Ideology, Repression, and Cultural Decline in Mann's Death Venice: A Neo-Marxist Interpretation

This study examines Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as a critique of bourgeois ideology in historical decline, arguing that Aschenbach's disintegration is not only personal but materially produced by the contradictions of late bourgeois society. The study moves beyond readings of obsession, Apollonian-Dionysian conflict or aestheticism to ask three questions: How does Death in Venice depict the way bourgeois economic and ideological structures shape and distort the consciousness of the artist? In what ways does Aschenbach's breakdown reflect the ideological contradictions produced by late capitalist society? Why does Death in Venice depict bourgeois culture as inherently self-destructive? Using a Neo-Marxist approach, informed by Gramsci's cultural hegemony, Althusser's ideological apparatuses and Adorno's notion of the self-negation of culture, the analysis finds that Aschenbach's commitment to discipline, productivity and respectability is harmful to his consciousness and the pursuit of Tadzio is the return of repressed desires. Mann portrays bourgeois culture as a self-destructive system that allows no real life, only decay.