi, 30

poststructuralism, 6, 9,10, 14, 18,23,54, 71-2, 137, 172 prediction, 94, 131, 141 psychoanalysis, 3, 140, 199n77 public sphere, 15, 138-9, 163, 202n134 Rabelais, Francois, 14, 73,83-95, 138 Ravera, Camilla, 206n 16 reflection and refraction in language, 79-80 Reformation, 8, 113, 138 Rehg, William, 229n145 relativism, 13,53, 104, 108, 123, 130. See also epistemology; objectivity religion, 8, 9, 41, 47-8, 74, 121-2, 125, 127,129,133,143,160,225n83.See also Roman Catholic Church; bible; faith Renaissance, 8, 89-90, 94, 113, 138 revolution, 15,57-9,61, 100-5, 109, 112,118,120-2,133,187n42;bourgeois, 137-8; French, 106, 112; Russian, 15,57-9, 100-3, 108-9, 113, 120 Risorgimento, 30, 46, 57, 141, 207n29 Robinson, Douglas, 212n83 Rochlitz, Rainer, 115, 213n102 Roman Catholic Church, 8, 9, 120-2, 149

Weber, Samuel, 116, 214n109 White, Allon, 55, 194n12 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 104, 208n38

Young, Iris Marion, 227n124 Young,Roben, 77, 194n14