Lukács György - Georg Lukács: the fundamental dissonance of existence: anesthetics, politics, literature

Georg Lukcs:
The Fundamental
Dissonance of Existence

Continuum Literary Studies Series

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Edited by
Timothy Bewes
and
Timothy Hall

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 9781441121080

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

In memory of Frances Stracey
19632009

Even ideas that were at one time firmly established have a history of their truth and not a mere afterlife; they do not remain inherently indifferent to what befalls them.

Theodor W. Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies

The idea for this book was initiated by three events: a panel discussion entitled Revisiting Lukcss Theory of the Novel at Theories of the Novel Now, a conference organized by Novel: A Forum on Fiction in Providence, Rhode Island, November 2007; a symposium entitled Looking for Lukcs, organized by Jeremy Gilbert and Timothy Hall, held at the University of East London, June 2008; and a panel entitled Reclaiming Modernism for Lukcs organized by Timothy Bewes at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee, November 2008. Each of these has been represented in some form in these pages. We are grateful to the participants in and fellow-organizers of these events, including Jonathan Arac, Nancy Armstrong, David Cunningham, Jed Esty, Andy Fisher, Jeremy Gilbert, Andrew Hemingway, Yoon Sun Lee, Stewart Martin, John Marx, Ellen Rooney and Bill Solomon. The Marxist Literary Group conference at St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, in June 2010 proved to be an occasion to rehearse some of the ideas in the introduction, and Timothy Bewes would like to thank the organizers and fellow attendees, especially Mathias Nilges. In addition, we would like to thank Sarah Osment for editorial assistance; Zachary Sng for his advice and translation of Lukcss preface to Probleme des Realismus, III; Andrew Feenberg for encouraging this project in its early stages; Kevin McLaughlin and Marilyn Netter in the English Department at Brown University; Michalis Skomvoulis; the Research Committee of the School of Humanities and the Social Sciences, University of East London; Merl Storr for compiling the index; Anna Fleming and Colleen Coalter at Continuum; and our contributors for meeting our deadlines and writing such provocative essays. We also extend our thanks to the following artists discussed in Chapter 13 for allowing us to illustrate their work: Allan Sekula, Petr Bystrov on behalf of the Radek Community, Chto Delat, and Freee.

The following abbreviations are used for German editions of works by Lukcs cited in the text:

The following abbreviations are used for standard English translations of Lukcss works: