Hatching Detached

The readings focusing on Marxism, state ideologies and social consciousness are very dense and fraught with cognitively compelling issues. The concepts these writings address and the ways in which they are conveyed waver between clarity and abstruseness; the ideas and language – complex in on their own - may have suffered from translation. I look forward to our discussion of the topics that Lukacs, Gramsci, and Althusser wrangle into their writing. Though some of Lukacs writing is difficult to peruse due to its heavy saturation with referenced works that I have little to no familiarity with, his central ideas seem very modern and applicable in a number of what would seem to be unrelated domains (like Frankenstein). Lukacs’s treatment of the historical novel in terms of the social and historical conditions of Europe considers issues that are still very relevant today. His notions of the emerging historical consciousness and feelings of nationalism in Europe seem pertinent in modern postcolonial discussions. His focused attention on the continental effects of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars may be addressed through lenses of globalization, postmodernism and late capitalism.

In accordance with the majority of the other posts, the writing I would like to focus on in establishing a relationship to Frankenstein is Louis Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. School, according to Althusser, is the “one ideological State apparatus certainly has the dominant role, although hardly anyone lends an ear to its music” (1346). Unlike most children, the Monster, although equally vulnerable, is not forcedly “squeezed between the family State apparatus and the educational State apparatus” (1346). The monster’s self-determining role outside of these State apparatuses – his self-imposed womblike enclosure at the cottage where he willingly submits himself to information and education – allows him to evade being indoctrinated by “the ideology which suits the role [he] has to fulfill in class society” (1347). The Monster’s predicament diverges further from Althusser’s model in that he is not entrusted to the State apparatus by a hopeful (or deluded) parent. Frankenstein, as teacher and parent, may be seen as what Althusser calls a ‘hero’, in that he neglects his creations education and indoctrination into an exploitative society (1348). With further analysis, it seems that Felix and his family, though unbeknownst to them, are the true ‘heroes’ associated education. Felix, as a victim of French bourgeois injustice, evinces society to Safie – and unknowingly the Monster by association - instead of adopting an agenda of indoctrination. Felix and his family’s uniquely detached role, largely uninvolved though didactic, in the Monster’s education allows him to partake in a variety of roles, “role of the exploited; role of the agent of exploitation; of the agent of repression; of the professional ideologist”, in his attempt to create and destroy (his/a) society. Though it is by his constant exclusion and detached educational experience that allows the Monster to realize his own personal freedom of conceptualizing “knowledge, literature, and their ‘liberating’ virtues”, his is a society unto himself, like Milton’s Satan (1347).