The Decline of Modernism

Peter Bürger

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780745694986
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia del XIX secolo

In this lucid and stimulating new book, Peter Burger, one of the foremost literary critics in Germany today, addresses the relationship between art and society, from the emergence of bourgeois culture in the eighteenth century to the decline of modernism in the twentieth century. In analysing this relationship, Burger draws on a wide range of sociological and literary-critical sources - Weber, Benjamin, Foucault, Diderot and Sade among others. He argues that in questioning the formal relationship between art and life which had dominated the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the avant gardist movements of the early twentieth century brought about the crisis of postmodernism. Burger charts the establishment of literary and artistic institutions since the Enlightenment and their apparent autonomy of the prevailing political systems. However, he argues that the discovery of the obverse of Enlightenment, namely barbarism, revealed the interdependence of art and society and set the scene for the avant-gardist protest against aesthetics formalism.

Part I

1

Literary Institution and Modernization

Translated by the author in collaboration with a native speaker of English, this chapter is a revised version of a lecture given in April 1981 in the course ‘Theories of modernity’ organized by the Inter-University-Centre of Doubrovnik and January 1982 at the Universities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Oslo.

Rationality and irrationality of art as a sociological problem (Max Weber/Jürgen Habermas)

The title needs an explanation. I intend to refer not to the theories of modernity developed in the United States,¹ but to the German sociological tradition represented by Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas. For Max Weber, the distinctive mark of capitalist societies lies in the fact that in these societies the process he calls rationalization comes to full development. This process concerns, on the one hand, the faculty to dominate things by calculation, on the other, the systematization of world-views and, finally, the elaboration of a systematic way of life.² The principle of rationalization shapes all areas of human activity. It determines not only scientific and technical processes, but also moral decisions and the organization of everyday life. The very fact that the critical social theories of the twentieth century refer to Max Weber makes obvious that his concept of rationalism is indispensable for the analysis of capitalist society. This can be seen as well in the famous chapter on reification in Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, as in the Dialectics of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno, and finally in Habermas’s recent Theory of Communicative Action. Besides, we can observe that a certain type of anticapitalist opposition from Rousseau to the ecological movements of our day can be characterized by its attitude towards rationalism in the Weberian sense. If this holds true, a cultural theory concerned with the social function of art or literature must study the relationship between art or literature and rationalization. Let us briefly examine the solutions to this problem proposed by Habermas and Weber.

In his Adorno Prize Lecture, Jürgen Habermas thus defines the relation between art and modernization (thereby recalling an idea of Max Weber):

As the [religious and metaphysical] world-views dissolved and the problems inherited from these – now arranged in terms of truth, normative correctness, authenticity or beauty – could be treated as questions of knowledge, justice or taste, so a clear categorization of areas of values arose between science, morals and art [ … ]. The idea of the modern world projected in the 18th century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment consists of their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art, each according to its own inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the cognitive potentials of each of these domains to set them free from their esoteric forms. The Enlightenment philosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life, that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life.³

This construction, continuing as it does the Kantian tradition, is fascinating in two respects: (1) The inner logic of the development of art and that of modernization are congruent. The differentiation of art as an autonomous sphere of value corresponds to that of the spheres of science and morality; (2) Habermas reconciles the autonomous development of art with the utilization of its potentials in everyday social life. But this elegant construction is not without problems. Habermas does not take into account the historical changes in the status of art, the analysis of which seems to me necessary for a complete comprehension of its actual crisis. What is more important, Habermas’s harmonistic view risks concealing the contradiction between art (institutionalized as an autonomous sphere) and rationality (as the dominant principle of bourgeois society).

As to Max Weber, he gives different interpretations of the relation between art and Western rationality. In one of his sketches of universal history, he understands art (like science and capitalist economy) as a sphere of social praxis equally defined by occidental rationalism.⁴ In this context, Weber cites the rational use of the arch in Gothic architecture, the organization of the tonic system in harmonic music and the linear perspective in painting. Weber apparently views as rational the development of an architectural, musical or visual system, coherent in itself, which constitutes an optimal solution to given technical problems. According to this, rationality would be set at the level of what might be called artistic material, to use the term introduced by Th. W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler. In this essay of Weber’s, art does not occupy any special position within occidental societies, but is mentioned among other spheres as an example of rationalism.

It is very interesting that Weber characterizes the position of art within modern society differently in a paragraph in Economy and Society. Above all, he now lays the stress on the opposition between the spheres of art and religion (especially the Christian spirit of fraternity). Weber discovers this opposition on the following levels: (1) the secular salvation which art claims to provide is opposed to religious salvation; (2) the application of aesthetic judgement (strictly confined to the subjectivity of the individual) to human relations contests the validity of religious norms; (3) it is just this rationalization of religion (‘the devaluation of magical, orgiastic, ecstatic and ritual elements of religion’) that brings about a devaluation of art by religion.⁵

On all three levels, the opposition of religion and art is interpreted as one of irrationality and rationality. Any rational religious ethic has to oppose secular irrational salvation by means of art.⁶ Individual aesthetic judgement applied to human behaviour calls the rationality of moral norms into question, just as, conversely, religion denounces the survival of irrational practices within the context of art, practices which religion had got rid of a long time ago. Because of its irrational character, art here opposes Christian religion. For Weber there is no doubt about the fact that ‘the systematic condemnation of any devotion to the proper values of art [ … ] must help to develop an intellectual and rational organization of everyday life’.⁷ In this perspective, art is not part of occidental rationalism but is radically opposed to it.

At first glance, Max Weber seems to get mixed up in an insoluble contradiction, if art is to be considered as both rational and irrational. This contradiction can probably be solved when we become aware of what precisely the two texts are about. The first text is concerned with the artistic material (and it is no coincidence here that lyric poetry has been left out); the second text, by contrast, deals with art as an institution which comes into conflict with another institution, that is to say religion. According to Weber, in this conflict religion reproaches art with its irrationality. Thus, there need not be a contradiction between the rationality of the development of artistic material and techniques and their application within the scope of an irrational institution.

This solution of the contradiction between the two Weber texts must not veil the underlying problems mentioned above: (1) during the formation of bourgeois society the status of art undergoes important changes; (2) the present crisis of art is one of its status. I want to elucidate this current problem by a historical approach. I suppose that the autonomization of art is not a unilinear process of emancipation ending in the institutionalization of a value-sphere coexisting with other spheres, but a highly contradictory process characterized not only by the acquisition of new potentials but also by the loss of others.

Before we come to the historical analysis of the changes the status of literature has undergone since the era of absolutism, we must bear in mind that we are not concerned here with individual works, but with the status of literature, that is to say with the literary institution.⁸ The concept of literary institution does not signify the totality of literary practices of a given period, but only the practice characterized by the following distinctive features: the literary institution serves special purposes in the social system as a whole; it develops an aesthetic code functioning as a boundary against other literary practices; it claims an unlimited validity (it is the institution which determines what in a given period is regarded as literature). The normative level is at the centre of a thus defined concept of institution, because it determines the patterns of behaviour both of the producers and the recipients. Sub-institutions of literary distribution, like theatres, publishers, cabinets de lecture or book cooperatives and so on will lose in this conception the appearance of autonomy. And they will be perceived as instances where the claim of validity imposed by the institution turns out to be accepted or refused. Thus literary debates are of great importance; they may be regarded as struggles to establish the norms of the literary institution. These debates can also represent an attempt to set up a counter-institution. We may interpret these struggles as the often contradictory expression of social conflicts.

The institutionalization of the doctrine classique in French absolutism

The debate on the validity of the doctrine classique opened by the first performance of Corneille’s Le Cid (1637) marks an important step towards the establishment of the feudal–absolutist literary institution.⁹ The rules which constitute the yardstick of the critics of Corneille’s tragicomedy Le Cid were not yet acknowledged, neither by the majority of the playwrights nor by the public. Only because of the intervention of Richelieu and of the Académie Française, who both sided with Corneille’s critics, did the rules obtain the status of an officially recognized literary doctrine, the validity of which remained almost undisputed until the nineteenth century. In the debate on Le Cid there is, on the one hand, a socially mixed public interested in strong emotional effects, and on the other, the representatives of the doctrine classique who attempt to submit the theatre to new normative tendencies. For the public the aesthetic value of a drama is identical with the pleasure it provides and therefore cannot be rationally explained. The supporters of the classical doctrine, by contrast, have at their disposal an instrument which enables them to formulate rational judgements on the aesthetic value of a play. On the one hand, social norms function as aesthetic rules and enforce a conformity between the plot of the play and a set of social norms, which in this period were not even accepted by the aristocratic elite. The introduction of the doctrine classique thus furthers the affect-control which, according to Norbert Elias, is one of the important features of modernization.¹⁰ On the other hand, the well-known unities of action, place and time submit the plot of the plays to rationally controllable criteria. These criteria may be called rational because they can be applied to all objects of the same genre (principle of universality) and because an intersubjective consensus on their fulfilment or violation can be reached without any problems in the individual case. It is significant that the opponents of the doctrine classique are forced to agree with the judgements deduced from the rules.

The main social force promoting the new literary institution is the absolutist state. Intending to overcome the rivalry of the seigneurs, absolutism not only sets up a standing army and a centralized administration, but also tries to establish a cultural monopoly. The regulation of literary (artistic) production is supposed to provide the political system with a culture of high rank which can serve as a means of representation. Absolutism delegates the formulation and implementation of its cultural programme to the members of the bourgoisie versed in jurisprudence. It is part of the peculiarities of the institutionalization of the doctrine classique that in its beginnings – in spite of its moments of bourgeois rationality – it is not carried on by the strata of the public which may be called bourgeois. During this period, this public maintains an attitude of reception only aimed at the immediate pleasure of the performance. The absolutist state, submitting literature to political ends, fosters bourgeois rationality against the very interest of the contemporary bourgeoisie. Here, we must take note of the contradictoriness in absolutism where bourgeois and feudal moments fuse in a rather particular way. At first glance the question of whether the feudal absolutist literary institution may be called autonomous seems vain, because its dependence on the political system of absolutism, that is to say its heteronomy, cannot be ignored. But things are not as simple as they may seem. The incontestable dependence on the political system offers to the literary institution a certain (but strictly limited) scope vis-à-vis that institution with which literature has been in competition since the beginning of the process of bourgeois emancipation during the Renaissance: the church. Even as late as 1619, i.e. shortly before the coming to power of Richelieu, Vanini was publicly burned as a libertine in Toulouse, and some years later Théophile de Viau was sent to prison because of some allegedly atheistic verses. The rivalry between the literary institution and the church lasted for the whole century; it manifested itself above all in the attack of the church against the morally pernicious influence of the theatre. This attack was by no means primarily directed against the folk theatre (théâtre de la foire) and the popular genres like tragicomedy, but against high literature which, institutionally secured, claimed a cultural superiority. The more the theatre is submitted to the rules of decency – this is the argument of Nicole and Bossuet – the more it becomes tempting and thus pernicious. The conflict about the public performance of Molière’s Tartuffe may be considered the climax of the struggle between the literary institution and the church during the seventeenth century. In the same measure as the theatre goes beyond its mere function of entertainment in order to discuss moral problems, it rivals the dominance of the church. The result of this conflict is of importance for the problem of autonomy. Molière could only push through the public performance of Tartuffe with the massive support of the King. Political dependence, at least in this case, is a precondition for the possibility of literature to cope with the church as a rival institution. Indeed, the conflict is continued in the eighteenth century with undiminished violence: Voltaire takes the offensive by proclaiming ‘écrasez l’infâme’.

We can summarize as follows: the loss of validity of religious world-views is not only a process of erosion but also a result of conflicts, in which literature is fighting for its institutional autonomy. In so far as literature encourages the loss of validity of religious world-views, its evolution during the feudal absolutist era is in harmony with modernization. This can also be applied to the doctrine classique, which can be seen as the normative core of the feudal absolutist literary institution. It is characterized by the effort to submit literary production to a process of social standardization and thus literature is put under the central principle of modernity: the principle of rationality. Obviously that does not mean that emotional effects are abandoned, but their uncontrolled implementation is restricted and their calculability postulated. We must take into account the fact that rationality still remains within the framework of the feudal absolutist st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Part I
• Part II
• Notes
• Index