An aesthetic between utopia and reality : the idea of realism in Western Marxism.

摘要

The aim of this thesis is to examine the idea of realism in Western Marxism throughudthe comparative approaches of Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno,udBertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre and Fredric Jameson in relation to non-Marxistudtheorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. The issue of realism suffersudfrom the controversial terminology of realism and reality. This is the reason whyudrealism can be better viewed by Marxist perspectives that are firmly based on theudcategory of the subject-object dialectic. This Marxian principle, thereby pertaining toudthe reality existing outside of subjectivity, substantiates the issue of realism as audcontinuing social and aesthetic project. By focusing on the category of reality inudrelation to the idea of realism in Western Marxist debates, this study explores the wayudin which the Marxist theorists understand the relationship between culture andudsociety, and respond to the change of socio-economic conditions in each historicaludmoment. These various discourses revolving around the issue of realism produce audsimilar agenda to explain the place of the artwork in the realm of culture. Such audsimilarity arises from their attempt to retain the idea of realism, even when they argueudfor an aesthetic of anti-realism. In this respect, my thesis questions the distinctionudbetween realism and modernism in Western Marxist discourses, and argues that suchuddifferentiation had been articulated by a political intention to sever Western Marxismudfrom Stalinism. Their idea of realism is paradoxical in the sense that theirudformulations of realism aspire to a utopian project. This is the very way in which theirudidea of realism can be grasped as another facet of their political programme.