Using Ernst Bloch's terminology, we might say the so-called New Atheists merely indulge in "half-Enlightenment."
<http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell1.htm> Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique By Douglas Kellner
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Principle of Hope [by Ernst Bloch] contains three volumes, divided into five parts, and fifty-five chapters. The three volumes roughly correspond to Hegel's division of his system into interrogations of subjective, objective, and absolute spirit. The first volume queries "Little Daydreams" (Part One), "Anticipatory Consciousness" (Part Two") and "Wishful Images in the Mirror" (Part Three). The latter studies analyze the utopian dimensions of fashion, advertising, display, fairy tales, travel, film, theater, jokes, and other cultural phenomena. The second volume (Part IV) depicts "Outlines of a Better World," focusing on social and political utopias, including technological, architectural, and geographical utopias, as well as quests for world peace and a life of leisure. Volume three (Part Five) discusses "Wishful Images of the Fulfilled Moment," including morality, music, images of death, religion, morning-land of nature, and the highest good.
Just as Hegel's philosophy articulated the odyssey of spirit through history and culture, so too does Bloch's philosophy chart the vicissitudes of hope. For Bloch, hope permeates everyday consciousness and its articulation in cultural forms, ranging from the fairy tale to the great philosophical and political utopias. For Bloch, individuals are unfinished, they are animated by "dreams of a better life," and by utopian longings for fulfillment. The "something better" for which people yearn is precisely the subject-matter of Bloch's massive The Principle of Hope, which provides a systematic examination of the ways that daydreams, fairy tales and myths, popular culture, literature, theater, and all forms of art, political and social utopias, philosophy, and religion -- often dismissed tout court as ideology by some Marxist ideological critique -- contain emancipatory moments which project visions of a better life that put in question the organization and structure of life under capitalism (or state socialism).
Bloch urges us to grasp the three dimensions of human temporality: he offers us a dialectical analysis of the past which illuminates the present and can direct us to a better future. The past -- what has been -- contains both the sufferings, tragedies and failures of humanity -- what to avoid and to redeem -- and its unrealized hopes and potentials -- which could have been and can yet be. For Bloch, history is a repository of possibilities that are living options for future action, therefore what could have been can still be. The present moment is thus constituted in part by latency and tendency: the unrealized potentialities that are latent in the present, and the signs and foreshadowings that indicate the tendency of the direction and movement of the present into the future. This three-dimensional temporality must be grasped and activated by an anticipatory consciousness that at once perceives the unrealized emancipatory potential in the past, the latencies and tendencies of the present, and the realizable hopes of the future. Above all, Bloch develops a philosophy of hope and the future, a dreaming forward, a projection of a vision of a future kingdom of freedom. It is his conviction that only when we project our future in the light of what is, what has been, and what could be can we engage in the creative practice that will produce a world in which we are at home and realize humanities deepest dreams.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bloch's Concept of Ideology Critique
I think that Bloch is most useful today in providing a model of cultural theory and ideology critique that is quite different from, and arguably better than, dominant models which present ideology critique as the demolition of bourgeois culture and ideology, thus, in effect, conflating bourgeois culture and ideology. This model -- found in Lenin and most Marxist-Leninists like Althusser, but also to some extent in the Frankfurt School --interprets dominant ideology primarily as instruments of mystification, error, and domination which are contrasted to science or Marxist theory, or "Critical Theory." The function of ideology critique on this model is simply to demonstrate the errors, mystifications, and ruling class interest within ideological artifacts which are then smashed and discarded by the heavy hammer of the ideology critic.
Such a model is, of course, rooted in Marx's own texts for whom ideology was the ideas of the ruling class, ideas which legitimated bourgeois rule, ideas which mystified social conditions, covering over oppression and inequality, and ideas which thus produced false consciousness and furthered bourgeois class domination.[2] Within the Marxian tradition, there is also a more positive concept of ideology, developed by Lenin, which sees socialist ideology as a positive force for developing revolutionary consciousness and promoting socialist development. Bloch, however, is more sophisticated than those who simply denounce all ideology as false consciousness, or who stress the positive features of socialist ideology. Rather, Bloch sees emancipatory-utopian elements in all living ideologies, and deceptive and illusory qualities as well.
For Bloch, ideology is "Janus-faced," two-sided: it contains errors, mystifications, and techniques of manipulation and domination, but it also contains a utopian residue or surplus that can be used for social critique and to advance progressive politics. In addition, to reconstructing and refocusing the theory and practice of ideology critique, Bloch also enables us to see ideology in many phenomena usually neglected by Marxist and other ideology critiques: daydreams, popular literature, architecture, department store displays, sports, or clothing. In this view, ideology pervades the organization and details of everyday life. Thus, ideology critique should be a critique of everyday life, as well as critique of political texts and positions, or the manifestly evident political ideologies of Hollywood films, network television, or other forms of mass-mediated culture.[3]
Previous Marxist theories of ideology, by contrast, tended to equate ideology with texts, with political discourses, and with attempts to mystify class relations and to advance class domination. Ideology critique then, on this model, would simply expose and denounce the textual mechanisms of mystification and would attempt to replace Ideology with Truth. Bloch would dismiss this merely denunciatory approach to ideology critique as "half-enlightenment," which he compares to genuine enlightenment. Half-enlightenment "has nothing but an attitude," i.e. rationalistic dismissal of all mystification, superstition, legend, and so on that does not measure up to its scientific criteria.[4] Genuine enlightenment, on the other hand, criticizes any distortions in an ideological product, but then goes on to take it more seriously, to read it closely for any critical or emancipatory potential. Half-enlightenment deludes itself, first, by thinking that truth and enlightenment can be obtained solely by eliminating error rather than offering something positive and attractive. Indeed, Bloch believes that part of the reasons why the Left was defeated by the Right in Weimar Germany is because the Left tended to focus simply on criticism, on negative denunciations of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, whereas fascism provided a positive vision and attractive alternatives to masses desperately searching for something better.
Against merely negative ideology critique, Bloch urges us to pay close attention to potential progressive contents within artifacts or phenomena frequently denounced and dismissed as mere ideology. For Bloch, ideology contained an "anticipatory" dimension, in which its discourses, images, and figures produced utopian images of a better world. Utopian elements, however, co-exist with "merely embellishing ones" (148). In some cases, this amounts to a "merely dubious polishing of what exists" (149). Such apologetic functions "reconcile the subject with what exists" (ibid). Such purposes appears above all "in periods of class society which are no longer revolutionary" (ibid). Even in this situation, however, ideologies may contain embellishing elements that anticipate a better world, that express in abstract and idealist fashion the potentialities for a better future. If such ideologies deceive individuals into believing that the present society has already realized such ideals, they serve mystificatory functions, but Bloch's method of cultural criticism also wants us to interrogate these ideologies for their utopian contents, for their anticipations of a better world, which can help us to see what is deficient and lacking in this world and what should be fought for to produce a better (i.e. freer and happier) future.
Bloch therefore restores to radical theory a cultural heritage that is often neglected or dismissed as merely ideology. Critique of ideology, Bloch argues, is not merely unmasking (Entlarvung), or de-mystification, but is also uncovering and discovery: revelations of unrealized dreams, lost possibilities, abortive hopes -- that can be resurrected and enlivened and realized in our current situation. Bloch's cultural criticism thus accentuates the positive, the utopian-emancipatory possibilities, the testimony to hopes for a better world. As Habermas dramatically puts it:
What Bloch wants to preserve for socialism, which
subsists on scorning tradition, is the tradition of the
scorned. In contrast to the unhistorical procedure of
Feuerbach's criticism of ideology, which deprived
Hegel's 'sublation' (Aufhebung) of half of its meaning
(forgetting elevare and being satisfied with tollere),
Bloch presses the ideologies to yield their ideas to
him; he wants to save that which is true in false
consciousness: 'All great culture that existed hitherto
has been the foreshadowing of an achievement,
inasmuch as images and thoughts can be projected
from the ages' summit into the far horizon of the future.'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ideology critique thus requires not only demolition but also hermeneutics, for ideology in Bloch's view contains pre-conscious elements or what Bloch calls the "Not-Yet-Conscious." Properly understood, the Not-Yet-Conscious may point to real possibilities for social development and real potentials for human liberation. Bloch tends to present the theory of utopian surplus along historical-materialist lines in terms of the rise and fall of social classes. Utopian surplus generally appears when a class is rising: the ascending class criticizes the previous order and projects a wealth of proposals for social change, as when the bourgeoisie attacked the feudal order for its lack of individual freedom, rights, democracy, and class mobility. Bourgeois critiques of feudalism proliferated, as did revolutionary proposals for a new society. Some of these ideas were incorporated into bourgeois constitutions, declarations of rights, and some were even institutionalized in the bourgeois order.[5]
Thus culture ranges for Bloch from an ideal type of pure ideology to purely non-ideological emancipatory culture. Purely ideological artifacts embellish or legitimate an oppressive existing reality, as when Bloch speaks of ideology as that which excludes all progressive elements (9). Most cultural artifacts, however, contain a mixture of ideology and utopian elements. Since ideologies are rhetorical constructs that attempt to persuade and to convince, they must have a relatively rational and attractive core and thus often contain emancipatory promises or moments. Drawing on Bloch, Fredric Jameson has suggested that mass cultural texts often have utopian moments and proposes that radical cultural criticism should analyze both the social hopes and fantasies in cultural artifacts, as well as the ideological ways in which fantasies are presented, conflicts are resolved, and potentially disruptive hopes and anxieties are managed.[6]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Socialism, Revolution, and the Red Arrow
Part Four of The Principle of Hope interrogates the "Outlines of a Better World" in a variety of utopias. Bloch finds utopian dreams not only in the social and political utopias of the great utopian theorists, but also in a variety of technological, architectural, and geographical utopias, as well as in painting, opera, literature, and other forms of art. Part Five describes "Wishful Images of the Fulfilled Moment," in which morality, music, religion, and philosophies project images and visions of supreme fulfillment, culminating in the figure of an individual who "has grasped himself and established what is his, without exploitation and alienation." In this situation, "in real democracy, there arises in the world something which shines into the childhood of all and in which no one has yet been: homeland" (1,376).
Culture for Bloch contains traces of what he calls red arrows which migrate through history looking for realization in socialism. Bloch finds a red path weaving through history, revolting against alienation, exploitation, and oppression, struggling for a better world. The social and political utopias present imperfect yearnings for what was more fully developed in Marxism and socialism. Thus Bloch develops an explicitly political hermeneutic that interprets certain cultural artifacts and residues from the past as pointing toward socialism.
Certain aspects of the bourgeois revolutions, for instance, were never realized and contain a surplus of critical and emancipatory potential that can be used to criticize bourgeois society on the grounds that it was not realizing its own potentials. One of Bloch's more productive ideas is that the ideological surplus or cultural surplus is not just an expression of the socio-economic base or the dominant mode of production but is Ungleichzeitig, describing what is non-contemporareneous or nonsynchronic with the present.[16] This concept points to the fact that residues and traditions from the past continue to be effective in the present, even though it might appear that they are completely archaic and historically surpassed (i.e. fascist primitivism, or the strange phenomenon of Reaganism in a technological United States).
But Ungleichzeitigkeit also points to elements from the past which anticipate future developments, which appear before their time, which point ahead to the future (i.e. earlier anticipations of socialism) and which have yet to be realized. However, the utopian surplus contains the potential to project long-term goals for an individual or society and for political practice that provides alternatives to the status quo which is far-seeing and future oriented. For Bloch, ideology and utopia are therefore not simply opposites because utopian elements appear in ideology and utopias are often permeated with ideological content and mystification. Cultural surplus for Bloch has the potentiality of utopian surplus which anticipates, previews, and points to a better organization of society and everyday life, and it is the task of the cultural critic to discern and unfold this progressive potential and to relate it to the struggles and possibilities of the present. Bloch's cultural hermeneutic is thus deeply political and cultural studies for him is thus intimately bound up with political practice.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -- Yoshie