Lukács’ Red Revolution

Moving between autobiographical and biographical reflections on Lukács and the embeddedness of lives, his and briefly mine, in historical time, the persistent influence of his readings of culture and questions of form, science and a philosophy of praxis is to be reflected on. There is, in some quarters, a dominant Lukácsian reading of modernism, which he apparently dismisses as fragmentary and debilitating. However, there is much to be said about the ways his writings, especially the ones from the 1920s, leave traces and recurrently propel inquiry lines in less discussed areas: namely, thermal analyses of alienation and reification as picked up in Frankfurt School and Situationist thinking; synthetic color production, and communist self-activity. To observe this persistent generativity in the name of self-organization and dialectics is to value something under attack in the revival of anti-Semitism and anti-Communism in Hungary today.