past conjunctures and experience (and sources of experience that are present
for the poet, who brings them back to life in his texts). The cross of the X
corresponds to the language, understood as the national language: a partial
system, since subject to constant variation according to historical conjunctures,
and site of communication. Here, Stalin’s language as instrument of
communication for the whole society finds its embodiment, with the help of
ideological state apparatuses: for language in the sense of langagealso serves
the purposes of communication with one’s fellow citizens within a national
language. Finally, the upper part of the X corresponds to the different
superstructures, each of which has its own language (jargons, technical
languages, etc.), subject to historical change, and percolating, like coffee into
its filter, down to the two lower levels. (We shall avoid – something this model
seems to prompt – interpreting the X as a hierarchy – i.e. making spoken
language a linguistic ‘base’.)
Thus we observe that, while Stalin’s intervention is located at the heart of
the dominant philosophy in linguistic matters, in that it exemplifies most of
its six characteristics, Pasolini’s is located outside it and exemplifies the
converse six principles. For it is clear that, for Pasolini, language does not
obey the principle of immanence: in order to talk about langageor langue, we
must speak of the whole of the society or culture. And his conception of
language corresponds to the principles of dysfunctionality (it is the language
that speaks Ninetto, a language as old as the world that he speaks unawares);
opacity (the speaker says what the historical conjuncture in the language
permits her to say: there is therefore a linguistic conjuncture); materiality (for
Pasolini, the language is the site of a power relation and its materiality is as
much corporeal as social); partial systematicity (the X schema provides us
with a remarkable illustration of this seemingly bizarre concept); and, obviously,
historicity: Pasolini is the direct inheritor of the Italian philosophical tradition,
Marxist or non-Marxist, of historicism.
The opposition between two philosophies of language – the dominant one
and the one aspiring to replace it – therefore runs through Marxism. The
dialogue beyond the grave between my two Marxists reproduces this opposition.
Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, however, it is not obvious that
the political leader is more faithful to the Marxist tradition, as embodied in
the founding fathers, than the marginalised poet and communist. Let us
examine this more closely.
88 • Chapter Four