Brecht in Asia and Africa 
 
 
    Others call Habermas's "ideal speech situation.., a technocratic

fantasy" (Lacapra in I. Hassan (ed.): Renovation, Innovation ) or decide

his communication theory is based on simple egopsychology which 
disregards Lacan's analysis of the invasion into language by 
unconscious meaning (Nagele in New German Critique Nr. 16, 1979). 
Such systematic disregard of the force of the Unconscious in language 
is another charge made against Brecht and I am going to refute it in a 
few moments. In any event, the concept of communicative interaction is 
held to imply an authoritarian unity as the goal of thought and practice,

a modernist precluding of pluralism, hence a repetition of enlightenment

modernization, whose belief in rational consensus is both naive and 
dangerous because leading to the imposition of closed systems. The 
rhetoric of Habermas's position may cause problems, let alone problems 
of understanding, but his arguments, perhaps when modified, represent 
a moment that cannot be lost. We face a megatonne metanarrative and 
Lyotard's refusal of narrativity is an ostrich policy. 
    Aligned with fashionable postmodernism, which has its critical 
moments, are theorists and fashion writers who seek to refute any 
capacity in Marxist thought for development. Since the positions they 
attack are the ones in terms of which Brecht is commonly read and 
since they are incompatible with the relationalism Brecht and Marxism 
represent, I mention them briefly. Todorov aligns Marxism and post- 
structuralism, for both refute human values, defined as universal 
values, the one by reducing all question of values to simple class- 
struggle, the other by opposing universal values in the name of taste. 
There is something in this second supposition. As for class-struggle, 
well Todorov has not theorized it, that is to say he has not historisized

it, in fact he universalizes it! 
     My second example is something of a comic dialogic counterpart 
but has a function in the design of my argument. Ihab Hassan (op. cit.) 
believes he has discovered the fatal flaw in Marx, who argues that 
"social being" determines  "consciousness" but also proposes,

voluntaristically, that consciousness determines social being. This is 
circular and hence contradictory. Hassan has unmasked Marx. I 
mention this for three reasons. It draws attention to the level of some of

these debates. It points to the problem of consciousness to which I turn

in a moment, and it raises the question of the difference between non- 
relational and relational logical models. 
     And now, with apologies for the delay, I move to Brecht and first of

 all to the position of his writing in relation to these recent developments.

     His work is characterized by its openness to a range of impulses. 
 You could take it as a syllabus for Comparative Literature. One of its 
 notable features is the creative assimilation of popular forms. This, 
 however, is taken as a distinguishing mark of post-modernism. So I 
 seemed to have proved that the avant-garde is post-modernist and that 
 is supposed to be impossible. 
     Another characteristic is its refusal of closure, the fact that it is

 open-ended, always capable of extension, resisting attempts at 
 systematic mastery both in formal terms, his readiness to change and 
 to re-write, to adapt and re-examine, and in his theatrical practice, 
 
 
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