A01=Beibei Guan
A01=Wayne Cristaudo
Aesthetics
Author_Beibei Guan
Author_Wayne Cristaudo
Category=DS
Category=JPA
Charles Baudelaire
Cultural Marxism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Literary Studies
Literary Theory
Literature
Philosophy of Literature
Politicized Aesthetics
Walter Benjamin
Product details
- ISBN 9781498595070
- Weight: 531g
- Dimensions: 163 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 23 May 2019
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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 supra-political. 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.
Beibei Guan assistant professor of English at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen.
Wayne Cristaudo is professor of political science at Charles Darwin University.
