B: Culture and Politics: From Marx to Adorno (Convenor: Dr Martin Ruehl)

This seminar offers a general introduction to Marxist and post-Marxist methods of cultural (mainly literary) analysis. Its aim is to familiarize students with the most important theories – from historical materialism as defined by Marx and Engels to Adorno’s aesthetic theory – that have emphasized the historicity of texts and the socio-political significance of literature as well as literary interpretation. Among other things, this seminar will address the following questions: How can Marxist interpretations avoid the pitfalls of economic determinism? Can they accommodate notions of authorial agency, creativity, originality, “greatness”? What makes a literary text politically important? How can a work of art both subvert and perpetuate “hegemonic” social and political conditions? What is critical about Critical Theory? 

Session 1
Introduction: From Eagleton to Marx
•    Terry Eagleton, “Introduction”, in T. Eagleton and D. Milne (eds), Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Oxford 1996), pp. 1-16.
•    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Introduction to the Preface to a Critique of Political Economy [1859] and other excerpts in: T. Eagleton and D. Milne (eds), Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Oxford 1996), pp. 30-42.
•    Eugene Lunn, “Art and Society in the Thought of Karl Marx”, in: Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno (Berkeley 1982), pp. 9-33.

Session 2
Aesthetics and Politics: Lukács and Brecht
•    Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (Lincoln 1983), “Preface to the English Edition”, “Foreword”, and ch. 1 (“Social and Historical Conditions for the Rise of the Historical Novel”), pp. 13-30.
•    Bertolt Brecht, “Shouldn’t We Abolish Aesthetics?”, “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre”, “Theatre for Pleasure and Theatre for Instruction”, in John Willett (ed.), Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic (New York 1992), pp. 20-22, 33-43, 69-77.
•    Bertolt Brecht, “Against Georg Lukács”, in: Fredric Jameson (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London 1977), pp. 68-73.
•    Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno (Berkeley 1982), part 2 (“Lukács and Brecht”), pp. 75-149.

Session 3
Culture as redemption, culture as deception: Benjamin and Adorno
•    Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” [1936], in: Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York, 1968), pp. 217-252. Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” [1947], in: Theodor W.
•    Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York 1999), pp. 120-167.
•    Richard Wolin, “The Adorno-Benjamin Dispute”, in: Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption (New York, 1982), pp. 163-213, esp. pp. 183-198.
•    Martin Jay, “Culture as Manipulation, Culture as Redemption”, in: Martin Jay, Adorno (Harvard/Mass., 1984), pp. 111-160, esp. pp. 111-131.

Session 4
Art’s Autonomy: Adorno
•    Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural criticism and society”, in: Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms (Cambridge, MA 1981), pp. 17-34.
•    Theodor W. Adorno, “Art, Society, Aesthetics”, in: Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (New York 1997), pp. 1-23.
•    Martin Jay, “Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of Mass Culture”, in: Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Berkeley 1996), pp. 173-219
•    Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno (Berkeley 1982), chs 8 and 9, pp. 215-281.
 

Back to core course seminars