“It is All About Realism” – A Reappraisal, with Patrick Eiden-Offe

“It is all about realism”, “Es geht um den Realismus”. Under this title, the literary theorist and political philosopher Georg Lukács published a polemic in 1938 that enlisted literature in the service of anti-fascist struggle. For Lukács, there were only two sides: either progressive realism or reactionary anti-realism. Confrontational determinations of this kind date back to the debates over literary realism in the 19th century and have continued to this day. The lecture will interrogate such absolutist definitions, aiming to update realism’s conceptual utility for the analysis of contemporary literature and culture. Ultimately, it becomes clear that for our critical purposes today the standard English translation of the title of Lukács’ essay - “Realism in the balance” – is more apt and productive than the confrontational title of the German original.

Dr. Patrick Eiden-Offe is a prominent Germanist and research associate at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. He is a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and co-coordinates the program area “History of Theory”