Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities

City University of New York (CUNY)

Theses/Dissertations

2020

Marxism

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine Jun 2020

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …


Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, And Walter Benjamin’S Sensory Revolution, Alexander C. Redlins Jun 2020

Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, And Walter Benjamin’S Sensory Revolution, Alexander C. Redlins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This inquiry examines the ways in which the psychedelic nature of film, as posited by Walter Benjamin, has the potential to precipitate class consciousness and lead to humanity’s emancipation from anaesthetizing capitalist forces. We first explore Benjamin’s relationship to, and understanding of, Marxist thought with a particular focus on György Lukács’ theory of reification and Marx’s fetish character of the commodity which Benjamin ultimately believes lead to an erosion of the human sensorium and the destruction of human nature. As such, we explore Benjamin’s revolutionary aesthetic theory which seeks the reversal of these erosive capitalist forces and the redemption of …