I've been reading a bunch into dialectics, and started "Dance of the Dialectic" by Bertell Ollman which i'm finding very interesting.
I want to write a few things, some articles that will generally be about historical research, analysis and critique of an event, or a text, or ideology. A lot of what i'm interested in gravitates around literary/media critique.
So are there still marxist, specifically dialectical methods, models or schools of thoughts that are still used? Modernised versions, evolutions (that don't fall into anti-communism, or some vague "post-marxism"), etc? Are there methods that bridge the gap like Marx's dialectic and can be used as much in science, in critique, in philosophy and in strategy and action?
Another thing I'm interested in: escaping the uselessless of media and literary critique. I don't just want to dissect a text and talk about what's inside or about the ideology, although that's a necessary step, but I want to see if that can be projected forward, to derive not only a critique but a positive method, a strategy for change. For example, a method that allows you to critique fiction writing and also gives you workable tactics for better writing, for revolutionary writing. Not simply pointing out the ideological content of something, but tactics for fighting it, for writing something better, for counter-acting. Feels like simply analysing and being critical isn't enough because it doesn't bring change, and can even bring a sense of powerlessness when all you're doing is in knowing rather than doing. In this example, how do we convert the analysis into something that motivates and guides new writing? I'm still unsure if this is really possible, it feels like media critique can only ever be subsumed into capital and can never really be used in revolutionary ways, but I'm wondering.
Sorry if some of this is rambly.
Thank you everyone for the answers, I'm going to copy a wall-of-text response I gave because I think it goes deeper into what I wanted to go into, and I want to know if it makes any sense and what people think of it :
Sorry for the vague "revolutionary writing" term, I'm not sure myself.
Basically, I have been reading a lot and writing a little, and slowly my interests and hobbies have been transformed by my reading and my political learning. What I, and basically everyone around me, engage with the most on a regular basis are various forms of entertainment, media, and more broadly art and literature. This is a fairly narrow domain, very western and middle-class centric, but there are things that I think are worth pursuing politically as in this domain they appear to have power. Those things are literary and media critique, but I want to go further than critique and into a method and a strategy that would allow (beyond the analysis and critique) for better writing, a positive/productive outcome of critique, constructive critique rather than deconstructive, if that makes sense.
This is the kind of thing I'm interested in. Because specifically in this narrow domain of media in the western world, it seems like media is utilized broadly to co-opt, numb and kill political any revolutionary energy. Media is heavily commodified and almost entirely filled with ideological bias and propaganda, directly or indirectly. Counter-culture is co-opted too, if it even exists beyond the aesthetic of one. And even analysis and critique, at least the one I see and hear around me, the one people seem to engage in generally, feels mostly deconstructive and pointless. The methods of analysis and critique are all still thoroughly in the world of bourgeois science, and more importantly because of this the conclusions or those critique never seems to produce anything positive. As with most things that are of the bourgeois scientific tradition, the direction of the critique is projected towards nihilism, or an individualistic escapism.
So even the better forms of literature and art, even the better critiques of literature and art, seem to at worst fuel the reaction and at best to diverge the potential energy into a black hole of impotence.
It's hard to feel like these things are "important" and "serious" a lot of the time because media critique is.. well, media critique. Engaging with media in general, in this western capitalist individualistic world, is increasingly feeling like it can't be anything other than escapism to me. There's a part of me that wonders if I'm not just looking at these things because I don't have anything else I feel like I can do, so I'm trying to have my escapism and theory at the same time. Obviously there are much more important things to be doing, but I think this could also be worth doing at the same time. After all art, literature, media, etc.. is something everyone engages with and creates all the time, art is an essential part of human lives and cultures. Capitalism turns this into commodities, and turns the engagement with it into an escape, especially for the category of people in the west who, while still exploited, still benefit enough from the exploitation of the rest of the world, and still have enough "treats", that they fall into complacency and nihilism. The reason why basically all the western left, even in its best moments, seems unable to escape individualism, unable to look beyond its national borders and national interests.
I'm getting lost. Basically I'm torn because there are things I know about and I'm interested about personally, and I want to bring theory and method to them. I want to believe that there is worth in that, although I'm unsure of the form it would take, or the goal it would have. It is hard to maintain motivation when those things can, at the same time, motivate me yet make me feel like they are only escapism.
So "revolutionary" art/literature/media in this context would be a method for analysis, critique, projecting a vision and providing tools for better writing. The vision being a more positive and potent vision of the future (I don't mean utopian/happy necessarily) that drives collectivism rather than individualism, that carries with it a different understanding of the world, a different ideology and feeds a different "narrative" in our minds to counter the reactionary narrative (the brainworms if you will) that we all have. The tools for better writing would be, without being dogmatic or prescriptivist, a way of collaborating, adjusting, writing and rewriting things for that visionary goal, as with Marx's dialectic method where the revolutionary strategy emerges as a way to go from A to B: the analysis of the past allows a critique of the present, the critique of the present allows a judgement of how things are but also how they COULD be, the judgement of how things are and how they could be allows for a positive vision of how things can be in the future, and the vision of how things can be allows for a strategy to be developed in order to get there.
This is a lot, but that's basically it for what I was trying to get at. Almost everything I find about art/literature/media never really seems to get to this. It's either insufficient analysis, or useless critique, or nihilistic vision, and no attempts or clear ways of trying to make it better, of projecting all that mental energy and theory into any kind of practice.