Sorry for the late reply again.
Illmatic said:
What do you think of historical consciousness?
It’s a term that makes sense if you accept Marxist categories of analysis. As I don’t, it doesn’t hold a lot of meaning for me.
With all due respect Illmatic, it seems quite clear that you don’t have a clue what these categories of analysis are. Which presumably would be a prerequirement for accepting them or not.
The argument re false consciousness is just going in circles so I will leave it be.
I will write about historical consciousness since I havent done so yet, and I think it is of relevence to the thread. It is difficult for me to articulate and define these concepts lucidly; I will do my best. (it's a long post)
1.
Beginning with consciousness.
There us no such thing as the one "true" consciousness, right? Truth is by its nature multiple and infinite. There are states of consciousness.
Some states of consciousness are necessary for survival; without accessing the states of consciousness necessary for acquiring the basic requirements for living, the individual would die.
This is where Marx’s theory of history begins – the basic premise is the relation of the human organism with the environment. This is necessarily a social relation, since we are social in nature. (The theory of history is explained in ‘The German Ideology’)
Marx took a practical and materialistic methodology -and not ideology - so as to avoid the abstraction, essentialism and transcendentalism in previous idealist philosophies of history. (to put him in context, the basis of his methology is largely a reaction against the mystification in Hegel the Hermetic and Feuerbach the Fantastic)
Consciousness is not a metaphysical concept, it only exists within real activity (praxis). The essence of man is his practical activity. It is immanent and not transcendental. (Marx prefers to start the analysis from Malkuth than speculating about Kether)
This real activity necessarily begins with the satisfaction of basic needs. So activity begins with production (the act by the subject upon nature). “All production is appropriation of nature on the part of an individual within and through a specific form of society.” (said Karl) Production is counterpointed to consumption; together with distribution they are part of a single system (one cannot exist without the others). Consumption also produces, and production also consumes (the simplest example is eating). (Marx really analyses the categories of production in the introductory chapter of the ‘Grundrisse’...short but challenging hardcore magic text).
When thinking about production it helps to visualize it with concrete examples; ranging from prehistoric hunting to industrial factory work to cleaning your room to breathing. What characteristics do they share; where do they differ?
Production produces not just the object of production, it also reproduces the way the object will be consumed subjectively. Within the act of production the system of social relations are reproduced. The subject, engaged in the act of production, is also itself produced by the act of production. (In psychological terms, the act of production reinforces itself, and reinforces the context in which it exists.) The act of production also develops certain capacities on the part of the subject, and allows others to atrophy.
A nice quote:
“The everyday activity of slaves reproduces slavery. Through their daily activities, slaves do not merely reproduce themselves and their masters physically; they also reproduce the instruments with which the master represses them, and their own habits of submission to the master's authority. To men who live in a slave society, the master-slave relation seems like a natural and eternal relation. However, men are not born masters or slaves. Slavery is a specific social form, and men submit to it only in very particular material and historical conditions.” (Fredy Perlman, the Reproduction of everyday life)
Capitalism is quite similar; its categories are eternalized and very rarely understood in a historical context. They seem natural but they are transient results of material and historical conditions. It is often very difficult to even understand how entrenched these modes of thinking are, how they have infused so many aspects of life, how difficult it is to stop thinking within these categories. Being impotent to widen our understanding of the historical moment, our apparent choices are restricted; our thoughts and activities are alienated as we reproduce the same system again and again.
In contrast to this, when our Imagination is strong, we can imagine that “another world is possible”. When we can imagine alternative modes of production and social interaction, with as little mediation as possible from the dominant categories of thought, we achieve a different relation with Time. This is in contrast to the limiting idea of time which we reproduce when still working within hegemonic categories of discourse.
In capitalism time is quantified, it is a commodity; we sell our labour-power in blocks of 60 minutes, we ‘save’ time, ‘waste’ time, ‘time is money’. Time is completely objectified, and thus the common experience of time is either that of conquering it or of being prisoners of it. Within the hegemony of capitalism we cannot unite with time as a single process (the unity of subject and object). We live within a very specific conception of past, present and future and of causality.
Historical consciousness is the empowerment of the subject as regards time; we can sequence events in time in multiple ways, we can break free from circular time. We can engage in a dialogue with it.
In terms of work on oneself this is of immense importance. Simply meditating on these ideas can bring about big shifts in consciousness, which have practical value.
In terms of communication and inter-subjectivity, historical thinking broadens discourse and different ways of relating to others.
In terms of the ‘proletariat’ (that is, all of us who sell our time and do not control production) achieving historical consciousness is a prerequisite for taking the direct actions which will result in the supercession of capitalism at some point in the future.
(False consciousness can maybe be defined simply as the absence of historical consciousness.)
I am hardly doing the ideas justice here, and I have left out the concept of alienation/reification and the actual model of history....
2.
Political approaches to achieving awarness tend to focus on altering social conditions, generally assuming that individuals will ‘wake-up’ after the changes (whether these changes take the form of a revolution or something more reformist e.g. civil rights). Magic-mystic approaches to achieving awareness tend to focus exclusively on the individual. They often imply or state clearly that this is ‘secret knowledge’ reserved for a select few.
In my opinion the boundaries between self and others are not very clear cut (hello schizophrenia). In fact, the very rigid definition of 'Me' which is entrenched and widespread is part of the historical-defined ideology of capitalism (and its emphasis on defining units, on personal profit, private propery, competitiveness and so on). (The Matrix Warrior is itself a historically specific form of egotism which seems unlikely to have developed in any other kind of society)
Within magic & mysticism we find many references and techniques for remembering oneself. Being aware and awake in this moment depends to a large extent on the relation of that moment to the events preceding it. The Work necessitates Remembering, bringing old experiences into a new focus, an awareness of continuity and flux, the faculty of reorganizing past events, the ability to learn from history. And learning seems to be the crux of any progress. If you can't remember, you can't learn. If you can't remember, you won't even know what the Work is.
(also the actual relation between Awareness and Memory, which (id)entity and Red Frog pointed out, seems very important somehow but I dont think I can explain things better right now.)
So, in defense of Marxism, its emphasis on Memory is important because it sheds light on the inter-subjective and communal nature of Memory. Marxism is maybe not the only system of thought where this takes place, but it constructs a very detailed map which is still highly accurate in many respects.
bru no |
