Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
Baudelaire Contra Benjamin : A Critique of Politicized Aesthetics and Cultural Marxism, Hardback Book

Baudelaire Contra Benjamin : A Critique of Politicized Aesthetics and Cultural Marxism Hardback

Part of the Politics, Literature, & Film series

Hardback

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks

Description

This book offers the first sustained argument against the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and his readings of Charles Baudelaire.

More broadly, it is also a critique of politicized aesthetics and cultural Marxism, of which Benjamin is a pioneering and emblematic figure.

Cristaudo and Beibei argue that Baudelaire was not mistaken in refusing to subject aesthetics to morality and politics.

Baudelaire's refusal was based on the recognition that existential matters, such as sickness, evil, death, sexual longing, melancholy, and beauty itself-all themes at the center of his poetry-are by nature intrinsically political moral.

By contrast, Benjamin's faith in political redemption, while breaking with the enlightenment's faith in progress, nevertheless conforms to another core element of faith of the enlightenment, via faith in the ability of morals and politics to liberate humanity.

The authors make the case that Benjamin's understanding of politics is severely deficient because it is not sufficiently versed in an understanding of economics or the nature of class interests, and that Marx's own theory of economics is fundamentally deficient and creates an insurmountable problem for those deferring to a future industrial society free from capitalism.

Information

Other Formats

Save 6%

£85.00

£79.65

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information