Pauline Johnson - Marxist Aesthetics: The foundations within everyday life for an emancipated consciousness

Routledge Revivals

Marxist Aesthetics

Originally published in 1984, this study deals with a number of influential figures in the European tradition of Marxist theories of aesthetics, ranging from Lukcs to Benjamin, through the Frankfurt School, to Brecht and the Althusserians. Pauline Johnson shows that, despite the great diversity in these theories about art, they all formulate a common problem, and she argues that an adequate response to this problem must be based on an account of the practical foundations within the recipients own experience for a changed consciousness.

Pauline Johnson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney

Marxist Aesthetics

The foundations within everyday life for an emancipated consciousness

Pauline Johnson

First published in 1984
by Routledge & Kegan Paul

This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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Pauline Johnson 1984

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC Control Number: 83019102

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-60908-1 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-83270-7 (ebk)

Marxist aesthetics

The foundations within everyday life for an emancipated consciousness

Pauline Johnson

First published in 1984

by Routledge & Kegan Paul plc

39 Store Street, London WC1E 7DD, England

9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA

464 St Kilda Road, Melbourne,

Victoria 3004, Australia, and

Broadway House, Newtown Road,

Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EN, England

Set in 10/11 pt IBM Press Roman by

Academic Typesetting, Gerrards Cross, Bucks

and printed in Great Britain by

St Edmundsbury Press, Suffolk

Pauline Johnson 1984

No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form without permission from the publisher,

except for the quotation of brief

passages in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Johnson, Pauline, 1953
Marxist aesthetics.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.

1. Communist aesthetics. I. Title.

BH41.J63 1984 700. 1 83-19102

British Library CIP available

ISBN 0-7100-9927-4

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank a number of people for their assistance and support. Bob Connell and Tim Rowse offered useful comments and advice on several versions of this work. I was very fortunate to have the help of George Markus, and I wish to thank him for his time and for his penetrating criticisms of my drafts. Jan Bruck translated some segments of Lukcss Die Eigenart des Aesthetischen. I am also indebted to Jan for his useful editorial comments. I would like to thank my sister Lesley, who was invaluable both as editor and friend throughout the whole process. To John Grumley, a good friend and a thoughtful critic, I give my warmest thanks. My aesthetics reading group was a useful source of stimulation, and I am particularly grateful to Ewan Maidment for a number of interesting discussions on issues connected with my work. My thanks also to Kalpana Ram for her support and encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank my friend Cathy Phillips, who typed the manuscript.

At first sight the field of Marxist theories of aesthetics consists of a disparate collection of theories with very little in common. If we consider these theories solely from the viewpoint of their individual contents they appear quite incommensurable. We are, for example, confronted with the marked contrast between the Lukcsian conception of the emancipatory potential of the great realist tradition and Adornos account of the conceptual accuracy of some avant-garde works. Nevertheless, despite the very real differences between their specific contents, the main stream of Marxist theories of aesthetics do share a common problematic. Marxist theories of aesthetics give an enlightening capacity to art: they all attempt to determine the basis of the emancipatory impact of the work of art. We can, therefore, attempt to assess the relative merits of the individual theories by considering their adequacy with respect to the general problem they formulate.

What internal criterion can we use to assess the adequacy of a specific aesthetic theorys attempt to establish the enlightening effect of the art work? And what significance can be attached to Marxist aesthetics as a tradition which focuses on the problem of the foundations for a change in the consciousness of the individual? These are the particular issues which the following work attempts to address.

The problematic of Marxist theories of aesthetics

The form of the aesthetic problem is, in the first place, characterised by the constitution of a particular relationship between the truth of the art work and the falsity of everyday thinking. The process of enlightenment cannot be explained merely in terms of a cognitive distinction between art and everyday life. The work of art presents not merely an alternative standpoint but specifically acts to effect a change in the recipients consciousness. It seems that, in order to account for the emancipatory impact of the art work, an aesthetic theory is required to establish the basis upon which the recipient is able to recognise that the art work provides a better and a more convincing representation of reality than the perspective he/she has acquired from daily life. In so far as Marxist theories of aesthetics attempt to explain the emancipatory impact of the work of art upon the recipient, they need to specify the practical basis within immediate experience for a changed consciousness. An account of the enlightening potential of the art work must attempt to find the foundations within the recipients everyday consciousness for a new, emancipated way of thinking. It seems, then, that the central theoretical problem addressed by Marxist theories of aesthetics necessitates an attempt to formulate a specifically democratic account of the process of ideological change. A successful aesthetic theory needs to establish that the process of enlightenment does not merely involve the substitution of a correct consciousness, but crucially concerns the appropriateness of the response of the art work to the recipients own dissatisfaction with his/her alienated consciousness.