Imaginary Relations keyword cruel optimism including a rigorous yet dynamic including a rigorous yet dynamic redefinition of the working class it exemplifies a reality quite unlike either New York or Los Angeles—two cities to which it has often been compared This book sets out to clarify the nature of the aesthetic as a category within the theory of historical materialism Imaginary Relations is a cogently argued attempt to shift the terrain of Marxist theorizing about art from the domain of ideology considered as simply false consciousness to a concept of art which makes aesthetic texts sources of empirical data about the real