Table of Contents

Introduction

Section I: Aesthetics / Emancipations

Chapter 1: Three Logics of the Aesthetic in Marx
Samir Gandesha, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Chapter 2: Poiesis, Praxis, Aisthesis: Remarks on Aristotle and Marx
Henry Pickford, Duke University, USA
Chapter 3: “Sensuous Supra-Sensuous”: The Aesthetics of Real Abstraction
Sami Khatib, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Chapter 4: Free Associations: On Marx and Freud
Johan F. Hartle, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Section II: Style and Performativity in Marx

Chapter 5: On Beauty and its Challenges: Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Karl Marx
Anna Katharina Gisbertz, University of Mannheim, Germany
Chapter 6: Marx: The Philosophical Defense of History in the Metonymical Mode
Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Chapter 7: Imagery as Weaponry: ars gratia belli
Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, UK
Chapter 8: Radical Schiller and Young Marx
Daniel Hartley, University of Leeds, UK

Section III: Modes of Artistic Production

Chapter 9: Installing Communism
Boris Groys, New York University, USA
Chapter 10: Marx’s Aesthetics in Mexico: Conceptual Art After 1968
Robin Greeley, University of Connecticut, USA
Chapter 11: Filming Capital: On Cinemarxism in the Twenty-first Century
Sven Lütticken, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Chapter 12: Marx as Art as Politics: Representations of Marx in Contemporary Arts
Johan H. Hartle, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

List of Illustrations

Promotional Information

This book discusses Marx’s work as a contribution to recent theories of the aesthetico-political and to a socially informed theory of contemporary fine arts.

About the Author

Samir Gandesha is Director at the Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Canada.

Johan Hartle is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Adjunct Professor for Aesthetics at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China. He was visiting research fellow at Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Centre for German Jewish Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Humboldt Research Fellow at the Universitá Roma Tre. He is editor, along with Samir Gandesha, of Reification and Spectacle. The Timeliness of Western Marxism (2016).

Reviews

This volume offers many promising lines of inquiry whose practical and theoretical elaborations represent an exciting possibility for future research.
*Marx and Philosophy Review of Books*

The crisis of neoliberal capitalism has occasioned an urgent and widespread reassessment of Marx and his significance. Anyone seeking to take its pulse in the discourses of the aesthetic must read Aesthetic Marx.
*Stewart Martin, Editor of 'Radical Philosophy' and Reader in Philosophy and Fine Art, Middlesex University, UK*

Gandesha and Hartle’s vividly choreographed collection of essays succeeds in giving a new sense to Marx. It shows how the familiar scenes of dialectic, class consciousness and self-consciousness play out on a wider stage of passion, affect and sensibility. This invitation to revisit the texts of Marx and be astonished anew by their beauty and complexity is not to be missed.
*Howard Caygill, Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London, UK*

A vibrant and inspired collection of essays, Aesthetic Marx prompts us to re-imagine the work of Marx as well as our long-standing understanding of aesthetics. Gandesha and Hartle’s expansive introduction offers an invaluable and detailed overview of the fundamentally aesthetic character of Marx’s thought, arguing in the process for a new vision of the operations of Marx’s emancipatory critique. Essential reading for artists, critics and theorists who want to better understand why Marx's ideas remain at the heart of our political and aesthetic imaginaries in the twenty-first century.
*Imre Szeman, Professor of Communication, Performance and Design, University of Waterloo, Canada*