Lukács 50

Publications, programmes on the 50th anniversary of Lukacs’s death

 

Programmes of the Lukács Archive International Foundation (LAIF)

The Philosopher of a Century. On 7th June 2021 between 5pm-7pm Wolfgang Müller-Funk (Vienna) will be speaking about continuity/discontinuity in Lukács’ works, under the title Lukács: Philosoph eines Jahrhunderts. The talk will be followed by comments from the two opponents, Ivana Perica (Vienna) és Francisco García Chicote (Buenos Aires), and a discussion. The event, organised by Bettina Szabados and László Gergely Szücs (LANA), will be held online and can be attended on Zoom after registration. The recorded event will be available on LANA’s YouTube channel and the text of the presentation will be available in Hungarian translation on the LANA website.

LANA and Kalligram publishing house will be jointly publishing Éva Fekete’s monograph, which has been in manuscript form for decades, under the title Lukács György. Késleltetett életrajz (György Lukács. Delayed Biography). ’There was no need for a denouncement or a particular event for the director of the publishing house not to want to publish György Lukács’s biography. Éva Fekete’s Lukács biography is about someone who called himself a communist, but despite all his disappointments and mistakes, still believed that communism can only be achieved through and only with a profound, democratic transformation of society.’ (Ferenc Kőszeg)

György Lukács’s Essays 1920-1929. A Hungarian language complete collection of György Lukács’ smaller works (political essays, reviews, theoretical writings in the form of reviews) written in the 1920s, during his years of emigration in Vienna, edited by Miklós Mesterházi, has been published on LANA’s website. This has been long overdue: the Lukács Archive planned to include these writings in Magvető Publishing’s Complete Works of Lukács in 1990, but the publishing house was transformed and ceased to exist as a large, state-owned publisher, so the publication of the complete works of Lukács fell through.

Wreath laying ceremony. On 3rd June at 5pm, LANA will be laying a wreath at the plaque in tribute to György Lukács on the wall of the house where the philosopher lived and where the Lukács Archive was situated until its closure three years ago (Budapest, V. Belgrád rkp. 2.).

 

Other events and publications on the Lukács anniversary

On June 7 an anniversary conference will be held at UAM Xochimilco (Mexico) with the participation of Michael Löwy, Antonino Infranca, Miguel Vedda and others.

On 4th June an international conference entitled Georg Lukács im 21. Jahrhundert will be held in Berlin. The organisers of the conference are Frank Engster (Helle Panke), Rüdiger Dannemann (Internationale-Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft) and Patrick Eiden-Offe (Leibniz Zentrum für Literaturforschung, ZFL). (The conference will be streamed on the YouTube channel of Helle Panke.) The closing talks will be given by two internationally reknowned scholars, Axel Honneth (Columbia, NY/ IfS Frankfurt) and Michael Löwy (CNRS / EHESS, Paris). On LAIF’s behalf, Miklós Mesterházi will give a presentation under the title Lukács in Ungarn – gestern und heute.

The monthly magazine Theater der Zeit (Berlin) is organising a series of debates as part of Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus and will also publish a reader under the title Georg Lukács: Texte zum Theater to mark the occasion. ’As a rule, Lukács is primarily considered a theorist of the modern novel. This makes it all the more revealing to look at his writings specifically on theatre as part of the rediscovery of his work. For theatre plays a role for Lukács that should not be underestimated. Not only did he work as a theatre critic in his younger years, but his ideas on the theory of realism have also been taken up in theatre studies and media theory. The project “Re-reading Lukács – Georg Lukács and the Theatre” aims to initiate a comprehensive, long-term discussion. Lukács is to return to the stage as a stimulating intellectual force in critical debate.’

On 2nd June junge Welt will publish a themed supplement entitled ’Irrationalismus und Klassenkampf’ to mark the anniversary. The authors of the issue are Ester Vaisman and Ronaldo Vielmi Fortes, Lukács’s publishers in Brazil; Dr. Jian Liu (Nanjing), Rüdiger Dannemann, president of the Internationale-Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft, Werner Jung, editor of the Lukács-Werkausgabe (Aisthesis Verlag) and Arnold Schölzel (Berlin).

There are two conferences commemorating the anniversary in Brazil: Lukács: Permanências E Releituras will be held between 27 and 28 May, and Congresso Internacional – Lukács 50 anos depois. Pensamento vivo from June 4 to 6, organized by the Anuário Lukács.

To mark the anniversary, Suhrkamp published a comprehensive Lukács reader covering his entire oeuvre, with a foreword by the editors, Rüdiger Dannemann and Axel Honneth, under the title Ästhetik, Marxismus, Ontologie. The contents and introduction can be found here.

A videoconference held on 2nd May 2021 with the participation of the reknowned philosopher and Lukács researcher, Andrew Feenberg (Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) can be viewed on the YouTube channel of Red May (Seattle).

Vorschungsverbund der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt held a conference entitled Self-transformative Life? on 22nd April. The Hungarian participant was Csaba Olay with his presentation, Lukács’ Early Conception of Reification in the Light of Recent Interpretations.

Actuel Marx (Presses universitaires de France) published a special issue dedicated to Lukács with a Hungarian contribution from Ádám Takács (ELTE) entitled Democracy, fascism, and the question of socialist society in the political writings of Lukács (1945–1950).

In October 2020, Lukács’s Brazilian publisher published The Destruction of Reason in revised translation, edited by Ester Vaisman and Ronaldo Vielmi Fortes, under the title Georg Lukács: A destruição da razão.

(The list of articles and commemorations will be continuously updated.)

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