ABSTRACT
Originally published in 1984, this study deals with a number of influential figures in the European tradition of Marxist theories of aesthetics, ranging from Lukacs to Benjamin, through the Frankfurt School, to Brecht and the Althusserians. Pauline Johnson shows that, despite the great diversity in these theories about art, they all formulate a common problem, and she argues that an adequate response to this problem must be based on account of the practical foundations within the recipient's own experience for a changed consciousness.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |5 pages
Introduction
part |40 pages
Lukács: reification and its overcoming
chapter |13 pages
History and Class Consciousness
chapter |12 pages
Lukács's theory of realism 1
chapter |13 pages
Die Eigenart des Aesthetischen (The Specificity of the Aesthetic)
part |66 pages
The role of art in modern capitalism
part |30 pages
Althusserian Marxism and the Problem of Ideological Struggle