Conference article

Lukács efter Adorno

Johan Frederik Hartle
Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Download article

Published in: NORLIT 2009

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 42:10, p. 115-126

Show more +

Published: 2010-04-27

ISBN:

ISSN: 1650-3740 (print), 1650-3686 (online)

Abstract

Whenever Adorno writes about anything that Lukács published after Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein there is; to phrase it modestly; not much sympathy in his tone. Erpresste Versöhnung (1958) is probably the most polemic article of his Noten zur Literatur. The article argues for a radical version of modernism that is also presented as a radical political programme: the fragment and the monad are playing the melody of an alienated world to maintain a potential of critical distance. From this point of view Adorno attacks Lukács aesthetics for being helplessly captured in repressive ideas of totality and social embeddedness.

Adornos text is a half-theological plea for transcendence. Both the historical situation of the Cold War and the dominance of aesthetic modernism have changed. How convincing are modernisms (aesthetical and political) axioms today? Does Adorno not overestimate the critical potential of heroic individualism?

These critical questions allow for a reconsideration of the literature theory of Lukács: Narratives that restore social contexts; social coherence and horizons of concrete practical hope might still be useful to understand political dimensions of the literary process – even if and especially because its political context (the communist bloc) and the historico-philosophical ideology (Stalinist determinism) has ceased to exist. The paper will discuss the question: Whats left (What remains? What might be connected to emancipatory politics?) of Lukács literary theory after Stalinism?

My thesis will be that politics proper is rather based on narratives of social totality that make collective agency possible; than on the reflective potentials of the critical monad. But politics; this is my second claim; remains deficient if it is not also decentered by a critical potential of the aesthetic.

Keywords

No keywords available

References

Bürger; Peter (2001): Das Altern der Moderne. Schriften zur bildenden Kunst; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Boltanski; Luc/Chiapello; Éve (1999): Le nouvel ésprit du capitalisme; Paris: Gallimard.

Gethmann-Siefert; Annemarie (2000): Hegel über das Hässliche in der Kunst; in: Hegel-Jahrbuch 2000; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; 21–41.

––– (2005): Einführung in Hegels Ästhetik; München: Fink.

Guilbaut; Serge (1983): How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Abstract Expressionism; Freedom; and the Cold War; transl. by Arthur Goldhammer; Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hartle; Johan Frederik (2006): Der geöffnete Raum. Zur Politik der ästhetischen Form; München: Fink.

Jameson; Fredric (1972): Marxism and Form. Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature; Princeton: Princeton University Press.

––– (1981): The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act; London: Methuen.

––– (1988): Cognitive Mapping; in: The Jameson Reader; ed. Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks; London: Blackwell; 2000; pp. 277–287.

––– (1997): Interview with Fredric Jameson; in: Lukacs After Communism; ed. Eva L. Corredor; Durham: Duke University Press; 1997; pp.75–94.

Kliche; Dieter (1979): Kunst gegen Verdinglichung. Berührungspunkte im Gegensatz von Adorno und Lukács; in: Burkhard Lindner und Martin Lüdge (Hg.): Materialien zur Ästhetischen Theorie Theodor W. Adornos. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen; Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp; pp. 219–260.

Laclau; Ernesto (2005): On a Populist Reason; London: Verso.

––– (2006): Why Constructing a People is the Main Task of Radical Politics; in: Critical Inquiry; Vol. 32; No. 4 (Summer; 2006); 646–680.

Lindner; Burkhard (1978): Der Begriff der Verdinglichung und der Spielraum der Realismus-Kontroverse; in: Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (Hg.): Der Streit mit Georg Lukács; Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp; 91–123.

Löwenthal; Leo (1980): Mitmachen wollte ich nie. Gespräche mit Helmut Dubiel; Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

Mann; Thomas (1984): Von Deutscher Republik. Frankfurter Ausgabe; ed. Peter de Mendelssohn; Frankfurt/M.: Fischer.

Nadal-Melsió; Sara (2004): Georg Lukacs – Magus realismus?; in: Diacritics 34/2; 62–84.

Sziklai; László (1990): Georg Lukács und seine Zeit. 1930–1945; übers. V. Ágnes Meller; Berlin: Aufbau.

Žižek; Slavoj (2000): From History and Class Consciousness to the Dialectic of Enlightenment... And Back; in: New German Critique; vol. 81 Fall; 107–123.

Citations in Crossref