Philosophizing the Everyday

Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Theory

John Roberts

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780745324111, 9780745324111
• eBook ISBN: 9781849644648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After modernism and postmodernism, it is argued, the everyday supposedly is wherea democracy of taste is brought into being - the place where art goes to recover its customary and collective pleasures, and where the shared pleasures of popular culture are indulged, from celebritymagazines to shopping malls. John Roberts argues that this understanding of the everyday downgrades its revolutionary meaning and philosophical implications. Bringing radical political theory back to the centre of the discussion, he shows how notions of cultural democratization have been oversimplified. Asserting that the everyday should not be narrowly identified with the popular, Roberts critiques the way in which the concept is now overly associated with consumption and 'ordinariness'. Engaging with the work of key thinkers including, Lukács, Arvatov, Benjamin, Lefebvre, Gramsci, Barthes, Vaneigem, and de Certeau, Roberts shows how the concept of the everyday continues to be central to debates on ideology, revolution and praxis. He offers a lucid account of different approaches that developed over the course of the twentieth century, making this an ideal book for anyone looking for a politicised approach to cultural theory.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Prologue: Dangerous Memories
• 1 The Everyday and the Philosophy of Praxis
• 2 The Everyday as Trace and Remainder
• 3 Lefebvre's Dialectical Irony: Marx and the Everyday
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index