Join us for an unusual seminar with a screening of the recent documentary on Georg Lukacs.
György (Georg) Lukács (1885–1971) was a Hungarian philosopher. Although he was primarily concerned with the philosophy of art and literature, Lukács was also deeply engaged in politics and wrote extensively on questions of class consciousness, social reproduction and form, as well as the history of philosophy. Before late 1918, Lukács held a “romantic anti-capitalist” position not uncommon in Budapest’s intellectual circles around the turn of the century. After the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire—and the dual revolutions in Hungary that followed (1918–19)—he pursued a lifelong intellectual and political engagement with Marxism. Variously, Lukács was a key member of the Hungarian Communist Party, expelled from its ranks, one of the most prominent reform communists around Imre Nagy and the Petőfi Circle of intellectuals in 1956, and then re-integrated into the Party in the 1960s. From 1919 onward, he was described as an “orthodox Marxist,” a “Left Communist,” a “Stalinist,” or even a “democratic socialist.”
While by now he has been widely accepted as one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, the current right-wing nationalist Fidesz party in Hungary—which controls most functions of the state—has undertaken an extensive campaign to eliminate his historical memory in the country of his birth, death, and most active public engagement. Statues of Lukács have been removed from prominent public places; the archive located in his former apartment has been shuttered and its contents removed and placed in the closed stacks of the library and archive of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The documentary “Georg” (2019, dir. Sotiris Bekas) reflects on his life, legacy, its international reception, and poses questions about the politics of history in contemporary Hungary.
Event details:
The filmmakers, Sotiris Bekas and Cody James Inglis will be present for a conversation and Q&A moderated by Dina Gusejnova on intellectual history in the age of spin dictatorships.
Reception on the 8th floor rooftop terrace of the LSE's Marshall building to follow.
Hosted by the LSE Department of International History's Conflict and Identity cluster, in cooperation with the IHR History of Political Ideas seminar and KCL.
Speakers:
Sotiris Bekas is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is a graduate of Hellenic Open University ("Studies in European Culture") and holds an MA in Quality Journalism and New Technologies (University of Donau-Universität Krems, Austria). The documentary "Georg" is his first feature film and has been presented in Budapest (2019), at the Greek Film Archive (2020), in Peloponnese International Documentary Festival (2021), and in Ioannina/Epirus (2022). Since 2015, Sotiris Bekas works at Central European University (Budapest / Vienna) as a Video Program Manager.
Cody James Inglis is a doctoral candidate in comparative history at Central European University (Vienna, Austria). Inglis is an intellectual historian who works on the history of political thought and the history of philosophy in Central and Southeastern Europe from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. From 2018 to 2023, he worked on the ERC Consolidator Grant “Negotiating post-imperial transitions,” hosted at the Institute for Political History in Budapest. His dissertation is an intellectual history of republicanism in Central Europe, 1900–1948.
Dina Gusejnova (PhD in History, University of Cambridge) is Associate Professor in International History at LSE. Her research interests include modern European political, intellectual and cultural history of transitional periods, especially the revolutions of 1918-20 and the two World Wars. She is currently working on a cultural and intellectual history of forced displacement and internment in the Second World War.
How to attend:
This a public event open to all. Register via EventBrite.
Email ih.events@lse.ac.uk if you have any questions about the event.