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Against Bleak Liberalism: Reclaiming Left Aesthetic at the 2009 Kane Lecture
Amanda Anderson
Anderson explained further that this bifurcation between radical and liberal aesthetics—both of which characterize liberalism—actually results from a pair of conflicts within liberal thought itself. First, liberalism is characterized by commitment to both the individual and to society (especially social systems like democracy), which result in conflicting demands. On the one hand, liberalism values the individual and puts moral responsibility on the individual actor. On the other hand, the value liberalism places on social institutions shows a belief in the dominance of the social over the individual. The second liberal conflict Anderson identified has to do with liberalism's skeptical habit of mind, which encourages openness and transparency while constantly critically interrogating belief systems and tradition. This aspect of liberalism is partially responsible for the politically unproductive "radical" elements of the liberal aesthetic Anderson critiques, and it makes it hard to implement the kind of practical action for social change with the "society" aspects of the first liberal dichotomy advocates. The first pair has to do with competing explanations of how social change occurs, while the second issue describes an ideological commitment within liberalism that makes it difficult to implement a liberal program of action.
After setting the stage for her argument with this critique of the internal contradictions of liberalism, Anderson analyzed two Victorian novels—George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and Charles Dickens' Bleak House-to show how narrative techniques in these novels allow liberal, realist literature to encompass both the kind of radical individualism advocated by poststructuralist literary criticism and the kind of structural, procedural democracy advocated by liberal politics.
In her analysis of Daniel Deronda, Anderson explained how Eliot takes up the question of how to make an active life continually critical and reflective. Eliot takes this up on a formal level, using two narrators—one who takes the long, "social" view, and one who is an individual character embedded in the story—to encompass both the individual and the social view liberalism calls for. The plot of Daniel Deronda takes up the issue of the impasse liberal skepticism can create, featuring a protagonist who is attracted to ideologues whose doctrines represent an active, lived belief, but who is also skeptical of the their dogmas, tempering blind adherence with the kind of debate, reflection, and interpretation which characterize the liberal habit of mind.
Turning to Bleak House, Anderson identified a narrative structure similar to Eliot's: Dickens also uses a first-person narrator within the story—the character of Esther Summerson—as well as a third-person omniscient narrator representing the voice of society to represent both the individual and social commitments of liberalism. The third-person narrator represents the determinism liberal politics are often accused of, depicting the social works as an institution characterized by inertia and self-reproducing bureaucratic self-servingness. However, the intervention of Esther's first-person narrative emphasizes the effect the individual as an active moral agent can exert on bureaucratic social systems, emphasizing the motivating power love can have for the individual within society. Anderson emphasizes that both of these perspectives are necessary for creating an aesthetic that addresses all of liberalism's theoretical commitments, and that Dickens' novel is particularly valuable for providing dual perspectives on Bleak House characters who are described in both narratives.
The narrative unity that Daniel Deronda and Bleak House provide suggests a way in which the value liberalism places on the individual and on society/social order can be represented coherently in a politically conscious liberal aesthetic, where the presence of both individual voice and a voice representing society curbs the excesses and augments the shortcomings of each. These Victorian novels exemplify the self-reflexivity that characterizes much Victorian literature. They suggest a way to counter systems which are intended to be progressive but which can threaten the individual, mediating between bleak assessments and idealizing aspiration.
Amanda Anderson is the Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and Chair of the Department at Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in critical theory and nineteenth-century British literature and culture. She received her Ph.D. in English from Cornell University and taught at the University of Illinois before moving to Hopkins in 1999. Her work has focused on questions of modern self-understanding, disciplinary methodology, and the place of critique and argumentation across philosophy and literature (with a special emphasis on liberalism and proceduralism). She is particularly interested in the legacies of philosophical modernity, the normative bases of contemporary theories, and the relation between formal argument and informing ethos (style, character, method). She is the author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory (Princeton, 2006); The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (Princeton, 2001); and Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (Cornell, 1993). She has also co-edited, with Joseph Valente, Disciplinarity at the Fin de Siècle (Princeton, 2002). At Hopkins, Anderson's recent graduate teaching has included courses on forms of argument in contemporary theory; Victorian internationalism; Nineteenth-century realism; literary theory; and ethics and aesthetics. At the undergraduate level she teaches literary theory and a variety of topics in nineteenth-century literature.
