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Aesthetics and Politics

by Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, György Lukács, Ernst Bloch, Fredric Jameson (afterword)

4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 · rating details · 534 ratings · 12 reviews

No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a conti...more

Paperback, 220 pages

Published January 17th 2007 by Verso (first published 1977)

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Oct 21, 2010 Anton rated it 3 of 5 stars

I keep going back to what you said about how, "Lukac's argument that there may never have been such a thing as an Expressionist writer but only Expressionist theory" and I feel that he does acknowledge that literary history recognizes this notion of an expressionist writer and says, "since our dispute is concerned with the evaluation of individual writers, it is not of paramount importance that for us to resolve this problem (29)." He continues by not necessarily challenging their existence, but...more I keep going back to what you said about how, "Lukac's argument that there may never have been such a thing as an Expressionist writer but only Expressionist theory" and I feel that he does acknowledge that literary history recognizes this notion of an expressionist writer and says, "since our dispute is concerned with the evaluation of individual writers, it is not of paramount importance that for us to resolve this problem (29)." He continues by not necessarily challenging their existence, but wants to prove Brecht wrong by illustrating their failed attempt at a movement bound for a demise.

It is interesting because even later in Lukacs' essay he admits to the "dethroning" of Expressionism as a "product of the maturity of the revolutionary masses (40)." He makes it clear that the lives and careers of these Soviet poets needed to be examined in order to grasp the demise of Expressionism. These "ideologues" were the men who stood between the political leaders and the people. So, though he challenges their cowardice for not truly accomplishing much in the name of change, it seems, in order for him to deny them this capability, he does acknowledge they existed as artists in some form.

I found Lukacs' essay really clever and interesting in the way it challenged the conception of expressionism but also the blame he puts on them for not succeeding in a revolutionary change. Does he think that in order for an artist or movement to be of importance, does it have to confront itself through the eyes of a successful awakening? When does this cycle start and end, meaning, in a world of no political strife, can true art exist?

To go back to the blame he puts on the expressionists, maybe he does have a solid point. He mentions that, "they [expressionists](51) were profoundly influenced by the same uncertainties to which the immature revolutionary masses were subject to." He almost seems to put artists in this sort of other worldly condition, not human, in which they must rise above their own innate flaw. But, it seems to me, that he is basically proving himself wrong, in that, because of their insecurities and attempts at change that lead to failure, they became human in the world of art. Expressionism reacted in the moment, and because of their failed attempt to stabilize their movement, their attempts become a movement with no "real" value, in the eyes of Lukacs.

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Dec 02, 2012 Liam rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't know, man. I bought this guy in a little bookstore in Georgetown when I was twenty and wanted to understand it a lot better than I did. After going off and getting to know these guys better individually - making friends with Lukács's 'Narrate or Describe,' getting hold of Benamin's 'Illuminations' in particular - the book suddenly makes sense as the only, the obvious way to introduce folk to the Frankfurt School debates, but that's only after the introduction has been made. Maybe that wa...more

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Dec 28, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2011

Still surprisingly apt, even with so much time that has passed. This is a well-constructed collection of letter and papers on the role of art and its interaction with political thought/action. If you think art matters, but sometimes have a hard time articulating how or why, this book provides some nice theoretical exploration of just those issues.

Special appreciation must be given to the written introductions to each exchange, establishing the stakes and particular points of disagreement. Fredri...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Dont rated it 4 of 5 stars

Like many of the reviewers on here, I have always found this book extremely useful in how it establishes the terms of debates around Marxist aesthetics for key European critics. This reading, however, I did something different from how I've approached the book in the past. Eschewing the lovely Germans and their feistiness, I opted instead to read Jameson's introductory notes as one continuous essay. This helped to foreground a few very important distinctions that often get missed, particularly b...more Like many of the reviewers on here, I have always found this book extremely useful in how it establishes the terms of debates around Marxist aesthetics for key European critics. This reading, however, I did something different from how I've approached the book in the past. Eschewing the lovely Germans and their feistiness, I opted instead to read Jameson's introductory notes as one continuous essay. This helped to foreground a few very important distinctions that often get missed, particularly by the contemporary reader.

First, it's important to remember that this book came out in 1977, at a moment of tremendous transition from the radicalism of the post '68 generation and the postmodernism of the '80s. Jameson, as we know, would play a key role in theorizing that transition. In many respects, his notes in this volume set the stage for exactly that project.

With that in mind, it's useful to not lose site of the still-smoldering urgency of the revolutionary milieu that began in the early 1960s and continued up until Reagan's election in 1980. The point was not that all art needed to engage the politics or that it needed to be Marxist. The point, at least for Jameson, was what is the role of art (and therefore, aesthetics) in the revolutionary milieu. Hence, the central figures in that debate would be Brecht and Lukacs -- both of whom participated directly in the internationalist movement of Europe and had a direct stake in the debate about Marxist aesthetics. To emphasize this point, Jameson reminds us that Adorno occupied a profoundly different position in the years of the Cold War. Although nominally a Marxist, Adorno's place in a kind of Social Democratic Western Marxism had long abandoned any interest in or sympathy for the revolutionary milieu of either Brecht or Lukacs. A fact made all the more pointed when Jameson reminds us of how Adorno's own material conditions as an academic drew direct support from liberal anti-communist institutions, like the CIA.

For the revolutionary milieu, whose echoes could still be heard in 1977, the need for a radical aesthetics drove many to the debates between Brecht and Lukacs. In terms of the former, Brecht's essays on aesthetics had just been collected and published for the first time in 1967 on the eve of "the events." And Lukacz would make a tremendous impact on radical intellectuals through the publication of his HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS (1968, tr. 1971). For the contemporary reader, think about it this way; the whole of radical cinema (e.g. Godard and Third Cinema) and even certain artistic practices embraced Brecht's ideas as the key to formulating a radical artistic praxis. Conversely, radicals like Guy Debord and the Situationists adopted Lukacs's analysis of reification as the very basis of a critique of spectacle culture. Hence, the Brecht / Lukacs debate was, in fact, a lens through which artists and intellectuals like Jameson made sense of their present historical moment.

For that reason, in terms of a revolutionary aesthetics, the high-low culture debates of the 1950s and early '60s (in which Adorno figured prominently) seemed increasingly old hat and irrelevant.

It's also useful to keep in mind some of the historical blindnesses that inform Jameson's own analysis. As he readily admits, his own framework as a critic is clearly the West. Consequently, it is excruciating to read the extent to which that framework limits his own analysis. While one might appreciate the criticism that Brecht never theorized a general aesthetics beyond a justification for his own practice, it's hard to take seriously Jameson's claim that the political failure of Godard signals the failure of Brechtian aesthetics in general. I can only hope that sometime after 1977 Jameson encountered the Third Cinema movement which not only realized Brecht's ideas but dramatically surpassed them through a process of realist engagement just of the sort Jameson advocates. In fact, a useful follow up to AESTHETICS AND POLITICS would be a rigorous study of how the Lukacs / Brecht debate shaped the post-colonial and anti-imperialist practices of African and Latin American creators. In those contexts, the stakes of on-going revolutionary struggle approach the binary of Realism and Modernism not as opposing sides in a grand contest, but two terms in need to be dialecticized. This is, exactly what we find in much of Third Cinema.

Finally, one last note that really stood out for me by reading straight through Jameson's comments. In reviewing the different positions between Brecht and his critics in Adorno and Lukacs, Jameson makes the salient point that it is the former who has a far more clear idea of the role of aesthetics within politics. While the critics expect for the art object to fully demonstrate a radical aesthetics, Brecht is more modest. It is, after all, in the theater, with an audience and in relationship to a larger political context that the radicalism of any art object becomes apparent. But of course, accepting this fact means that the critic must not only consider the object in itself but also its context in time and place. But doing so escapes the traditional purview of aesthetics and begins too much to sound like sociology. Thus, the art critic has to invent the object in order to identify its failures in realizing a radical aesthetic. This is a lesson that critics to this day seem not to be able to learn. And, as a result, artists adopt the lie that the work of art must be political in itself if it is to pass for radical. Their own participation in politics, and the politics of the object in its social reception and activation, these considerations all too often fall from view. Jameson, of course, is not beyond entering into the same mistake. The insistence that a revolutionary aesthetic must engage the Realism versus Modernist abstraction debate, fails to raise the more pressing and, for artists, more practical consideration; how do these terms shape an aesthetics of reception? (less)

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Apr 19, 2009 matt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: red-menace, wisdom-philosophical-investigatons, political-badassery, historyonics-world, re-readers

This is my third time actually going through this text. I borrowed it on curiosity from a friend of mine and tried to give it a good going-over. I think i understood what I was reading well enough but the aracana and the historical jargon was a little distancing. I find a lot of marxist theory can be like that, frustratingly so.

I'd like to learn it more, be more conversant in it, my sympathies are definitely on that side of the spectrum- at least, in the realm of politics and history. I'm not s...more
This is my third time actually going through this text. I borrowed it on curiosity from a friend of mine and tried to give it a good going-over. I think i understood what I was reading well enough but the aracana and the historical jargon was a little distancing. I find a lot of marxist theory can be like that, frustratingly so.

I'd like to learn it more, be more conversant in it, my sympathies are definitely on that side of the spectrum- at least, in the realm of politics and history. I'm not so very certain there is a non-mystical, hermetically sealed way to read history without bumping into huge Hegelian discourses about the World Spirit and Weltanschaung and what-you-will. I find that interesting material, certainly, but thinking along those catergories is better as a solitary discipline than a broadening appraisal. Otherwise it's too Germanic, too murky, too heavy on the specialization to be used effectively and pragmatically. Thus to Marx, to materialism. I like the way it levels the playing field of discourses, too, in that it unearths the constructions which are (as someone said of Chaucer's irony) 'too large to be seen.' I like the empirical understanding of the making, working, fashioning, selling dialectic going on all the time. It's fruitful and penetrative when dealing with large structures and mainstream dialogue: yeah, ok, big shot but who's the guy in the basement shoveling coal into your furnace? Cuts out a lot of the bullshit about market opportunities, transitional labor forces, neo-democracy, whatever. Nuts and bolts, people.

wWhen it comes to aesthetic theory, though, the nuts and bolts appraoch begins to falter. Let's not politicize our art and especially our artists- underlined even more so when it comes to doing it as it were from the outside. If one decides a certain kind of literature or literary style is more or less politically expedient that's of course one's right as a reader. but all too often I think it's about putting shoes on a horse. Ideology might empower and engage an artist, certainly, but I think by its very nature art contradicts ideological pretenses by being an aspect of the human consciousness, the human presence.

We are too frisky, as beings, for all that. It's vey hard to accurately pin down someone within a matrix, assuming that their experience on this planet is in any level sufficiently realized and vivid. A dot moving on a horizon has a universe within it, yet it would be mighty hard to preceive that universe in all its variety and depth unless it begins to speak or be confronted by...art! Art is or should be our way of creating an added provocation to our everyday life. It's an enhancer, an enricher, the way that color on a wall changes the way you percieve the wall itself. So when we start to theorize about the arts it's really no more than art appreiciation- non gustibus debutantum est, naturally, which is why it's so much fun to argue about. But there's no really totalizing theory of art, or can be, so long as people's consciousness is consistently at play. New forms emerge, they can't help but do so. Theory is made to be broken. Who would want a world where art is made to suit theoretical priorities? Well....

The dialogue here is very intense, complex, and cultivated. We've got an assembly of heavyweights here- I think it might be fair to say that between them you've got at least a large chunk of the nucelus of 20th Century intellectual thought. The arguements come fast and quick, build and finish. The first time through, you start to feel that the person who has just finished speaking has pretty much nailed it outright- they have taken up all the different critiques into their statement, developed the thesis sufficiently enough that it nails home the issue at hand for all time. Then- the next one comes through and lo and behold Lukacs has told Bloch precisely where to stick it. THen Adorno cleans Lukacs' reductive, pompous, partisan smirk right off his face. Benjamin makes luminous sense in his own right, of course, but doesn't go for the kill- as if he ever did.

The meat of it for me at least is in one of the buttressing 'Presentations'- where the unnamed editors describe the upcoming debate for the reader, and say essentially that Brecht is going to outline a position with a lot of experiential value but one that also happens to be theoretically weak. Adorno (I think it's him, at any rate) has a stronger theoretical stance, but doesn't have as much application to match it up. Riiiight.

Great, well you know if you're going to come up with theories about artistic engagement with the political sphere, how we can enact positive changes in the body politic through the mass accessibility of our art, well then maybe the insights of the ACTUAL ARTIST in the bunch might be a little more pressing than those of partisans or theoreticians. Lukacs, Adorno, Benjamin never wrote anything creative that I've ever heard about. Brecht's literally putting on plays for the workers in the flesh and gauging their reactions.

Not to discount the importance of theory- without an intellectual framework there is a lack of justification for things. Plus it inspires people, pushes the discourse further, it changes language, thought, etc. OK sure. Theory is important. But I have to take issue with the idea that artists who are engaged in the social arena along clearly expresed political sympathies might have something more valuable to say than what theory might dictate on a blackboard.

Brecht takes a sarcastic ease in addressing the challenges of the other theorists, explaining at point how for him as reader and as a writer it isn't so much important how you get there as an artist, or what you want to depict- people do it in different ways, that's all. Workers don't give a shit if the play they see is culturally within the field of their discourse as much as if it moves them, speaks to them, penetrates into their inner world. If politics comes back out of the other side, so much the better, but let's not put the theoretical cart before the horse by condemming things people do who are in an entirely different arena. Everyone's a critic, and everyone should be allowed to be, but not all criticism is created equal.(less)

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Aug 07, 2007 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: writers

if i ran a creative writing grad school, i'd make every first-year read this book. i felt better about america for a second when i found not one but two copies at the barnes and noble in the leafy, sun-dappled arboretum.

this book collects definitive essays by german-speaking literary critics of the mid-twentieth century. they all lived through the nazi disaster, and had try to understand it culturally while not betraying their love for the art and literature of their country. furthermore, many o...more

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May 18, 2012 Hao Guang rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you think Marxism and art have nothing in common save propaganda posters, you're probably not going to want to read this book anyway. It's dense, and pitched as a battle amongst those modern Marxist aesthetes who shaped the debates on art as a political medium. Don't expect to find anything like consensus here - although Adorno seems to be the last word, it really is Benjamin whose thoughts seem most beautiful, lucid and free of intellectualism - in other words, most like an artist himself.

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Jun 24, 2010 Shawn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Shawn by: Dr. Chowdhury

Shelves: lit-theory, marxist-cultural-theory

Read this for my Marxist Cultural Theory course. It is an amazing text, and a wonderful introduction to the writings of the Frankfurt School.

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Apr 28, 2009 meeners rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-school, theory, frankfurt-school

a really neat format - two critical essays/reviews are paired in dialogue with each other, with each dialogue framed by a general intro to put things in context. teases out resonances and nuances you might not necessarily get when reading each essay in isolation. i wish people would do this more often!

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Oct 02, 2008 Nicole ( Colie ) rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm auditing a class on Modernism, and have been incredibly intimidated by the isms and the ations, but this book has been a balm--it's extremely well laid out.

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Dec 09, 2007 Elsie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is useful, but why does art HAVE to be the political avant-garde? Anyway, Brecht and Bloch more than Lukacs and Adorno. Brecht more than Bloch.

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Jun 27, 2008 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

amazing that this book is in print again. buy it NOW if you want academic street cred.

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