Overview

Marxist Modernism presents for the first time Gillian Rose’s 1979 lectures on the Frankfurt School, art, and politics. Delivered soon after the publication of her now classic study of Adorno, The Melancholy Science, the lecture series expands upon this work to explore the lives and philosophies of a wider range of Frankfurt School members and affiliates: from Adorno, to Lukács, Brecht, Bloch, Benjamin, and Horkheimer. In particular, Rose discusses their debates concerning various twentieth-century modernist art movements, and outlines the ways in which each theorist developed Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism into a Marxist theory of culture. Marxist Modernism serves as a comprehensive yet concise and conversational introduction to the Frankfurt School, but it also provides a new resource for one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers: Gillian Rose. The volume will provide an accessible encounter with Rose’s thought for those not yet acquainted with her formidable work, while provoking a renewed engagement with the Marxist basis of her oeuvre for those who are. An Afterword by the renowned intellectual historian Martin Jay reviews the lectures and contextualises them within the wider reception of the Frankfurt School in the Anglophone world.

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9781804290118

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A fierce vigilance of thought. * Guardian * Writing wholly from within the tradition of modern European philosophy and social thought, Rose produced one of the most distinctive and original bodies of work of her generation. * Guardian *

"A fierce vigilance of thought. * Guardian * Writing wholly from within the tradition of modern European philosophy and social thought, Rose produced one of the most distinctive and original bodies of work of her generation. * Guardian * To read these lectures is to watch a great mind at work. Animated by her discovery of an incisive and socially relevant left-wing intellectual tradition, Rose approaches teaching by conveying that excitement - precisely the philosophical eros she would later extol. For readers familiar with Rose's rigorous and sometimes forbidding books, these lectures reveal an unexpected, intimate pedagogical side. Alongside her unique and pioneering reception of the Frankfurt School, we can see Rose's own singular contributions to political thought - her meditations on law, violence, the relationship between aesthetic imagination and social order - begin to find their grounds in her readings of, and arguments with, her predecessors. -- James Butler This is the best starting place for a new generation of Rose-readers, a reminder of where it all began, when modernists could still be Marxists and theologians belonged to a previous age. A treat for the Roserati. -- Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London, author of <i>Crisis as Form</i> In these early and inviting lectures, written in a high conversational style, Gillian Rose brilliantly reconstructs first generation Critical Theory as ""Marxist modernism"" by demonstrating how Georg Lukács's generalization of commodity fetishism from a concept belonging to the critique of political economy into dialectics of society enables the development of the critique of culture in Bloch, Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht. The promise and potential of dereifying critique that Rose demonstrates, of revealing the immediacies of given social reality as the products of 'human sensuous activity, practice,"" seems more urgent today than ever before. To read these lectures today is a painful reminder of how much we miss and still need to engage with Gillian Rose's fierce intellect. -- J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research ""As you know, dialectics is a very slippery term.. Do you know this phrase, repressive toleration? Have you come upon it? No. Okay.."" How I would have loved to have been there. These lectures are revelatory - exhilarating, passionate, brilliant, ambitious. They're everything we've always admired and loved about Gillian Rose, but show us another side of this towering intellect - her brilliance as a teacher. It's the perfect accompaniment to the classic Aesthetics and Politics and a belated gift to us all. -- Rebecca Comay"

A fierce vigilance of thought. * Guardian * Writing wholly from within the tradition of modern European philosophy and social thought, Rose produced one of the most distinctive and original bodies of work of her generation. * Guardian * Praise for Judaism and Modernity: This is a book to make one want to read philosophy once again. I can think of no higher praise. * Times Higher Education * Praise for Hegel Contra Sociology: Her finest and most accomplished book. Inspirational and profound scholarship. * Radical Philosophy * Praise for Love's Work -- : This is not a pastel reverie, but a work in which the author, an English philosopher, feminist, and Marxist, not only bares her soul but carefully dissects it. Rose develops by contrast her notion of love's work: the obligation to go on thinking and caring in spite of the certainty of physical and moral defeat. Gillian Rose died shortly after completing this rigorous and lyrical book. * Boston Review * Powerful. A miracle. * New York Times Book Review * This beautiful memoir comes right from a genuinely thoughtful heart. It is good to find that philosophizing can offer its age-old consolations so present tensely. -- Elisabeth Young-Bruehl In its emphasis on the work of living, suffering, and loving, this is a masterpiece of the autobiographer's art, intense and rationally decorous at the same time. -- Edward Said Magnificent. Makes whatever else has been written on the deepest issues of human life by the philosophers of our time seem intolerably abstract and even frivolous. -- Arthur Danto This small book contains multitudes. It provokes, inspires, and illuminates more profoundly than many a bulky volume, and it delivers what its title promises, a new allegory about love. -- Marina Warner * London Review of Books *

Author Information

Gillian Rose (1947-1995) was one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers and social theorists. She was a lecturer in sociology at the University of Sussex, and then chair of Social and Political Thought at the University of Warwick. She is the author of works such as Hegel Contra Sociology (1981), The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society (1992), and her memoir Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life (1995).

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