The Institution of Criticism

4

The Task of Contemporary Literary Criticism

After the “Death” of Literary Criticism (1974)

Everything is back to normal: literature is being produced—to judge by the statistics, more abundantly than ever—and books on the market are finding reviewers. The situation is no different from ten, twenty, or fifty years ago. The predicted demise of literature and literary criticism never did happen. Or so it would seem. Only occasionally do we recall 1968 and the horror with which one viewed the prophets predicting the destruction of the literature industry and the birth of a new and better literature. Gone are the New Left’s dreams of restructuring advanced capitalist society through cultural revolution. Also forgotten, it seems, are the critical assaults on the institution of literary criticism.

Was the so-called crisis of criticism nothing but a momentary collapse? A number of the more recent statements on the subject suggest as much. Joachim Günther asserts: “Books are being written and printed, and, despite all the crises of authors and publishing houses, of a satiated public and overfilled libraries, it looks as though this unending process in the underground of the psyche and society, in the depths of the economy, culture, history and human life were not to be deterred or blocked, much less ever eliminated.1 The appeal to the eternally human, so familiar to us from pronouncements of the 1950s, finds its place once more in the arsenal of this “surviving” criticism, and already they are saying that criticism is indeed as necessary as sun and rain. “A newspaper would simply not be able to compete financially if it let itself think that it could discard its literature and review section as antiquated and irrelevant.”2 It is safe to say that this professional self-assurance will probably not be deterred by indications that American newspapers by no means sell fewer copies simply because they do not review books regularly; nor would they be bothered by the fact that even in West Germany the public demand for literary criticism is not all that great: the literary section of large newspapers is, on the average, read by only 9 percent of their readers.

Some commentators even regard it as success that peace and quiet prevail at present, as though the arguments against the institution of literary criticism had somehow lost validity because ideological struggle has abated. All that can be concluded from such a view is that those critics have never really understood the meaning and consequences of this much discussed crisis of criticism; that they view objections to literary criticism as minor disturbances that have fortunately been eliminated once and for all. And yet, if we distinguish between immediate cause and deeper structural grounds of the crisis, there is no reason to assume that the pressing problems of a few years ago have been solved. For the most part, efforts of the New Left to destroy traditional criticism through a comprehensive cultural revolution have failed. The institution of literary criticism today is not much different from what it was ten years ago. The eloquent pleas for a new kind of literary criticism have brought about no change, precisely because they appealed to the subjective consciousness instead of transforming the institutional basis. In truth, the self-help measures of literary intellectuals have only scratched the surface. Thus traditionalists have had an easy time pointing out to the prophets of the new criticism that except for few name changes all has stayed the same. Of course, it should be remembered that this is the bad old, and not the sudden renascence of, literature and criticism.

Any reassessment of the future of literary criticism will have to begin with the unsolved problems of the past. Contrary to the prevailing tendency to repress such things, the only hope for their resolution lies in recognizing these problems as having accumulated over a period of time, as the product of a given social situation, and not as something that can be done away with exclusively within the realm of literature. Short-term solutions will accomplish nothing. This was one of the failings of the early New Left (1967–70), which in attempting to provide remedies through change of consciousness and by challenging rigid attitudes, failed to see that the business interests sustained by the literary criticism were not to be swayed by verbal appeals. Nor were they to be disarmed by daring violent actions. In fact, to a certain extent the demand for liquidation on the part of the New Left even obscured the underlying structural problems in the enterprise of literary criticism. Personalized attacks on big-name critics or individual publishing concerns, or even generalized assaults on the whole “system” (theory of manipulation) distracted from the larger context and, in so doing, focused on illusory solutions. A classic example of this was Boehlich’s postulation of a new movement beyond the realm of bourgeois criticism—a criticism that would reclaim everything which bourgeois criticism had forfeited, that would rise like Phoenix from the ashes to gratify genuine human needs.3 That criticism had completely lost its function, as Boehlich and Ehzensberger claimed in 1968,4 can be demonstrated only if one uncritically accepts certain premises. Only by equating the actual end of Modernism with the end of literature itself can one conclude that literary criticism has entered its final phase. Enzensberger, who offered the sharpest formulation of this problem, was also the first to recognize the limits of the thesis and consequently, with his theory of the media in Kursbuch, 20 (1970), the first to proclaim the resurrection of literature and criticism.5 This theory of the media suggested at least tentatively that the much heralded crisis originated not in literature but rather in the problematic of an altered public sphere. The notion that a revival of criticism could be achieved only by restructuring the mass media brought us considerably closer to the essential problem. Only a theory that locates literary criticism—and literature—as part of a socially rooted hence socially regulated system of communication makes possible an understanding of its historically structured relationships. The Neomarxist Left’s condemnation of bourgeois literary criticism in West Germany (1965-1969) uncritically laid claim to what in reality was in the process of perishing—the bourgeois public sphere. The emancipatory demands, the attempt to do away with the apparatus and its rigid roles and models, presupposed an interest in literary criticism within society as a whole, even though for decades it has been limited to one social class, namely the educated bourgeoisie. A critique of criticism remained a matter for intellectuals, a matter in which the masses, whose cause was supposedly being defended, had very little involvement. The valid claim that bourgeois criticism did not reach the masses (and did not want to reach them), that the media erected insurmountable barriers between classes, was equally true for the Left’s own position. It was forced, no less than its adversary, to make use of the same apparatus. Ultimately the cultural revolution was to remain very much a question of superstructure (i.e., ideology), and one avoided analyzing the processes at the base which formed the background of the crisis. It certainly should not surprise anyone that the literary establishment ignored the crucial changes in the field of book production and consumption as long as possible and even today chooses to adapt itself to the changed relations rather than deal with them critically. Much more serious, it seems to me, is the fact that even the Left has not adequately taken into account the increased tendencies of concentration within the book market as well as the restructuring of production and distribution; or, at least, has failed to grasp the connection between these factors and the crisis of literary criticism. In so doing it has held bourgeois critics or criticism in themselves responsible for a deplorable situation which far transcends the (limited) scope of the accused. Thus it seems of little value to rehash the debates around this problem in order once again to refute the representatives of established criticism. Whether Günther hails the unfathomed mysteries of book reviewing or whether Heinrich Vormweg,6 arguing formalistically against the cultural revolutionary attacks, demands that knowledge of the literary system in its diachronic and synchronic aspects be a prerequisite for reviewing—little is achieved. Obviously we are dealing with a rerun of positions which even in the 1960s could not be successfully defended. The controversy can only be fruitful if it focuses on problems which have been avoided and if it approaches the substantial issues which were still covered up in the late 1960s. Only then can the contours of an epoch emerge which will mark the end of bourgeois criticism. The value of such deliberations are not in the least diminished by the fact that they do not automatically transform the present conditions. That is to say, they should not be confused with actions. Such a misunderstanding would not be without its dangers, for it could lead one to the hasty conclusion that everything will change in the near future.

Accumulated Problems

A prognosis can be reached only if one recognizes not only the phenomena but also the causes underlying them. Thus literary criticism must be viewed within the entirety of its historical context. It should not be overlooked that in advanced capitalist societies literary criticism as an institution has by and large lost the mandate once given it by the public. Since the eighteenth century aesthetic criticism has legitimated itself before a public in which the readers congregated as free and discerning citizens. Yet from the very outset it was a fiction that everyone took part in critical discussion, although up to the middle of the nineteenth century one could at least hope to realize a liberal model of the public sphere. In the ensuing period the development of industrial capitalism made the fulfillment of this early bourgeois model impossible. The undeniable increase in formal education for the masses (the elimination of illiteracy through state schools) was not to be equated with cultural emancipation. What was said to be the democratizing of literary experience (entertainment through mass media, book clubs) proved upon closer examination to be the institutionalization of cultural barriers that have taken hold in the consciousness industry. In literary criticism these barriers are reflected in the fact that prominent professional critics have almost completely excluded those areas of literature which subsequently have come to be known as Trivialliteratur (popular literature). On the other hand, the majority of readers is no longer considered the recipient of literary essays and book reviews. Literary criticism is to be regarded as that part of literary production which is consumed by only the narrowest circle of the initiated. The more general accessibility of information by means of mass media should not obscure the fact that literary criticism reaches only very specialized groups, not a general public. Put more pointedly, the production and reception of literary criticism has become the concern of an exclusive circle and in the process has lost the very foundation that would legitimate its public distribution as part of the mass media.

The latest developments on the book and media market have also decidedly contributed to limiting the importance of book reviewing. Since the eighteenth century the book market and criticism have been closely linked; yet the commodity aspect of literature has been strictly excluded from criticism. Traditional publishing concerns have fastidiously respected this separation: the priority of the aesthetic qualities of a work was the unwritten law. On the basis of it, critics have assumed their judgments to have a direct influence on the literary market. Suffice it to say, only a minority of the profession clings to the illusion that such an influence still exists.

The material demands of the book industry—that is, total use of its capacities, the amortization of invested capital, etc.—have dealt a deadly blow to the autonomy of literary-aesthetic value judgments. Production, distribution, and consumption are determined according to criteria that are foreign to the literary critic—according to economic criteria. Any protest against this perversion of “true”relations must forever remain powerless in the face of a book industry that has long since found the ways and means to circumvent the institution of literary criticism or to make it adapt to its own goals. From the perspective of the big publishing concerns, literary criticism appears as a type of unpaid public relations, part of the requirements in any large corporate undertaking. In certain areas—for example, in book clubs—the industry has actually taken criticism into its own hands. In the magazines and newsletters distributed by the clubs, book reviews and advertising have become part of a package.

This is but one illustration of the process which Habermas has called the decline of the bourgeois public sphere.7 Just as the model of literary criticism upon which the bourgeois-liberal press bases the validity of its literature section is indebted to the public sphere in the eighteenth century for its development, so its present crisis rests in a causal context with the fusion of the public and private sphere in late capitalist societies, as described by Habermas. Given the fact that these changes had already begun in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the structural crisis of criticism can by no means be considered simply a product of the 1960s. The influence of the German Left’s extraparliamentarian opposition (APO) only brought out into the open what had long been smoldering beneath the surface.

The inclusion of the public sphere in the circle of production and consumption—that is, the determination of public opinion by the literary market—has undermined those principles which endowed literary discussion with its public significance. “When the laws of the market which govern the sphere of commodity exchange and social labor also penetrate the sphere reserved for private people as public, Räsonnement (critical judgment) transforms itself tendentially into consumption, and the context of public communication breaks down into acts that are uniformly characterized by individualized reception.”8 The dialogue of literary criticism loses its representative character as communication of human values that are valid for the entire society. Literary criticism is faced with the choice of either adapting to commercialized culture, thereby forfeiting its original claim, or choosing the esotericism of the literary avant-garde and thus giving up any universality of Räsonnement. In the developed forms of the consciousness industry both positions evolve side by side. One and the same organization plans both mass entertainment and elitist cultural programs. In this context we encounter the so-called star critic, whose name serves to guarantee that the new literary product is in step with the latest trends. Regardless of how much the appearance of fame might seem to speak to the contrary, it is also true that the star critic as independent subcontractor of the literature industry is “inexorably pulled into the sphere of power dictated by companies with the larger capital investments and consequently becomes part of the market.”9 The freedom to form opinion is limited by one’s public image. Self-censure confines the judgment of the critic to what corresponds to the public’s preexpectations. The critic is paid not for Räsonnement but for the product, “renowned opinion.” Here it makes no difference whether the critic still believes in this task, constituted as it once was by the bourgeois public sphere. The reliance on the liberal model, according to which the critic speaks in the name of an enlightened literary public, only makes the contradiction between the self image and actual situation more evident. Even the critical writer who takes his or her task seriously and wants to resist the impact of the literature industry gets caught by accepting premises that are no longer valid. The semblance of universal accessibility to critical judgments and to equality, at least in intellectual debates, ultimately hinders insight into the anachronistic nature of one’s own intentions. With good reason Gerhard Bauer notes: “Today”s critical author is still providing enlightenment in every sense of the word. In the face of a massive counterenlightenment that controls most of the channels of the consciousness industry, the critic thus fulfills an important task, as endless as that of Sisyphus.”10 These relationships were certainly not unknown to leftist anticriticism, and the demand was for a new kind of critic. Of course, this did not solve the dilemma as to how this new critic was to function under present conditions. Would it not be more likely that a change of those conditions would itself bring about a new type?

A New Criticism?

It is no longer reasonable to hope for the restoration of a liberal public sphere, as advocated by progressive critics in West Germany after the Second World War. Such a reconstruction can only be realized in certain limited, if not marginal, areas of social communication. The fact that one would even consider its reinstitution within the field of literary criticism directly reflects the relative social insignificance of literature itself. For over two decades a kind of free space has existed here, completely unavailable to other sectors of the superstructure. If literary criticism is to regain a real critical and evaluating function, it is necessary to understand that a new, and by that I mean an activating and socially constructive, literature requires first of all changed methods of production and distribution in order to escape control of the consciousness industry. That the role consciousness and self-image of critics will change in accordance with these alterations is secondary in importance to changes of the basic model itself (even though they may be the most visible signs). Only by freeing itself from polemics against superficial phenomena and directing itself to the underlying structural problems will the discussion of the crisis of criticism make any meaningful progress. The hope for sudden transformation through spontaneous actions (graffiti, posters, wall writings, etc.) is illusory, simply because this counterpublic sphere cannot combat the influence of the advanced capitalist public sphere. The hegemony of the capitalist public sphere becomes apparent in its ability to neutralize anything said or written against it and turn everything to serve its own ends. The broad masses whose interests are controlled from above are unable to articulate their experiences, and their real needs are distorted and twisted by the consciousness industry. But it is precisely the expression of these needs in literature which cannot be achieved through a reinstitution of the liberal public sphere, since from the very outset it has equated general interest with bourgeois interest. “The degenerated forms of the current bourgeois public sphere cannot be salvaged or interpreted by looking back to the idealized concept of public sphere in the early bourgeois period.”11

We must begin with the idea that at present the public dialogue about literary experience, organized as it is in bourgeois society as literary criticism, is of little use to the working classes. Although in a formal sense this dialogue may be generally accessible through the media, in fact the masses are prevented from taking part in it. If in the final instance the goal of this discourse is the exchange of opinion about subjective experiences and human interaction, then we can say that the masses are prevented from participating precisely because they remain alienated from the literature under discussion.12 The wellintentioned and indeed progressive attempt to democratize culture ultimately failed because there was no effort to question the concept of culture in the light of the qualitatively different experience of the proletariat. The most glaring symptom of this failure is the language used in aesthetic discourse. It has been repeatedly pointed out how, in the literary sections of bourgeois newspapers, language has been distorted into a jargon that is almost incomprehensible even to the educated middle classes. And yet this elitist manner of expression identifies only one extreme. Even where critics make an effort to write clearly and comprehensively, they use a language which in choice of vocabulary and syntax lies outside of the experiential sphere of the masses. To this extent, the exchange of critical judgment remains blocked off. Where the lower classes do express themselves directly, they tend not to attain the linguistic standards upon which the public sphere has founded its discourse. This unequal relationship can be expressed more specifically as follows: where the masses, who themselves have not adequately. been reached through formal edueation, do make literature their own, they tend to relate it directly to their own life experience without holding to those rules of an appropriately aesthetie attitude—a prerequisite for bourgeois discussions of art. This appropriation process usually ignores the aesthetic character of a text, thereby violating the rules of literary discourse. On the other hand, the attempt of literary critics to clarify the rules is met not so much with opposition as with lack of comprehension, and this precisely because it is difficult for the uninitiated masses to reconstruct the underlying separation between real experience and fiction lying at the core of literary discourse. These abstract rules cannot be absorbed by the more immediate experience of the lower classes.

Given that the structure of a postbourgeois public sphere can be grasped only in its barest outlines and even in socialist societies has in no way been realized, the possibilities and forms of expression for a new literary criticism can at best be only tentatively sketched out. They in turn have been obscured to a large degree by those forms and methods of criticism which have arisen within the framework of advanced capitalist sectors of production. Just as the advanced capitalist public sphere has been directly connected to market areas, so literary criticism has become an appendix of the culture industry. While the latter does preserve the appearance of a universal dissemination of information and of the accessibility of knowledge to everyone, it nonetheless reinforces in its very structure those barriers between the critical judgment (Räsonnement) of the avant-garde and the entertainment of the masses. Can this wall be broken down? Hardly under conditions of advanced capitalism. Adorno and Horkheimer were correct in making this assessment, based as it was on their analysis of the United States.13 We cannot expect any interest on the part of the media industry in democratizing cultural production and reception, since this industry considers the population as an object to be administered and not a participant in the discussion. This is the relevant aspect of Enzensberger’s media theory—it draws attention to the discrepancy between the potential and actual use of mass media and postulates the restructuring of the apparatus in such a way as to mobilize the masses and make them the subject of the apparatus.14 According to Enzensberger, only through an open, permeable system of communication can the promise of democratization possibly be met. Moreover, Enzensberger is right in saying that the elimination of capitalist relations of ownership is a necessary but not sufficient condition for such a process. The control of the mass media by the state and party in socialist countries is not the same as socialization of the mass media. More questionable, it seems, is Enzensberger’s assumption that the democratic potential of the media will in and of itself prevail against the conditions of production in advanced capitalism. In this he shows too much trust in the spontaneous advances of the masses and too little sensitivity to the current curtailing and crippling of experience. Before the masses can really appropriate the media, they must gradually overcome these deficiencies through a gradual learning process. Here one might confront him with his own statement on the subject: “Precisely because no one bothers about them, the interests of the masses have remained a relatively unknown field.”15 This is by no means limited exclusively to capitalist countries. In looking at more recent literary theories and policies in the German Democratic Republic, it becomes clear that mass needs, specifically in the cultural sector, have remained unsolved problems for Socialist societies as well. Subsequent to the 8th Party Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1971, cultural political discussions focused particularly on the question of how literary criticism on the one side and the appropriation of literature by the working masses on the other could be meaningfully combined.

The Example of the German Democratic Republic

At this point let us examine more closely the social function of literary criticism in the GDR, a society that can well serve as a model for the study of possibilities and problems of a postbourgeois public sphere. The concept of a socialist literary society, first introduced by Johannes R. Becher, defines its goal in a threefold way: the participation of the working masses in the literary process; the elimination (Aufhebung) of elitist and mass culture; and the appropriation of the literary heritage by the working class. Of central importance are the 5th Party Congress (1958) and the First Bitterfeld Conference (1959), where the tasks of the East German cultural revolution were formulated. As we are not concerned here with the development of cultural policy, let us focus on key policy statements. It was Walter Ulbricht who called for “overcoming the gap still existing between artists and the people” and for “breaking down the barriers of the traditional division of labor.”16 Workers were urged not only to take part in the reception of literature, but also to partake actively in producing it. Obviously this attempt to have workers “storm the heights of culture” (Ulbricht) could not bypass the institution of literary criticism. In the Bitterfeld model the role of mediator necessarily fell to the critic. It was a time to develop a discipline that would make workers’ needs the basis of one’s work. In the introduction to his anthology of literary criticism, Klaus Jarmatz speaks of the “ensemble character” of the new literary criticism and emphasizes its collectivity: “This collectivity assumes the already mentioned leading role of the party of the working class in this area as well but includes all levels (Schichten) of socialist society; in short, readers are codeterminants of literary criticism. It is clear that they, too, are involved to an increasing degree in the development of new artistic conventions, in the formation of standards that are appropriate for our society.”17 Horst Oswald emphasizes the importance of reader and lay criticism: “Readers’ opinions enter into the ensemble of critical possibilities for our socialist literary society. At the same time reader criticism becomes an expression of the new quality of this literary society. The formation of standards for judging literature occurs with the help of readers. Reader discussions—just as much as literary criticism— become the mediator between literature and reader.”18 With good reason Oswald insists that Marxist criticism is unthinkable without reader discussions. In the final instance, the process of reaching critical judgment must be founded on the intercommunication of the masses themselves. It certainly should not be concluded from this that lay criticism will finally have reached its humble place next to professional criticism, but rather that this dichotomy—a vestige of a past social form—must be overcome. Criticism is always, of course, reader criticism, for even the specialized intellectual is a reader—a privileged one, to be sure.

As one can readily demonstrate on the basis of concrete literary debates, these demands were more easily voiced than put into practice. In the extensive public discussion around Christa Wolf’s The Divided Heaven (1963), professional and lay criticism coexisted in an uneasy relationship.19 In the long run the professionals had the final word, whereas, because of their unliterary character, the suggestions and objections of the amateurs were not taken all that seriously. It was quickly pointed out to workers that they had not yet acquired the prerequisites for discussion, that they still did not have the proper conceptual apparatus at their disposal. Nevertheless, that such reactions were even officially recorded must be regarded as significant progress. Among the critics, Günther K. Lehmann was the first to comment critically on this unequal relationship between the reading interests of the masses and the aesthetic as well as ideological norms of the specialists: “It was often the case that books were praised which virtually nobody read because they were boring, unrealistic and irrelevant. . . . And critics also frequently rejected fresh and unconventional works which interested people and gave them new food for thought, either because those books seemed to violate some supposed purity of genre or because the logic of the plot, the typology of the hero, or the tragedy inherent in the solution of the conflict contradicted theoretical models or ready-made critical norms.”20 From this Lehmann drew far-reaching conclusions for the restructuring of literary criticism. In place of a systematic, speculative criticism based primarily on textual analysis, he called for a science of communications that would “explore the degree of social efficacity of art workS.”21 The model proposed here is connected to the problem of literary criticism insofar as it presented for the first time a theory of literary communication capable of analyzing the social function of literary criticism. The numerous works published in the GDR since 1965 which deal with the impact of art and with reader interests attest to the growing interest of East German criticism in evaluating changing relations. Since 1970 these empirical studies have been complemented by theoretical exploration of the meaning of literary reception.22 At the center necessarily stands the question of the possibilities of literary criticism within socialist life relationships.23 For GDR theoreticians, the socialization of the means of production itself is seen as sufficient cause for the changes demanded. It is anticipated that a new type of reader will be developed—one who will be able to appropriate past and present literature on the basis of his or her experience in a socialist society. An end point of this development is a universal reading of culture which would encompass all members of society; thus the proletarian public sphere would emerge as a necessary component of the actual realization of socialism. Manfred Naumann underscores this achievement: ‘The ensemble of socialist life relationships, in particular the socialist educational system, has contributed to a continual improvement of the cultural level of the citizenry [GDR] and furthermore to a stimulation of its literary interests and needs.”24

The key question, of course, is whether this development can occur as unproblematically as is suggested here. The recent discussion concerning the function of literary criticism in the GDR still suggests that the overcoming of cultural barriers is not without its difficulties. Although democracy has been instituted on a formal level, it has not been realized and guaranteed experientially. For instance, during the Sinn und Form debate of 1972 a number of problems emerged which were not in accord with the premises of official cultural policy. In what seemed to be a conscious attempt to provoke, Wilhelm Girnus spoke of the inadequacies of literary criticism: “We simply cannot be satisfied with the present state of literary criticism or with the training in this profession.”25 Girnus pointed particularly to the fact “that despite repeated urging from the party, the working class, which has the power in its hands, does not carry weight in literature commensurate with its historical mission and social force.”26 What is missing is its collective involvement in public discourse. In this context, Girnus criticizes the lack of public discussion around problems of literature, without however giving any reasons for this phenomenon. It is only indirectly that fundamental problems are voiced when the conditions of public Räsonnement are presented. Then it becomes quite clear that the liberal public sphere is still the paradigm that shapes the mode of criticism. The desired discussion is defined as a dialogue among specialists. The audience gathered here as the public sphere is in reality a socialist republic of scholars whose experiences are not necessarily the same as those of the working class.

The writings of Friedrich Möbius point in a similar direction.27 His attempt to define art criticism within the ensemble of social productivity is directed toward systematically designating the scope of criticism by assigning to it specific audiences and functions. Distinctions are drawn between the promotional function of criticism (in relation to the artist), the educational function (in relation to the audience), and administrative functions (the concerns of the social contractors)—that is, “the editorial staffs of mass communications, associations of artists, and the party and state apparatus.”28 Here the apparatus envisages itself as the contractor of a public that appears only as the sum of malleable individuals. Decisive theoretical and practical decisions are relegated by Möbius to the area of administrative function, which characteristically is reserved for the party apparatus; whereas the public—the working masses—is considered only from the vantage point of education. The critic defines himself or herself vis-à-vis the masses as expert and pedagogue; his or her goal is the aesthetic education of individuals. “An art critic . . . must guide readers, listeners, viewers to identification or disagreement, even regarding the ‘attitude’ of a work of art.”29 The masses are not considered as the actual contractors of critical Räsonnement. Relations between them and the critic remain one-way communication.

Möbius is certainly not blind to the inclination of professional critics to isolate and make themselves self-sufficient. Although he critically analyzes the “ivory tower of academic contemplation,”30 the overcoming of this condition is still conceived in terms of individual contact between critic and artist, teacher and student, etc. This means, however, that the structure of the dialogue itself remains intact. The professional role of the critic in the GDR differs significantly from similar roles found in capitalist societies; yet the status of expert remains unquestioned. The production of book reviews, critical essays, and historical works remains in Möbius’ model a matter for trained specialists; and no demands for greater contact with the masses can hide that fact. The basis for the function of the expert is still a restrictive public sphere in which the masses primarily remain receivers. The stimulus for action lies with the party apparatus; the policies laid down (articulated) at party conventions are designed to initiate activity among work collectives. Hannelore Vierus describes the effects of the 8th Party Congress in the following way: “Just as the Kirov workers emphasized the role of art and literature in the development of a socialist personality for the importance of forming a cultural environment and cultural relations within the work collective . . . so after the 9th Party Congress of the SED numerous work collectives struggled to achieve a living relation to culture and its enrichment.”31 A statement like this does not make clear whether the “struggle” has been decreed by the party apparatus or whether the seed of a proletarian public sphere—one in which literature would become the subject of discussion directly related to common everyday experience—is emerging from within the collectives. The 6 percent cited by Vierus as that segment of the population actively and creatively engaged in culture is a clear indication that the desired democratization is still very much in the inception stage.32 The dilemma of the GDR is that the state and party apparatus still cannot do without intellectuals as specialists, and this in turn makes the juxtaposition of lay and professional criticism part of the system itself. This contradiction makes itself felt within the structure of the mass media; the media not only permit but actually demand that the public articulate its needs. At the same time they continue to remain the means of communication for the party apparatus and its specialists, only occasionally being placed at the disposal of the lay person.

The Democratization of Literary Criticism

What does the democratization of literary criticism really mean? The answer to this question will decide the future of criticism. A meaningful answer is by no means obvious and can only be given in relation to a concrete social situation. In this regard it is easier to say what democratization cannot mean: it cannot mean the separation of literary institutions from everyday life in order to prevent the further incursion of socioeconomic interests. The critic as spokesperson for an educated reading public or as discerning mediator between artist and reader is no longer a viable model because the model’s underlying conception of democracy is tied to a certain class structure. In other words, the literary public sphere cannot be democratized by merely using the media and other institutions to draw in lower classes previously excluded from such privileges. The history of book clubs provides ample evidence why this does not work. Initially established to enable the underprivileged to participate in literary life, they soon became instruments in the hands of private capital for keeping the masses in a state of cultural dependency. Attempting to organize the cultural needs of the proletariat through institutions of the late bourgeois public sphere is problematic, for the consciousness industry will usually succeed in channeling and thereby neutralizing these efforts. As long as current social conditions in the Federal Republic prevail—more specifically, as long as the media can be used as instruments by dominant social groups against the interests of the masses—the socialization of literary criticism can only be prepared for. A first step in this direction would be a praxisoriented didactic criticism which, by analyzing distortions and promoting legitimate needs, could begin to do away with professional isolation in bourgeois cultural ghettos and direct itself consciously and intentionally to broad social groups. It is not simply a matter of knocking down language barriers; we must also expand the scope of the subject matter. The present focus of the book review industry on innovative literature might be replaced by an emphasis on the impact ofliterature. One cannot conduct a discussion about so-called “good” literature if no one has knowledge of the subject. Obviously popular literature and best-sellers would be a priority concern, since here there is an impact that must be critically examined.33 Of course any such revision of critical tasks will necessitate another kind of training for the critic. It is astonishing how little attention has been given this problem in recent literary debates. The unsatisfactory state of academic criticism and, more specifically, the assumed irrelevance of academic training for the practice of literary criticism, have hindered the necessary reconsideration of how critics are to prepare for their tasks. Based as it is on established norms of aesthetics, the constant emphasis on literary quality is nothing but a hidden defense of the status quo. A truly popular criticism would first and foremost attempt to provide the lower classes—under the conditions of a diffuse public sphere—with the opportunity of coming to terms with their own situation, one which they themselves did not create. This can only be achieved if the machinations of the culture business, of which they are the objects, are gradually made visible. (The warning against “bad” literature will have no effect as long as it is unclear what the needs are which have led to the reading of this literature.) The proper place for such a discussion would not be literary magazines or the book review section of nationally syndicated newspapers but local or factory newspapers, mimeographed newsletters, or even programs of educational radio and television.34

These few efforts will, of course, soon run up against the limits of what the system will tolerate. The competing industrial and commercial interests will exert their influence to thwart and control democratic efforts. For that reason it will be necessary for a popular literary criticism to make maximum use of areas of communication in which the classical principle of the public sphere is still operable. Public control of some mass media in West Germany (radio, television), compared to the United States, provides shelter in a limited sense, as does the relative autonomy of schools and universities vis-à-vis private interests. Anyone familiar with these institutions knows very well how precarious their situation is in regard to outside pressure. For all that, the ultimate goal remains a movement in the opposite direction; the public sphere is to be extended into the area the bourgeoisie has defined as private—namely, control over the means of production. Consequently, a second step would consist of workers gaining a share in the decision-making of the press and major publishing houses. Here labor organizations and unions would play a crucial role, for their influence on the structure of the media is anything but secondary. Of course we cannot expect that the masses will have a clear perception of the problem. This is not only because the consciousness industry has attempted to hinder such insights, but, more importantly, because the proletarian public sphere cannot be simply transferred to a mass media developed by the bourgeoisie. Adapting to the forms of the bourgeois public sphere will be paid for through separation from the very subculture that heretofore has lent identity to the proletarian classes. Qualitatively new ways of producing and living can be developed only subsequent to overcoming capitalist relations of production; prior to this there exists a contradiction between political goal and everyday life. The worker “must choose between his or her own, present identity and a historical, characteristic quality as a proletarian and revolutionary force that would transform the totality of society into new means of production.”35 Hence Negt and Kluge are right in calling the present form of proletarian counterpublic sphere a “self-defense organization of the working class,”36 which while creating enclaves of solidarity to counter bourgeois interests must at the same time sacrifice any claim to universality because of its integration into late capitalism’s public sphere of production relations. Thus at the very moment when the proletariat wishes to realize its claim to universality, it finds itself thrown back upon the liberal public sphere. This is also what characterizes the current difficulties of popular literary criticism: either it makes use of bourgeois institutions, or it is driven back to areas of communication that are not public in the sense of the entire society. As Enzensberger has clearly demonstrated in his discussion of the New Left, the price for undermining the bourgeois public sphere is self-exclusion from forms of communication directed at society as a totality. On the basis of that he came to the following conclusion in his theory of the media: the mass media must be refashioned in such a way as to become the masses’ means of production—and this not only in a formal sense, through nationalization, but through actual appropriation of tools and technology. Enzensberger’s proposal is itself not entirely free of the Aporie it describes, for it assumes a condition which the masses have not yet reached and fails to show how the prevailing structure of the public sphere is to be overcome. The question of what the basis of experience should be from which the masses are to learn an emancipated use of the media if the intelligentsia does not assume the task of organizing new forms of decentralized communication remains unanswered. Yet, more than any other social group, the intelligentsia is inextricably bound to the consciousness industry. In this it retains its freedom to critique the system, but not to abolish it—an act that would amount to economic suicide. Where the intelligentsia succeeds in establishing contact with the masses, it is able to function in an advisory and enlightening way, but it can hardly constitute a counterpublic sphere.

The beginnings of a socialized literary criticism have begun to emerge in the most recent forms of self-organization among writing workers. Whereas Gruppe 61 was still conceived as a bourgeois association that chose the working world as the subject of study, within the workers’ literary workshops (Werkkreis) forms of organization have developed which break through the context of the bourgeois public sphere (without being, of course, immune to getting pulled into it). They thereby destroy a definition of literature, peculiar to the bourgeois public sphere, which sees itself as a form of communication divorced from real life experience. The workshops no longer wish to provide insights into the living conditions of a particular social class but rather seek to mobilize this class for its own literary activity and thereby construct a literary dialogue in which those being depicted comprehend their own situation. “Workers and white collar workers write as ‘wage earners’ for workers and white-collar workers, in order to promote and develop class-consciousness and bring about the solidarity resulting from it.”37 Clearly this program contains the call for a new conception of literary criticism. Further development is yet to come. If the movement is not to be confined merely to primary groups where personal contact and communication are possible, new forms for establishing dialogue in literary criticism must be considered.