The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Contradictory Syntheses: Norman Mailer’s Left Conservatism and the Problematic of “Totalitarianism”

Written by
Alexandros Mantzaris

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Abstract: An examination of Mailer’s seemingly paradoxical position of "Left Conservatism" that may have its basis in certain mechanisms contained within the problematic concept of "totalitarianism."

NORMAN MAILER'S SEEMINGLY PARADOXICAL POSITION of "Left Conservatism" may have its basis in certain mechanisms contained within the problematic concept of "totalitarianism." I suggest that there are two aspects to the broader problematic of totalitarianism. The first aspect has to do with what we could refer to as the historical phenomenon of totalitarianism. This phenomenon is represented by certain political regimes and/or types of sociopolitical organizations called totalitarian, to which are attributed a number of shared characteristics such as rule by a single party, an official ideology, and a monopoly of mass communications. From Mailer's slightly different perspective, such totalitarian regimes are thought of as suppressing the past, suppressing myth, and imposing a cowardly conformity on their subjects. Here, in short, we find the view of "a system" exhibiting certain characteristics. There is also, however, another facet to the totalitarian problematic having to do with the discourse of totalitarianism itself. From this slightly diverging angle one would observe that the discourse of totalitarianism is one whose very logic confuses political "sides" and therefore destabilizes "standard" political antagonisms. What we have here is a convergence of political opposites, the plasticity of political/ideological oppositions, and a profound ideological ambivalence.

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Not everyone would readily accept the central thesis of totalitarianism's theorists, namely that the former USSR and Nazi Germany can be put in the same category. And, naturally, even fewer would accept that American democratic capitalism can itself be implicated in such a problematic category—yet, of course, that is what people like Mailer never tired of arguing.

Now, when Mailer critics discuss totalitarianism they usually refer to what I called the "phenomenon" of totalitarianism—that is, to a "system" with certain characteristics. Although there is much to be said in this area, I believe it is equally productive to approach totalitarianism as a discourse exhibiting certain paradoxical properties. In what sense is it helpful, then, to think of totalitarianism not just as a system but in the way I am suggesting—as a discourse perpetuating the political confusion that produces it in the first place? First of all, the view of totalitarianism as political confusion allows us to confirm that Mailer’s Left conservatism does not surface for the first time in The Armies of the Night, although it is there the term first appears, nor does it properly belong to Mailer’s 1960s work only. Left Conservatism, in other words, is not a later stage in Mailer’s ideological development. It is there from the start, in the uneasy relationship of the author of The Naked and the Dead to that book's most fascinating characters, Cummings and Croft, both of whom are fascists.

Critics have discussed this tension, starting with The Naked and the Dead as well as its development in Mailer's later works, in terms that are primarily moral, philosophical, aesthetic. Joseph Wenke, for example, has argued in his highly interesting study:

[I]t is clear that until Mailer was able to write "The White Negro," totalitarianism was a particularly intimidating and intimate enemy of his art. In addition to representing an external political threat, it presented itself to Mailer as an immediate aesthetic problem that insinuated itself into the very creation of his first three novels.(emphasis mine)

The problem Wenke refers to is, precisely, the profound appeal that characters such as Croft and Cummings held for Mailer even as he was placing them on the side of the "heavies." And, in general, I think it is fair to say that this tension has been mostly discussed in terms similar to Wenke’s. Indeed I sometimes have the sense that the political field has to be preserved intact in

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such critical efforts, as a sort of stable ground from which Mailer’s course can then be observed and appraised—so that, for example, in his opening to the violent (a)morality of Croft, Mailer can be said to be moving "to the Right." This approach is somewhat problematic for, in my view, the problem or paradox here is first of all political in nature. Moral and other considerations follow. That is, it seems to me wrong to try and retain the political as a stable reference point, which can then help us explain aesthetic problems and/or moral ambiguities, because the origin of the ambiguity lies with politics and ideology.

The argument, then, is that when one is working within the framework of the discourse on totalitarianism, one is bound to activate a host of paradoxical political/ideological effects (or, perhaps, side-effects),which are conducive to the development of ambivalent and problematic stances such as Left Conservatism. There are effects we could discuss. To avoid too protracted an analysis, however, I have isolated two, of which I would like to say a little more in this essay. So, to recapitulate, totalitarianism is a discourse which ultimately functions to undermine standard political oppositions and which, therefore, causes great political and ideological confusion. When working within the framework of this discourse one is bound to become implicated in a number of paradoxes, such as (1) the force one sets in opposition to totalitarianism(that is to a totalitarian "system") often turns out to be itself totalitarian or potentially totalitarian; (2) within the context of a specific political/ideological antagonism, opposition to may finally be indistinguishable from support for whatever it is one is ostensibly opposing. Or, perhaps even more paradoxically, one’s political ends may be better served by supporting one's political opponent: the best way of effectively opposing one’s opponents may finally be to support them.

With totalitarianism qua political confusion as our guide, then, we can attempt to tackle some of the salient curiosities in the development of Mailer’s ideology, which seem to me to have been often met with a sort of embarrassed silence. One such very interesting curiosity was already noted by Diana Trilling in her seminal, early essay on Mailer’s work:

[H]ad Mailer been of their period [i.e., that of D.H. Lawrence and W.B.Yeats] instead of ours, he would have similarly avoided the predicament of presenting us with a hero not easily distinguishable from his named political enemy. He would have been

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able to evade the political consequences of consigning the future of civilization to a personal authority morally identical with the dark reaction from which it is supposed to rescue us. Or, to put

the matter in even cruder terms, he would not have exposed himself to our ridicule for offering us a God who is a fascist.

I have not read many critics trying to follow the lead offered by Trilling here and to explain, if Mailer's God is indeed "a fascist," how we might be able to justify such a rather unexpected reversal? Yet there are places in Mailer's work where this political exchange with fascism is more than obvious. The following example I take from "The White Negro," where we are told:

[I]t is possible, since the hipster lives with his hatred, that many of them are the material for an élite of storm troopers ready to follow the first truly magnetic leader whose view of mass murder is phrased in a language which reaches their emotions.

The first thing to note is that the very terms used by Mailer ("storm troopers," "magnetic leader," "mass murder") take us beyond the field of morality and even aesthetics and points us clearly in the direction of organized politics. And I think that the way, finally, to explain such ironies is precisely with reference to the first paradox I spoke about. Namely, the idea that when one works within the totalitarian discourse, the force one posits as a counterweight to the dreaded totalitarian system will often turn out to be itself totalitarian or potentially totalitarian.

The work of Georges Sorel (1847–1922), a French theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, is important for the proper understanding of our second paradox. Réflexions sur la Violence, his best-known work to which I will refer, was published in 1908. For the sake of brevity I would not like to go into the details of what I hold to be Sorel’s own “Left Conservatism.” Instead I have chosen a few quotations, which will give an idea of the basis for the comparison to Mailer. The first comes from an essay on Sorel, written by Isaiah Berlin:

Sorel remains, as he was in his lifetime, unclassified; claimed and repudiated both by the right and by the left. . . . He appeared to

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have no fixed position. His critics often accused him of pursuing an erratic course.

I think that both the lack of political "fixity" but also, all the more so in fact, the idea of an interstitial position between "the right and the left" clearly points us in the direction of Left Conservatism. The second extract comes from the English author and painter Wyndham Lewis, according to whom

Georges Sorel is the key to all contemporary political thought. Sorel is, or was, a highly unstable and equivocal figure. He seems composed of a crowd of warring personalities, sometimes one being in the ascendent [sic], sometimes another, and which in any case he has not been able, or has not cared, to control. (Lewis 119)

When I first read the above what instantly came tomymind wasMailer’s description of his own personality in The Armies of the Night,where we read:

[T]he architecture of [Mailer’s] personality bore resemblance to some provincial cathedral which warring orders of the church might have designed separately over several centuries, the particular cathedral falling into the hands of one architect, then his enemy. (The Armies of the Night 28)

Works Cited

• Berlin, Isaiah (1979). "Georges Sorel". Against the Current. London: Hogarth Press: 296–332.

• Lewis, Wyndham (1989). The Art of Being Ruled. 1926. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.

• Mailer, Norman (1959). "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster". Advertisements for Myself. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 337–358.

• Trilling, Diana (1971). "The Moral Radicalism of Norman Mailer". Norman Mailer: The Man and His Work. Ed. Robert Lucid. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.: 108–36.

• Wenke, Joseph (1987). Mailer's America. Hanover: University Press of New England.