Agonistics Book

This book combines two recently-discovered favourites of mine: literary theory, and Marxist theory. Of course, the two have obvious overlap, but I'd never seen them united and so beautifully woven together until I read this book. The chapters here are mostly essays or letters by the people mentioned on the title page, and you'll get more value out of this book if you've read their longer texts first, but it's not necessary; you can always read them afterwards if you want to better understand the context.

My favourite things about this book: the peeks into Benjamin and Brecht's relationship as provided by Benjamin's wonderful diary entries; the absolutely savage but no less cultured way these men attack each other's theories (I wish MY critics addressed me the way Adorno does his friends--it's like getting stabbed with a stunningly elegant knife, which of course still hurts but at least you can admire its beauty); the remarkable ease with which aesthetic concepts are merged with political ones in their arguments. I now want to read everything related to the Frankfurt School that I can get my hands on.

On a completely tangential and very personal note, I'm so jealous of the people who were introduced to this kind of stuff in college or, a fortiori, earlier in life, through parents or teachers. The closest I had teacher-wise was a high school IB English HL teacher who pointed us in the direction of the deconstructionists but never went so far as to actually deconstruct, so to speak, their theories for us. (They weren't required knowledge for the IB assessment, so. I remember learning the phrase "death of the author" and leaving it at that.) Parent-wise, mine had completed the unimaginably difficult task of immigrating from the depths of rural China to the West and thus had, understandably, very little interest in Western philosophy or politics. My dad did happen to be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of China, but of course that means something very different when that party is actually the ruling party (and really only party) of the country you live in, rather than a fringe movement that appeals mostly to disaffected youth. In any case, I got the impression it was more of a shrewd career move than a sincere political belief.

All this to say that I had little exposure to anything remotely approaching critical theory until very recently. About a year ago, I was two years into a presumed life sentence at a tech startup whose premise I had absolutely zero faith in. I was completely unhappy with what I was doing and could no longer see something to look forward to with my career. Everything that I had put so much effort into for the last two years was melting into air, and I was lost, resigned, adrift in an ocean of meaningless customer acquisition targets. It felt like I was at one of those sushi places with a conveyer belt but, like, the kitchen was closed, and I was just sitting there watching the conveyer belt go round and round, hoping against hope that the dish I wanted would turn up but instead seeing the same unappetising options displayed over and over.

So I started to rediscover an old passion: books. At first it was merely a refuge from the exigencies of a stultifying 9-5, but I soon realised I was hooked. Two main paths emerged: David Foster Wallace (and literary criticism thereof), and critiques of the current socioeconomic system. The latter path began with the fairly milquetoast mea culpas of mainstream economists wringing their hands over the 2008 crisis, but I have now reached the wonderful heights of critical theory. Surprisingly, at least to me, the two paths intersected quite a bit, in terms of vocabulary used, philosophers mentioned, and ideas explored. Both paths brought me, more or less simultaneously, to Frankfurt School theories, which, so far, seems to me like the apotheosis of both paths.

Wow, so this review turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would. So yeah, my message to anyone who sees this: read more, and don't be afraid of going down rabbit holes. You just might discover a part of yourself you'll want to nourish.