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Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence Continuum Literary Studies Series Also available in the series: Active Reading by Ben Knights and Chris Thurgar-Dawson Adapting Detective Fiction by Neil McCaw Beckett’s Books by Matthew Feldman Beckett and Phenomenology edited by Matthew Feldman and Ulrika Maude Beckett and Decay by Katherine White Beckett and Death edited by Steve Bar) eld, Matthew Feldman and Philip Tew Canonizing Hypertext by Astrid Ensslin Character and Satire in Postwar Fiction by Ian Gregson Coleridge and German Philosophy by Paul Hamilton Contemporary Fiction and Christianity by Andrew Tate English Fiction in the 1930s by Chris Hopkins Ecstasy and Understanding edited by Adrian Grafe Fictions of Globalization by James Annesley Joyce and Company by David Pierce London Narratives by Lawrence Phillips Masculinity in Fiction and Film by Brian Baker Modernism and the Post-Colonial by Peter Childs Milton, Evil and Literary History by Claire Colebrook Novels of the Contemporary Extreme edited by Alain-Phillipe Durand and Naomi Mandel Postmodern Fiction and the Break-Up of Fiction by Hywel Dix Post-War British Women Novelists and the Canon by Nick Turner Seeking Meaning for Goethe’s Faust by J. M. van der Laan Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad by Jeremy Hawthorn Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Phillip Larkin by Richard Palmer The Imagination of Evil by Mary Evans The Palimpsest by Sarah Dillon The Measureless Past of Joyce, Deleuze and Derrida by Ruben Borg Women’s Fiction 1945–2000 by Deborah Philips Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence Aesthetics, Politics, Literature Edited by Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. EISBN: 978-1-4411-8728-4 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India In memory of Frances Stracey 1963–2009 Even ideas that were at one time : rmly established have a history of their truth and not a mere afterlife; they do not remain inherently indifferent to what befalls them. —Theodor W. Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies Contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations x Introduction: Fundamental Dissonance 1 Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall Part I: Paradoxes of Form Chapter 1: Temporalized Invariance: Lukács and the Work of Form 17 Yoon Sun Lee Chapter 2: How to Escape from Literature? Lukács, Cinema and The Theory of the Novel 36 Timothy Bewes Chapter 3: Capitalist and Bourgeois Epics: Lukács, Abstraction and the Novel 49 David Cunningham Chapter 4: Typing Class: Classi) cation and Redemption in Lukács’s Political and Literary Theory 65 Patrick Eiden-Offe Part II: Life, History, Social Theory Chapter 5: Lukács sans Proletariat, or Can History and Class Consciousness Be Rehistoricized? 81 Neil Larsen Chapter 6: Rethinking Rei) cation 101 Andrew Feenberg Chapter 7: Justice and the Good Life in Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness 121 Timothy Hall viii Contents Chapter 8: Capitalist Life in Lukács 138 Stewart Martin Part III: Aesthetic Reframings Chapter 9: Art for Art’s Sake and Proletarian Writing 157 Georg Lukács Chapter 10: The Historical and Political Context of Lukács’s ‘Art for Art’s Sake and Proletarian Writing’ 164 Andrew Hemingway Chapter 11: ‘Fascinating Delusive Light’: Georg Lukács and Franz Kafka 178 Michael Löwy Chapter 12: The Historical Novel After Lukács 188 John Marx Chapter 13: Realism, Totality and the Militant Citoyen: Or, What Does Lukács Have to Do with Contemporary Art? 203 Gail Day Appendix: An Entire Epoch of Inhumanity 221 Georg Lukács Contributors 227 Index 231 Acknowledgements The idea for this book was initiated by three events: a panel discussion entitled ‘Revisiting Lukács’s Theory of the Novel’ at Theories of the Novel Now, a conference organized by Novel: A Forum on Fiction in Providence, Rhode Island, November 2007; a symposium entitled Looking for Lukács, organized by Jeremy Gilbert and Timothy Hall, held at the University of East London, June 2008; and a panel entitled ‘Reclaiming Modernism for Lukács’ organized by Timothy Bewes at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee, November 2008. Each of these has been represented in some form in these pages. We are grateful to the participants in and fellow-organizers of these events, including Jonathan Arac, Nancy Armstrong, David Cunningham, Jed Esty, Andy Fisher, Jeremy Gilbert, Andrew Hemingway, Yoon Sun Lee, Stewart Martin, John Marx, Ellen Rooney and Bill Solomon. The Marxist Literary Group conference at St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, in June 2010 proved to be an occasion to rehearse some of the ideas in the introduction, and Timothy Bewes would like to thank the organizers and fellow attendees, especially Mathias Nilges. In addition, we would like to thank Sarah Osment for editorial assistance; Zachary Sng for his advice and translation of Lukács’s preface to Probleme des Realismus, III; Andrew Feenberg for encouraging this project in its early stages; Kevin McLaughlin and Marilyn Netter in the English Department at Brown University; Michalis Skomvoulis; the Research Commit- tee of the School of Humanities and the Social Sciences, University of East London; Merl Storr for compiling the index; Anna Fleming and Colleen Coalter at Continuum; and our contributors for meeting our deadlines and writing such provocative essays. We also extend our thanks to the following artists discussed in Chapter 13 for allowing us to illustrate their work: Allan Sekula, Petr Bystrov on behalf of the Radek Community, Chto Delat, and Freee. Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used for German editions of works by Lukács cited in the text: GK Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein – Studien über marxistische Dialektik (1968). Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand. V ‘Vorwort,’ Probleme des Realismus III, Werke [6] (1965). Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand. W Werke (1962–1974). 17 volumes (volume number indicated in square brackets). Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand. WR Wider den missverstandenen Realismus (1958). Hamburg: Claassen. The following abbreviations are used for standard English translations of Lukács’s works: DHC A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic (2000), trans. E. Leslie. London: Verso. EE ‘An Entire Epoch of Humanity’ (Foreword to Volume 6 of Lukács’s Werke) (2010), trans. Z. Sng. Included as an appendix to the present volume. ER Essays on Realism (1981), trans. D. Fernbach, ed. R. Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. GR German Realists in the Nineteenth Century (1993), trans. J. Gaines and P. Keast. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. HCC History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1971), trans. R. Livingstone. London: Merlin. HN The Historical Novel (1983), trans. H. and S. Mitchell. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. LR The Lukács Reader (1995), ed. A. Kadarkay. Oxford: Blackwell. MCR The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (1963), trans. J. and N. Mander. London: Merlin. PR Political Writings, 1919–1929: The Question of Parliamentarianism and Other Essays (1972), trans. M. McColgan, ed. R. Livingstone. London: New Left Books. Abbreviations xi SER Studies in European Realism (2002), trans. E. Bone. New York: Howard Fertig. SF Soul and Form (2010), trans. A. Bostock, ed. J. Sanders and K. Terezakis, with an introduction by J. Butler. New York: Columbia University Press. TAC ‘Thoughts Toward an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ (2001), trans. J. Blankenship, Polygraph 13, 13–18. TN The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (1971), trans. A. Bostock. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. WC Writer and Critic (1978), trans. and ed. A. D. Kahn. London: Merlin. YH The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations Between Dialectics and Economics (1976), trans. R. Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The following abbreviations refer to frequently cited works by other authors: AP Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno (1977), Aesthetics and Politics. London: NLB. PN J. M. Bernstein (1984), The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukács, Marxism and the Dialectics of Form. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. RNL Axel Honneth (2008), Rei: cation: A New Look at an Old Idea. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press. TLSD Moishe Postone (1996), Time, Labor and Social Domination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Introduction Fundamental Dissonance Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall Is a new reading of Georg Lukács possible? Perhaps a more pertinent question would be: is a new reading of Lukács necessary? After all, this is a thinker whose preoccupations, and solutions, seem & rmly grounded in the debates and energies of the twentieth century. Much of what he is thought to stand for has come to seem discredited, even to those for whom Marxist principles of analysis are a matter of ongoing re+ ection and debate. Obvious