History and Repetition

Kojin Karatani, Seiji Lippit

• Editorial: Columbia University Press
• Año: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780231528658
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: Asian History

Kojin Karatani wrote the essays in History and Repetition during a time of radical historical change, triggered by the collapse of the Cold War and the death of the Showa emperor in 1989. Reading Karl Marx in an original way, Karatani developed a theory of history based on the repetitive cycle of crises attending the expansion and transformation of capital. His work led to a rigorous analysis of political, economic, and literary forms of representation that recast historical events as a series of repeated forms forged in the transitional moments of global capitalism.

History and Repetition cemented Karatani's reputation as one of Japan's premier thinkers, capable of traversing the fields of philosophy, political economy, history, and literature in his work. The first complete translation of History and Repetition into English, undertaken with the cooperation of Karatani himself, this volume opens with his innovative reading of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, tracing Marx's early theoretical formulation of the state. Karatani follows with a study of violent crises as they recur after major transitions of power, developing his theory of historical repetition and introducing a groundbreaking interpretation of fascism (in both Europe and Japan) as the spectral return of the absolutist monarch in the midst of a crisis of representative democracy.

For Karatani, fascism represents the most violent materialization of the repetitive mechanism of history. Yet he also seeks out singularities that operate outside the brutal inevitability of historical repetition, whether represented in literature or, more precisely, in the process of literature's demise. Closely reading the works of Oe Kenzaburo, Mishima Yukio, Nakagami Kenji, and Murakami Haruki, Karatani compares the recurrent and universal with the singular and unrepeatable, while advancing a compelling theory of the decline of modern literature. Merging theoretical arguments with a concrete analysis of cultural and intellectual history, Karatani's essays encapsulate a brilliant, multidisciplinary perspective on world history.

1

When the communist system collapsed at the end of the 1980s and—as symbolized by Francis Fukuyama’s (1998) assertion of “the end of history”—an optimistic outlook based on the globalization of representative democracy and liberal market economics was proclaimed, it appeared as if works by Marx such as Capital or The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte had entirely lost their meaning. Yet if anything, it was at that point that these works began to emit a dull yet powerful luster. Since then, we have witnessed a worldwide structural recession and the dysfunction of representative democracy. This does not portend, however, the collapse of capitalism or of the modern nation-state. Rather, it exposes the fact that history exists within a kind of repetition compulsion.

It is precisely the problem of such a repetition compulsion that Capital and The Eighteenth Brumaire address. What Marx grasped in Capital is the repetition compulsion inherent in capital’s movement toward accumulation. Capital is driven to self-reproduction through a ceaseless process of differentiation, and this process is unable to avoid the repetitive business cycle of recession, prosperity, economic crisis, recession. For its part, The Eighteenth Brumaire elucidates the repetition compulsion that cannot be resolved by the political form of the modern nation-state, a repetition compulsion that is in fact inevitably set in motion by the very attempt to resolve it. What must be recognized in the 1990s is that we still find ourselves in such a repetition compulsion.

An earlier version of this chapter was translated by Sabu Kohso as “Representation and Repetition: The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Revisited” (Karatani, n.d.).

For example, there were many who predicted that in reference to the emergence of a global economic crisis and the breakdown of the parliamentary system, the 1990s would resemble the 1930s. This type of thinking may appear to be nothing more than the familiar catastrophism on the part of the Left. But in the present context, at a time when the old-line Left has fallen from grace, I think this problem is worth serious scrutiny. This type of repetition points to the approximately sixty-year business cycle in global capitalism known as the Kondratieff wave.¹ Seen from an economic perspective, there was a transition to “late capitalism” in the 1930s; sixty years earlier, in the 1870s, there was a transition from liberalism to imperialism. In this sense, the 1990s will no doubt give rise to the transition to a global market economy. My intent, however, is not to examine this phenomenon in detail here. What I am interested in analyzing is the repetition compulsion that transcends the particular differences of each of these historical moments, and which in fact is the basis for the creation of new stages themselves.

Repetition in history does not signify the recurrence of the same events, for repetition is possible only in terms of form (structure) and not event (content). Events themselves are able to evade repetition, whereas a given structure—such as the business cycle—is unable to do so. This is precisely the type of repetition compulsion that I take up here. As Freud wrote, the compulsion to repeat marks the return of the repressed that can never be remembered; instead of being remembered, it is repeated in the present. What we are able to remember is nothing more than events. For this reason, to compare the events of the 1870s, 1930s, and 1990s is no doubt to lose sight of the “return of the repressed” that exists there. In order to see this process, we must turn to Capital and especially to The Eighteenth Brumaire. After all, from the very opening passages of this latter text, Marx problematizes the question of repetition in history.

What then does “the repressed” signify in this context? The answer is intertwined with the question of representation in the parliamentary system as well as in the capitalist economy, as mentioned at the outset. It is true that these systems are “repressive.” Their compulsion to repeat, however, is not based on that type of repression. Instead, the “repressed” that remains absolutely unrepresentable is the “hole” that makes such systems of representation possible. This hole is not in any way invisible but in fact exists everywhere. Yet for that very reason, its nature as a hole is hidden.

In the capitalist economy, for example, one can say that money is just such a hole. In Capital, Marx made clear that money is a being—or rather a Heideggerean being-as-nothingness—that is driven to a perpetual movement of self-reproduction exceeding any human will. Classical economics mocked the perversity of the bullionist (the mercantilist), who worships money. Yet in times of financial panic, when the system of trust has collapsed, it is precisely money to which people rush. For classical or neoclassical economists, money is nothing more than a standard to express value, a means of payment—in other words, a visible “being.” For just this reason, however, that which makes it possible for money, as a being = nothing (or to put it another way, as a “thing”), to exist in the commodity form (the value form) is concealed. It is in times of economic crisis—whether or not the crisis itself comes into being in dramatic fashion—that people are receptive to it. At such times, however, people kneel down before money. At that moment, money is not merely a thing but rather a sublime fetish. To put it conversely, money exists as something unrepresentable, and it is during the economic crisis as repetition compulsion that people experience this.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire, the “hole” that exists in the system of representation is the “king” who was banished by this system. We see that in its place, the “emperor” Bonaparte is restored to life. Kings, emperors, and presidents actually exist, just as money exists. But what is important is the fact that they are the “nothingness of being” that makes possible the system of representation. For this reason, it is not important who the “king” or “emperor” is, or even whether they are actually called king or emperor. What is at stake is that the parliamentary (representative) system created in modern times contains a hole that can never be filled, one that exists quite apart from the actual, visible king, president, or emperor; furthermore, it is precisely this hole that is repeated as the “return of the repressed.”

The reason that I take up The Eighteenth Brumaire here is that it analyzes as a symptom what was repeated in the 1870s and the 1930s and that is likely being repeated in the 1990s. The events in France that it examines contain something that prefigures the later phenomena. It is not the events themselves, however, that lead me to believe this but rather Marx’s penetrating analysis of them. Undeniably, The Eighteenth Brumaire is a journalistic work analyzing the contemporaneous French political situation; from the standpoint of modern-day historiography, it is bound to be inadequate. That one must consider more complex factors regarding the actual Louis Bonaparte or the Second Empire is self-evident. What I find in The Eighteenth Brumaire, however, is a fundamental consideration of the state, rather than actual history. This is similar to the relationship between Capital and British economic history. Capital does of course consider British economic history as its source material, but one can—and should—read Capital quite apart from it.

In Capital, Marx attempted to explicate the phantasmatic system organized by money. Nevertheless, this system should not be designated as the economic base. Instead, it belongs to the superstructure, organizing as well as concealing the economic base; in other words, it is the system of representation. For precisely this reason, it continually maintains within it the danger of collapse. For its part, The Eighteenth Brumaire takes up the unavoidable danger contained in another kind of system of representation, that of representative democracy. If Capital engaged economy as a question of representation, The Eighteenth Brumaire engages politics along the same lines. Similarly, if Capital is a critique of modern economics, The Eighteenth Brumaire is a critique of modern political science. Furthermore, in Bonapartism the two forms of representation come together. Thus the problems taken up by The Eighteenth Brumaire not only belong to the past but also emerge once more in the fascism of the 1930s as well as in the state of affairs since the 1990s.

There are several advantages to taking The Eighteenth Brumaire as a starting point. In considering 1930s fascism, for example, we should not think of it as a phenomenon specific only to Germany and Italy, for we would then lose sight of problems that emerged in the 1930s on a global scale. Furthermore, such a narrow focus would not provide an opportunity to think about the question of “repetition” in the 1990s. For, as I have already stated, events themselves cannot be repeated. In this sense, fascism would be considered merely a problem of the past. However, as long as the problems that burden the parliamentary system and the capitalist economy do not disappear, the problems of the past will continue to linger in the future.

The Eighteenth Brumaire is, for example, an indispensable text for understanding the fascism of 1930s Japan. Theories of fascism tend to be modeled on the experience of Germany and Italy, and such models do not necessarily apply smoothly to the Japanese case. As a result, nonsensical assertions such as those denying the existence of fascism in Japan are able to gain a fair amount of currency. There is, however, a limit to how much the concept of fascism alone can explain the phenomenon that emerged in advanced capitalist countries in the 1930s. This phenomenon was, in the first place, a counterrevolution in reaction to the Russian Revolution. In other words, it had to contain a certain degree of socialism itself. The movement of counterrevolution was spurred on by the Great Depression of the 1930s. For example, in America a president—Roosevelt—emerged who represented all parties and classes and who propelled wartime policy. This was not fascism, but neither was it liberalism. What is necessary in order to see such a phenomenon from a universal viewpoint? The answer is The Eighteenth Brumaire (I address the Japanese case in chapter 2).

The Eighteenth Brumaire is filled with insights that make possible a fundamental analysis not only of the imperialism of the 1870s and the fascism of the 1930s but also of the new state of affairs that has emerged since the 1990s. For example, in The Eighteenth Brumaire, Bonaparte’s seizing of power is preceded by the collapse of the “Left” in 1848. This fact, despite differences in historical particulars, is also held in common by the 1870s, the 1930s, and the 1990s. To put it simply, I believe that fascism is one form of Bonapartism. But what is important is to see this as a dynamic process of the sort depicted in The Eighteenth Brumaire. Otherwise, the result would be nothing more than the production of another sterile definition.

For example, Engels defined Bonapartism as follows. In the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, when a balance of power emerges between them and neither is able to seize state power, a temporary state power that maintains a certain autonomy from both is established. For Engels, Bonapartism refers to the character of an autocracy formed in this manner. Marxists have tended to follow this definition of Bonapartism without properly reading The Eighteenth Brumaire.

If one is talking only of a balance of class power, however, then one can also say that the absolutist monarchy was established in the equilibrium between feudal forces and the bourgeoisie. For this reason, one cannot understand the distinguishing feature of Bonapartism only by the fact that class conflict had shifted to that between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The difference between absolutist monarchy and Bonapartism—which emerges from within the bourgeois state formed through the overthrow of the absolutist monarchy—exists above all in the process of how the class equilibrium is achieved. It is obvious that in the latter case it is realized through the representative system based on popular elections and through the coalition of various political parties.² And, without this basic understanding, it is impossible to grasp the meaning not only of Bonapartism but also of the subsequent forms of counterrevolution, including fascism.

2. The Question of the Representative System

In The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx considers the question of representation on at least five different levels. The first is that of the parliamentary (representative) system. The February Revolution of 1848 gave birth for the first time to popular elections in a republic that had overthrown the monarchal system. In truth, however, it was this parliament that gave rise to the strange events that occurred thereafter. The events described in The Eighteenth Brumaire are unthinkable outside the system of popular suffrage. Marx points out the existence of actual social classes in the background of such a representative system. And subsequently, Engels would view Marx’s great achievement as the discovery of the “laws of history,” whereby in the background of political, religious, philosophical, and other ideological representations there exist socioeconomic class structures and conflict.

Yet what Marx actually discerned in these historical events was, conversely, a phenomenon that appears to advance independently of, or even counter to, such a socioeconomic class structure, and he tried to explicate its functioning. Clearly this function resides in the representative system. As Hans Kelsen would later state, in contrast to the assemblies of estates, “representation” in the parliament based on popular suffrage was nothing more than a fiction.³ In other words, there can be no necessary relationship between those who represent and those who are represented. Marx emphasizes the independence of the political parties and their discourse from actual classes. Or rather, the latter constitute what Kenneth Burke refers to as “class unconsciousness,” and they are rendered conscious as “classes” only in the place of the former’s discourse (1966:70). This is also clear from Marx’s comments on smallholder peasants. First, he explains the arbitrariness of the relationship between the representatives and the represented as follows:

Only one must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven from earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent. . . .

The parliamentary party was not only dissolved into its two great factions, each of these factions was not only split up within itself, but the party of Order in parliament had fallen out with the party of Order outside parliament. The spokesmen and scribes of the bourgeoisie, its platform and its press, in short, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, the representatives and the represented, faced one another in estrangement and no longer understood one another. (Marx 1963:50–51, 102–3)

The fact that the relationship between the “representatives” and the “represented” is in this way fundamentally arbitrary made it possible for the industrial bourgeoisie as well as other classes to abandon their original “representatives” in favor of Bonaparte. On February 4, 1848, the various parties appeared as differences between “representatives”—that is, in the place of discourse. Three years later, however, Bonaparte seized power as someone representing everyone. Marx rejects reducing this to Bonaparte’s own ideas, strategies, or character. None of these perspectives can explain the secret of how Louis Bonaparte—who, on February 4, 1848, had nothing to recommend him other than the fact that he was Napoléon’s nephew—was able to attain the seat of power.

In Capital, Marx says that it is easy to see that money is a commodity, but that the real problem is to explain how and why a commodity is able to become money. He makes a similar statement with regard to Bonaparte. In response to Victor Hugo, who heaped “bitter and witty invective” upon Bonaparte, Marx writes that he will “demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part”...