Revolutionary Insight

All movements, whether reform or revolutionary, face a common dilemma as they attempt to grow beyond their founders. New participants must be convinced to join the movement so that it can gain influence and resources in order to thrive. One of the primary tactics used is to focus on “consciousness-raising,” whereby those in the movement attempt to spread the message of the evils against which they struggle, through personal appeals, education, media work and the like. This paper does not attempt to undermine the notion of consciousness-raising in movement practice; instead, it attempts to draw a different conclusion about how best to achieve this goal, patterned on the insight work of Bernard Lonergan. It does this through an examination of the revolutionary motivations and conversions of characters in two classic novels of revolution, Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate. This may seem like an unorthodox approach to a real-world organizing problem, but in this case the use of literature helps illustrate the importance of insight more clearly than real participants. This is because the books allow us to follow a more essential example and recognize cleaner parallels and contradictions, but more importantly because the movement/revolutionary conversion experience is not one that can easily be described by many who have experienced it. The purpose of this paper is not to prove that the insight-oriented view of this conversion is superior, but to present it as an option for further development and attempt to develop the best questions to examine the conversion experience.

Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate are both books about revolutionaries, but neither functions well as a revolutionary novel. Of course, neither Conrad nor Malraux intended to write propaganda supporting the movements they described, but both authors take care to try and illustrate the inner life of participants in revolution. Focusing on their primary characters, I feel that this inner life, as represented, does not ring true to the radicalization experience. However, both books introduce secondary characters that may be closer to the mark.

I am not intending here to tackle these works as a whole and will instead focus on a small part of each book, that which deals with the radicalization of the characters. In Under Western Eyes, the two most prominent revolutionaries are probably Haldin and Peter Ivanovitch, yet we are not given an understanding of what brought either into the movement. Both justify their presence through reference to injustices occurring in Russia, but in Haldin these read like debating points and in Peter Ivanovitch as inauthentic in and of themselves. Haldin appears to be reacting to the idea of injustice, not the apprehension of it, and a vision of “the soul of Russia.” Peter Ivanovitch is radicalized (if that is even the appropriate term) exclusively by things that happen to him. He is imprisoned, beaten, escapes, meets a woman, and joins the movement.

In stark contrast to this we see Peter Ivanovitch’s secretary, whose commitment is clearly much stronger than Peter Ivanovitch’s, but also seems more concerned with that actual lives and experiences of those most harmed by injustice in Russia. She relates the story of her transformation and radicalization (her “salvation”) after a conversation with the apple woman who was selling near her home. This woman pointed the secretary to thinking about a girl who was begging and this line of thought end up at an indictment of governments as agents of misery. She also took the secretary to see a man who gave “a name and a face” to those she had previously only talked about. Although for the secretary, this happened as “my eyes began to open gradually to the horrors from which innocent people are made to suffer in this world” (112, in the Epubbooks.com edition), this all occurs quickly. In one day, she goes from a content life to realizing she cannot support the government and cannot live with her parents.

In Man’s Fate we see a similar contrast between primary and secondary characters. Ch’en, the terrorist, is “pushed into political activity” by “the hope in a different world, the possibility of eating, though wretchedly…, the gratification of his hatreds, his mind, his character” (65, in the 1990 Vintage edition). He does not realize he is a revolutionary nor decides to become a revolutionary; he is pushed into it. In the course of the book, he is also moved from revolution to terror, motivated by his view of himself more than any ideological consideration. Additionally, it is made clear that at least in part Ch’en’s revolutionary ideas are filling a gap created when he abandoned his faith. He rapidly abandons any pretense of being a revolution actor and instead focuses on terrorism as “the meaning of life” (192).

Kyo is a more interesting case, since he appears to have reasoned his way into revolution; “he had chosen action, in a grave and premeditated way, as others choose a military career” (64). Both his “heroic sense” (65) and circumstance pushes him to lead within the revolution. However, this can be set aside when he is with his father. “Whenever Kyo came into his presence, his own will to action was transformed into intelligence, which rather disturbed him; he became interested in individuals instead of being interested in forces.” (40). Kyo is still distanced from witnessing the injustice at that time, but appears to be less so.

Suan, instead, joins the movement because he watched his father get beaten. He says, “It’s for those to whom we belong that I’m fighting, not for myself” (193). May describes her changing relationship to the revolution, specifically the move from Marxism to “agitation” as a product of Kyo’s death. Similarly, Himmelrich’s relationship to the revolution changes from an intellectualized separation to a lived experience as a monitor in an electrical plant, largely due to his experience of his wife’s death. In all three cases, it was the act of the state upon specific people that mattered, not its actions upon “classes” or the population as a whole. It would have been interesting to compare Katov’s radicalization process, but we don’t learn anything before he tried to bomb the Odessa gate.

While these characters may have been guided toward seeing, most notably in the case of the apple woman and the secretary, they all experienced or witnessed the injustices that motivated them directly. I believe argue that this is an example of a something we could call “revolutionary insight,” a moment and thought process that fundamentally changes the individual and their outlook on their situation and the world. We can contrast this with the more reasoned conviction (or in Peter Ivanovitch’s case, perhaps reasoned non-conviction) we see in the primary characters.

“Revolutionary insight” can best be understood as a variation of Bernard Lonergan’s approach to insight. Lonergan’s thought on this issue is too complex for a decent overview here (and possibly by this student at all), but a simple outline is possible. For Lonergan, cognition is made up of four separate levels of consciousness, each of which does different work. First is “experiencing,” which is simply the processing of sense data without the application of labels or meaning. The second applies these labels and is called “understanding.” Understanding can attach incorrect labels or reach incorrect conclusions, so the third step is “verification,” where understanding is tested. It is only after these tree functions are completed that we move to “decision,” where we decide what to do. Lonergan argues that this system performs as a loop. Once a decision is made and an action taken, new sense data is created and the process starts over. It is important to note that the secondary characters’ radicalizations mentioned above all began from an experience, not an idea.

Of particular import here are two additional concepts, “insight” and “authenticity.” Insights are the system through which learning occurs. As we are going through the cognitive looping, we create new interpretations, labels, explanations, etc. about our sense data. These occur as a flash of understanding and change how we view the object, situation, or person under consideration. Insights cannot be logically reasoned, “As if it were possible to tell how a belief comes to one.” (179). We do not gradually learn things about the situation and finally settle on the best understanding. Instead, we operate in a kind of questioning limbo until the insight occurs. Once it does occur, it is difficult to think the old way again. Insights are transformative. This does not mean that old explanations of injustice do not have value, just that each person’s insight is new to them. The insight could be that the old explanation is the correct one.

While transformative, insights are not guaranteed to be correct. This is where authenticity comes into play. For Lonergan, authentic cognitive processing proceeds through the four levels of consciousness consecutively and with a process of question-asking that aims to verify insights as well as create new insights. Cognition is more authentic the less it relies on existing meaning systems (frameworks like culture or ideology). Perhaps the best example of inauthentic insight is that described by Peter Ivanovitch, who while a noted feminist, seems to see the world through a distorted, patriarchal lens, “the insight of her feminine compassion discovering the complex misery of the man under the terrifying aspect of the monster, restored him to the ranks of humanity.” Instead of subjecting his insight and story to verification and analysis, Peter Ivanovitch presumes his interpretation is accurate and sets about promoting it.

Conrad and Malraux prove to be astute observers of their own characters and in other aspects – making allowances for the thin nature of secondary and tertiary characters – their descriptions of the thoughts and actions of these characters seem reasonable (including, for me, Conrad’s Razumov). Reasonable, that is, with the exception of their revolutionary transformation.

Products of revolutionary insight are, due to the nature of insight itself, less appealing as literary characters. The idea of revolutionary insight, especially as presented in these works as a transformative experience, appears to undermine the agency of the character. To some extent, the products of revolutionary insight are post-conversion true believers, and true believers do not make good primary characters. Malraux, with the first few sentences of Man’s Fate and Chen’s indecision, and Conrad, with Razumov’s thoughts while wandering in the snow, seem to show a preference for focusing on characters debating themselves over those that “know.”

Although Conrad and Malraux could have been underestimating the dramatic potential of knowing what is the right thing to do and trying to choose whether or not to do it (cf, Hamlet). Revolutionary insight may move one from not caring (or not paying attention) to caring and paying attention, but it does not provide a road map for action. Perhaps that is a partial explanation for why characters like Suan or the secretary are tied to more active, if less authentic, revolutionaries in these books. The “men of action” are the doers, while Suan exists as a foil to Ch’en’s ideas and as a signifier of the nobility of Katov’s sacrifice.

While this may be interesting as a literary phenomenon, the idea of revolutionary insight takes on a more serious connotation when considered as a problem of revolutionary motivation. If “real” insight requires the direct sense-experience of injustice, how do we get a large enough number of people motivated to participate? They may simply not be enough obvious injustice to go around. Conrad and Malraux do not have a good answer for this, especially when we consider that the widest-disseminated ideas are those in Peter Ivanovitch’s book and are, at best, questionably revolutionary, unless we are discussing a revolution in self-promotion. However, the rise of mass culture may provide a remedy. Allison Landsberg has discussed the way that film can function to create “prosthetic memories” in viewers, where the viewer experiences the life (and injustices) of another and takes them on as their own. This does not mean that the viewer is confused about fiction and life, but that their memories of the representative of oppression and injustice can be acted upon just like actually observing it. While recent examples of “real life” video such as the killing of Oscar Grant by a police officer in San Francisco, or the death of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran (both available on Youtube) appear to be less-mediated examples, there is no reason to think that this is limited to documentary experience. Our experience has shown that fiction, whether docudrama accounts like Schindler’s List or The Killing Fields, or even science fiction such as the 1980s miniseries The Day After – a radicalizing experience for me – can work as well. Similarly, still photography and art – think of Kevin Carter’s picture of a starving Ethiopian child and vulture or a painting like Picasso’s Guernica – can work as well. Novels and memoirs, of course, have fulfilled this purpose longer than film or photography. Consider the number of vegetarians radicalized by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle or the revolutionary “patriots” inspired by The Turner Diaries.

The Turner Diaries, similar to films like Jud Süß, can produce radicalizing and revolutionary insights, but this brings us back to the idea of authenticity. It is not enough for movements to generate insights, because insights can be wrong (and action based on wrong insight is often evil). This is why radicalization cannot simply be implanted, it must be cultivated. This cultivation occurs through encouraging authentic insight, and this is the product of questioning. The lesson for revolutionaries, therefore, is to present injustice, but not as an already-processed piece of propaganda with closed-ended explanations. Instead, present injustice and encourage viewers to ask questions and start conversations. If the path is just, we have to assume that it can be found by those who are looking, even if they do not understand, pre-insight, what it is they are looking for – even if we are discouraged by those, such as the narrator of Under Western Eyes, who has everything in front of him but does not make the radicalizing connection.

The revolutionaries in Under Western Eyes and Man’s Fate do spend their time questioning themselves, but these questions always seem to be forward-focused: “now what do I do? How do I do it?” The lesser characters, like Suan and the secretary, carry their radicalization experiences with them and appear to rely on these experiences in interpreting new information. They ask questions that relate the past to the future (in a way that Hilde Nelson has identified with possessing moral agency). They stay committed, even in light of poor treatment by the movement, or misfortune. Conrad and Malraux seem to have stumbled on their own insight about the radicalization process, but as novelists fail to realize where the truth they were representing actually lies.

What does this mean for the contemporary movement? There is an authenticity to the conversion experience that cannot be forced, even upon those who are ideologically sympathetic. The goal of any movement should be the eventual sympathetic incorporation of as many people as possible into the movement’s understanding of justice and the injustices occurring under the status quo. The choice is between producing as a byproduct of movement activities and choosing to actively pursue insight-oriented transformation. There is already a growing practice related to the promotion of insight to resolve conflicts and there is no reason to believe that complementary practices could not be developed and used for larger issues of social justice. While this paper has largely considered the contributions to this from literature and the arts, there is no reason to believe that insight cannot be a core principal of movement rhetoric as well.

Works Cited:

Conrad, J. (1991). Under Western Eyes. Everyman’s library. New York: Knopf.

Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Macdonald, A. (1996). The Turner Diaries (2d ed. Introduction c1996 ed.). New York: Barricade Books Inc.

Malraux, A. (1934). Man’s Fate = La Condition Humaine. Modern library of the world’s best books. New York: Modern Library.

Sinclair, U. (2005). The Jungle. Boston, Mass: Bedford/St. Martin’s.