Abstract
Challenging reductionistic approaches to intellectuals that emphasize the so-called social origins of their ideas—the sociology OF culture approach—this essay proposes a cultural sociological approach that puts the search for meaning front and center. Intellectuals code their times in terms of sacred-good and profane-evil, and they provide narratives of salvation by temporalizing good and evil as protagonists in a master story of social transformation. Among the universe of significant intellectuals, however, one finds only a tiny subset whose ideas have actually been deployed to make things happen in the social world. To conceptualize this process, the theory of cultural pragmatics must be brought into play: Ideas must be socially performed, by carrier groups with access to the means of symbolic production, in propitious social settings, vis-a-vis potentially receptive audiences. After considering Marx, Freud, Keynes, and Sartre, this discussion is devoted to case studies of Ayn Rand and Frantz Fanon.
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Notes
The culturally oriented Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci (1971: 206–76) insisted, in developed capitalist societies, that the Communist struggle for material power—economically via control of the state—can succeed only if it is complemented by the struggle for cultural hegemony, which he called the struggle for position.
The quotations following are from Eyerman and Jameson (1995): 1–7.
I am grateful to Alex de Branco and Christine Slaughter for their assistance with the following sections.
In the wake of the extraordinary impact of her literary work, Rand made an effort to upgrade her ideas into an abstract philosophy she called Objectivism. The move contributed something to Rand’s performative power, allowing Rand to place herself at the head of the pantheon of the great thinkers (see, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6gV1MUSXMg) and providing a glossy patina for her followers. Only a tiny handful of contemporary philosophers, however, regard the upgrading as an intellectual success. In my view, it was the fictional, not the philosophical version of her thinking that propelled Rand’s dramatic impact.
“Greenspan’s attraction to Rand was fairly standard for those drawn into her orbit … Before meeting Rand, Greenspan was ‘intellectually limited … I was a talented technician, but that was all.’ Under Rand’s tutelage, he began to look beyond a strictly empirical, numbers-based approach to economics, now thinking about ‘human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think’ …. Rand pushed him … to connect his economic ideas to the big questions in life.” Burns (2009:150) quotes here from Greenspan’s memoire, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: Penguin, 2007).
Guattari (1984: 208) describes this movement in a way that illuminates its relevance for Fanon: “Its main characteristic is a determination never to isolate the study of mental illness from its social and institutional context and, by the same token, to analyze institutions on the basis of interpreting the real, symbolic, and imagery effects of society upon individuals.”
“The Marxism of the early 1950s had nothing to say about the lived experience of the black man. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were of much more use to Fanon” Macey (2012: 9202).
The idea of creating a compound from a mixture suggests that, while providing background representations, none of these intellectual influences retained their original form in Fanon’s later thought. For example, while Fanon’s theory incorporated racial difference, as both independent cause and effect, he engaged in a fundamental critique of négritude for what he saw as its tendency to essentialize and romanticize blackness as more emotional and less rational, rather than asserting a fundamental universal humanity.
“Less than half of the material included in the book [Wretched of the Earth] was actually produced in 1961. The section on ‘national culture’ is an expanded version of the speech given by Fanon to Presence africaine’s Rome congress at Easter 1959. The final section on ‘colonial war and mental illness’ consists mainly of case-notes made in Blida and Tunis between 1954 and 1959, supplemented by a short essay which takes up and revises both Fanon’s 1952 essay on ‘The North-African syndrome’ and his one brief contribution to Consciences maghrébines … The notorious first chapter on violence first appeared as a 50-page-long article published in Les Temps modernes in May 1961” (Macey 2012: 8715–8730).
Quoting here and below from Fanon 2004 [1963]: 6.
Such a classical Aristotelian view points to the dramaturgical underpinnings of the psychoanalytic concept of catharsis upon which Fanon’s theory of violence draws.
For Les Temps modernes, see the May 1961 publication of the draft of Fanon’s critical chapter on violence (n. 10, above) and, e.g., Maurice Maschino, “L’An V de la revolution algérienne de Frantz Fanon,” Les Temps modernes, February–March 1960.
While the elements of performance are deeply implicated in materiality, the exchange between Sartre and his colleagues with Fanon was much more about gift giving than utilitarian exchange. Fanon’s writing had already affected the views Sartre and his colleagues developed about the anti-colonial struggle, which made them eager to put their networks and influence at Fanon’s disposal, in turn. Beauvoir recounts the 3-day long encounter she and Sartre had with Fanon in Rome 5 months before his death. Sartre and Fanon, she writes, talked virtually nonstop. When the three parted, De Beauvoir shook Fanon’s hand, and she recalled “touching the passion that burned within him,” averring “he could communicate that fire” (Macey 2012: 8851).
“There was … the danger that the preface would overshadow the text itself, and many reviews made it do just that … It was as though Sartre’s preface were taking on a life of its own … Sartre’s preface was, after all, a major selling point.” (Macey 2012: loc 8931, 8954, 8983).
The interview appeared in the December 26th issue of the magazine Révolution Africaine (James 2001 [1969]: 156).
See the section “Che reads The Wretched of the Earth” in Young 2003: 121–122.
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Alexander, J.C. Dramatic Intellectuals. Int J Polit Cult Soc 29, 341–358 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-016-9240-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-016-9240-8