Marxism and Totality The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas

by Martin Jay (Author)
February 1986
First Edition
Paperback
$40.95
Title Details

Rights: Not available in British Common; Available in Canada
Pages: 576
ISBN: 9780520057425
Trim Size: 6 x 9

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About the Book About the Author Table of Contents Related Books

About the Book

Totality has been an abiding concern from the first generation of Western Marxists, most notably Lukács, Korsch, Gramsci, and Bloch, through the second, exemplified by the Frankfurt School, Lefebvre, Goldmann, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Della Volpe, up to the most recent, typified by Althusser, Colletti, and Habermas. Yet no consensus has been reached concerning the term's multiple meanings—expressive, decentered, longitudinal, latitudinal, normative—or its implications for other theoretical and practical matters. By closely following the adventures of this troublesome but central concept, Marxism & Totality offers an unconventional account of the history of Western Marxism.

About the Author

Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought and, as co-editor, The Weimar Sourcebook, both published by the University of California Press.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Topography of Western Marxism
1. The Discourse of Totality Before Western Marxism
2. Georg Lukacs and the Origins of the Western Marxist Paradigm
3. The Revolutionary Historicism of Karl Korsch
4. The Two Holisms of Antonio Gramsci
5. Ernst Bloch and the Extension of Marxist Holism to Nature
6. Max Horkheimer and the Retreat from Hegelian Marxism
7. Anamnestic Totalization: Memory in the Thought of Herbert Marc use
8. Theodor W. Adorno and the Collapse of the Lukacsian Concept of Totality
9. Henri Lefebvre, the Surrealists and the Reception of Hegelian Marxism in France
10. Totality and Marxist Aesthetics: The Case of Lucien Goldmann
11. From Totality to Totalization: The Existentialist Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre
12. Phenomenological Marxism: The Ambiguities of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Holism
13. Louis Althusser and the Structuralist Reading of Marx
14. Scientific Marxism in Postwar Italy: Galvano Della Volpe and Lucio Colletti
15. Jurgen Habermas and the Reconstruction of Marxist Holism

Epilogue: The Challenge of Post-Structuralism
Selected Bibliography
Index