Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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Schroyer describes the work of the Frankfurt School in analysing the contemporary “culture industry” (including philosophy, social theory, art, music, and literature) and contemporary manifestations of social institutions such as the state and the family. As expounded in The Critique of Domination, this body of cultural criticism, particularly the work of Horkheimer and Adorno, unmasks contemporary culture - and notably mass culture - as a system of social domination of the individual. Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain fills an especially acute need in the contemporary rassessment of the social roots and cultural contexts of avant-garde academic movements. . . . Dworkin assembles a convincing historical narrative of how a seemingly provisional reaction to the crisis of British welfare capitalism in the post-war period developed into a coherent and compelling subtradition of European Marxist social theory. . . . Dworkin’s new study manages to both creatively historicize a familiar—yet often misunderstood—recent academic and political formation as well as raise pressing methodological questions that cross the major disciplines of the human sciences.” — Alex Benchimol , Thesis Eleven Webster, Frank (2004). "Cultural Studies and Sociology at, and After, the Closure of the Birmingham School". Cultural Studies. 18 (6): 848. doi: 10.1080/0950238042000306891. S2CID 145110580.

Cultural Marxism in Post War Britain: History, the New Left Cultural Marxism in Post War Britain: History, the New Left

Shulman, Norma (1993). "Conditions of their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham". Canadian Journal of Communication. 18 (1).Schroyer was, and is, a genuine scholar presenting a thesis that was received and reviewed seriously. He seems generally correct in his description of Western Marxism’s departure from Soviet Marxism, with an emphasis on cultural critique and a different set of attitudes to culture itself. More specifically, the unmasking of culture as complicit in social domination of the individual was a central idea within the intellectual ambitions of the Frankfurt School. Similar ideas of unmasking and criticizing the role of culture can be observed more broadly within Western Marxism - and in what we might call “Western post-Marxism” - from at least the 1920s to the present day. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Curtis, Polly (27 June 2002). "Birmingham's cultural studies department given the chop". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 December 2018. Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners.

Cultural Marxism Postwar Britain by Dworkin Dennis - AbeBooks Cultural Marxism Postwar Britain by Dworkin Dennis - AbeBooks

In the upshot, all the talk of cultural Marxism from figures on the (far) Right of politics is of little aid to understanding our current cultural and political situation. At best, this conception of cultural Marxism is too blunt an intellectual instrument to be useful for analysing current trends. At its worst, it mixes wild conspiracy theorizing with self-righteous moralism. Although the term “cultural Marxism” is used by mainstream academic figures, it has obtained greater prominence since the 1990s from its weaponized use by right-wing political commentators such as William S. Lind and Pat Buchanan. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep content for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services The new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology was unexpectedly and abruptly closed in 2002, a move the university's senior management described as "restructuring". [14] The immediate reason given for disestablishment of the new department was an unexpectedly low result in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, though a dean from the university described the decision as a consequence of "inexperienced 'macho management'". [15] Students and staff unsuccessfully campaigned to save the school, which gained considerable attention in the national press and sparked numerous letters of support from former alumni all over the world. [16] Four of the department's 14 members of staff were to be "retained" and its hundreds of students (nearly 250 undergraduates and postgraduates at that time, many from abroad) to be transferred to other departments. In the ensuing dispute most department staff left. In Part 1 of this article, I concluded that the term “cultural Marxism” has a variety of uses. It has been employed by right-wing ideologues, such as Anders Breivik, in grandiose theories of cultural history; and it is flung about popularly in ways that show little understanding of its history or its original meaning. Nonetheless, it has also been useful for some mainstream scholars who tend, themselves, to be sympathetic to Marxist thought.

The strengths of Dworkin’s study are legion. He offers an excellent account of the break made by a number of intellectuals with the Communist Party of Great Britain. . . . Moreover, although an ardent enthusiast for the work of the cultural Marxists, Dworkin is not afraid to be critical of that work. . . . But most of all, Dworkin has written an important study insofar as it charts the evolution of a major strand of thought in postwar Britain and does so in part by making excellent use of unpublished papers and various interviews that the author undertook for the study.” — Chris Waters , American Historical Review Conditions of their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham by Norma Schulman

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain on Apple Books ‎Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain on Apple Books

References to “the Frankfurt School” are to a group of scholars who were associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in 1923. Among the most influential scholars connected with the Institute at one time or another were Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and (later) Jürgen Habermas. The Institute evolved its orientation over time - most dramatically in 1930 when Horkheimer became its director - and in the late 1930s it adopted the deliberately obscure term “critical theory” as a label for its method(s) of analysis. Dennis Dworkin. Cultural Marxism in Post War Britain: History, the New Left and the Origins of Cultural Studies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.

Resistance through rituals: youth subcultures in post-war Britain. Hall, Stuart, 1932-2014., Jefferson, Tony. (2nd., rev. and expandeded.). London: Routledge. 2006. ISBN 978-0415324373. OCLC 70106758. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: others ( link) As he develops his thesis, Schroyer explains the “crisis theory”, shared by the Frankfurt School with other “cultural Marxists”, as identifying a social process of rationalizing endless growth. This forces social-cultural processes to adapt in ways that undermine individual autonomy ( Critique of Domination, p. 171). More specifically, Schroyer explains the central idea of the Frankfurt School as follows: “As advanced industrial societies developed, the individual was more integrated into and dependent upon the collectivity and less able to utilize society for active self-expression” ( Critique of Domination, p. 227).