Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory

By Gillian Rose  
Edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson 

“To read these lectures is to watch a great mind at work. Animated by her discovery of an incisive and socially relevant left-wing intellectual tradition, Rose approaches teaching by conveying that excitement – precisely the philosophical eros she would later extol. For readers familiar with Rose’s rigorous and sometimes forbidding books, these lectures reveal an unexpected, intimate pedagogical side. Alongside her unique and pioneering reception of the Frankfurt School, we can see Rose’s own singular contributions to political thought – her meditations on law, violence, the relationship between aesthetic imagination and social order – begin to find their grounds in her readings of, and arguments with, her predecessors.”—James Butler

“This is the best starting place for a new generation of Rose-readers, a reminder of where it all began, when modernists could still be Marxists and theologians belonged to a previous age. A treat for the Roserati.”—Peter Osborne, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London, author of Crisis as Form

Lectures on art, Marxism, and critical theory by the legendary philosopher, collected for the first time, with an afterword by Martin Jay

Marxist Modernism is a comprehensive yet concise and conversational introduction to the Frankfurt School. It is also a new resource from one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers: Gillian Rose.

Her 1979 lectures on the Frankfurt School explore the lives and philosophies of a range of the school’s members and affiliates, including Adorno, Lukács, Brecht, Bloch, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, and outline the way each theorist developed Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism into a Marxist theory of culture.

Paperback
176 pages
Verso, 2024
5.5 x 8.25 inches
ISBN 9781804290118
Philosophy, Politics