#criticaltheory — Public Fediverse posts

The Works of Henri Lefebvre: Four Lectures
Iván Zatz-Díaz
"...the work of French Marxist theorist Henri Lefebvre through four monthly lectures presented by cultural studies scholar Iván Zatz-Díaz"
Lecture 1—October 11
Metaphilosophy
Lecture 2—November 15
Critique of Everyday Life
Lecture 3—December 6
The Production of Space
Lecture 4—January 10
Critique vol. 3 and Rhythmanalysis
#CriticalTheory #Sociology #Marx
Register for these free and virtual talks at:
https://marxedproject.org/event/four-lectures-lefebvre/

(Translated from: Wolfgang Heise, Realistik und Utopie. Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur zwischen Lessing und Heine, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1982, p. 116-118)

#adorno #criticaltheory

Herein lies, at the same time, the systemic function of his protesting thought. This also explains why the Frankfurt School split apart in the face of the emerging political movement of the 1960s, however limited it may have been in many respects.

A Marxist will read Adorno’s works critically and with benefit: for here he finds a phenomenology of alienation in the realms of art, culture, ideology, and the social psychology of bourgeois society, while Adorno, characteristically, leaves out the economy. The reader will find critical insights and materials on these topics whose substance is not consumed by the ideology of this line of thought. He must simply not expect to find insights into the dialectics of class struggle, into the logic of intra-imperialist contradictions, or even a guide to action; rather, he will find a bourgeois self-criticism and self-negation. Within these limits, the reader encounters a highly sensitive process of reflection—one that often operates and articulates itself in artistic ways—whose experience frequently transcends theory, whose concrete critical insight sometimes surpasses ideological position, whose driving restlessness goes beyond the results, and whose analyses extend beyond or point beyond the conclusions."

[part 3- citation reference in next posting]

#adorno #criticaltheory

This standpoint is not negated by his insights adapted from Marx. Adorno is a characteristic figure of the bourgeois intelligentsia of our era: he has recognized and experienced too much to still be able to affirm or justify capitalism, let alone state-monopolistic capitalism. At the same time, he harbors a panic-stricken fear of any connection to the real, practical movement for its overthrow. Fascinated, he absolutizes the traits of the old within the new. He objectifies and legitimizes this fear in the image of a society petrified in universal alienation. Thrown back upon himself, upon his intellectual existence, he absolutizes the actual experience of powerlessness, depravity, and the objectified situation of the isolated individual in the face of the course of social events—which takes no account of his will—and in the face of the merciless logic of the capitalist economy and the overwhelming power of its state-institutional superstructure. Adorno does not take refuge in the past. He develops an extreme position of contradiction between the ideologue and his class, a contradiction that is so neutralized by the norm of practical hopelessness and the subjectivism of his “negative dialectic” that their convergence is guaranteed in practical conflict.

[part 2 -continued in next posting]

#adorno #criticaltheory

Why one shouldn't mistake Adorno for a Marxist - East German Marxist philosopher Wolfgang Heise nailed it in his 1974 essay "Zehn Paraphrasen zu 'Wandrers Nachtlied":

# Critique of Adorno’s Philosophical-Aesthetic Position

While Theodor Adorno’s philosophy did incorporate Marxist ideas, it integrated them into a theoretically and ideologically opposed framework. It is a protest against the world of capitalism, condemning and negating it theoretically—while at the same time negating any practical revolutionary action aimed at abolishing this society. It was not merely Adorno’s affective and blind anti-communism, which came to the fore in the postwar period, that integrated him into bourgeois society, but rather his fundamental philosophical and ideological approach: the subjectivism of self-reflection, which elevated the standpoint of the isolated self—as a contemplative existence of consciousness—to the status of the ultimate authority.

[part 1 - continued in next posting]

#Adorno #criticaltheory

[Archive]
RACE AFTER DARWIN [for Devin Griffiths and Deanna K. Kreisel, eds. 2023. After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press.]
#HistSTM #HistSci #CriticalTheory
[PDF] https://www.academia.edu/attachments/116926857/download_file

[Archive]
RACE AFTER DARWIN [for Devin Griffiths and Deanna K. Kreisel, eds. 2023. After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press.]
#HistSTM #HistSci #CriticalTheory
[PDF] https://www.academia.edu/attachments/116926857/download_file

[Archive]
RACE AFTER DARWIN [for Devin Griffiths and Deanna K. Kreisel, eds. 2023. After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press.]
#HistSTM #HistSci #CriticalTheory
[PDF] https://www.academia.edu/attachments/116926857/download_file

[Archive]
RACE AFTER DARWIN [for Devin Griffiths and Deanna K. Kreisel, eds. 2023. After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press.]
#HistSTM #HistSci #CriticalTheory
[PDF] https://www.academia.edu/attachments/116926857/download_file

[Archive]
RACE AFTER DARWIN [for Devin Griffiths and Deanna K. Kreisel, eds. 2023. After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press.]
#HistSTM #HistSci #CriticalTheory
[PDF] https://www.academia.edu/attachments/116926857/download_file