English 456: C20 Criticism and Theory Questions on Karl Marx's
The German Ideology (1846) Al Drake | Cyber Cafe | Thurs. 4-6 1. What is a camera obscura? (Look up the term in a dictionary if you aren't familiar with it.) What does this term imply about the possibility of arriving at true statements about human relations? If art is a form of ideology, what is art's relation to "real life"? 2. Why do institutions and belief systems such as religion and philosophy "have no history, no development," according to Marx? What, then, is history? 3. What, according to Marx, accounts for the fact that we can still enjoy Greek art? 4. On 626, Marx insists on distinguishing between the purely material transformation of a society and "the ideological forms [religion, aesthetics, law, etc.] in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." What does this statement imply about the potential task of the literary or art critic? *The reading selection is from Adams, Hazard. Critical Theory Since Plato.
Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, 1992. 625-27.
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