Critical Historicity; an Alternative to Ideology?

Hey everyone, I found myself in the rare position of having a little extra time and some prior research that felt particularly relevant to the current moment. Wait, which current moment you ask? Good question! The firehose of crises vomiting from the White House and far right governments across the world have produced no shortage of current moments of concern. In this regard, I’d like to speak directly to the Trump admins’ latest Orwellian attempt to whitewash US history by imposing their ideologies on the Smithsonian. 

We're talking (briefly) about the Masters of Suspicion; Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, and a little smattering of Foucault and Deleuze, as regards using critical theory to combat ideological thinking.

This is a short one I wanted to get out before heading to Dragoncon - If you'll be at Dragoncon, or in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, hit me up through the comments section of whatever platform you're listening on, or through the PvW website, Patreon, or Discord! 

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Towards an Investigation)”, in Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972

Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, Hugh Tomlinson, and Graham Burchell. What Is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Foucault, Michel. “Human Nature: Justice Versus Power, Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault 1971” Transcript, 

Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, and Peter Gay. 1989. “The Future of an Illusion”. New York: Norton.

Freud, Sigmund, “On Narcissism: an Introduction”, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. ed. and tr. James Strachey with Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb, and Angela Richards London: Hogarth Press, 1900. pp.73-102. 

Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Robert C. Tucker. The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton, 1978.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Thomas Common, Helen Zimmern, Horace Barnett Samuel, J. M. Kennedy, and Clifton Fadiman. The Philosophy of Nietzsche. New York: Modern library, 1954.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and R. J. Hollingdale. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. Harmondsworth, Eng: Penguin Books, 1979.

Transcript

Episode 26: Critical Historicity; an Alternative to Ideology? 

Hey everyone, I found myself in the rare position of having a little extra time and some prior research that felt particularly relevant to the current moment. Wait, which current moment you ask? Good question! The firehose of crises vomiting from the White House and far right governments across the world have produced no shortage of current moments of concern. In this regard, I’d like to speak directly to the Trump admins’ latest Orwellian attempt to whitewash US history by imposing their ideologies on the Smithsonian, to ensure the history on display comports with Trump’s America First policy goals (i.e., white, anglo-saxon, protestant, and let’s not forget that America First was literally the slogan of the American Nazi Party in the 1930s, feel free to check out Nazi rally, Madison Square Garden if you want to check out this horror show). 

As someone with a deep interest and respect for history and love of museums, and some extensive study of the intellectual and political history from the 1920s to the 1990s, this particular move is deeply troubling to me. It was already clear he was abusing his power to exert influence on thought and speech on college campuses, and to shape what can and can’t be taught in public schools, but to now demand a review of all exhibits in what is essentially the crown jewel of the US’ public museums… it’s, well, Stalinist. And I mean that very literally. This is a move right out of Stalin’s policy of Socialist Realism… if you can control information, you can control thought. Or, at least that’s the idea. 

So, first things first, what is historicity? Simply put, it’s the character of a thought or idea that has a real, factual, historical origin, rather than coming from myth, legend, or belief. The term pops up in the late 19th century with Hegel’s (and forgive my rusty German) Geschichtlichkeit, as a study of the nature of history, and carries forward into Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology, Marx and the Frankfurt School’s historical materialism, Nietzsche and Foucault’s genealogical methods, etc. As a methodology, what I mean by critical historicity is taking both the subject and the real world, and their temporal and cultural situatedness as central to investigating beliefs and ideals. Okay, so, let’s get into it. 

Of the key elements of human comprehension and interaction with the world few are more problematic than perception.  Not only is our own situation and readings of the situations and histories of others colored by our particular and subjective perception, but any reading of history, art, music, literature, politics, etc. is colored by the perception of the author or artist.  Numerous factors accomplish this coloring of perception: chief among them are history and ideology.  These two together, in large part, form the basis of our values and beliefs, and as such carry the insidious potential for the rationalization or justification of ignorance, exploitation, and oppression.  This insidious aspect of beliefs and values stems, largely, from cognitive dissonance, the psychological security system that shields the mind from reconciling contradictions between facts and beliefs.  The following authors present the reader with an alternative to an ideological basis for forming judgments of moral value; specifically, they offer various viewpoints on a critical historicity from which the individual subject can recognize and combat the vested interests of the ruling elite, be they political, familial, economic, or religious. I propose that it is only from this critical vantage point that a compelling judgment, which compensates for the subjectivity of perception, can be made. 

The history of human experience, and with it philosophy, art, politics, etc. is often described as that of a swinging pendulum – and yes, the metaphor is problematic. Putnam points out in The Upswing while discussing the faults historians have with his argument, that the breadth of evidence identified makes it difficult to form a clear narrative, and that social scientists have with it, that the breadth of evidence conflicts with a requirement for particular causation, that the problem with the pendulum of history narrative is that it implies natural end points of social movements and focuses political action on finding equilibrating forces. So, it is true that history is rife with both concurring and reactionary social trends, and that there appears to be an ‘arc of moral justice’ that favors progressivism, and that neither make any guarantee about the future. 

As to the pendulum though? Political history is abundant with the ebbs and flows of democracy and tyranny, the history of art with naturalism and abstraction, and likewise in philosophy between idealism and realism.  This critical-historical alternative begins (it was not the beginning, but it was a beginning…) with the works of Karl Marx, partly in response to a Hegelian, neo-Platonist, teleological view of history – that history was culminating toward something. If there is a ‘god’ in this tradition, it’s capital-H “History,” and it’s chosen prophet is Marx. As we previously mentioned, in the “Theses on Feuerbach”, Marx proposes that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”  This speaks to the very root of Marx’s value to any form of social criticism; specifically, it is not enough to merely point out what is wrong or right, critique must exist in praxis.  Philosophers, like artists, exist in the doing – if the dream is never painted, it may well have never existed.  

Rather than conceiving of history as marching progressively towards a final eschatological (the death and final judgement or final destiny of mankind) fulfillment or realization of an abstract/religious ideal, Marx views the history of human experience as practical and material interactions with the world.  From this point of view, history becomes the history of the class struggle, of haves and have-nots, oppressors and the oppressed, exploiters and the exploited, for the betterment of the ruling class. The persistence of the ruling class’ position stems in part from their access to resources, such as wealth, education, and better conditions of shelter and nutrition that generally lead to better health; but more so in the ideological indoctrination of the subservient class.  The exploited class is convinced from childhood through their elders, their schools, and churches that: 1, their hard work will be rewarded either materially (e.g. the American Dream) or eternally (toil and suffering are the path to heaven).  And/or 2, the way of the world is God’s Will, i.e. the way things are, are the way they ought to be, and whatever ill has befallen you is due to your own faults and sins.  However, in postulating a response to the class struggle – the social reorganization called for in the Communist Manifesto - Marx, somewhat contradictorily, proposes his own telos, that the socio-economic conditions produced by capitalism will eventually result in a socialist, proletarian uprising of which the end result will be a utopian classless society.  This vestige of Hegelian teleology, albeit hopeful and inspiring, is the weakest part of Marx’s argument concerning a critical historicity, as he falls victim to offering the same salvational ideology, “once you have done X you will receive Utopian Y” that he criticizes in religion as “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.  It is the opium of the people.”

Further insight into the human experience can be gleaned from Sigmund Freud’s writings, particularly his speculations, which tread the borders of science and philosophy.  In Freud’s account, the struggle of the human condition is within the self first, and extrapolated onto the society – as the social being must either repress or sublimate his desires and instincts or else succumb to neuroses.  As it regards the critical-historical perspective, Freud’s analyses of obsession, narcissism, and consciousness offer an alternative to the origins and functions of religious worship, conceived otherwise as divine, that is consistent with a practical, material conception of the human experience.  From Freud’s work a critique of ideology that accounts for its power over the individual’s perception and comprehension of the material world, reinforced by observational psychoanalysis, can be realized. 

Okay, so, there are considerable parallels between Plato’s essentialist/idealist world of Forms and the religious world of divine will.  Specifically, that there is an essence or ideal form of something that is unknown to us, and we experience, rather, only shadows of the truly real.  In a similar understanding of reality many religions invert this conception to claim that the true form of the self is the soul, and that our life experiences are mere transience en route to an existence with the divine.  What Freud puts forward, in “On Narcissism”, is the comparison of this level of comprehension of the world with the level of understanding of primitives and children.  The inversion of idealism into a human essence or soul and its magical properties parallel the inversion of libidinal cathexes, “withdrawn from the external world,” towards the self.  The believer in religious ideology thus adopts a conception of the world that is only considered sane due to the sheer number of fellow believers.  Their behaviors otherwise, “if they occurred singly, might be put down to megalomania: an over-estimation of the power of their wishes and mental acts, the 'omnipotence of thoughts', a belief in the thaumaturgic force of words, and a technique for dealing with the external world-'magic'-which appears to be a logical application of these grandiose premises.”  Freud elaborates further in The Future of an Illusion how the introduction to the child of rules, frustrations, other such “external coercions” become ingrained in their mental processes and internalized, to the point where they form the very parameters under which the adult feels they can act “as a social and moral being.”  The point here being that the individual cannot even make a value judgment regarding their own life without first looking back upon how their present views came into being, which ideologies, desires, and frustrations have shaped those views, and whether or not the decision they are making is truly their own or the product of external coercions. 

In order form a critical historicity of both the self and the species there is perhaps no better author to turn to for a scorched-earth assault on the beliefs and value judgments of our all-too-human condition than Friedrich Nietzsche.  This is not to say that our beliefs or judgments are wrong or worthless, rather the opposite is true and precisely why they must be unsparingly critiqued.  Supporting this position I think Deleuze’s concept of the free-standing work of art, as described in What is Philosophy?, provides a fresh perspective on Nietzsche’s revaluation of all values. 

Note the authors of The Philosophy of Nietzsche, “With [Daybreak (1881, also translated as The Dawn] begins [Nietzsche’s] campaign against morality.” The campaign is not an arbitrary conflict against morality for the sake of immorality, but rather against morality as it was socially and religiously conceived for the sake of its redemption.  Specifically, redemption from an essentialist, externalizing religion that Nietzsche saw as denigrating the body and the material world.  This was an assault against a morality of decadence and resentment that justified suffering and extolled weakness and subservience as values.  A revaluation of beliefs and morals is fundamental to the preservation of morality, because without a critical examination, morality is meaningless.  Morality, like history, does not exist in essence; rather it is the judgements on the consequences of actions.  The fault with religious morality is that it places as its highest goal the (re)union of the soul with God; it is a morality that cares nothing for self-preservation and justifies exploitation and suffering as a test of one’s will to determine who will be worthy in the afterlife.  As such, it is a morality that sanctifies death and vilifies life.  It should come as no surprise that the same man that struggled against a morality focused on the soul, and its attainment of a reward in the afterlife as an affirmation of morality itself, should also regard the physical affectivity of art so highly.  For Nietzsche art is every bit as serious as existence and in the “Foreword to Richard Wagner”, the preface to The Birth of Tragedy, expresses his “conviction that art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life.”

On this point, as I alluded to a moment ago, I believe Deleuze offers some elucidation as to the revaluation Nietzsche finds necessary in order to affirm morality. “The work of art”, according to Deleuze and Guattari, “is a being of sensation and nothing else: it exists in itself.”  Conversely, morality-in-itself, according to Nietzsche, is the sign of the decadent, priestly morality.  Deleuze and Guattari go on to explain how art must be able to stand up on its own, i.e. that it must, as a being of sensation, stand up – as a monument – of the sensations preserved within it.  However, there is nothing preserved within morality, rather morality and immorality are judgments contingent upon actions that have been taken – they only exist after the fact.  To make a monument of morality is to pretend that society and culture are somehow stagnant, immutable, and unchanging.  History is rife with examples, political and religious, of events that were once considered moral or ethical but have since fallen from grace: eugenics, slavery, genocide, torture, race-based discrimination, the crusades, and the inquisition, just to name a few; and a few that sadly appear to be coming back in fashion.  

Placing what-has-been on a pedestal and calling it morality because of the institution that has brought it into being is the kind of forsaking of the living for the dead that Nietzsche sought to topple. 

Returning to the criticism that religion provides a meaningful comprehension of the world, as I began above with Freud’s comparison to primitives and children, through a cosmogony (a theory of the nature of the universe) based upon divine causality is particularly problematic.  In this sense, religion is a profoundly seductive ideology that offers the believer a child-like understanding of the world that never need offer a more substantial explanation than a parent’s “because I said so”.  It is all too easy, and all too human, to accept the doctrines of Creationism and divine will.  It is far more difficult to seek out information, often destabilizing information, which may force the individual into conflict with their beliefs.  The individual willing to engage critically with their own morals, beliefs, and history must be willing to come face to face with their own naked ideologies, their fears, and their weaknesses, not to mention the real possibility that their beliefs and the beliefs of those they love may be wrong.  It may be true that we would “wish Nothingness … than not wish at all.” But would we truly believe in nothing rather than not believe? After all even Marx’s stateless society, like religion, offers the believer hope in the future. 

I should make clear I am not advocating for the refutation of all beliefs simply on the basis of critical antagonism. As an English speaking, visually-able, non-color-blind, human I am well supported in believing the sky is blue, as all available evidence supports the premise that light reflected from the atmosphere and perceived by my eyes and interpreted by my brain translates as “blue.” Attacking all beliefs for the sake of attacking them begs cynicism and nihilism, which, like the religious viewpoint, denigrate life. A healthy dose of skepticism? Sure. But cynicism? No thank you. And nihilism? Screw off. 

Getting back to the point. 

Religion is not the only institution that needs to be placed under the scrutiny of critical historicity.  Any institution that imposes its agenda upon the people in order to form the parameters of their social behavior that accomplishes that imposition either through ideology or the employment of coercion ought to be brought under the same microscope.  Fortunately, coercive violence and repression is often pretty easy to recognize, although the same cannot be said of ideology.  More insidious yet is the potential for ideology to mask coercive violence and repression, or worse yet to label it as just or moral. 

Okay, before concluding – yeah, this is a short one, but we just had a really long episode – I would like first to turn to something Michel Foucault said in his 1971 debate with Noam Chomsky in response to Chomsky’s proposition of an anarcho-syndicalism of decentralized free associations as the only appropriate system of governance. 

Responds Foucault, in French, but translated, “It seems… that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.”

The risk of forming any type of future institution, according to Foucault, without first critically unmasking the present institutions is the potential reconstitution of the same violences, exploitations, and injustices that occurred under the previous institution.  Whether the subject under scrutiny is social morality, the politico-economic system, religion, or the self, an affirmation of previous transgressions must precede any recommendation of how conditions ought to be. And this is what Trump and the conservatives are getting dangerously wrong with their heinous, anti-DEI impositions on colleges, public schools, and now the Smithsonian. Worse, under an intentional, rhetorical mask of neutrality and race-blindness, they are actively reshaping access to information in accordance with white supremacy and xenophobia. 

Without a ruthless, unsparing criticism of our beliefs, morals, and institutions we cannot know with certainty that they are worthy of our actions.  In order to form a comprehension of the human experience we must begin to piece together all those various sorts of dissociated knowledge and confront those realities which conflict with our beliefs.  To invert the old proverb: judge… for we can only judge ourselves. 

And you know what? Some beliefs do stand up to critique. Do no harm. Treat others as you would be treated. Be kind. If you need to go out of your way and write a 900 page treatise of mental and legal gymnastics to justify the suffering of others in support of your wealth and political power, maybe you shouldn’t be in government. 

Okay, before I go, I want to drop a teaser of content to come. Week’s ‘refusal of work’ is still in the pipeline, but I’ve got thoughts about another current moment issue with Trump as to what some people are starting to call “MAGA Marxism” or “surprise socialism” because… ho-ly shit do Trump’s actions have nothing to do with Marx, but leave it to the mainstream media to have no idea what call his latest fascination with intervening in American businesses after 70 years of socialist-bashing and false dichotomies. So I guess we’re jumping into the history section a little earlier than planned, but eventually circling back to wrap up Weeks and utopias. 

Alright, I’m heading off to Dragoncon! 

‘Til next time…

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