Ideology of Modernism

     In this essay, Lukacs has darted his criticism to the bourgeois concept of modernism which has forgotten man and society and given focus to the form rather than content. He has brought three brands of thought regarding modernism in the essay:
? Russian formalism
? Existential thinker/existentialism
? Writers who brought stream of consciousness technique.
     These above-mentioned brands of modermism have isolated art from society, they have created negative interpretation about the art and the humanity. The so-called Russian formalist did not care about content, only gave emphasis to the from. Lukacs says that content determines form and there is no content of which man himself in not the focal point. He goes back to Aristotle whose dictum man is a social animal is applicable to all great realistic literature which puts aside all the formal considerations. Man has got socio-polotical backgrond. His existence is determined by socio-economic reality. So, according to Luckacs, the writer should expose the socio-economic reality of the man.
But the modernist writes are only externalizing the psychic mood of modern man at the expense of surrounding environment. Modernist writers say that man is solitary, a social, unable to enter into the relationship with other human beings-advocating the solitariness to be found in the literature of traditional realism as in “Oedipus” and “Antigone”. But luckes is not ready to agree this because contextual factors to make ocsipus and antigene isolated must be understood. These characters were not innately solitary and isolated. Situation and atmospheres made them so. Classical literature has not put the man the way modernists do as man is inbornly isolated and solitariness is the character of man. Lukacs says that there are two kinds of solitariness:
a) Basis solitariness
b) Individual solitariness
a) Basic solitariness: we come alone and go alone no one came with us, no one will go with us. When I am happy, I an happy alone. Whatever are think we think alone, we suffer our problem alone etc. this concept comes under basic solitariness
b) Individual solitariness: sometimes we have to be lonely due to the different circumstance sometimes we are voluntarity isolated that is not other them tiny part of human life. But modern writes generalize that tiny phase of isolation as isolation forever which is totally wrong. The basic solitariness of man must not be confused with that indicidual solitariness to be found in the literature of traditional realism. The fate of people may be a characteristics of certain human types in specific social and historical circumstances. Their solitariness is a specific fate not a universal condition of human.
     Heideggers description of human existence as a “thrown ness- into- being is a graphic evocation of the ontological solitariness of individual which is very hard to imagine. This also implies that man not only is unable to establish himself but also it is impossible to determine theoretically the origine and goal of human existence, thus man is conceived as an a historical being, this negative of history taken two different form in modernist literature.
The hero is confined within the limits of his our experience.
Hero is without personal history, he is rootless and meaningless.
Luckacs is not satisficed with the defination of man by modern ideology as solitary and isolated creature. He says that man is not a helpless and hapless solitary creature but a repository of immense potentialities:
Potentialities
Abstract concrete
Subjective objective
Imaginative actions, doings implementings
Thinking planning limited
Consciousness
Innumberable possibilities
     Potentiality is rooted in life, modern idelolgy either neglects one extreme or merge both in such a way that we can not distinguish any of the extreme. Human life is fruitful if equal emphasis is given to both extremes. Abstrast potenliality belongs to the realm of subjectivity whereas consrete potentiality is concerned with the dialectic between the individual’s subjectivity and objectives reality. Modernist written either relegate one or blur both. If man is incapable of meaningful relationships as in modernist ideology- the distinction between abstract and concrete potentialies become null and void. The ideological problem in modernist literature is that by exalting man’s subjectivity at the expanse of the objective reality of his environment subjectively is impoverished. Lukacs says if the distiriction between abstract and concrete potentialiy vanishes, if man’s inwardness is identified with an abstract subjectivity, human personality must disintegrate, the negation of the outward reality is present in all modernist literatures, it is not other than atteruation of an actuality. The rejection of narrative objectivity, the surrender to subjectivity may take the form of Joyce’s stream of consciouness where abstract potentiality achieves pseudo-realization.
     To sum up, Lukacs shows the modernist ideology as incapable of defining and illustrating human being and thus call it alienated, a social, incapable of relationships. The truth is both potentialities must be distinctively identified and be made the interact with one another so that human existence is realized as social, capable and action-oriented.

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