True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom

“In stunningly argued text, Suther claims that it is partly through the work of art that we collectively form ourselves as a certain kind of historical community. The unlikely source of Suther’s compelling philosophy of art and literature is a tour de force reconstruction of Hegelian-Marxism from a revised Aristotelian reading of Hegel’s Logic. This is an aesthetic theory for our time.” ―J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research

“In his brilliant and spectacular debut, Jensen Suther explores how some of the greatest modernist artworks are not merely hostages to capitalism or refuges from its depredations. They dramatize and even take part in our embattled attempt to confer narrative unity on our lives.” ―Samuel Moyn, Yale University

“Fearlessly reclaiming a humanist and Hegelian Marx, Jensen Suther’s exhilarating book reactivates the concept of ‘bio-aesthetics’ for literary criticism today. Concepts and practices we have grown used to seeing as opposites―embodiment and reason, historical materialism and the autonomy of artworks―are subsequently re-thought together in politically exciting ways. This is an almost endlessly rich and rewarding text.” ―Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago

“The most ambitious attempt to defend Marxist literary criticism by systematically elaborating what it should be since Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious.” ―Christopher Gortmaker, Critical Inquiry

“An original and rigorous intervention in dialectical thought and the philosophy of (modernist) art, True Materialism is a spectacular achievement…. [Suther] has produced a formidable, and beautifully-written, piece of scholarship―one that should do as much as any I’ve encountered to move literary theory from its Kantian to its Hegelian phase.” ―Robert S. Lehman, Modernism/modernity