Abstract
This is a review of a lecture series by Gillian Rose on Frankfurt School critical theory, which was delivered at the University of Sussex in 1979 and is now published under the title Marxist Modernism, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Robert Lucas Scott.
This lecture series by Gillian Rose on critical theory, which was delivered at the University of Sussex in 1979 and has now been published thanks to the editorial labours of James Gordon Finlayson and Robert Lucas Scott, is a remarkable insight into one of the most brilliant philosophical and sociological minds of the late-20th century. Rose died in 1995 at the age of 48, but her writings, aside from Love’s Work, her final autobiographical memoir, have, to date, been largely neglected. This is not altogether surprising given their textual, conceptual, and rhetorical complexity. Rose’s (1978) first book, The Melancholy Science, is framed as an ‘introduction’ to the thought of Adorno but is a work of close scholarship rather than an account written for the lay reader. Her following book, Hegel Contra Sociology (Rose, 1981), advanced a critique of the neo-Kantian foundations of sociology, and an argument instead for a ‘speculative’ sociological alternative inspired by Hegel. Dialectic of Nihilism (Rose, 1984) is a bold and original critique of post-structuralism that accuses Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault, among others, of deconstructing metaphysics by blinding us to a history of law that it disowns but ultimately repeats. And The Broken Middle, arguably Rose’s (1992) magnum opus, draws on the writings of Kierkegaard to explore the authority of authorship, and, by way of conclusion, considers the possibility of a ‘new’ political theology. Towards the end of her life, Rose published a brilliant but again neglected volume on Judaism (Rose, 1993) and penned a collection of essays published posthumously under the title Mourning Becomes the Law (Rose, 1996), which, among other things, identified the dangers of libertarian and neoliberal politics long before such concerns became fashionable.
There is nothing easy, then, about Rose’s work, and one might presume it to be incompatible with the mundane demands of undergraduate teaching. This, however, is far from the case. Martin Jay, in his afterword to this volume, writes that: ‘Not only did [Gillian] have the courage to tackle the thorniest of philosophical, theological, and social issues, but in her defiant struggle with a fatal illness and wager on the consolations of love and faith, she also showed that philosophy could combine a search for the truth with the quest for a meaningful life’ (Rose, 2024: 129). More than this, she showed that ‘Apparently abstract considerations of the convoluted relationships between law and violence, reason and belief, the individual and the community, were imbued with existential significance’ (Rose, 2024: 129). It was for precisely these reasons that students were drawn to Rose’s teaching and scholarship, first at Sussex and later at the University of Warwick, where she was Professor of Sociology. I was one of Rose’s students at Warwick from 1990 to 1995, and students flocked en masse to her lectures and classes in order to make sense of their own lives and those of others by grappling with fundamental questions of freedom, ethics, love, enlightenment, power, domination, (state) violence, and death.
The lectures collected in the present volume were delivered at Sussex the year after the publication of The Melancholy Science and address the core ideas of cultural Marxism through close readings of Lukács, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Bloch, Kafka, and Mann. These lectures, which centre on the cultural dynamics of capitalism, the politics of mass culture, and the constant threat of fascism, are just as important now as at the time of their delivery. While today it is easy to take the core ideas of Frankfurt School critical theory for granted, in 1979 this material was largely unknown to an English-speaking audience. As Martin Jay observes (see Rose, 2024: 134), in the late-1970s British Marxism was polarised between Althusserianism on one hand, and humanism on the other, the main voice of which was E.P. Thompson. In turning to Frankfurt School critical theory, Jay argues that Rose ‘was entirely outside this debate, which, since the mid 1960s, had pitted an older generation of British leftists against the younger generation around the New Left Review’. In teaching the likes of Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin, Rose (2024) was breaking new ground not least by rethinking Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism against what she calls the ‘epiphenomena’ of a ‘static, mechanistic, and deterministic’ base-superstructure model of ideology and culture (p. 15). Scott and Finlayson remind us of the novelty of this approach, and cite Rose from a later lecture series in which she reflects that at the outset of her career ‘there was very little knowledge or teaching of Critical Theory or the Frankfurt School in this country’, and adds that ‘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’ (Rose, 2024: ix).
What, then, of the content of the lectures collected in this volume? Readers approaching Rose’s work for the first time will be pleasantly surprised as, in spite of the renowned difficulty of her writings, these lectures are a model of clarity. Rose (2024) starts with a consideration of Georg Lukács, a key figure in the emergence of the Frankfurt School because he showed that ‘new forms of domination were not only economic and political, but also cultural’ (p. 8). Against what Rose (2024) calls scientific forms of Marxism and socialism, she argues that the value of Lukács’ work is twofold: first, it examines the ways in which the cultural has become political, adding that ‘Critical Theory is really a shorthand for this position’; and second, it asserts that ‘Marxism had to resolutely subject itself to criticism in order to remain active and revolutionary, and not passive and orthodox’ (p. 8). Through Lukács, Rose (2024) emphasises the importance of Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, which, in her words, describes ‘A definite social relation between men [that] assumes the phantasmagoric form of a relation between things’ (p. 66). Lukács developed a theory of reification from this definition, and, more than this, ‘generalises Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism’ to show that domination can be economic, political and cultural in form. Rose (2024) asserts the importance of Lukács’ early work, in particular The Theory of the Novel and History and Class Consciousness, against his later work which ‘tried to reconcile Stalinism with bourgeois democratic culture’ (p. 29). For Rose (2024), the ‘positive’ contribution of Lukács’ work is threefold: first, it ‘pointed to the relative autonomy of cultural forms’; second, it developed a ‘dynamic notion of totality’ and of ‘class consciousness’ (something that was lost in his later writings, which, she argues, ‘fell back into the traditional concept of culture, according to which culture is seen as a unified and perfect whole’); and third, it advanced an understanding of culture in terms of its ‘formal qualities’ rather than treating content as an ‘abstract ideal’ that is independent of history (p. 37).
Alongside Marx, Rose addresses the influence of Nietzsche and Freud on the Frankfurt School. Nietzsche, she explains, rejected a Hegelian philosophy of history that idealised the ‘reconciliation of all contradictions’, and advanced a concept of the will to power that could be developed to address ‘new forms of anonymous and universal political and cultural domination . . . which prevent the formation of classic liberating proletarian class consciousness’. Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, which in Rose’s (2024) reading is ‘radically sociological’, provided a model for cultural analysis as it centred on ‘literary form, not content’ (p. 18). Rose (2024) also points to the importance of Freud’s theory of the subject, which connected ‘economic and political processes and resultant cultural forms’, and asserted that ‘individuality was a formation, an achievement, not an absolute, or a given’ – an understanding that led Frankfurt School thinkers to ‘develop a theory of the loss of autonomy or decline of the individual in advanced capitalist society’ rather than to ‘idealise what had counted as autonomy or individuality in the first place’ (p. 19).
The lectures that follow work out of this understanding of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Chapter 3 addresses the work of Ernst Bloch; a ‘Marxist modernist’ whose 1918 book The Spirit of Utopia was the first work of ‘expressionist social theory’. While Bloch was drawn to Lukács’ theory of reification and concept of totality, he stood against the role assigned to the Communist Party in History and Class Consciousness, namely the educator of the proletariat and ‘the means by which the transition will be made from existing class consciousness to imputed or ideal class consciousness’ (Rose, 2024: 45). Bloch linked faults in Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness to the success of fascism, for it ignored the ways through which fascism was able to appeal to the ‘specific grievances’ of ‘the young, the peasantry, and the petite bourgeoisie’, along with the potential for art to give ‘political form to modern utopian substance, to this cultural surplus’ (Rose, 2024: 50). In a brilliant denouement to the lecture, Rose (2024) asks her students who is right – Lukács or Bloch? – only to conclude that both were wrong, for both thought that from 1918 to1950 bourgeois culture was in a state of dissolution or disintegration whereas, in fact, ‘bourgeois society, or late-capitalist society, was consolidating itself – consolidating new modes of domination’ (p. 55).
This is Rose at her best, for not only does she advance a close analytical and critical reading of the history of cultural Marxism but she implores her students, and now readers of this volume, to take a position. The remaining lectures cover ground likely to be more familiar to readers of the Frankfurt School. Chapter 4 turns to Walter Benjamin, ‘our second Marxist modernist’, who, like Bloch, was drawn to Lukács’ work on reification and to his analysis of the relationship between artistic form and historical change but rejected his later writings on bourgeois and socialist realism. Whereas Lukács thought that ‘successful, socially committed, and responsible art was classic realist art’ and anything else indicated a ‘period and art of social decline and disintegration’, Benjamin argued, instead, that ‘there was no such thing as classic art’ as the ‘concept of the artwork . . . was always problematic in its relationship to society and in itself’ (Rose, 2024: 60). For this reason, Benjamin centred on ‘the untypical’ or ‘distant extremes’ that could be used to question understandings of culture as an ‘organic unity’ that is destroyed when works of art become commodities. Rose (2024) explains: ‘Benjamin . . . wanted to show that what we call autonomy in art is in fact only achieved under capitalism – it actually depends on the commodity form’ and that ‘this autonomy or culture depends, not on organic unity, but precisely on contradictions in a society’ (p. 65). Rose draws attention to two further aspects of Benjamin’s work. First, it sought to develop a Marxist concept of modern experience and subjectivity, which, Rose (2024) explains, sought to capture the ‘shock’ of ‘those moments when a new form of life . . . especially associated with technological change . . . occurs for the first time’ (p. 61). And second, like Bloch, it opposed ‘an evolutionary interpretation of the development of the proletariat’ that believed ‘in the inevitable triumph of the working class’, and argued, instead, that ‘defects in Marxist theory of the pre-war period had contributed to the defeat of the working class’ and, with this, to the rise of fascism (Rose, 2024: 68).
The threat of fascism is a central concern of the following lectures on Adorno. Rose (2024) observes that Adorno was deeply critical of Benjamin, for his work was too descriptive and rested on ‘static and archaic presuppositions’ (p. 71). Moreover, his idea that ‘the new technological means of reproducing art would totally transform art and people’s perception of it’ was ‘hopelessly naïve’, for ‘instead of mechanical reproduction producing a new form of liberation of art, it would produce new forms of domination’ (Rose, 2024: 71). This position is central to the argument of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, which, Rose (2024) explains, traced the ‘success’ of fascism not to cultural ‘disintegration and decadence’ (Lukács), to disintegration and transition (Bloch), or to a situation in which new forms of technology could have ‘a liberating potential’ and yet ‘the class enemy had not ceased to be victorious’ (Benjamin) (p. 78). Instead, Horkheimer and Adorno understood the 1930s and ’40s as a time through ‘which new forms of domination were being consolidated’ and thus as ‘a period of increasing stability, not disintegration’ that signalled that ‘new technology would be used for regressive and not for progressive ends’ (Rose, 2024: 78).
Against this backdrop, Rose (2024: 80) advances a view that, in her words, was ‘slightly scandalous’ at the time. For against the ‘standard’ and ‘extremely facile liberal, functional explanation of fascism’ advanced, among others, by Ralf Dahrendorf, which traces it to the ‘very rapid development of capitalism [in Germany] without a liberal-democratic political structure’, Horkheimer and Adorno insisted that ‘it is capitalist rationality itself which produces and reproduces forms of barbarism; that fascism cannot be seen as a breakdown unique to Germany due to the asymmetry in Germany’s social institutions, but is itself inherent in the logic of late capitalism’ (Rose, 2024: 81). For Rose, this is why the core ideas of The Dialectic of Enlightenment were ‘so polemical and contentious’: ‘that precisely those aspects of eighteenth-century culture which we were most proud of are those which have turned into the kind of social institutions which could produce fascism. Fascism can’t be seen as a breakdown in them, but as part of their logic’ (Rose, 2024: 81). And it was for this reason that, against Benjamin, who thought that the new age of mechanical reproduction contained the promise of liberation or enlightenment, Adorno insisted instead that these ‘developments constituted new forms of social and political control, and not new possibilities for emancipation’ (Rose, 2024: 86), hence the title of a key chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment: ‘Enlightenment as Mass Deception’.
The final two lectures analyse the work of Brecht, Kafka and Mann. Rose (2024) takes a strong position on each of these writers, arguing, for example, that Brecht relied on Aristotle’s Poetics but ‘got his Aristotle completely wrong’ (p. 96) and ended up establishing a ‘mode of consuming art which he wanted to criticise’, and, with this, prescribing ‘the kind of reception he is aiming for as an artist, rather than analysing the possibility of such a reception – that is, sociologically’ (Rose, 2024: 96). In response, Rose (2024) asserts the value of Adorno’s work, which, she argues, ‘applied Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism to every stage of production, exchange, distribution’ (p. 107), and so analysed style and the technical features of a work of art rather than simply its content. To this, Rose (2024: 99–101) adds a further key point: that art and culture intended to be revolutionary in basis can be ‘co-opted by the capitalist class’ and turned into their opposite. Rose (2024), fleetingly, refers to Marcuse’s concept of ‘repressive desublimation’ to clarify this point, and explains the danger of ‘things that look, in a capitalist society, as if they’re liberating’ but ‘are in fact a new form of repression, once they’ve been taken over by the dominant apparatuses’ (p. 102).
Martin Jay, in the afterword to this volume, warns that publishing lectures that were never intended for a wider public audience is potentially an act of an ‘unintended betrayal’ of someone whose life was dedicated to scholarship of the very highest level. His verdict, however, is that this is not the case, for ‘Rather than a betrayal, their publication expresses . . . the admiring judgement of posterity that even the seemingly ephemeral remnants of the life of this particular mind are worth preserving, and, indeed, may still have something to teach us’ (Rose, 2024: 134). Jay is right: there is, indeed, much to learn from these lectures in relation to the challenges of the present, not least to address the failure of the political left, the ‘successes’ of the political right, anti-Semitism, the relation of capitalism to fascism, and the ways in which oppositional forms of culture can be incorporated into and deployed by the very system they are intended to undermine.
Jay qualifies his judgement on this question of betrayal by observing that these lectures are of the ‘young Rose’ who ‘favoured critical over speculative reason, outrage at social injustice over affirming the unending dialectic of law and violence, the promise of a different future contained in aesthetic form over believing that eternity exists in the here and now for those with faith’ (Rose, 2024: 143). In his view, ‘There is no doubt that the mature Rose (2024) would have considered these lectures the efforts of a naive, perhaps even jejune thinker, who had yet to pass through the life-altering experiences that would result in her being able, despite everything, to affirm the work of love’ (p. 143). Jay may be right, but nonetheless, today, in a world increasingly devoid of political hope, Rose’s attention to social injustice and search for a different social and political future is invigorating.
It is also striking how many of Rose’s later concerns appear in nascent form through the course of these lectures. At their outset, for example, Rose (2024: 5) pits Frankfurt School Marxism against the ‘existentialism and phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus’ on the grounds of their ‘lack of historical, political, and social awareness’. This was to become a lifelong concern, as Rose’s critique of the ‘existential nihilism’ of thinkers such as Heidegger is central to her assertion of possibility in death in Mourning Becomes the Law. Elsewhere, in Chapter 3, Rose (2024: 42) finds, through Bloch, an opportunity to consider the relation of Marxism to Christian and Jewish theology and points her students towards Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope. And in Chapter 4, on Benjamin, Rose (2024: 64) is already concerned with the question of mourning through the study of the artistic form of the Trauerspiel (the ‘funeral pageant’). Read in this way, these lectures are an invitation to reflect on the relation of critical to speculative reason, and to consider what Rose’s early commitment to cultural Marxism might bring to her later writings on love, death, mourning, the state, and violence. It is also an invitation to think again about the type of cultural Marxism at stake here, which does not include the work of Gramsci (which is central to a different trajectory of cultural studies), and what it might bring to an understanding of a present in which fascism, through emergent forms of populist and neoreactionary politics, is being repackaged and reborn. One way to conceive of these lectures, then, is to think of them as a series of openings – openings onto a life and a body of work, the relevance and possibilities of which still need to be understood.
