Esther Leslie

Esther Leslie has research interests in Marxist theories of aesthetics and culture, with a particular focus on the work of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Other research interests include European literary and visual modernism, the 'everyday' and value, memory and history, madness and expression and digital aesthetics. Her books are Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (Pluto 2000), and Hollywood Flatlands, Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso 2002), Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005) and Walter Benjamin (Reaktion 2007). Her translations include Georg Lukacs, A Defence of 'History and Class Consciousness' (Verso 2002) and Walter Benjamin: The Archives (Verso, 2007).  She is actively involved in editing three journals – Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, Radical Philosophy and Revolutionary History.

Books

Walter Benjamin, Overpowering Conformism, Pluto Press,  London 2000, 298pp
Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde, Verso, London, 2002., 344pp

Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry, Reaktion, London 2005

Walter Benjamin, Reaktion, London 2007

Chapters in books

•  ‘Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft’ in Obscure Objects of  Desire; Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century,
  edited by Tanya Harrod, Crafts Council, London 1997, pp21-31
•  ‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’ in Art, Technology, Technique; Art, Criticism, Theory,
  edited by John Gange, Pluto Press, London, 1998, pp17 33
•  ‘Souvenirs and Forgetting; Walter Benjamin’s Memory-work’ in Material Memories; Design and Evocation, edited by Marius Kwint, Jeremy Aynsley and Christopher Breward, Berg, Oxford/New York 1999, pp107 122
•  ‘Spectacles and Signs’ in Living in a Material World, collection of conference papers, Coventry University, 2000, pp240-251
•  ‘Elemental: The Arcades Project’ in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy; Destruction and Experience, edited by Peter Osborne and Andrew Benjamin, Clinamen Press, Manchester 2000, pp304-308
•  ‘Mad Pride and Prejudice’ in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture, edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie, Ben Watson, Spare Change Books, London 2000, pp67-82
•  ‘One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back’ in The Twentieth Century, A Century of Wars and Revolutions, edited by Keith Flett and David Renton, Rivers Oram Press, London 2000, pp33-53
•  ‘Some Optical Illusion: Colour and Craft’ in The Body Politic: The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft,
  edited by Julian Stair, Crafts Council, London 2000, pp51-57
•  ‘Flaneurs in Paris and Berlin’ in Histories of Leisure, edited by Rudy Koshlar, Berg, London 2002, pp61-77
•  ‘Philistines and Vandals Get Upset’ in The Philistine Controversy, edited by Dave Beech and John Roberts, Verso, London 2002
•  ‘Murmurs of the Future’, in Berliner Kindheit, a book of photographs by Aura Rosenberg, Distributed Art Publishers, New York, 2002
•  ‘Absent Minded Professors; Etch-a-Sketching Academic Forgetting’ in Regimes of Memory, edited by Susannah Radstone and Kate Hodgkin, Routledge, London 2003, pp172-185
• ‘Jameson, Brecht, Lenin and Spectral Possibilities’, in Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, Palgrave, London 2004 pp195-209
• ‘Wear and Tear’, Fashion and Modernity, edited by Caroline Evans and Christopher Breward, 2005
• ‘Benjamin, Adorno, Brecht on Film’, Marxism and Film, edited by Michael Wayne, Pluto, London 2004
• ‘Two Worlds of Fortune: Culture and Dying in the Global Zone’, Economising Culture, edited by Joasia Krysa and Geoff Cox (DATA browser collective), Autonomedia 2004
• Entry on Karl Marx and Fashion, Encyclopedia of Fashion and Clothing, Charles Scribner's Sons 2005
• ‘Ruin and Rubble in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades’, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades, Continuum, 2006

Articles in journals

• ‘Pocahontas; a study of Disney’s 33rd full-length animated cartoon Pocahontas’ for ‘History at Large’ in History Workshop Journal, 41 spring 1996, pp235-239
• ‘Wrapping the Reichstag; Re-visioning German History’ in Radical Philosophy 77, May/June 1996, pp6-16
• ‘Exotic of the Everyday: Critical Theory in the Parlour’ in Things 4, summer 1996, pp83-101
• ‘On Making-up and Breaking-up: Woman and Ware, Craving and Corpse in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project’ in Historical Materialism 1, winter 1997, pp66-89
• ‘The Multiple Identities of Walter Benjamin’, New Left Review 226, November/December 1997, pp128-135
• ‘Professional Faces: Explaining the Shadows; On August Sander’ in Things 7, winter 1997-1998, pp87-96
• ‘Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft’ in Journal of Design History, Vol. 11 no. 1, spring 1998, special issue on
  Modernism and Modernity in Design, pp5-13
• ‘The War on Memory; Disappearances in Soviet Photography’, in Things 9, winter 1998-1999, pp50-69
• Introduction and translation of letter exchange between T. W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse on the Frankfurt School and the Student Movement, New Left Review 233, January/February 1999, pp118-123, pp123-136
• ‘Telescoping the Microscopic Object: Walter Benjamin, the Collector’ in The Optic of Walter Benjamin, De-, Dis-, Ex-, no. 3, March 1999, pp58-91
• ‘Space and West-end Girls; Walter Benjamin versus Cultural Studies’ in ‘Hating Tradition Properly’, New Formations 38, 1999, pp110-124
• ‘Die Kunst der Kritik’, Jungle World: Die Linke Wochenzeitung, 17 September 2003