Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory

by Gillian Rose

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 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, Luk�cs, Brecht, Bloch, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, and outline the way each theorist developed Marx's theory of commodity fetishism into a Marxist theory of culture.

Edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, Cultural, History, Academic

176 pages, Paperback

Published August 6, 2024

About the author

Gillian Rose (20 September 1947 – 9 December 1995) was a British scholar who worked in the fields of philosophy and sociology. Notable facets of this social philosopher's work include criticism of neo-Kantianism and post-modernism, along with what has been described as "a forceful defence of Hegel's speculative thought."

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase Brian Eno: The first Gillian Rose lectures on the Frankfurt School were only attended by a small cohort of clueless British undergraduates, but everyone who showed up became a critical theorist

[Dante]

It is Rose's lecturing style (reminds me of Marshall Berman a bit, conversational and bounding, apt given the topic) which draws you in. Cursory, risk-taking; all the better for it.

[L. A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really clear, concise introduction to a very interesting perspective on a collection of marxist that have been extremely influential on western humanities (and to some extent social sciences) in the late 20th century. These lectures were given in 1979, after these writers were already established as touchstones for post-marxist writers in continental europe and notions of "social construction" that drew on their work were becoming more academically mainstream. This situated both the subjects of the lectures and Rose's contemporary perspective in a way that was interesting and useful for me. For example, I found her perspective on Lukacs interesting because I think it's not so often that he's presented so critically in more recent writing.

On the marxism end, what stands out is Rose' emphasis on the adaptation of Marx's notion of commodity fetishism to the appraisal of art and culture. How this is deployed by each of these thinkers, and how they reacted to its deployment by the others, is what I consider the throughline of this set of lectures. I think the way these lecture paint this development as underpinning later notions of social construction etc are very compelling (even if I think most people who deploy the concept in the latter day would not necessarily consider it an especially clean lineage). However, I think that these arguments, as presented in this volume (to be fair, its a summary aimed at undergrads), end up doing a lot of the characteristic wheel-spinning that I expect from people who make a lot of noise about the first three chapters of Capital but don't really seem up to the effort of analyzing the process in as much detail as Marx does for surplus value and its identification, extraction, and role in circulation and social reproduction. That being said, I think that the writing leaving this open mostly made me feel invigorated by the potential for analysis along those lines and excited to read more theory. So, overall, very enjoyable!

[Ethan Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

These early lectures by Gillian Rose on the Frankfurt School, actually got me excited to read Adorno. Although the afterword points out a number of minor factual errors and positions that Rose later abandoned--Rose never intended these lecture transcripts for publication--the book is still useful as an introduction. It identifies important ideas and key motivations in a field of scholarship that is all too often forbidding and unapproachable. Unlike in many introductory works, the ideas that Rose is interested in come across as genuinely insightful and useful. I would recommend this.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was an excellent introduction to the work of the Frankfurt School. I have read works by Benjamin, Adorno and Marcuse, but this helped to refresh and challenge my understanding of their work.

[Naimah · Rating 5 out of 5]

should've read this before "aesthetics and politics" (1977) beefings between adorno, benjamin, bloch, brecht, and lukács.

[Gram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lukacs takes a real beating

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

only read a slim majority of this, but it's a nice intro to critical theory. being a transcription of lectures, it feels clear and accessible, but incomplete and unrigorous. some of the paraphrased marx political economy didn't seem very accurate but it probably didn't affect much else.

[Jay Kwon · Rating 5 out of 5]

a dense and thorough but accessible series of lectures on the development of marxist modernism. a good start for ppl interested in the dynamic between aesthetics and revolutionary theory :)

[Saul Rodriguez]

Never have I felt such a stronger kinship than to Theodor Adorno, who will always have the last word.

[Julia M · Rating 5 out of 5]

very approachable, loved the book

[Jacob biscuits · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew nothing about the subject of these “introductory lectures” when I bought this book. I still know nothing.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I don’t need grad school maybe I just needed recorded lectures in book form!!

Would give it 6 stars if I could. Grateful for the editors who decided to publish this. I found this to be a more coherent and incisive introduction to the Frankfurt School than the Grand Abyss Hotel. The introduction and afterword equally stood out to me. I love it when you read books that humbles you and make you hungry to think and learn more. This is one of those books!

I’m glad I invested in the hard copy instead of loaning from the TPL… this one is gonna sit on my shelf and I know I’ll turn back to every once a while.

[will · Rating 4 out of 5]

The lectures provide a very readable introduction to the Frankfurt School's debates on modernist aesthetics and art as a site of resistance to capitalism. Though I'm in no position to say how good it is of a place to start, it did provide me with my formal introduction to this set of thinkers (despite having read some Lukács and Benjamin before). The introduction and the afterward provide some helpful context and correctives. I'm interested in Rose's writing on Hegel and have recently begun her memoir Love's Work: A Reckoning with Life but also have become more interested in finally tackling Adorno--and getting a bit deeper with Benjamin--so this seemed like an appropriate book choice. I had recently read some Jameson and found resonances of his ideas throughout these pages, particularly Bloch's thinking on utopia. Next stop may have to be Aesthetics and Politics.

[Differengenera · Rating 5 out of 5]

ah this is so good.

7 lectures introducing the key figures of the Frankfurt School and a couple of the most important adjuncts. v readable, comprehensive summaries but also great insight and synthesis, such as the step by step explanation of what Lukács and Bloch thought, the ways in which they disagreed with each other, who was right and who was wrong why and in what ways, or how Lukács and Benjamin are inverted images of one another. I appreciate this all the more coming away from reading a lot of Jameson (RIP) whose book on Adorno offers everything except an honest inventory of what he wrote and thought. unlike Rose the objective for him it seems is to stretch the texts in order to riff out as many Adornos as possible

to reach for a criticism: her reading of Marx is off, and to do I think with a reading (to which her subjects here are also given) that excludes vols. 2, 3 and everything after chapter 3 of vol. i from view

[TL · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first Gillian Rose, and my already-high expectations have been surpassed. These are indeed 'Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory'—in that they are in fact clear and inviting and presuppose little—yet surely they manage simultaneously to attain deeper insights than many, even most other 'non-introductory' commentaries. This is all the more impressive given their early date for the English-speaking world (1979); in Rose's own words, 'I was one of the first people who did doctoral research on this subject, and when I did it... I was the only person in the country working on this stuff. I was completely and utterly isolated' [introduction p.ix]. If you've been searching for clear and coherent through-lines to thread together the Frankfurt School and its associates—Lukács, Bloch, Benjamin, Horkheimer and Adorno, and Brecht—look no further.

[John-Michael Polnik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful and useful introduction to the Frankfurt school, as opinionated and divisive as a work like that should be. An imperfect chapter on Walter Benjamin though, places him too close to the main stream of the School when he himself like would have preferred to keep a comical and theological distance. At times it has a view which overemphasizes the Hegelian character of the school, and its use of biography is not always credible. But overall a good resource and a text which contains a wealth of useful information about each subject even when they often border on the anecdotal/incidental. Its greatest virtue is its enthusiasm and the chapter(s) on Adorno exemplify that very well. The chapters on Adorno and the one on Lukàcs are easily the best in the book.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept coming back during this reading to a college class in modernism, one that would have benefited greatly from the perspectives presented in this volume. We covered Freud, Benjamin, and Brecht, as well as the Futurists, Fauves, and Surrealists, but didn’t look at Marx.

Reportedly very unlike her written work, in the lectures presented here Rose seems very concerned with having the listeners follow her arguments. And for someone lacking the Marxist / critical theory background it is a gem of an introduction.

Publication note: the lectures are printed pretty much as delivered, warts and all. A reader might prefer some interventionist editing. With that, might have been a five-star read.

[kid · Rating 4 out of 5]

gillian rose’s lectures on the frankfurt school (and adjacent) collected and published for the first time! some recordings are available online, but i think the website for it is down atm :( anyways, they are extremely readable and could be easily followed with just some basic undergrad marxist understanding. rose only focuses on their aesthetic theories though, except for lukacs’s reification, but given the limited setting of a lecture is totally understandable. as with her early stuff, her words on adorno is very clarifying. would def recommend as a primer on critical theory in general and especially aesthetic theories of famous critical theorists

[astrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet and insightful little series of lectures on the thought of some first generation Frankfurt School (and associated!) thinkers. Pretty informal, sometimes inaccurate, more focused on art and culture than I had initially anticipated - probably a 'me being stupid' thing rather than any deeper internal deficiency of the book itself. Overall, a fun but quite flawed read. I'd like to read more Gillian Rose, although my understanding is that most of her work is pretty radically different to this, at least in form and style...

[Martin Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published after her death and less recondite reading than the books she wrote as an academic philosopher. The book is based on a series of lectures she gave in 1979 on various theorists associated with the Frankfurt School of Social Research in regard to Marxist theory and the arts. The writing is less difficult than her usual writing, possibly due the fact these are lectures.

[Jose]

I might be too dumb for aesthetics. I found quite revealing that a great deal of the ideas which I myself labelled as marxist are actually Adorno's critique of Marx. Overall it was a nice, conversational book (which was to be expected).

[A L]

Kind of like "Melancholy Science" (1978) on easy mode.

[Dom · Rating 4 out of 5]

her lecturing style is so engaging, thoroughly enjoyed this

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frankfurt School is impenetrable, this helped but I wish I got more out of it.

[kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

she’s my new girl crush

[Ike Schell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned I don't care that much about Marxist modernism. Useful overview of the history and internal debates within the Frankfurt school though.