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In this article, I tell the history of the "national form" of Georgian socialist realism, in light of a theoretical question: Was a national (peripheral) socialist realism possible, or did it only vary the forms created at the center? If it was possible, then what were its specifics, its differences from "central" socialist realism? Furthermore, did it have a reverse impact on multinational Soviet literature? I will demonstrate that "peripheral" socialist realism not only varied the forms created at the center but generated its own forms in a complex interaction of national tradition, modernism (national, European, and Russian), and central socialist realism. I examined a form that is specific to Georgian socialist realism, the "Great Georgian Novel," an amalgam of history and myth that interprets the history of Georgia; its "metanarrative." I analyze the development of the national form from the beginning of the socialist realism exemplified by the poetic collection The New Colchis (1937) (the historicization of mythology), the historical novels of Konstantine Gamsakhurdia (1939–56), the mythologization of history to the literary de-Stalinization exemplified by the Novels by Otar Chiladze (A Man Went Down the Road , 1973), and Chabua Amirejibi (Data Tutashkhia , 1972–75). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of imposing socialist realism on Lithuanian literature, which became a part of the Soviet multinational project after the Soviet occupation in 1940, does not directly follow the general pattern of transferring the Russian model. The agents of the Soviet national literary field not only transposed standard socialist plots to local realia, but also had to transform them in order to legitimate occupation, to reject the legacy of the independent Lithuanian republic, and to reinterpret anti-Soviet resistance. In the process of inventing the national sources of socialist realism and forging "the most advanced artistic method," overcoming the constraints of the Lithuanian literary tradition proved impossible. This article discusses the encounter of inherited literary structures with the external model and its effects on the development of Lithuanian socialist realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concentrates a query as to the facility of current transnationalism in coming to grips with Cold War culture as a world phenomenon bound by both time and space. On the one hand we confront its forceful synchronicities, inspiring but also requiring aesthetic congruities across substantial, sometimes hitherto unrelated portions of the world, and, on the other, its calculated silencings and censorship, enforcing asynchrony and differentiated cultural production, readerships and aesthetic formations on polarised political ground. Exploring little-traced, transverse literary connections between postcolonial Australia and the metropolitan Second World, this paper foregrounds the dissident practices of mid-century poetry, centring the work of settler Australian communist poet Dorothy Hewett. Can such transverse valency help us displace the moribund bipolar model of the cultural Cold War, in favour of a more worldly poetics of disruption, able to speak to the as-yet unrealised utopic horizons that propelled the conflict? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores Sreten Petrović's contribution to Marxist aesthetics. Petrović developed his theory within the framework of the Yugoslav Praxis School, although he was not a member of it. Petrović followed Danko Grlić, a prominent member of the Praxis School, in explaining art as a specific emanation of praxis – free, creative, autonomous and self-emancipatory activity beyond the commodity form of capitalist society. Art was thus understood as the liberation and emancipation of Being and its essence. However, Petrović also introduced a novelty – he claimed that art can never be fully understood nor explained. According to him, the only true Marxist aesthetics, given our limited cognitive abilities and the capitalist imperative of producing commodities, would be to limit aesthetics to meta-aesthetics and affirm the 'critique of the aesthetic mind'. We argue that by limiting aesthetics to meta-aesthetics Petrović is following the young Wittgenstein and his proposition that the world is unintelligible to philosophy. Accordingly, we claim that Petrović's contribution should be seen as an important contribution to Marxist aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on the experiences and insights of living together with God's people. It highlights the differences between the religion-dependent and religion-free people on Catholicism. It discusses the religious and unreligious exercises in church and for faith development in God. It also reports on the atheist of East German Marxists.

This essay examines an innovative approach to the Marxist concept of reification by the contemporary art collective Claire Fontaine, who I argue joins historical materialist and radical democratic strands of critique in their artistic and textual practice. I argue that their work responds to a conceptual impasse in contemporary theory between a radical democratic sensory micropolitics on the one hand, and a critique of political economy on the other. Their work synthesises these approaches, taking into account dynamics of commodification, financialisation, and the neoliberal reconfiguration of the relationship between politics and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enzo Traverso's inspired book Left‐Wing Melancholia revisits iconic representations of revolutionary hopes and defeats not to draw up an inventory of what has been lost but rather to remind his readers that past defeats also contain the traces of unfulfilled possibilities. After the end of the Soviet Union and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism, the communist utopian imagination of a classless society, Traverso suggests, can be reignited through memorial practices of resilient, resistant melancholy. Traverso's argument draws on Walter Benjamin's notions of materialist history, redemptive memory, and knowing melancholy. Yet the nameless vanquished masses to whom Benjamin's concept of history seeks to do justice remain marginal in Traverso's book. Instead, revolutionary defeat is cast in the tragic mold of succeeding by failing, a trope exemplified by figures such as Auguste Blanqui, Charles Péguy, or Daniel Bensaïd. In response to Traverso's reliance on the transhistorical category of the tragic, this essay argues for a more abstractly theoretical understanding of left‐wing melancholy as conditioned by historically specific class relations that constrain and challenge the engaged intellectual. Moreover, this essay questions Traverso's dualistic treatment of politically committed (Benjamin, Brecht, C. L. R. James) and elitist intellectuals (Adorno) and concludes that the concept of left‐wing melancholy must ultimately be interrogated against the backdrop of a lingering uncertainty about the relationship between theory and praxis that, as Adorno claims, one can already find in Karl Marx—an uncertainty that is hence inscribed into the history of any Marxist theory of revolution and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our fraught political moment is a propitious one for renewing the Marxist approach to music. Because that approach has consistently been folded into a more general Marxist discourse on art and aesthetics, any attempt must begin by revisiting what is essential to that discourse. I take its keystone to be the realist conception of art. This conception holds that artworks are a means by which at least some of their appreciators come to know truths about the world outside consciousness. Insofar as they are representational, painting, fiction, music, and drama potentially constitute vehicles for coming to understand the real world. Artistic representation on this view is understood to be analogous to mental representation. Previous studies of Marxist aesthetics have followed Maurice Merleau-Ponty in making a sharp distinction between 'Eastern' and 'Western' branches of the tradition. The Eastern, beleaguered by the exigencies of Communist Party rule is often presented as the corrupt twin of the Western. The latter, developed in relative freedom and informed by a Hegelian legacy suppressed by Stalinism, alone commands theoretical, rather than merely historical, interest. This article departs from this Cold War framework in arguing that the Hegelian strand in Marxist aesthetics grows out of its Bolshevik predecessor and, crucially, shares with it a realist conception of art. After reconstructing the emergence and development of this conception (paying special attention to how music is directly addressed in the literature), I evaluate the compatibility of the realist conception of art with the materialist conception of history as it is found in Marx and Engels. I ultimately argue that moving past the realist conception of art is key to renewing the Marxist approach to music for our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to compare the tracks used by Bettino Craxi and Felipe González from 1978 to 1979 to break the historical Marxist tradition and bring the respective parties, Psi and the Psoe, to Social Democracy. The collected results, mainly based in the analysis of bibliographic material, show that the debate was much more lively and intense in the ranks of the Italian socialists, while it was more dramatic in the ranks of Psoe, even if less prolific from the intellectual point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade of the communist regime in Romania was a very complicated one due to the economic crisis that led to drastic reductions in the supply of the population with products necessary for daily living. This caused severe problems in an everyday life marked by the absence of food on the market, leading to serious health problems due to malnutrition. This situation developed gradually, but, by the end of the 1980s, things turned for the worse. Even if this aspect was known by the supervisory structures, mainly the Securitate, measures to improve the situation were taken only after the fall of the communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the institutional architecture and the effects of product market competition in 11 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The aim of the research was to find out how similar or dissimilar are the CEE countries in the area of product market competition compared with the four models of capitalism prevailing in Western Europe: the Anglo-Saxon (liberal) model (the UK), the continental model (Germany), the Scandinavian (Nordic) model (Sweden), and the Mediterranean one (Spain). The research method involves calculations of the coefficients of similarity and the analysis of polygons, being the extension of our own concept of the hexagons of similarity. The dynamic approach adopted in this study allows to examine the path dependence in order to assess how the institutional environment evolved over time. The analysis indicates that almost all CEE countries were the most similar to the Mediterranean model of capitalism represented by Spain. However, the variety of results for the individual variables is also a proof that the model of capitalism prevailing in CEE in the area of product market competition may be called a patchwork capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at tracing the interface of language and ideology mainly from two angles: philosophy and linguistics covering the period between 1846 and 1989. It deals with reviewing how the term 'ideology' has been dealt with as a concept, negative or positive, in philosophy from a Marxist and post-marxist points of view. It also reviews how the term has been linked to language in philosophical discussions, and how linguists have analysed the (re)construction and transmission of ideas, via language, in relation to the formulation of power relations. The basic arguments that lay behind this paper are that language and ideology are inseparable (Fowler & Kress, 1979) and that any discussion of ideology inevitably invites the discussion of language and its manifestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their article "Maoist Aesthetics in Western Left-wing Thought," Jun Zeng and Siying Duan discuss a terrain of knowledge called "Maoist aesthetics," which is the creative misreading of Mao's "On Contradiction," the theory and practice of "Cultural Revolution" and other revolutionary literature and arts of Mao's time by Western Left intellectuals. Scholars and academic communities inspired by Maoism include Bertolt Brecht, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Pierre Althusser, the Chinese period of Tel Quel, Fredric Jameson, Arif Dirlik, and Contemporary Radical Left intellectuals such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. Comparative study of the mutual influence of (Western) Maoist Aesthetics and (Chinese) Mao's thinking on literature, as well as the research of (Western) Maoism's return to China, can contribute to the rediscovery of the multi-dimensional voices and complexity of the theoretical thinking around Mao Zedong, and thus reveal unique but neglected voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symphonic music composed under Stalin presents both ethical and aesthetic problems. Often assumed to have been composed in a compromised style by composers who were either coerced into abandoning their "real" modernist inclinations or who were in any case second-rate, these works have been labelled variously socialist realist, conformist, conservative, or even dissident, depending on the taste and opinion of those passing judgement. This article argues that picking and choosing which symphony is socialist realist and which is not cannot be justified either logically or historically, and that we should no longer attempt to define any non-texted or non-programmatic music in this way. The Anglophone term "middlebrow" holds out the possibility of describing this repertoire without implying ethical or artistic compromise on the composers' part, acknowledging that, in the absence of any elite or "highbrow" musical culture, composers shared the aim of reaching a mass audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on history of researches on intellectual life in Europe in 20th century conducted by Spanish writer Jorge Semprún. Various topics discussed include history of metaliterature, literary hagiography, history of Marxist philosophy in Europe and metaphors used in these literary works. It further discusses intertextuality in published articles, extensive studies on English language based monographs, social and literary aspects of intellectual works and Marxist aesthetics.

This paper deals with chosen aspects of retextualisation strategies, shown in the example of Gottfried's epigones. The leading question is the relationship between the so-called »materia « and »artificium«, whereby different statements concerning the dichotomy are to be presented. As the artistic intentions are often presented in the prologues, we point out the different positions of Ulrich and Heinrich, who completed Gottfried's novel. The perception of the »materia« by the Czech »interpreter« is to be illustrated by the example of the potion-episode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computation existed long before the computer-and there were artists, seduced by the beauty of mathematics, who integrated computation into their creative endeavors. With the advent of the digital machine, the relation between aesthetic artifacts and computation was redefined. This article deals with images produced between 1965 and 1970. The generation of images associated with mathematical formulae raised questions regarding art's condition and the nature of creativity. These are addressed from the perspective of aesthetic experiments. Through dedicated experiments involving computers in Eastern Europe, particularly in (communist) Romania, artists strove for artistic freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the influence of Islamic philosophy on Western critical theory is far from being a well-established area of research and not without controversy. It becomes even more controversial when integrating an Islamic discourse as having implications for Marxist aesthetics. This is very true in the case of Avicenna and Ernst Bloch, an area which has not been addressed adequately. This article, therefore, explores how Avicenna was integrated into a materialist Western discourse, through playing a major role in what Bloch termed the Aristotelian Left, an idea that Bloch expressed in full in his Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left (1952). I argue that no matter how controversial the integration of Avicenna's position on matter might be, it has significant implications for Bloch's Marxist aesthetics and his warm stream of Marxism. By examining these implications, the present article sheds light on the possibilities latent in Islamic philosophy, in one of its variation, for a critical theory of culture and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The view that the fundamental kind properties are intrinsic properties enjoys reflexive endorsement by most metaphysicians of science. But ontic structural realists deny that there are any fundamental intrinsic properties at all. Given that structuralists distrust intuition as a guide to truth, and given that we currently lack a fundamental physical theory that we could consult instead to order settle the issue, it might seem as if there is simply nowhere for this debate to go at present. However, I will argue that there exists an as-yet untapped resource for arguing for ontic structuralism – namely, the way that fundamentality is conceptualized in our most fundamental physical frameworks. By arguing that physical objects must be subject to the ‘Goldilock's principle’ if they are to count as fundamental at all, I argue that we can no longer view the majority of properties defining them as intrinsic. As such, ontic structural realism can be regarded as the most promising metaphysics for fundamental physics, and that this is so even though we do not yet claim to know precisely what that fundamental physics is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the latter part of the twentieth century, North American poets such as Tom Wayman and Jim Daniels began to practise and theorize a poetry of the workplace that Wayman called the 'New Work Writing'.1 This writing emerged to meet a perceived lack in the majority of twentieth-century literature: namely, writing specifically from and about the industrial workplace. This new work writing defined itself, in part, against socialist realism and the tendency in the 'proletarian literature' of the 1930s to privilege politics above descriptions of the actual experience of work. However, the 'New Work Writing', as theorized by Wayman, was in many ways just as prescriptive as socialist realism, and similarly sceptical of experimental modernism and its inheritors. It is somewhat ironic, then, that arguably the most prominent North American work-related poems of the twenty-first century have been written (or aggregated) by Mark Nowak, a formally experimental poet.2 Much of the previous scholarly criticism of Nowak's work has focused on the documentary aspects of his work.3 This article, however, will discuss Nowak's texts within the context of 'work writing', and his attempts to reimagine this mode of writing as a transformatory social practice, through experiments on the page - Shut Up Shut Down (2004) and Coal Mountain Elementary (2009) - and beyond it in his transnational poetry dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the search for drama in an age of fragmentation on reading the book "Evolutionary History of the Modern Drama" (Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Dramas), by Georg Lukács, known as one of the founders of Marxist aesthetics philosophy in the 20th century. The author exp0lores the initial questions and theoretical assumptions in the book and provides a novel hermeneutic approach to prevent misinterpretations in related studies.