Svět Literatury (Oct 2017)
Distance, iluze, prokletí zisku. Problémy (nejen) novohistorické symbolické ekonomie // Distance, illusion, the curse of gain: problems of (not only) the new historical symbolic economy
Abstract
In this article, the question of the specific logic underlying the New Historical conception of the relation between text and context leads, first, to the exploration of the extent to which Stephen Greenblatt builds his analysis of the English Renaissance theatre on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological conception of general economy of practices and symbolic goods. It is shown, secondly, how the New Historical latent conception of symbolic economy is built on the precondition of heteronomy of different social and cultural fields in the early modern period. Also, it is pointed out how New Historicism develops a self-reflective strategy within its historical epistemology by incorporating itself into the tradition of cultural critique born in the context of the “conquest” of the New World whereby a category of cultural difference was generated. Thirdly, both conceptions of symbolic economy (Bourdieu’s and Greenblatt’s) are compared to the project of Georges Bataille of “accursed share”, developed in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and his outline of a peculiar logic of general economy, which negates the very foundations of economic thinking. It is explained how all three conceptions are based on Marcel Mauss’s “discovery” of the economy of gift in archaic societies (later critiques of Mauss’s interpretation of the ethnographic material are taken into account). Bataille’s perspective of general economy is followed, where various historical societies face the problem of surplus and where the consumption of excessive resources acquires different forms of creativity in art, and destructivity in war and sacrifice. Bataille’s “delirant vision” (Goux) is taken as providing a possible critical angle on the limits of the “symbolic economies” of New Historicism and Bourdieu’s sociology not only as their analytical tools, but also as part of their own foundations as scholarly projects. Finally, the New Historical relation to the rhetorical tradition is understood as a moment whereby the limits of its symbolic economy (its subordination to the logic of capital accumulation) might be paradoxically transcended.
