Marxist Literary Theory

This chapter, Marxist literary theory, is composed of four major parts. The first section is a survey on Karl Marx’s ideas. After analyzing Marx’s ideas in great details, he pays attention to Frankfort school. Frankfurt School which was founded in 1923, was organized formally as the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt. This school was essentially a Marxist think-tank that comprised some of the most influential thinkers of the time. Later, the author goes to post-Marxism, discourse theory, and the thought of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci’s ideas mark a crucial break with the former. For Gramsci modern society is not a closed totality organized around a fixed center of capitalist rationality. At the end of the chapter, he presents the influential Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek’s thoughts. Zizek has developed a compelling perspective that, in a certain sense, represents a return to Marx.