Todd McGowan’s task in Embracing Alienation is to contend with two ideas that are usually associated with the problem of alienation, first that it is a modern phenomenon and second, that it is a negative aspect and hence must be overcome. The book hinges on the thesis that alienation is constitutive of our beings and hence is a challenge to self-identity. Hence, alienation does not emerge but only becomes recognisable in modernity. To perform this dual task, he traverses across different fields, from philosophy and psychoanalysis to literature and drama, and also popular culture like science fiction films and also personal experiences. However, the desire of the book remains both existential and political. It is true that alienation has become a common parlance without specific reference to Marx. We often say that we feel alienated in our work, our lives leading to depression, anxiety etc. This seems to be the main challenge that McGowan tries to address while explaining various theories of alienation. At this level, it remains an individual project. On the other hand, it is also political, in the sense of a collective activity, of recognition of each other’s alienation. For this political project, McGowan posits Hegel as the thinker of alienation against Marx. This political desire is manifested throughout the book, be it in positing Plato against Aristotle, or in referring to mass movements like the Arab Spring, or in tackling questions of race and gender and finally proposing alienation allows to think of a public, as a place of alienated beings rather than a community, based on a self-identity.
Introducing his project of thinking alienation as constitutive because of the inherent foreignness, as unconscious, in our being, and also because of the act of naming which places an identity and closes this foreignness, McGowan discusses in the first chapter the question of subjectivity as against symbolic identity. There is already a gap between the subject and the identity attached to it, as speech through which this is attached, as signifier is itself dialectical, revealing that this attachment comes from a moment of negation. Thus, despite attempts at forming identity, it only reveals alienation. Informed by Kant, the concept of the subject is seen as both ‘free and determined at the same time only as a result of the subject’s fundamental alienation’ (25-26). McGowan argues that the ramifications of this thinking of the subject as alienated is also visible in Kant’s oeuvre, divided between his theoretical work (Critique of Pure Reason) and his practical work (Critique of Practical Reason). Thinking of alienation also relates to the thinking of politics, and here Aristotle is confronted because of his thinking of man as naturally a political animal. Emancipatory politics cannot be based on the consideration of a nature that is also at once one’s given place in a structure, and because of his idea of antagonism between groups, Plato is championed as the thinker of emancipatory politics insofar as this antagonism is also an internal one, because of the subject’s alienation.
Chapter two takes into consideration the question of modernity, as alienation is supposed to be modern. Alexandre Koyré’s work shows how the thinking of an infinite universe from a closed world by philosophers and scientists (and even theologians) in the sixteenth and seventeenth century actually relates to thinking of a non-place, where no one has any fixed or assigned place in the system, which is opposed to the earlier Ptolemaic model and consequently a relation of analogy between the Heavens and the Earth (like in a social order). Without any centre in this infinite universe, one is alienated but this becomes an opportunity. However, for McGowan this shift in thinking does not lead to alienation but only its realisation. The art of this period is representative of such realisation, and hence Shakespeare is the modern playwright par excellence. All of his characters – and McGowan refers to Hamlet, King Lear and Othello – show refusal to act on account of their natural place in the social structure, their actions symptomatic of alienation. However this refusal is also indicative of the force of history, the greatest actor. There is thus a movement from the natural to the historical. Though alienation compels a refusal of one’s place, it is history that allows for any change of place. McGowan seems to avoid this movement because, for him, any place would lead to identity however historically guided it may be, and he finds in traditions a historical consolidation of trying to find places. Similarly, Descartes refuses the place of earlier philosophy and his thinking arises from this refusal of tradition of scholasticism and also in the choice of using French rather than the official Latin. But we also find philosophers who reject the idea of modernity, most notably Heidegger. In his essay on the ‘world-picture’ Heidegger directly attacks Descartes’ conception of the subject as separated from the world. However, we can also think of this differently, in that the crisis is not just modern but one already initiated by Plato. Though McGowan does not take this route, and follows that Heidegger’s philosophy is a reaction to what he thinks as the modern crisis, his thinking of the relation of nature and poeme surely points towards a rejection of Plato’s thinking of a mathematization of nature. Yet it is true that this recognition only comes with modernity, specifically modern science with the work of Galileo.
Considering issues of race and gender in the third chapter, McGowan argues that issues of racism and sexism are attempts to think if a ‘natural’ place, that is, to assign each one’s place and to hide this construction in the name of something natural, for example, when one says that the ‘woman’s place is in the home.’ In this sense, it reacts against the modern possibility and wants the woman or the African-American to play their traditionally assigned role, to affix an identity. But such an ‘acting out’ of one’s role is impossible because of alienation, and reveals the cracks itself. The author’s discussion of the film Don’t Worry Darling (2022) beautifully illustrates this impossibility. It would be interesting to think of such a formulation of alienation and identity by thinking of other identities, for example, caste ,where one’s subjectivity is denied to keep one within one’s place or the specific caste.
In the next chapter, Hegel is set against Marx to show the ground of any emancipatory politics. If we think of a relation between alienation and politics, it is Marx who remains at the forefront of such a project. Capitalism alienates man from the product of his labour, thus alienating him from both his species-being and from others in social life because it is only through productive labour that humanity knows itself. However, there have been different understandings of the concept of alienation in the reading of Marxism. Introducing the concept of ‘epistemological break’, Althusser separates the early ideological (humanist) Marx from the later scientific (anti-humanist) Marx, where alienation does not play a significant role but is rather an analysis of the economy. Rejecting any essence to human beings, Althusser proposes that this break also relates to a new relation between theory and practice, where any political programme cannot take motivation from the young Marx. Lukács, with his Hegelian fervour, considers the proletariat as both the subject and object of history: objects as alienated beings, but in recognising this alienation the proletariat becomes the subject and works towards a revolutionary programme. Despite these differences, both of them, according to McGowan, fall into the same trap of the desire to overcome alienation. It is then Hegel, not Marx, who is the true thinker of alienation.
As opposed to Marx’s historical conception of alienation, Hegel’s is a structural one, a conception that McGowan also shares and thus suggests that it has to be embraced because it is constitutive. This is a step towards politics which doesn’t focus on finding the cures of alienation. This difference relates to their understanding of change (practice) and interpretation (theory). While Marx will not discover any theoretical solution to the practical problems of the world, and theory can only show the contradictions in a system and suggest a way towards practice, for Hegel interpretation is to take a different perspective in the situation itself. This invokes the question of necessity and freedom and Marx can be understood as a dualistic thinker of emancipation who sees freedom only as the overcoming of necessity, though this overcoming is only on the basis of a necessity as its ground. Hence, Marx can imagine an emancipated communist future. In Hegel’s dialectical understanding of emancipation, freedom and necessity are intrinsically tied together, and ‘it puts us in a position to think about emancipation not as a future to be achieved but as a different way of relating to the present’ (109).
Habermas’ proposal that bourgeoisie society allowed individuals to maintain their private identity while also being in the public – where all the opinions of each individual have equal weight leading to the creation of a public sphere – does not account for the alienation which is inherent in appearing in public. McGowan suggests the public bus as such a site, as opposed to the chartered bus or even a boys football club, which stands for a community based on unsaid rituals, which preserves one’s identity. It is interesting to note how the question of community returns not just in case of the politics of the right-wing, but even when liberals claim to form a community based on the exclusion of the other as right-wing. Every community is formed upon this other, that which the community is not.
McGowan’s diagnosis leads to the suggestion of not finding a cure but embracing alienation for ‘a common unhappiness’ through an attempt to ‘move beyond the lure of a self-identical subject and a self-identical society’ and ‘produce a society structured around the public rather than around our private communities’ (150). The author must be praised for dealing with difficult philosophical and even existential questions tied to the notion of alienation and bringing out their implications. He does this with great lucidity and the examples, from literature or cinema and even his personal experiences, add to this. However, it seems he falls prey to a dualism of opposing thinkers who want to overcome alienation and those who do not. It is clear, as mentioned earlier, that this follows from his thinking of alienation as an ontological category rather than historical. Thus, for him, any attempt to overcome alienation is necessarily misguided, and he finds this problem in historical sequences or political movements. For example, the issue of Stalinism is seen as an attempt to overcome alienation through the State. It is true that alienation is constitutive because of language and the unconscious, but it has to also be investigated whether alienation in a historical period is the same as that in others. The meaning of alienation has also changed historically and also varies with discourses, like the theological discourse of alienation refers to man’s separation from God, while Arendt’s world alienation is specifically modern. While McGowan is right in claiming that Marx wants to overcome alienation, while Hegel does not, he underplays the issue of practice and thus history.
Marx’s alienation is specific to the capitalist mode of production and it is not enough that the worker realises one’s alienation, but this realisation must also lead to action to overcome this specific alienation, which will in turn lead to the realm of genuine human freedom. It is in this context that the author’s suggestion of simply recognising one’s alienation along with that of others for solidarity seems weak. There remains a gap between this realisation and action. Let us take the example of Brecht, whom McGowan also cites because of his use of the alienation effect in theatre. Brecht’s use of this technique specifically served the purpose of separating the spectator from the play. In this self-showing, it denaturalised what appeared as natural, leading to the alienation of the spectator and hence a kind of consciousness. McGowan is completely right, but he misses the point that this technique which served a didactic purpose, similar to Plato’s thinking of theatre, attempts to show that truth exists outside theatre, in political action which is necessary for any change. One can understand McGowan’s difference with Brecht in this desire of overcoming, but the question still remains that of practice and not just consciousness. Despite all these problems, Embracing Alienation is outstanding, and it must be read with care and patience, as it opens up avenues to think again about the age-old question of alienation.
Reviewed by Debjyoti Sarkar