Georg Lukács and Critical Theory

Tyrus Miller is professor of Art History and English at University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Modernism and the Frankfurt School (EUP, 2014); Singular Examples: Artistic Politics and the Neo-Avant-Garde (Northwestern University Press, 2009); Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts Between the World Wars (University of California Press, 1999). He edited the (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and was editor and translator of Georg Lukács’s post-World War II essays in Hungarian, The Culture of People’s Democracy: Hungarian Essays on Literature, Art, and Democratic Transition, 1945-1948 (Brill, 2013).

For those who have concluded that Lukács has nothing more to teach us or feel exhausted by the surfeit of commentaries on Adorno, Tyrus Miller’s sprightly essays on their entangled legacy will come as a refreshing surprise. He knows how to pose suggestive questions and come up with provocative answers, which demonstrate the continuing relevance of Western Marxism in the twenty-first century.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1: Georg Lukács and Critical Theory: The Long GoodbyeGeorg LukácsChapter 2: Matthew, Mark, Lukács, and Bloch: From Aesthetic Utopianism to Religious Messianism Chapter 3: Lukács's Theatres of History: Drama, Action, and Historical AgencyChapter 4: The Non-Contemporaneity of Lukács and Lukács: Cold War Contradictions and the Aesthetics of Visual ArtTheodor W. Adorno　Chapter 5: Adorno and/or Avantgarde: Looking Back at SurrealismChapter 6: Avantgarde and Kitsch, or, Teddy the Musical!Chapter 7: Remediating Opera: Media and Musical Drama in Adorno and KlugeCritical TheoryChapter 8: Perversion and Utopia: Sade, Fourier, and Critical TheoryChapter 9: Interdisciplinary Legacies: Critical Theory and Authoritarian CultureChapter 10: Prophecies of Mass Deception: Dewey, Trotsky, and the Moscow Show-TrialsConclusionChapter 11: Tell-Trials, or, Gyuri the Radio-Play