Subverting or Unmasking? On Bennett’s Comparison of Formalism and Marxism and its Relevance for the Contemporary Literary Theory and Theory of Ideology
Subverting or Unmasking? On Bennett’s Comparison of Formalism and Marxism and its Relevance for the Contemporary Literary Theory and Theory of Ideology

Summary/Abstract: Forty years after the publication of Bennett’s Formalism and Marxism (1979), the insistence on the mutual incompatibility or even contradiction of these two schools of literary criticism is still predominant in textbook representations of both. This paper therefore revisits Bennett’s important study, striving not only to underscore its on-going relevance for the understanding of the relationship between certain branches of Marxist and Formalist thought – a task which is far from accomplished – but also to establish connections between his research and certain preoccupations of the contemporary literary theory and theory of ideology. However, this return to Bennett is not a mere eulogy. In addition to emphasizing Bennett’s significant insights, this paper also draws critical attention to certain differences between the analysed theoretical currents that he failed to notice and simplifications he decided to introduce in order to construct an undisturbed continuity. By juxtaposing these two perspectives, this paper demonstrates that the relationship between Formalism and certain strands of Marxism, as well as between those two theoretical currents and contemporary post-Marxist thought, can be conceived neither as a simple binary opposition in a certain historical moment, nor as a series of consecutive stages in a single neat line of development.

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