Full Description
This book explores the tradition, impact, and contemporary relevance of two key ideas from Western Marxism: Georg Lukács's concept of reification, in which social aspects of humanity are viewed in objectified terms, and Guy Debord's concept of the spectacle, where the world is packaged and presented to consumers in uniquely mediated ways. Bringing the original, yet now often forgotten, theoretical contexts for these terms back to the fore, Johan Hartle and Samir Gandesha offer a new look at the importance of Western Marxism from its early days to the present moment-and reveal why Marxist cultural critique must continue to play a vital role in any serious sociological analysis of contemporary society.
Contents
Introduction: Reification and Spectacle: The Timeliness of Western Marxism, 1. Reification as Structural Depoliticization: The Political Ontology of Lukács and Debord, 2. 'Reification' Between Autonomy and Authenticity: Adorno On Musical Experience, 3. 'All reification is a forgetting' - Benjamin, Adorno, and the Dialectic of Reification, 4. Utopian Interiors: The Art of Situationist Urbanism from Reification to Play, 5. 'The Brilliance of Invisibility': Tracking the Body in the Society of the Spectacle, 6. Art Criticism in the Society of the Spectacle: The Case of October, 7. Spectacle and Politics: Is There a Political Reality in the Spectacle of Society?, 8. Reification, Sexual Objectification, and Feminist Activism, 9. Reified Life: Vitalism, Environmentalism, and Reification in Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and A Sick Planet, 10. Images of Capital: An Interview with Zachary Formwalt
