Reinterpreting History from a (Neo-)Marxist Perspective: Social, Intellectual and Literary Background

Abstract

Northrop Frye, in the “Conclusion” to the first edition of Literary History of Canada (1965), notices with remarkable perception the composition and approaches of the contributors: they come from divergent disciplines; they all attempt to interpret, theorize and summarize the significance of one part of the Canadian imagination—be it fiction, poetry, drama, history or political science. Manifested are his warm endorsement and appreciation of Carl Klinck’s valiant efforts to pull scholars from so many diverging fields. Such a comprehensive or near total perspective on literature as part of the Canadian culture or imagination certainly goes against the grain of Frye’s own more formalist approach to literary studies so vigorously championed in The Anatomy of Criticism (1957). And yet, Frye’s relatively recent gesture should come as a welcome sign, as contemporary criticism moves in a direction away from the purely literary: a sure sign of this would be Linda Hutcheon’s open-minded embrace of “theory” having made its rapid entry into literary studies and curriculum; and to appreciate it one need only to examine her “Preface” to The Canadian Postmodern, a work that includes, as if in answer to Frye, her “Conclusion” to Literary History of Canada (1990) under W.H. New’s editorship. Thus, in spite of Terry Eagleton’s After Theory (2003) announcing, rather prematurely for the Canadian literary-cum-critical impulses and historical projects, the declining influence and currency of “theory”, we continue to use this multiple-discourse theory, not just because it embraces what Fredric Jameson characterizes as the “totalizing” vision that guards against the fragmentation of reality and compartmentalization of knowledge and alienation resulting thereof, but also because such a vision facilitates our writing, or rather, rewriting of Canadian literary history from a Marxist and neo-Marxist points of view and avoids what Louis Althusser perceptively calls the ideological blind spot. Furthermore, Gayatri Spivak, speaking in an international context at Qinghua University in Beijing in 2006, voiced her disagreement with Eagleton’s assessment by citing the staunch Chinese Marxist Zhou Enlai’s famous saying: “It is too soon to pass judgment yet” (own translation). For many countries in which the Marxist tradition and/or legacy has been marginalized or buried, deliberately or unwittingly, the project of unearthing or rediscovering the whole, interrelated past and passed-over history has yet to commence.