Gail Day's Dialectical Passions is a uniquely important book. Day argues persuasively that the powerful negations that characterize the finest Marxist thinking about art architecture to come from the postwar New Left is characterized by real
and passionate
dialectical instability. It is largely this, in her view, that prevents it from being fully subsumed by the hegemonic forms of late capitalist culture. ... Read moreThe negations practiced by these writers, most notably T. J. Clark and Manfredo Tafuri, have been uncompromisingly realistic and resolutely non-romantic. At the same time, she argues, they share with Marx a belief, however endangered it now is, in the necessity of a genuinely radical political alternative. Day's book makes evident the value of such thinking in resisting the fixed polarities and relentless pessimism of much present-day cultural theory and its increasingly empty critiques of capitalist commodification.
Alexander Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan A wonderfully enjoyable examination of some of the key figures, debates, and points of intrigue in art theory influenced by the New Left.
Matthew Flisfeder PUBLIC Show Less