Philosophizing the Everyday: Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural TheoryAfter modernism and postmodernism, it is argued, the everyday supposedly is where a democracy of taste is brought into being - the place where art goes to recover its customary and collective pleasures, and where the shared pleasures of popular culture are indulged, from celebrity magazines to shopping malls.John Roberts argues that this understanding of the everyday downgrades its revolutionary meaning and philosophical implications. Bringing radical political theory back to the centre of the discussion, he shows how notions of cultural democratization have been oversimplified. Asserting that the everyday should not be narrowly identified with the popular, Roberts critiques the way in which the concept is now overly associated with consumption and 'ordinariness'.Engaging with the work of key thinkers including, Lukács, Arvatov, Benjamin, Lefebvre, Gramsci, Barthes, Vaneigem, and de Certeau, Roberts shows how the concept of the everyday continues to be central to debates on ideology, revolution and praxis. He offers a lucid account of different approaches that developed over the course of the twentieth century, making this an ideal book for anyone looking for a politicised approach to cultural theory. |
Contents
The Everyday and the Philosophy of Praxis | 16 |
The Everyday as Trace and Remainder | 59 |
Marx and the Everyday | 100 |
Copyright | |
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Philosophizing the Everyday: Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Theo John Roberts No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic experience aestheticization agency alienation Alltag artists Arvatov avant-garde Barthes becomes Blanchot capitalism capitalist Certeau Class Consciousness concept consumption counter-cultural creative critical Critique of Everyday cultural form cultural politics cultural practice cultural praxis cultural studies cultural theory cultural transformation debate defence dialectical early emergence Ernst Jünger expanded Freud Georg Lukács Gramsci Hegel Hegelian Heidegger Henri Lefebvre hermeneutics History and Class Ibid identifies ideology immanent intellectual irreducible remainder Kollantai Korsch labour Lefebvre's Lenin Leon Trotsky London machino-technical Marx Marx's mass culture mediation modern notion orthodox Marxism Paris philosophy of praxis photography postwar prewar problem Productivism Productivist proletariat psychoanalysis radical reification representation reproduction resistance revolutionary cultural revolutionary transformation Russian Revolution Schelling sense situation Situationist International social relations Sociology Soviet space struggle technism temporal theoretical total revolutionary praxis tradition translated Trotsky Trotsky's unitary urbanism Vaneigem vie quotidienne Walter Benjamin Western Marxism worker-correspondent workers writing York