Totalitarian Kitsch and the Irrelevance of Critical Literacy

Part 6 of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) frames the narrative within a kind of embedded essay on what Kundera calls "totalitarian kitsch." Totalitarian Kitsch is a theory of politics that sees dominant ideologies as functioning not through ideas but through a certain aesthetic. Under totalitarianism, Kundera argues, life is organised around certain images that have such broad emotional appeal that they cannot be argued with. Thus a kind of totalising emotional togetherness is created by the state. The first example Kundera gives of totalitarian kitsch in practice is the May Day parade: "As a group approached the reviewing stand, even the most blasé faces would beam in dazzling smiles, as if trying to prove they were properly joyful or, to be more precise, in proper agreement" (249, Kundera's italics). Kitsch, though, is not restricted to the specifics of communist ritual; it must be rooted in symbolism with broader appeal: "It must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running on the grass, the motherland betrayed, first love" (251).

Kundera's formulation might be seen as the flip side of Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp." Whereas the camp aesthetic necessitates a certain countercultural politics and subversion of dominant ideologies, kitsch is necessarily a handmaiden of totalitarianism: "Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch" (251, Kundera's italics).

Though he doesn't quite put it in such pedagogical terms, the antidote to kitsch, in Kundera's view, is critical literacy. For example, asking questions of kitsch's desired emotional response automatically defangs it: "In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it" (254). Critical reading here is a weapon--a knife with which to cut totalitarian pretensions to pieces.  Two pages later, Kundera makes a similar point in less metaphorical terms: "As soon as kitsch is recognised for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness" (256). In both cases, the key to depriving the authoritarian state of its power is to recognise how our images and emotions are manipulated through texts like a May Day parade.

Kundera's novel is, very obviously, wrapped up in a certain historical moment: The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the aftermath for Czech intellectuals in the following decade. Read from the perspective of 2020, however, I think this faith in critical literacy might be the thing that seems most dated about the novel.

Consider the predicament of the Trump COVID-19 press conferences. Here Trump preens and parades as the wise leader who handles the crisis flawlessly and commands the respect and attention of the nation in so doing. The media, in this case, responds as Kundera suggests it ought to. It points out Trump's factual errors, his exaggerations, his attempts to rewrite the historical record, and so forth. And the result is that Trump returns more defensive, more combative, and less able to put on his performance as all-knowing leader. Any kitsch effect, any warm emotion, is destroyed, much as Kundera predicts. Even those media outlets that support Trump end up doing so out of grievance and anger, focussing on the villainy of perceived enemies more than on the evocation of fellow feeling.

The political problem, though, is that it doesn't matter. The basic response to the Trump presidency has been exceptionally high levels of critical literacy that have absolutely no affect on politics. The Trumpian bubble is burst again and again, and yet his poll numbers hardly move, he is impeached but then acquitted, the leaders of his party remain in lockstep with him. And the same might be said throughout the democratic world. Everyone knows (and openly says) that Boris Johnson lied and continues to lie about Brexit; he wins anyway. Everyone knows Kaczynski is manipulating the courts for political purposes; he wins anyway. Everyone knows Bolsonaro lies about indigenous rights; he wins anyway. The panacea of critical literacy fails. It turns out that you can use your analytical knife to slice through the totalitarian stage backdrop. But the show carries on regardless.

This is not a very cheerful conclusion. If a widely literate and educated population can see right through a leader and yet fail to remove him, then what other levers of power need to be moved? The answer is hopefully that other levers in the cultural realm still have a certain importance: not just critical literacy to burst bubbles, but the creation of alternative myths and images and so forth. Perhaps, though, the lesson is a more atavistic one: That you can learn to read and analyse all you like, but that, all along, the levers that matter have been at the levels of economics, politics, and physical force.