By ALINE FERREIRA*
Considerations on the relevance of the Marxist theorist
In 1945, Goldmann posed the following question in his doctoral thesis on Kant[I]: “What weight can the work of Kant or Pascal, Goethe or Racine still have in the age of atomic weapons? What can they still offer us, what can they, above all, impede?” (GOLDMANN, 1967a, p. 19). Inspired by this question, and keeping due proportions, we asked ourselves: what contribution could Goldmann's work offer us in the era of neoliberalism?
Lucien Goldmann's name is quite familiar in the field of the sociology of literature. Mention of his work is present in any manual or book that proposes to present the main existing conceptions of the sociology of literature or the Marxist theory of art. It is not so common, however, that his theory is applied effectively in sociological analyzes of the literature. This occurs for several reasons, either because he was never in the "hegemony" (or "fashion") of sociological thought, or because his theory actually has deficiencies, especially in his analyzes of the novel.
But, in addition, Goldmann was also a “sociologist of knowledge”. One of its fundamental epistemological starting points is that theory is linked to practice. In this sense, his theoretical conception is necessarily linked to material production and the need for social transformation towards the formation of an authentic human community. Incidentally, based on the same theoretical assumption, according to which theory should be thought of along with the need for social transformation, we consider it relevant to study this author.
Considering these assumptions, he developed his own concepts for the sociological analysis of culture (understood here as artistic and philosophical production) that are still used by intellectual traditions today. We refer especially to the concept of worldview[ii], which is used, for example, by Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre, but in a revamped way[iii]. However, in this work we do not intend to address this aspect, which can be considered as one of Goldmann's contributions today.
Here, we will limit ourselves to presenting the conception of human community and everything that surrounds it as one of its main intellectual heritages. This issue has already been highlighted by other of his students, such as Jacques Leenhardt. For this author, the actuality of Goldmann's thought consists of his humanist hope, of the constitution of the human community, which is also reflected in the theoretical discussions, which are based on the constitution of this community (LEENHARDT, 2019)[iv].
But why was Goldmann insisting on the question of human community at that particular moment, and what enabled him to arrive at this kind of thinking? And, going further, to what extent did he contribute to the development of revolutionary theory and practice? These are some background questions that should guide us to reflect on Goldmann's contributions today, so as not to fall back into what he so condemned: empiricism, erudition for erudition's sake, piling facts one on top of the other. It is necessary, instead of patching up scraps, to understand his work and explain it socially, within its specific context, as well as questioning ourselves why we seek to reflect on its relevance. In this sense, to a certain extent, we depart from the theoretical assumptions of Goldmann (1959a), although we do not exactly follow all the “steps” pre-established by him.[v].
Assuming that the theme of community is the cement that binds his theory together (LÖWY, 1995), we propose the following exposition plan: (1) to present the opposition between individual and community present in Goldmann's work; (2) elucidate what “authentic human community” means according to the author; (3) highlight the relationship of this discussion with the present.
The opposition between individualism and community
The opposition between the idea of community and capitalist society is a constant in Goldmann's work and is part of his argument to defend the bet on the authentic human community. However, it is certain that this opposition is not new, especially in the field of German sociology since at least the end of the 1979th century. In Tönnies, for example, there is the opposition between community life / culture and the societal world / civilization, in which the first is identified with the organic and life, while the second is associated with the mechanic and artificiality (LÖWY, XNUMX)[vi].
Another example within this context is the work The soul and the forms, by Lukács (2015). Here, the theoretical basis was neo-Kantian and we can see the opposition between authentic life and inauthentic life, between “true life” (community) and “empirical life” (bourgeois society). The point is that, especially in the case of Lukács, there is no answer to this dichotomy, there is no perspective towards the future, leaving only despair. The two lives cannot be reconciled and there is nothing to do about it, except the tragic end: “True life is always unreal, always impossible in the face of empirical life. […] You have to fall back into torpor, you have to deny life in order to live” (LUKÁCS, 2015, p. 218).
Hence his tragic view of the world, which is even a source of reflection for Goldmann, who will rely precisely on this work to deepen the conception of the tragic view of the world[vii]. Its “applicability” can be seen in his two doctoral theses, the second of which is considered his main work: La communauté et l'univers chez Kant (1948) and Le Dieu cache (1959)
In the aforementioned works, our author indicates that Kant, Pascal and Racine have something in common, which is the tragic view of the world. This vision manages to identify the current problems of society. However, it does not point to a concrete way out in the human world. The “resolution” for the problems posed is usually given by the divine. But, although it does not present concrete resolutions, the criticisms pointed out are important so that this view approaches the dialectical view. The difference is that the latter does not propose a tragic end to the problem posed, but a hope for the future.
But what is the relationship between this reflection and the opposition between individualism and community? The tragic view is critical of nascent modern society, as is the dialectical view. These two are not apologetics for the individualist values of capitalism, as is the case with the rationalist view, for example. Cartesian rationalism was fundamental for the development of bourgeois thought, especially for the constitution of the idea of individual freedom. He placed the reason of the individual at the center, suppressing the idea of universe and community. Thus, what happens is that the “We” of the community is progressively replaced by the Cartesian “I”, which deepens selfish values. Tragic thought (Kant, Pascal, Racine), on the other hand, is an opposition and, in a way, a reaction to this individualism, with a critique of the fragmentation of human beings, seeking to maintain certain community values. While rationalism argues that selfishness is positive, tragic thinking points to the insufficiency of this way of living (GOLDMANN, 1959b).
An important element to highlight is that one of the refusals of the tragic vision in relation to “empirical life” is the fragmentation of reality and human beings. Thus, Goldmann (1959b) points out that there is a demand for totality. In this sense, it is important to highlight that the idea of authentic community is intrinsically linked to the idea of totality. While the bourgeois world, individualism, the inauthentic world, etc. are associated with fragmentation. Our author maintains that the central category of both dialectical and tragic thinking is that of totality in the domains of the individual, the community and the universe. The main aspect of individualistic and non-dialectical thinking is the acceptance of the partial.
However, although the tragic vision denounces the existing relationship crisis between human beings and the world, resulting in an inauthentic life, it cannot resolve it. Here, the future is closed and the past abolished. It is a timeless conception, preventing the possibility of thinking about social transformation. The tragic human being only thinks, but cannot actually act. It is only the dialectical view that can solve this problem.
Goldmann, finally, historically situates the dichotomy between individual and community, from the history of bourgeois society, placing as urgent the need to go beyond tragic thinking, from the dialectic towards a new society based on the communitarian conception. This is in fact the cement of his epistemology, it is always his fundamental problem and his presupposition. Thus, our author's starting point will always be the rejection of bourgeois society and its values in search of community values. However, this search does not mean a return to the past. What, then, does the authentic human community mean in Lucien Goldmann? This is what we will see in the next topic.
The authentic human community
When Goldmann uses the term “authentic human community” and defends it as a practical and theoretical postulate, he is not referring to pre-capitalist societies. In fact, he bets on the constitution of the new from human action in history.[viii].
Em Introduction to Kant's philosophy we find a classification in which the author differentiates at least two types of “universalism” as opposed to individualism. If it is true that there is an atomistic individualism, characteristic of bourgeois society, which places the individual above everything else, there is also a universalism that is opposed to this first one, but in an authoritarian way, which manifested itself through Nazi-fascism. Thus, it is not a question here of defending an absolute “whole” / “universal” in opposition to equally absolute individualism. In fact, the authentic community reconciles the “autonomy of the parts” and the “reality of the whole”, considering them as reciprocal elements. This perspective does not place the organic whole above everything else (when there is a loss of individual autonomy) – as the “totalitarian visions of the world” do –, nor does it defend the isolated individual[ix].
And here we effectively see that his idea is never to return to a supposedly idyllic past, much less to move towards authoritarianism. We reinforce this issue because, at first sight, we could assume that the concept of human community is problematic because it is supposedly linked to a movement of reaction and not true progressivism. Mainly because it could be argued, for example, that this term is unnecessary, considering that the words socialism or communism would be more adequate to refer to a future and post-revolutionary society. However, it should be noted that we are talking about a context in which the terms “socialism” and “communism” referred to the Soviet experience and the communist parties, in relation to which Goldmann was vehemently critical. Using the term “authentic community”, therefore, refers to the hope of a society effectively founded on the foundations of equality and freedom in its full sense, and not formal as it occurs with the bourgeoisie.
It is for this reason, by the way, that it is not a question here of thinking about restarting a new society “from scratch”, but of assimilating what is progressive in bourgeois society. This reinforces, once again, the argument just presented in the last paragraph that it is not a question of “returning” to ancient societies. Regarding this aspect, it is interesting to note what Goldmann (1959b) says about the modern human being. According to our author, this can be read in two senses: in the Cartesian sense or in the dialectical / tragic sense. The tragic and dialectical authors elaborated a new vision of the ideal being of the modern human being. In this case, this must be part of what there is of real achievement in empiricism and rationalism, but from a critical point of view to overcome the limits of these ideologies[X]. In this sense, it is about incorporating progressive elements of bourgeois society and overcoming individualist values towards a community vision, and not eliminating what is progressive in today's society.
Considering then the authentic human community as the new society to be created from what is progressive in bourgeois society, but overcoming its limits, we would like to point out what is human and concrete in this hope, opposing an idealistic vision . First, it is important to note that Goldmann (1967a) assumes that the individual can never live alone. Human existence is dependent on community ties, both of which are inseparable. And that is why its constitution must be collective, carried out by the “We” and not by the “I” of modern contemplative philosophy. In this sense, there is a tendency for human beings to realize the need to constitute an authentic community. The problem is that in capitalism there is a great obstacle to this constitution of the human community, translated through the phenomenon of reification[xi].
The only means of overcoming this phenomenon and concretizing the constitution of an authentic community is found in human action towards its emancipation. Human action is thought of as a whole (of the “We”, never of the Cartesian “I”). This is exactly what drives his conception of history and humanism[xii]. The concept of history used by Goldmann is not the accumulation of dead facts, but the sense of the future based on human action, the bet on it. Based on these assumptions, considering the constitution of a community as a possibility, makes it be conceived not as an idealism, but as a concrete tendency that depends on human action. After all, when our author uses the term "authentic human community" he is referring to nothing more than Marx's (and not the Bolsheviks') conception of communism, i.e., the free association of producers, with the constitution of a society without a state or private property. Now, the question is to know which means Goldmann defends to reach this free association of producers – and here lies the main problem of his perspective, in our view.
By rejecting the USSR as a “model” of society and a means of reaching communism, our author, instead, is sympathetic to the concept of self-management, but in its Yugoslav format. It is as if this were the most ideal possible “model” for the transition to the new communitarian society. Along with this idea, in the 1960s, he also started to defend the perspective of revolutionary reformism, which was based on the idea of the existence of a new working class that tended to propose self-management of companies, since the “traditional” working class would have integrated into capitalist society. This new working class would be constituted by the “new salaried middle class”, in reference to specialized workers, technicians, salaried university students, etc.
This conception was supported by other intellectuals, such as Victor Foa and Bruno Trentin, in Italy, and André Gorz and Serge Mallet, in France (LÖWY; NAÏR, 2008). Thus, the idea that the revolution would come through a violent overthrow of the State and private property was left aside, to the detriment of a vision of gradual reforms based on the self-management of companies that could expand into the political sphere, generalizing for society as a whole. This is because it was characteristic of that time the idea of a capitalist “stability” that would hardly be broken, which was denied by the events of May 1968.
In this sense, we can say that, concretely, at least during the 1960s, self-management was a principle to start thinking about the “authentic human community” (not that it was exactly a “model” of the community, but it was, at least, a starting point for thinking about a new society). The problem, in our view, is that the Yugoslav experience is too limited to think in these societal terms. With May 1968, a more radical conception of social self-management spread, in which reformism was not the means to reach its constitution, in addition to starting from a more comprehensive conception from the beginning, which was not limited only to self-management economical[xiii]. In fact, with this historic event, Goldmann himself made a self-criticism by questioning the supposed “stability” of capitalism. However, he remains in defense of social self-management in the sense of the Yugoslav experience.
Although it is problematic and limited, in our view, the defense of the Yugoslav experience, we maintain that Goldmann's conception of human community itself is still important, it contributes to reflect on the current social transformation. This is because globally, his thought means valuing collective action, considering the power of change of human action in history, in order to overcome the fragmentation of human beings, represented by social classes and the intense division of manual and intellectual work. It is, finally, in his humanism and his commitment to an authentic community that we consider the fertility of his vision that can contribute to thinking about social transformation today.
The relevance of this discussion
Lucien Goldmann has always defended the unity of theory and practice and this applies to his own theory. Reading attentively his first work, which is his first doctoral thesis (La communauté et l'univers chez Kant [1948], later published as Introduction to Kant's philosophy [1967]), we see that the discussion brought there is related to Nazi-fascism, and, philosophically, to the fight against neo-Kantism. This is not done mechanically (reflecting content), but based on the way in which thinking is approached. When we consider his works from the late 1950s and 1960s, we see that the emphasis is on associating knowledge with the problems of technocratic society, marked by the deepening of bureaucratization, commodification, as well as scientific hyperspecialization.
In this sense, the discussions about reification and totality, already present in his first work, become even more important and now in the sense of criticizing not the neo-Kantians in terms of thought, but the “non-genetic” (a-historical) structuralists.[xiv]. This is because structuralism, in terms of thought, represented that technocratic society that was increasingly bureaucratized, commodified and, therefore, passive.[xv]. Nothing is more current than reflection on reification, totality and the need to consider social transformation from human action towards an authentic human community.
It can be said that until the end of his life, Goldmann always associated his theory with the reality in which he lived, with the sense of the possibility of social change. Even though he has no productions from the 1970s onwards (for obvious reasons, since he died in 1971), the main themes of his theory remain current insofar as everything he indicated as problems in the configurations of society in which he lived remain in existence and are still relevant to understanding capitalism and overcoming it. This does not mean that exactly everything he theorized is still part of society, nor that he was correct in all of his analyses.[xvi].
Updates and corrections are always constant and necessary, depending not only on the era we are talking about, but also on local specificities (a country with developed capitalism is not the same thing as a country with subordinated capitalism, for example). However, the essence of his analysis remains current. This also does not mean that he was a “genius”, since it is, in fact, the essence of Marxist thought as a whole (from Marx, passing especially through Lukács de History and class consciousness). Specifically, we refer to the criticism of the intense social division of labor (manual and intellectual), the phenomenon of reification and the need to invest in the construction of the new. This is an essential assumption of Marxism: considering that one of the existing possibilities within capitalist society is that of a social revolution towards the self-emancipation of society as a whole. And all these aspects were somehow developed by Goldmann from the Marxist base.
Considering, therefore, this idea of the “essence” of his thinking, we can say that he remains current, as capitalism has not ceased to exist, despite having acquired new specificities. When thinking about the characteristics of the current capitalist society and the plane of thought as elements that are unified, we find the correspondence between contemporary capitalism and post-structuralist ideologies[xvii]. What we find today is still the fragmentation and hyper-specialization of science, but in an even more accentuated way than in the 1950s and 1960s. of elections), with the absence of the possibility of thinking about a new society.
The core of Goldmann's thought passes exactly through the core of these questions. He brings us tools to reflect that the individual should not be considered isolated in the world, that he tends to live in community. And this both in terms of collective political action and in terms of social theory. Now, nothing is more pertinent than the critique of Descartes' individualism carried out by Goldmann from Pascal onwards in the current neoliberal society, whose main values are selfishness, individualism, etc. As well as nothing more pertinent than his notion of historicity thought in its ultimate consequences – not only in relation to the past, but also to the future.
Finally, considering his intellectual production as a whole, it is very likely that our author would become a staunch critic of the current theoretical hegemony, based on the fragmentation of the subject and individualism (politically represented by neoliberalism). Given his premature death in 1970, what remains for us is to highlight his critical contributions to capitalist society, together with the contribution of other intellectuals.
Conclusion
Goldmann did not study Kant and Pascal because he wanted to build up an encyclopedic set of facts contributing to his scholarship. In fact, the authors and themes he chose are related to his time[xviii]. It is important to emphasize this, because, at first, there is a tendency to think that theoretical studies are not “useful” or do not have “validity”, since apparently they do not have a practical meaning. That's because studying and doing theory can lead us to too much abstraction. And this can actually happen if we start from a reified view of theory, in which it only exists as a means of erudition. Unlike this view, on the other hand, what we see in Goldmann is that theory can and should dialogue with reality (in fact, they are interdependent).
Our author attributes a real meaning to his study. It does not “study for the sake of studying”, but aims to resume categories and concepts that will be important for thinking about the future and its transformation. What we are advocating here is that we make the same move with Goldmann's thinking himself. We do not want to dwell on his theoretical production in search of pure erudition or the synthesis of the history of Marxist thought. Today his theory makes sense because we live in a moment in which fragmentation and pessimism are intensifying more and more, in all sectors of bourgeois society. It is in criticism of this that his theory is still current and can contribute to social theory. And the global answer to social problems is still found today in the commitment to an authentic human community.
*Aline Ferreira is a doctoral student in social sciences at the São Paulo State University (Unesp).
References
GOLDMANN, Lucien. humanities and philosophy. São Paulo: DIFEL, 1980.
GOLDMANN, Lucien. Introduction to Kant's philosophy. Paris: Gallimard, 1967a.
GOLDMANN, Lucien. La creation culturelle dans la société moderne. Paris: Les Éditions Denoël/Gonthier, 1971.
GOLDMANN, Lucien. Le Dieu cache. Paris: Gallimard, 1959b.
GOLDMANN, Lucien. Dialectical Recherches. Paris: Gallimard, 1959a.
GOLDMANN, Lucien. sociology of the novel. Rio de Janeiro: Peace and Land, 1967b.
GOLDMANN, Lucien. Marxism and human sciences... Paris: Gallimard, 1970.
GUILLERM, Alain; BOURDET, Yvon. Self-Management: Radical Change. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1976.
HARVEY, David. Postmodern Condition. Sao Paulo: Loyola Editions, 1992.
LEENHARDT, Jacques. Actualités théoriques dans la pensée de Lucien Goldmann. CONTEXTS [En ligne], nº 25, 2019. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4000/contextes.8426.
LEFEBVRE, Henri. Position: against the technocrats. São Paulo: Editora Documentos, 1969.
LÖWY, Michael. Lucien Goldmann, Marxist Pascalien. 2009. Available at: http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article21214#outil_sommaire_1.
LÖWY, Michel. Lucien Goldmann or the community bet. advanced studies, Sao Paulo, vol. 9, no. 23, p. 183-192, Apr. 1995. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-40141995000100012.
LÖWY, Michael. For a sociology of revolutionary intellectuals. São Paulo: Lech, 1979.
LÖWY, Michael; NAÏR, Sami. Lucien Goldmann or the dialectic of totality. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2008.
LUKÁCS, Georg. The soul and the forms. Belo Horizonte: Authentic, 2015.
LUKÁCS, Georg. History and class consciousness. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2012.
SAYRE, Robert; LÖWY, Michael. Romantic Anti-capitalism and Nature: The Enchanted Garden. Oxford/New York: Routledge, 2020.
VIANA, Nildo. Bourgeois hegemony and hegemonic renewals. Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2019.
VIANA, Nildo. Capitalism in the era of integral accumulation. São Paulo: Ideas and Letters, 2009.
Notes
[I] Originally, his first doctoral thesis was entitled Mensch, Gemeinschaft und Welt in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants, defended in 1945 at the University of Zurich. In 1948, it was translated into French and released as a book under the name of La communauté humaine et l'univers chez Kant: études sur la pensée dialectique et son histoire. In 1967 the book was republished under the name of Introduction to Kant's philosophy (edition used in this work). In this thesis, the author argues that Kant raised essential questions for the development of dialectical thought, among which, the question of the community as opposed to the individual, but from the tragic worldview.
[ii] It was not Goldmann who coined this term (it comes, at least, from Dilthey), but the fact is that he deepened it theoretically, attributing a particular meaning to his theory.
[iii] For example, in the work Romantic Anti-capitalism and Nature: The Enchanted Garden, by Sayre and Löwy (2020), romanticism is conceived as a vision of the world, and not simply as a literary phenomenon. To theoretically base the idea of worldview here, the authors depart from Goldmann's conceptualization, but modifying it in certain aspects. In this sense, they state: “For him [Goldmann], a vision of the world is 'a set of aspirations, feelings and ideas that bring members of a group (in most cases, a social class) and that oppose them to other groups '. Goldmann identified as the main worldviews of the modern era the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the tragic and dialectical worldview. Our research on the romantic world view does not identify it with a single class or group, but with individuals from different social backgrounds, many of whom belong to the social category of 'intellectuals', that is, creators of products and cultural representations” (SAYRE ; LÖWY, 2020, p. 02). Thus, it is especially with regard to the view of the world as an expression of a social class that the authors disagree with Goldmann, but still use him as a starting point in their theoretical framework.
[iv] “Anyway, Goldmann's actuality in 2017, that is, fifty years later, is precisely having incarnated an extreme sensitivity in the actuality of theoretical debates. Never stingy in his analyzes of past events, Goldmann demonstrates through his practice that theoretical reflection does not develop in a vacuum, rather it marries the debates and moods of the day. If necessary, she forges opponents who allow her to reveal the permanence of her effort in the mobility of circumstances. If there is a constant manifestation of this effort in Goldmann's work, it is probably the will to keep a humanist hope alive, it is to believe that it is still possible and, therefore, urgent to build a human community as a must-be and as a must-act” (LEENHARDT, 2019).
[v] By that we mean, for example, that we do not aim to create a typology of worldviews and fit you into them. However, its general theoretical assumptions follow a dialectical, anti-empiricist perspective, with which we agree. Which, incidentally, is directly related to its theoretical basis from the works of Lukács's youth (The soul and the forms, The Theory of Romance e History and class consciousness).
[vi] See especially Chapter 1, item III (The anti-capitalism of intellectuals in Germany) by Löwy (1979).
[vii] As we pointed out in our introduction, we will not go into detail about Goldmann's worldview concept, but it is important to briefly mention what this means in his theory. According to Goldmann, the view of the world is the expression of a certain social group (which is usually a social class), in which the maximum possible consciousness of that specific group is expressed. Methodologically, it allows distinguishing what is accidental and what is essential in the work of a given author. Thus, cultural productions (philosophical and artistic works) are not products of the head of an isolated individual. Unlike the latter, the world view is a coherent “system” of thoughts that can be “imposed” on certain groups and times. Thus, cultural works are the expression of a certain vision of the world manipulated by a creator who manages to express reality from a certain vision in the richest possible way, with a union between coherent form and content. It is necessary to explain why a certain vision of the world was expressed in a certain time and in a certain creator. On the discussion of the meaning of this concept, cf. Dialectical Recherches (GOLDMANN, 1959a), Le Dieu cache (GOLDMANN, 1959b) and humanities and philosophy (GOLDMANN, 1980).
[viii] The term "wager" is taken from Pascal's philosophy and adapted to Marxism. Goldmann (1959, p. 334) states that “it is necessary to bet”. That is why Löwy (2009) refers to this author as a “Pascalian Marxist”.
[ix] About this discussion in which there is a classification of individualist philosophies, totalitarian vision of the world and vision of the human community, see Introduction to Kant's philosophy, P. 61-64 (GOLDMANN, 1967a).
[X] “Pascal and, soon after, Kant, Hegel, Goethe and Marx in Germany, will elaborate a new vision of man, a vision that, integrating the real achievements of rationalism and the empiricism of illustration, is oriented again, however, towards to overcoming conceptual thinking closed in on itself [...]” (GOLDMANN, 1959b, p. 193).
[xi] Goldmann bases this discussion on History and class consciousness, by Lukács (2012) (who, in turn, developed what was already present in Marx's discussion of commodity fetishism). Even in 1958 Goldmann gave a lecture in Toulouse whose theme was the actuality of Marxism. Such a conference is described in one of the chapters of Dialectical Recherches (GOLDMANN, 1959a). His speech focused exclusively on the issue of Reification. This concept is indeed central to his theory in every aspect from his sociology of knowledge (in Introduction to Kant's philosophy he already pointed out the reified knowledge of the neo-Kantians, and this extends to his later works), to his sociology of the novel, in which he argues that the structure of the novel is homologous to the phenomenon of reification (GOLDMANN, 1967b).
[xii] The question of humanism in Goldmann is another central element of his theory, especially in his debate against Althusser's anti-humanism and formalist structuralism as a whole. Our author will always emphasize the importance and centrality of human action in history, fighting the idea that there are structures independent of human beings. On this, see especially the works La creation culturelle dans la société moderne e Marxism and human sciences (GOLDMANN, 1970, 1971).
[xiii] On social self-management, cf. the book Self-Management: Radical Change, by Guillerm and Bourdet (1976).
[xiv] Goldmann proposes a difference between genetic structuralism and non-genetic structuralism. The latter is marked by the denial of history, while the former does not deny history and places the human being as the center of action, capable of changing society. For this reason, in the 1960s, our author began to call his theory and methodology “genetic structuralism”, as opposed to the formalism of “classic” structuralism. The word “genetic” comes from the inspiration of Jean Piaget, of whom Goldmann was a student. This discussion can be seen in a more systematic way in the work sociology of the novel, in the chapter dedicated to genetic structuralism and its meaning (GOLDMANN, 1967b).
[xv] Goldmann deepens these aspects especially in La creation culturelle dans la société moderne, cf. Goldmann (1971). But in fact such criticism was not made by him alone, obviously. It is enough to consider the works of Henri Lefebvre, who also associated structuralism and “bureaucratic society of directed consumption” – a term to refer to the French society of the 1950s and 1960s (LEFEBVRE, 1969).
[xvi] See the defense during a period of revolutionary reformism, and even Yugoslav self-management, which was a failure.
[xvii] “Poststructuralism” understood here in a very generic way, referring to ideologies that rejected all totalizing ideologies, be it the concrete totality of Hegelianism and Marxism, or the holism of structuralism. Incidentally, when we think about the correspondences between contemporary capitalism and “post-structuralism” or “post-modernism”, we are basing ourselves especially on the theoretical contribution of authors who are currently developing the concept of regime of accumulation, such as Harvey (1992) and Viana ( 2009). And on specifically the relationships between the historicity of the thought plan and the accumulation regimes, there is the work also by Viana (2019) called Bourgeois hegemony and hegemonic renewals.
[xviii] For example, in the preface to the French edition of Introduction to Kant's philosophy, written in May 1967 (that is, more than 20 years after the first appearance of this work in the form of a doctoral thesis), Goldmann justifies the undertaking of the book in the sense of going against the current of non-genetic structuralism and anti-genetic thinking. humanist, the fashion of the French academy in the 1950s and 1960s. irrational, at a time when, the crisis of the economic and social structures of our societies seems to be followed by a no less radical crisis of philosophical thought and the human sciences, I would like to formulate the hope that this book will help some of its readers to address The countercurrent” (GOLDMANN, 1967a, p. 16).