Totality, Revisited

crystal bartolovichMany of my fellow contributors are writing-importantly-about the context and impact of the conference that gave rise to the edited volume Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture.I am focusing instead on the ongoing implications for intellectuals of the volume itself.Reading edited collections from earlier moments can feel rather like opening a time capsule.Some items are still familiar, some strange, and many both at once.When Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture was first published in 1988, "theory," the humanities, and universities were situated differently in the world (albeit by no means homogeneously!), or, to announce my main point straightaway, in capitalism.Though poststructuralism and the New Social Movements were challenging Marxist "totality" in the 1980s, there was not yet a "New Materialism" (at least not under that banner) nor were state legislatures and organized right-wing groups attacking the university in general and the humanities in particular with the vigor and success they are now in the United States (though stirrings, especially in state defunding efforts as well as in the long-term planning of the Koch Foundation were underway and right-wing assaults on universities outside the United States were legion).I address here the ways the debate about "totality" that permeates Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture is very much still relevant, but also inflected differently given changed historical conditions and the emergence of new perspectives.Although-or rather because-Fredric Jameson views "totality"(the "unified logic of : : : [a] social system" ["Cognitive Mapping" 348])as under assault both in general and at the conference (as attested by the lively exchange during the transcribed Q and A), his essay makes three key points about the importance of the concept: totality, because "inaccessible to any individual subject" (350), can be approached only CRYSTAL BARTOLOVICH is associate professor of English at Syracuse University.She has published widely on topics in Marxism, decolonial studies, and early modern studies, and her current project is "Hating Utopia Properly."