Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459898
Patrick Eiden-Offe, Jette Gindner
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Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459968
Kohei Saito
The Anthropocene is characterized by the definitive failure of the Promethean dream of capitalism about the absolute domination over nature. As a response to the deepening of global ecological crisis, new philosophical discussions have emerged that pivot around the ontological relationship between humans and nature in the Anthropocene. In this context, Marxian ecology that draws upon Marx’s concept of “metabolic rift” is often accused of its outdated “Cartesian dualism” of Society and Nature. Against “hybridism” and “monism,” which have become increasingly dominant in critical theory of nature thanks to Bruno Latour and Noel Castree, this article examines the legacy of Lukács’s theory of “metabolism” in order to defend the contemporary validity of Marxian ecology. Although Lukács is also often criticized for his exclusion of nature from his dialectical analysis of society in History and Class Consciousness, this article shows that there is nothing wrong with categorically separating society and nature. A careful analysis of Lukács’s little-known manuscript Tailism and the Dialectic demonstrates that “ontological monism” and “methodological dualism” are unique to his historical materialism. Based on this distinction, Lukács convincingly argues that the one-sided monist understanding of the social and the natural falls into fetishism, and this is exactly why his “methodological dualism” is essential to any ecosocialist critique of capitalism.
{"title":"Lukács’s Theory of Metabolism as a Foundation of Ecosocialist Realism","authors":"Kohei Saito","doi":"10.1215/0094033x-10459968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-10459968","url":null,"abstract":"The Anthropocene is characterized by the definitive failure of the Promethean dream of capitalism about the absolute domination over nature. As a response to the deepening of global ecological crisis, new philosophical discussions have emerged that pivot around the ontological relationship between humans and nature in the Anthropocene. In this context, Marxian ecology that draws upon Marx’s concept of “metabolic rift” is often accused of its outdated “Cartesian dualism” of Society and Nature. Against “hybridism” and “monism,” which have become increasingly dominant in critical theory of nature thanks to Bruno Latour and Noel Castree, this article examines the legacy of Lukács’s theory of “metabolism” in order to defend the contemporary validity of Marxian ecology. Although Lukács is also often criticized for his exclusion of nature from his dialectical analysis of society in History and Class Consciousness, this article shows that there is nothing wrong with categorically separating society and nature. A careful analysis of Lukács’s little-known manuscript Tailism and the Dialectic demonstrates that “ontological monism” and “methodological dualism” are unique to his historical materialism. Based on this distinction, Lukács convincingly argues that the one-sided monist understanding of the social and the natural falls into fetishism, and this is exactly why his “methodological dualism” is essential to any ecosocialist critique of capitalism.","PeriodicalId":46595,"journal":{"name":"NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47991066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459954
Jette Gindner
Georg Lukács’s essay collection History and Class Consciousness (1923) remains a foundational text of Western Marxism and a vital influence on contemporary German studies, not least by way of the Frankfurt School. Yet Lukács’s positing of the proletariat as the historical agent of revolutionary change raises difficult questions for radical Left theory and praxis in our rapidly deindustrializing world. Who or what is that working class that would redeem Lukács’s vision today? This article argues that the main concept for actualizing History and Class Consciousness is totality rather than class or reification. However, we should understand totality in a strictly negative sense, as a feature of capitalist coercion to be overcome in a free society.
Georg Lukács的散文集《历史与阶级意识》（1923）仍然是西方马克思主义的基础文本，对当代德国研究产生了重要影响，尤其是法兰克福学派。然而，卢卡奇将无产阶级视为革命变革的历史推动者，这给我们这个迅速去工业化的世界中的激进左翼理论和实践提出了难题。今天，谁或什么是工人阶级，会救赎卢卡奇的愿景？本文认为，实现历史和阶级意识的主要概念是整体性，而不是阶级化或具体化。然而，我们应该从一个严格的消极意义上理解总体性，这是资本主义胁迫的一个特征，需要在自由社会中加以克服。
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Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459926
E. Geulen
What made Goethe’s Faust so special to Georg Lukács? The contribution explores possible answers and examines the theoretical implications of the unique position Goethe’s Faust occupies in Lukács’s postwar writings. During his engagement Lukács modifies some of his most dearly held convictions. For example, his criticism of mixing genres disappears in his identification of Faust’s peculiar form as an “epic-dramatic form” said to approximate the elusive epical poem. But as such, it is also the paradoxical manifestation of a singular form without predecessors or followers. The essay concludes with a coda on the aftermath of Lukács’s Faust obsession in the work of the latter-day Marxist Franco Moretti.
{"title":"Epic Solutions of the “Goethe Problem” in Lukács and Moretti","authors":"E. Geulen","doi":"10.1215/0094033x-10459926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-10459926","url":null,"abstract":"What made Goethe’s Faust so special to Georg Lukács? The contribution explores possible answers and examines the theoretical implications of the unique position Goethe’s Faust occupies in Lukács’s postwar writings. During his engagement Lukács modifies some of his most dearly held convictions. For example, his criticism of mixing genres disappears in his identification of Faust’s peculiar form as an “epic-dramatic form” said to approximate the elusive epical poem. But as such, it is also the paradoxical manifestation of a singular form without predecessors or followers. The essay concludes with a coda on the aftermath of Lukács’s Faust obsession in the work of the latter-day Marxist Franco Moretti.","PeriodicalId":46595,"journal":{"name":"NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42835029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459982
György Túry
This article examines the political reception of György Lukács and his students in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary between 2010 and 2020. It argues that Orbán’s autocratic regime has sought to systematically delegitimize Lukács’s person, thought, and legacy in an attempt to consolidate power and usher in a “new cultural era.” The article analyzes three pivotal moments in the Orbán regime’s struggle against Lukács: a 2011 lawsuit accusing Lukács’s intellectual heirs of embezzling research money; a media takedown of Lukács, resulting in the removal of his statue from Budapest in 2017; and the closure of the Lukács Archives in 2018. The article shows that, rather than engage with Lukács’s thought and ideology, the Orbán regime has treated Lukács as an unwanted cultural symbol. It concludes by warning that Orbán’s treatment of Lukács is exemplary of “illiberal democracies” across the world: when ideology is deemed meaningless, culture becomes directly subjugated to political power.
{"title":"The Institutionalization of Memory Politics in a Hybrid Political Regime: The Figure, Legacy, and Appropriation of György Lukács in Hungary between 2010 and 2020","authors":"György Túry","doi":"10.1215/0094033x-10459982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-10459982","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the political reception of György Lukács and his students in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary between 2010 and 2020. It argues that Orbán’s autocratic regime has sought to systematically delegitimize Lukács’s person, thought, and legacy in an attempt to consolidate power and usher in a “new cultural era.” The article analyzes three pivotal moments in the Orbán regime’s struggle against Lukács: a 2011 lawsuit accusing Lukács’s intellectual heirs of embezzling research money; a media takedown of Lukács, resulting in the removal of his statue from Budapest in 2017; and the closure of the Lukács Archives in 2018. The article shows that, rather than engage with Lukács’s thought and ideology, the Orbán regime has treated Lukács as an unwanted cultural symbol. It concludes by warning that Orbán’s treatment of Lukács is exemplary of “illiberal democracies” across the world: when ideology is deemed meaningless, culture becomes directly subjugated to political power.","PeriodicalId":46595,"journal":{"name":"NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42379387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10460010
M. Kolkenbrock
Although COVID-19 gave “social distancing” an omnipresent urgency, the concept of distance—in its spatial meaning and in its metaphorical use for emotional detachment, interpersonal boundaries, and socially constructed difference—has been central to theories, practices, and ethics of modern sociability. This article argues that the sociological critique of modern therapeutic culture deploys a specific ethos of distance, which is shown through the work of Richard Sennett and Frank Furedi. Sennett and Furedi reactualize intellectual debates around the regulation of emotional exposure and vulnerability reminiscent of the “codes of cool conduct” in the culture of Weimar Germany, which Helmut Lethen has famously conceptualized based on the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s work, the article argues that this Plessnerian ethos of distance, while ostensibly designed to guarantee just and pluralistic societies, reproduces social hierarchies of political emotions and in this way prioritizes the stability of the current system and social cohesion over justice.
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Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459912
Kirk Wetters
The dynamics of Georg Lukács’s development and divergent scholarly perspectives are reconsidered in light of his little-read 1909 dissertation, The Developmental History of Modern Drama. This long early work, with its detailed methodological apparatus, establishes a baseline of comparison for his later and better-known works, especially in Soul and Form (1911), The Theory of the Novel (1916), and History and Class Consciousness (1923). This framework can reconnect Lukács’s early theory of literary genres to contemporary debates on form in literature, epistemology, and political and social theory. Attention to the systematics of Lukács’s earliest historical-transcendental criteria of literary form allows his genre poetics to be understood more flexibly than has often been assumed. The difference between novel and modern drama, for example, is not categorical but functions as a differential of protagonists’ possible forms of agency and autonomy in a world defined by passivity and heteronomy. The political subtext of Lukács’s early theory of the tragic pursues a double agenda of historical symptomatics (defining tragedy as the genre of a class achieving consciousness of its own decline) and existential radicalization (totalizing onstage and offstage tragedy as the pinnacle of aesthetic experience and the heroic rupture into a new historical era).
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Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10459996
André Fischer
This article revisits the intersection of myth and political theology through readings of relevant texts by Carl Schmitt, Ernst Cassirer, and Hans Blumenberg. At stake is the question of whether myth can inform a concept of political polytheism that avoids the absolutist threat to democracy of Schmitt’s monotheistic brand of political theology. To answer this question, the present essay proceeds in three steps. It reconstructs the Schmittian model in contrast to polytheistic concepts of the political, then traces the notion of the myth of the state in Cassirer’s and Blumenberg’s work. Finally, it shows how Blumenberg arrives at a preliminary yet operative model of political polytheism that goes beyond conceptions of the liberal democratic consensus and reveals a political form of resistance to power.
{"title":"Polytheism as Political Form: Schmitt, Cassirer, Blumenberg","authors":"André Fischer","doi":"10.1215/0094033x-10459996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-10459996","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits the intersection of myth and political theology through readings of relevant texts by Carl Schmitt, Ernst Cassirer, and Hans Blumenberg. At stake is the question of whether myth can inform a concept of political polytheism that avoids the absolutist threat to democracy of Schmitt’s monotheistic brand of political theology. To answer this question, the present essay proceeds in three steps. It reconstructs the Schmittian model in contrast to polytheistic concepts of the political, then traces the notion of the myth of the state in Cassirer’s and Blumenberg’s work. Finally, it shows how Blumenberg arrives at a preliminary yet operative model of political polytheism that goes beyond conceptions of the liberal democratic consensus and reveals a political form of resistance to power.","PeriodicalId":46595,"journal":{"name":"NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46287521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-10140762
T. Lewis
This article contributes to the growing literature on Walter Benjamin as an educational philosopher. In particular, it reassesses the claim made by prominent Benjaminian scholars that education can be defined as a form of awakening. To further develop this central educational claim, the article turns to Benjamin’s early essay “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem” and in particular, its emphasis on the existential categories of nearness and distance in relation to corporeal substance (Körper) and collective body (Leib). Subsequently, Benjamin’s reflections on various educational practices are evaluated in terms of how well they balance nearness and distance to produce the ethical, political, epistemological, and embodied dimensions of freedom. The dialectic that emerges between nearness and distance can become a powerful interpretive lens for understanding Benjamin’s criticisms of instruction and indoctrination while also giving new insight into his embrace of proletarian children’s theater and epic theater as preferred educational practices.
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