MarxismChronology

Tuesday,September23,2008 6:59AM Rough Chronology and Divisions within Marxist Cultural Theory There are many ways to periodize and classify the vast quantity of cultural theory that derives from Marx, one of the basic thinkers of modernity. In fact all advanced models for studying culture historically and sociologically bear an important debt to Marx. This very selective division is roughly chronological and analytical, noting certain important schools or approaches within the tradition. It is by no means a very full or complete outline, but simply emphasizes divisions, approaches, and key writers that are commonly referred to in literary studies at present and in our readings for this course. In this sense its a sort of outline of frequently-cited names. The final category (VI) is especially eclectic; it combines scholars from several disciplines and perspectives, and the unifying factor is simply the writers significance for one aspect of recent Marx-derived theory (whether literary, cultural, or media studies, sociology of culture, or advanced syntheses like World-Systems theory or globalization studies). Another factor to bear in mind is the immense importance of Marx for crucial theorists who develop new approaches that both break with Marxist tradition and nonetheless emphasize its centrality. Both Foucault and Derrida, for example, devote tremendous energy to articulating their relations to Marx while carefully distinguishing their approaches from Marxist traditions and institutions as they found them in the 1960s and 1970s. Derridas late book Specters of Marx (1991), for example, is a major consideration of this question. Other frequently-cited figures, e.g., Deleuze or Zizek have similarly complex relations to Marx. I. Marx and Engels (active 1840s-1890s): Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844; Theses on Feuerbach & The German Ideology (1845-46); The Communist Manifesto (1848); Grundrisse (1857-58); Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859); Capital (1867/1885/1894). II. Classical (and later Soviet-Stalinist) theory (active 1880s-1950s): A. Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900); The Accumulation of Capital (1913). B. Georgi Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism (1908); Art and Social Life (1912) C. Vladimir Lenin, Party Organization and Party Literature (1905); On Literature and Art (collected essays; 1967). D. Nicolai Bukharin, Historical Materialism, A System of Sociology (1921); Marxs Teaching and its Historical Importance (1933). E. Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1907); Literature and Revolution (1924); Permanent Revolution (1927). F. Valentin Volshinov (w. Bakhtin), Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1929). G. Andrei Zhdanov, Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music (collected, 1950). III. Western Marxism (Merleau-Pontys term for non-Soviet Marxist theory before structuralism; active 1910s-1970s): A. Early and influential figures not affiliated with particular methodological schools: 1. Georg Lukcs, Theory of the Novel (1916); History and Class Consciousness (1923); The Historical Novel (1937); Studies in European Realism (1948). 2. Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia (1918); The Principle of Hope (1959) 3. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (written 1926-34) 4. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the Haitian Revolution (1938); Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1952). 5. Bertolt Brecht, Little Organum for the Theater (1948). 6. J.P. Sartre, What is Literature? (1947); The Idiot of the Family (1971-72). 7. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961). B. Frankfurt School (transferred to US in 1940s; active 1920s-1960s) 1. Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Englightenment (1944, with Max Horkheimer); Philosophy of Modern Music (1949); Aesthetic Theory (1970); Minima Moralia (1974). 2. Walter Benjamin, The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (1922); The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936); Paris in the Second Empire of Baudelaire (1938); Theses on the Philosophy of History(1939). 3. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (1941); One-Dimensional Man (1964); Repressive Tolerance (1965). 4. Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). C. Situationism and Socialisme et Barbarie group (two different but related groups: the last of the historical avant-gardes and a more academic group that overlapped with it in the leadup to the events of 1968; active 1950s-1980s) 1. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (1967); Commentary on the Society of the Spectacle (1988).

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2. Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life (1947); The Production of Space (1974). 3. Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (1968); The Consumer Society (1970); The Mirror of Production (1973). IV. Structuralist Marxism (active 1960s-1970s): 1. Louis Althusser, For Marx (1965); Reading Capital (with Macherey, Balibar and others, 1965); Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (1969). 2. Lucien Goldmann, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine (1955); Towards a Sociology of the Novel (1973). 3. Etienne Balibar, On Literature as an Ideological Form (with Macherey, 1974). 4. Pierre Macherey, For a Theory of Literary Production (1966); The Object of Literature (1990). 5. Nicos Poulantzsas, State, Power, Socialism (1978). V. Cultural Materialism and Cultural Studies (British, Birmingham CCCS; active 1950s-contemporary) 1. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (1958); The Long Revolution (1951); The Country and the City (1973); Marxism and Literature (1977). 2. Richard Hoggart, Teaching Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life (1957); Only Connect: On Culture and Communication (1972). 3. E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1968). 4. Richard Johnson, What is Cultural Studies Anyway? (1986) 5. Stuart Hall, Notes on Deconstructing the Popular (1982); Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (essay collection, 1997) VI. Marx-derived Cultural and Social Theory after Poststructuralism and after 1989 (active 1970s-contemporary) 1. Fredric Jameson; Marxism and Form (1971); The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972); The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981); Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991); Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005). 2. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976); The Function of Criticism (1984); The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990). 3. Pierre Bourdieu: The Love of Art: Art Museums and their Public (1966); Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (1970); Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979); The Rules of Art (1992) 4. Aijaz Ahmad; In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992) 5. Franco Moretti; Signs Taken for Wonders (1983); Modern Epic (1995); Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (2005). 6. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (1989); The Limits to Capital (2nd ed., 2006) 7. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (1972/1980/1989); Historical Capitalism (1983); Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System (1991); World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (2004). 8. Antonio Negri (with Michael Hardt), Empire (2000).

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