October 16 – 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm CMT
We extend an invitation to the opening lecture of the Second Conference on the Sociology of Literature. It will be held virtually via the GESoL YouTube channel on Friday, October 16th at 6:00 PM (Argentina time). Horacio Tarcus will present the lecture entitled: “The Place of Literature in Historical Materialism.” Although literature occupied a significant place in Marx’s work (one need only consider the presence of Shakespeare in various sections of Capital), it would be futile to search among his many references for a theory of literature. Marx, and especially Engels, left clues about the place that literature would occupy within the system of historical materialism. Relegated by this system to the role of a mere “reflection” or “derivative” of “ideological superstructures,” from the later Engels to Georg Lukács and Lucien Goldmann, by way of Plekhanov and Mehring, Gramsci and Althusser, all the significant theorists of 20th-century historical materialism constructed sophisticated theoretical frameworks to mitigate or dismantle the rigidity and unidirectionality of the “base”/“superstructure” relationship, seeking to restore a degree of relative autonomy to literary creation. The exhibition reviews the successive formulations of this problem, from Karl Marx to Raymond Williams.
