Search Results

Lukács’s Turn to a Political Economy of the Senses

Anita Chari

in A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique

This chapter turns to an analysis of one of the most influential thinkers of reification critique, Georg Lukács who explored the crucial role that subjectivity played in the processes of the ... More

This chapter turns to an analysis of one of the most influential thinkers of reification critique, Georg Lukács who explored the crucial role that subjectivity played in the processes of the capitalist mode of production. This chapter argues that Lukács’s analysis of the subject’s reified stance in capitalism is crucial for reconnecting a critique of political economy with lived experiences and subjective perceptions of capitalist society.Less

Cyborg Consciousness: Questioning the Dialectics of Nature in Lukács

Alex Loftus

in Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology

This chapter appropriates the radicalism of Georg Lukács’s critique of capitalist society, as well as the sense of immanent possibilities within everyday life, and brings this into conversation with ... More

This chapter appropriates the radicalism of Georg Lukács’s critique of capitalist society, as well as the sense of immanent possibilities within everyday life, and brings this into conversation with more recent disruptions of the human exceptionalism underlying such claims. It suggests that his magnum opus History and Class Consciousness, in spite of its difficulties with “nature,” can be a powerful ally in a struggle for a better world. Lukács matters to this book for his unique understanding of the conditions of possibility for radical change. He brings a particular understanding of the interrelationship between thought and action, making him in some senses the archetypal theorist of situated knowledges and of an immanent critique of everyday life. The chapter is structured around three closely related conceptual debates. First, it seeks to respond to Žižek’s question of how we today stand in relation to the revolutionary challenges of the work. Second, seeks to reclaim Lukács’ writings for a critique of everyday life. Finally, turning to the figure of the cyborg, it attempts to go beyond Lukács’ confusing, contradictory, and antinomian position on nature.Less

Next Steps: Lukács, Jameson, Post-Dialectics

Andrzej Warminski

in Ideology, Rhetoric, Aesthetics: For de Man

This chapter demonstrates how the ‘material moment’ in Hegel recurs in Lukács's very attempt to say what ‘the class consciousness of the proletariat’ amounts to. It also shows how both Lukács in ... More

This chapter demonstrates how the ‘material moment’ in Hegel recurs in Lukács's very attempt to say what ‘the class consciousness of the proletariat’ amounts to. It also shows how both Lukács in History and Class Consciousness and Jameson in Postmodernism end up with something of a post- or other-than-dialectical materialism and an understanding of ideology as allegorical sign.Less

Introduction The Post-Identity Condition

in The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature

This book explores Asian American culture and politics by focusing on the notion of identity. It considers how the critique of identity politics has reconfigured the parameters of Asian American ... More

This book explores Asian American culture and politics by focusing on the notion of identity. It considers how the critique of identity politics has reconfigured the parameters of Asian American Studies and traces the persistence of what it calls the “idealized critical subject,” a theoretical figure that operates throughout Asian American literary culture and cultural criticism. To understand the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation, the book analyzes texts from different moments in the history of Asian American literature, including those by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa. It looks at the referential limits of Asian America while remaining cognizant of its so-called “real-life referents.” The book also examines Georg Lukács's History and Class Consciousness, which illustrates how the relationship between knowledge and subjectivity can be theorized through an idealized critical subject.Less

Jazz Today

Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli

in Free Jazz/Black Power

This chapter describes the state of the jazz scene in the late 1960s, relating the rise of free jazz to the rise of black power politics and culture and other radical developments in the African ... More

This chapter describes the state of the jazz scene in the late 1960s, relating the rise of free jazz to the rise of black power politics and culture and other radical developments in the African American community at the time. Music being at the forefront of African American culture, it is necessarily connected to African American politics.Less

Organising the car factories, 1945–64

Jack Saunders

in Assembling Cultures: Workplace Activism, Labour Militancy and Cultural Change in Britain's Car Factories, 1945-82

Chapter 2 traces the development of motor industry trade unionism from the 1945 to 1964. Prior to World War 2, car workers had little tradition of labour militancy. Car firms were generally ... More

Chapter 2 traces the development of motor industry trade unionism from the 1945 to 1964. Prior to World War 2, car workers had little tradition of labour militancy. Car firms were generally anti-union and dismissed shop stewards and other people perceived to be troublemakers. Jobs were insecure and management authoritarian. This changed in the two decades that followed the war, as activists set about assembling cultures of solidarity and combativity within the workplace. Drawing on their own experiences of working life, workers introduced new social practices and painstakingly organised factories workshop-by-workshop, often risking dismissal and blacklisting for doing so. This chapter takes a detailed look at this process and looks to uncover how shared values, identities and cultures were built.Less

The Wider Subjectivities of Men in Reserved Occupations in Wartime Glasgow and Clydeside

Alison Chand

in Masculinities on Clydeside: Men in Reserved Occupations During the Second World War

This chapter analyses the narratives of men who worked in reserved occupations in Clydeside to explore wider aspects of their individual subjectivities other than gender. Areas of subjectivity ... More

This chapter analyses the narratives of men who worked in reserved occupations in Clydeside to explore wider aspects of their individual subjectivities other than gender. Areas of subjectivity examined include national identity (picking up from the discussion in Chapter 3 and looking at men of non-British or Scottish nationality), class consciousness and political identity, religion and social activities. This chapter widens the picture of how men in reserved occupations experienced the war, arguing that male reserved workers were aware of ‘imagined’ collective subjectivity on a national level, and that important similarities existed between the subjectivities of men who worked in different regions of Britain, particularly those with higher proportions of men working in reserved occupations. The chapter re-enforces the notion that the subjectivities of such men existed on different levels and reflected to varying degrees the concepts of ‘imagination’ and ‘living’, making clear that the subjectivities of male civilian workers in wartime Clydeside comprised different national, ethnic, religious, class and political attributes, all integral and important to reserved men before, during and after the Second World War. Arguably, however, men were often aware of these integral aspects of their subjectivities on an ‘imagined’ level, and many aspects of them were superseded by a pre-occupation with everyday living, also continuous and fundamentally unchanged by wartime. In arguing for the continuity of different ‘imagined’ and ‘lived’ forms of subjectivity among men in reserved occupations in wartime Clydeside, this chapter re-enforces the notion that, although integral to masculinity, temporary wartime ideals did not fundamentally change the masculine subjectivities of male civilian workers.Less

A question of neutrality? The politics of co-operation in north-east England, 1881–1926

Joan Allen

in Labour and Working-Class Lives: Essays To Celebrate the Life and Work of Chris Wrigley

The Co-operative Party was formed in 1917, though its obvious links with the Labour Party were not formalised until the 1920s. Whilst this development has often been seen by historians, such as G. D. ... More

The Co-operative Party was formed in 1917, though its obvious links with the Labour Party were not formalised until the 1920s. Whilst this development has often been seen by historians, such as G. D. H. Cole, as an immediate to conditions in the Great War and lacking in any real sense of class consciousness, Joan Allen sees it as a much more as a long-term product of the radicalisation of a membership which was gradually unwinding its links with Liberalism much along the lines suggested by Sidney Pollard. Examining the Co-operative branches in the north east of England, she argues that whilst there might have been some disagreement about establishing a political party for the co-operative movement, and difficulties with the local constitutions of co-operatives which were not geared to providing money for political activities, it is clear that was, for a long time, the direction that co-operative societies in the north east were drifting towards in a region where working-class solidarity always counted. There was not the diffidence towards political action and class consciousness in the co-operative movement which some writers have suggested.Less

Introduction

Brian Marren

in We shall not be moved: "How Liverpool's working class fought redundancies, closures and cuts in the age of Thatcher"

This chapter sets out the book’s central themes, arguments and structure. Particular emphasis will be placed on the historical perspective of an entrenched culture of opposition within the ... More

This chapter sets out the book’s central themes, arguments and structure. Particular emphasis will be placed on the historical perspective of an entrenched culture of opposition within the consciousness of the Liverpool working-class.Less

Shedding Colonialism, 1953–1976

Stuart Wolfendale

in Imperial to International: A History of St John's Cathedral Hong Kong

The proportion of Chinese members in St John’s congregation gradually increased. Congregations grew in the post-war years and so did the Cathedral’s funds. St John’s continued to support the Chinese ... More

The proportion of Chinese members in St John’s congregation gradually increased. Congregations grew in the post-war years and so did the Cathedral’s funds. St John’s continued to support the Chinese churches and to reach out to welfare organizations, some of them with no religious connections. Bishops and chaplains had visions of uniting the Chinese churches with English-speaking churches, but progress was slow. Yet, in 1975, a vote held during a special meeting of the Synod of the Chinese Churches admitted St John’s, St Andrew’s and Christ Church into its fold. In 1971, Reverend Jane Hwang and Reverend Joyce Bennett were ordained as priests. St John’s acceptance of women as clergy was well advance of elsewhere.Less