Page 26 - summer 22

Yet ultimately Modernism was a search for a reality, beneath the speed,
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fragmentation and dislocation of the 20 century. But this reality is never defined.
Perhaps Modernism, wherever it came from and whatever it was, will remain the
enigma that defines the century. Art was never so radical as “Modern art”.

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Until, perhaps, in our own life-times; in the last third of the 20 century, everything
moved up a gear and we became Post-modern. But this would not be a renewed
search for “the reality below the surface”. Postmodernism was all surface, and is a
story for a future session.

First, we must look at something called Critical Theory, which reveals how the
century thought about itself.

MODERN PARADISE

SESSION THREE

• Critical Theory, culture and the crisis of Marxism
Gramsci, Adorno, the Frankfurt School, hegemony

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Thinking the 20 century
It seems remarkable that such a small group of Modernists could trigger a revolution
across all of the arts so quickly, despite having no clear common ideology or

philosophy. It is also remarkable that another small group, various intellectuals and
academics, revolutionised how the century thought about itself, about its history,
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politics and culture. We as a generation comprehend the 20 century by having lived
through it. But Hegel said that philosophy is “the epoch comprehended in thought”.

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I suggest that a small number of mid-20 century thinkers changed the century’s
understanding of itself and of modernity. This session concentrates on two of them,

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926, and
Theodore Adorno, an academic and member of the so-called Frankfurt School.

Today, neither Gramsci nor the Frankfurt School are that widely known outside
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academic circles. Nor do they do figure large in mainstream histories of the 20
century, which still tend to focus largely on events, on sorting out the political and
military narrative. Yet their thinking had tremendous influence. They brought to bear
an unrivalled breadth and depth of intellectual and philosophical analysis on some of

the century’s central problems. How does modern capitalism work? How is power