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Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) is now recognized as a philosopher and cultural critic of the greatest importance, his subtle and profound developments of utopian Marxism as influential for the student New Left of the 1960s and 1970s as they were for the leftist movements of the twenties. Today, in the United States and Britain, his enormous body of work is attracting new generations of readers: more translations are appearing, and his utopian thought is finding a new resonance in many different contexts.
Several of the authors here address the centrality of a radically unconventional concept of utopia to Bloch’s thought; others write on the question of memory and pedagogical theory. There is a Blochian reading of crime fiction, illuminating overviews of Bloch’s work and an exploration of the stylistics of hope in Bloch’s Spuren, as well as a translation of excerpts from that extraordinary book.
The essays gathered here are intended, above all, to recommend Bloch’s work as a challenge to older models of historical materialism and utopian emancipation, and to give specific examples of how that work can contribute to current debates about utopia, nationalism and collective memory, the liberatory content of popular cultural forms, and the complex relationship between ideology and everyday life. Together they provide a timely introduction to one of the most untimely and inspiring thinkers of the twentieth century.
Several of the authors here address the centrality of a radically unconventional concept of utopia to Bloch’s thought; others write on the question of memory and pedagogical theory. There is a Blochian reading of crime fiction, illuminating overviews of Bloch’s work and an exploration of the stylistics of hope in Bloch’s Spuren, as well as a translation of excerpts from that extraordinary book.
The essays gathered here are intended, above all, to recommend Bloch’s work as a challenge to older models of historical materialism and utopian emancipation, and to give specific examples of how that work can contribute to current debates about utopia, nationalism and collective memory, the liberatory content of popular cultural forms, and the complex relationship between ideology and everyday life. Together they provide a timely introduction to one of the most untimely and inspiring thinkers of the twentieth century.
- GenresPhilosophy
246 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1997
76 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 26, 2025
The editors said that the book (as it is published in the 90s) may not be obviously necessary as history seems to be over, and utopia buried but they argue that Bloch would ask us to not take the new world order as inevitable. This framing is amazing, some of the essays lacked it..
September 8, 2007
A better consideration of Bloch than Bloch's own Principles of Hope, the difficult three-volume text which is the chief subject of this study. Though several essays fall flat, most provide rather valuable readings of Bloch's dialectical utopianism (including Bloch's own distinction between concrete and abstract utopias/willful and wishful thinking) from Freirian, Jamesonian, postmodernist and even crime fiction (Bloch's concept of pre-history, in case you're wondering) perspectives.
It's a thriller, this one.
It's a thriller, this one.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews