The way we read and understand texts is not always effective. Stephen Greenblatt’s article “Towards A Poetic of Culture” introduces a new type of literary analysis which he called New Historicism. New Historicism is a more objective way of analyzing texts from the view of the subaltern based on the concepts of Marxism and Poststructuralism. Marxist theory is what Carl Marx created to analyze everything wrong with capitalism and normal society to create an ideology of a new system of social structure that would bring equality to everyone.
The Marxist analysis of Capitalism and other social systems can be used for the common good or for the opposite, which is why it is not always effective. Marxism can use the concept of Poststructuralism, which analyzes the way the subaltern are affected by art and texts in a psychological way, to send subliminal messages in commonly seen things like marketing. New Historicism’s purpose is to objectively analyze a text strictly to detect the subliminal messages embedded into texts, making it more effective than Marxism.
Although New Historicism and Marxism are similar methods of analyzing text, New Historicism’s righteous and objective intentions make it better than Marxist analysis, which can be exploited for the benefit of the hegemonic. While it is true Marxism can be used for the good of the proletariat by making them aware of the way the hegemonic make money or take power, in today’s capitalist world, the hegemonic use it to exploit the subaltern by sending subliminal messages through marketing.
The latter is not only more commonly seen and practiced, but has a greater impact than the former because the hegemonic are in control of everything around the subaltern, therefore having everything on a larger scale by having masses of subaltern people do what the hegemonic want. Greenblatt agrees when he writes, “That is, the work of art is the product of a negotiation between a creator or class of creators, equipped with a complex communally shared repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and practices of society”(Greenblatt 28).
He is saying works of art like films or books have creators who have wide and deep understanding of the way society works. They must have knowledge of this because their work is valued based on how society perceives it. To sell their work, artists and marketers today must know what types art styles specific parts of subaltern culture want to hear. Marxism uses the literary analysis method Poststructuralism to analyze text as does New Historicism, but New Historicism uses it in a just way.
Poststructuralism focuses on analyzing the connotations of words and what context they are used in to make psychological impacts on people in a specific way. Marketers may use Poststructuralism to make these connections to make the subaltern subconsciously relate certain parts of cultures to a certain group of people to be able to sell their work. The hegemonic gain capital from this, as they are selling and exploiting the subaltern’s culture to themselves and other groups of subaltern cultures.
In this way, the subaltern are still being analyzed, but it is not for their good. Greenblatt uses the example of President Reagan using phrases from his movies as a way to show how groups of people are affected by media and marketing. He says,“The response from Anthony Dolan, a White House speechwriter was highly revealing. ‘What he’s really saying is that all of us are deeply affected by a uniquely American art form: the movies’”(Greenblatt 23).
Greenblatt is saying President Reagan used his knowledge of his widespread fame before presidency around the United States to subtly make our minds think about the way he was portrayed in the movies, which was mostly always in a positive way, so hearing him say familiar phrases from movies made the American crowd make a positive subliminal connection. The governement, being the hegemonic in this example, used this This is one of the many examples in American culture that uses this type of marketing.
Marxism can be used to market and analyze, but New Historicism is used to analyze only. New Historicism analyzes what is going on with the subaltern in texts by using Poststructuralism which analyzes what groups of words are saying and how the diction is used to convey a hidden message based on connotations. Greenblatt himself says, “The text is historical and history is textual”(Garren et al. 135). In other words, Greenblatt is saying any text ever wrotten was written during a context of history.
There is atime Poststructuralism then uses this knowledge of words to see what the words/phrases are saying together to have a meaning and imply generalizations. New Historicism is not used to the advantage of the hegemonic, but the opposite. It is used to see the subaltern’s point of view by analyzing texts objectively both psychologically and economically so no flaws based on disposition can be brought up the way Marxism and Poststructuralism can be.
New Historicism is not a concept, it’s a method. Text can be analyzed to mean anything using Structuralism, because Structuralism says there are infinite amount of meanings anything can have depending on the group of words and their denotations and connotations. “New Historicism rejects this periodization of history in favor of ordering history only through the interplay of forms of power”(Ed. New Historicism takes the infinite meanings and uses the ones that tell the subaltern’s point of view.
Greenblatt talks about how Marxists used propaganda to belittle? the subaltern by generalizing them when talking about the Holocaust. In conclusion, New Historicism is a better and more objective way of analysis than Marxism. New Historicism takes the good and just ways of analyzing from Marxism and Poststructuralism to arrive at a conclusion of what the reality of the subaltern was in texts where they are being marginalized without being biased and without taking advantage of them.
Marxism is not always used to take advantage of the subordinate, but it can, which is the flaw with it. New Historicism is not perfect in terms of being just either, but it comes close to bringing justice because it is objective and nonbiased, and cannot be used for any other purpose other than to bring light to the subaltern’s situation. With New Historicism, the subaltern are able to be heard.