An aesthetic between utopia and reality : the idea of realism in Western Marxism.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the idea of realism in Western Marxism through
the comparative approaches of Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno,
Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre and Fredric Jameson in relation to non-Marxist
theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. The issue of realism suffers
from the controversial terminology of realism and reality. This is the reason why
realism can be better viewed by Marxist perspectives that are firmly based on the
category of the subject-object dialectic. This Marxian principle, thereby pertaining to
the reality existing outside of subjectivity, substantiates the issue of realism as a
continuing social and aesthetic project. By focusing on the category of reality in
relation to the idea of realism in Western Marxist debates, this study explores the way
in which the Marxist theorists understand the relationship between culture and
society, and respond to the change of socio-economic conditions in each historical
moment. These various discourses revolving around the issue of realism produce a
similar agenda to explain the place of the artwork in the realm of culture. Such a
similarity arises from their attempt to retain the idea of realism, even when they argue
for an aesthetic of anti-realism. In this respect, my thesis questions the distinction
between realism and modernism in Western Marxist discourses, and argues that such
differentiation had been articulated by a political intention to sever Western Marxism
from Stalinism. Their idea of realism is paradoxical in the sense that their
formulations of realism aspire to a utopian project. This is the very way in which their
idea of realism can be grasped as another facet of their political programme.