Marxist Literary Theory 3301-LA2221
The aim of the course is to provide literature and culture majors with seminal philosophical texts which situate cultural and literary production in a historical and ideological context. The course opens with a presentation of the sources of the specificity of Marxist discourse and methodology on the examples of the writings of K. Marx, F. Hegel, I. Kant. All subsequent classes focus on examining the works of M. Weber, T. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, W. Benjamin, H. Marcuse, J. Habermas, L. Althusser, J. Rancière, A. Gramsci, G. Debord, J. Baudrillard, P. Macherey, R. Williams, F. Jameson, T. Eagleton, and on clarifying concepts offered by individual thinkers. The course’s extensive list of texts concerning the complex relation between aesthetics, politics, and economy will help students to increase their terminological and analytic competence in their literary and cultural research projects, and, by the same token, to deepen their understanding of the contemporary tendencies within the field of literary and cultural criticism.
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to analyze a literary text from the Marxist perspective.
Assessment criteria
20% attendance
20% participation
60% final test
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory (1970). Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics (1966). Trans. E. B. Ashton, New York: Seabury Press, 1973.
Adorno, Theodor. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein, London: Routledge, 1991.
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books, 1971.
Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. (1972). Trans. Charles Levin. St. Louis: Telos, 1981.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Ken Knabb. London: Rebel Press, 1983.
Eagleton, Terry. The Body as Language: Outline of a 'New Left' Theology. London: Sheed & Ward, 1970.
Habermas, Jurgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. F. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.
Hegel, G.W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Horkeimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1947). Ed. G. S. Noerr. Trans. E. Jephcott, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Jameson, Frederic. The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. 1981.
Macherey, Pierre. A Theory of Literary Production. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
Marcuse, Herbert. Technology, War and Fascism: The Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse. Vol. 1 ed. Douglas Kellner. London: Routledge, 1998.
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867). New York: International Publishers, 1967.
Rancière, Jacques. Politics of Aesthetics. Continuum, 2006.
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: