Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T12:45:12.239Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Marxist Literary Study and the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2022

Colleen Lye
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Christopher Nealon
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University
Get access

Summary

Our introduction is written in three parts. In the first section, we provide an overview of how late twentieth-century Marxist theory understood the development of bourgeoning non-class-based social movements, and grappled with the problem of a capitalism that was simultaneously expanding its reach and declining in profitability. In the second section, we turn to the state of literary study after the 2008 financial crisis. We argue that the aftermath of the economic downturn has altered the coordinates for both the multiculturalism of late twentieth-century literary study, and the forms of Marxist literary criticism that subsisted alongside it. We argue that this situation demands a reading of Marx that goes beyond critiques of commodity fetishism and false consciousness, drawn from the first chapter of Capital, Volume 1, to embrace the whole arc of Marx’s argument in that work. In the final section, we preview the essays collected in the volume.

Type
Chapter
Information
After Marx
Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century
, pp. 1 - 22
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory [1970], edited by Adorno, Gretel and Tiedemann, Rolf, translated by Hullot-Kentor, Robert. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics [1966], translated by Ashton, E. B.. Continuum, 1973.Google Scholar
Anderson, Kevin. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Societies . University of Chicago Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Banaji, Jairus. Theory as History. Brill, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benanav, Aaron and Clegg, John. “Misery and Debt.” Endnotes, vol. 2, 2014, https://endnotes.org.uk/issues/2/en/endnotes-misery-and-debt.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Thiti. “How Not to Skip Class.” Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, edited by Bhattacharya, Thiti. Pluto Press, 2017, pp. 6893.Google Scholar
Bleemer, Zachary, Kumar, Mukul, Mehta, Aashish, Muellerleile, Christopher, and Newfield, Christopher. What Metrics Matter? Life in the Quantified University. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert. The Economics of Global Turbulence: The Advanced Capitalist Economies from Long Boom to Long Downturn, 1945–2005. Verso, 2006.Google Scholar
Burden-Stelley, Charisse. “Modern US Racial Capitalism: Some Theoretical Insights.” Monthly Review, vol. 72, no. 3, 2020, pp. 820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandra, Sarika and Chen, Christopher. “Remapping the Race/Class Problematic.” Totality Inside Out, edited by Kevin Floyd, Jen Hedler Phillis, and Sarika Chandra. Fordham University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Chandra, Sarika and Chen, Christopher. “Combahee River Collective Statement.” How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited by Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. Haymarket Books, 2017, pp. 1528.Google Scholar
Chandra, Sarika and Chen, Christopher. Communiqué from an Absent Future [2013]. www.e-flux.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Communique-from-an-Absent-Future.pdf?b8c429.Google Scholar
Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. Verso, 2005.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael. Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics. Princeton University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denning, Michael. “Wageless Life.” New Left Review, vol. 66, 2010, pp. 7997.Google Scholar
Desai, Radhika. Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire. Pluto Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Dosse, François. History of Structuralism: Volume 1: The Rising Sign, 1945–1966, translated by Glassman, Deborah. University of Minnesota Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. University of Minnesota Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. “Introduction Part I.” Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by Eagleton, Terry and Milne, Drew. Blackwell, 1996, pp. 115.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. “Toward a Science of the Text” [1976]. Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by Eagleton, Terry and Milne, Drew. Blackwell, 1996, pp. 296327.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography.” The Professional Geographer, vol. 54, no. 1, 2002, pp. 1524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” Black British Cultural Studies, edited by Baker, Houston, Diawara, Manthia, and Lindeborg, Ruth. University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 1660.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart, Critcher, Chas, Jefferson, Tony, Clarke, John N., and Roberts, Brian. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. Macmillan, 1978.Google Scholar
Harootunian, Harry. Marx After Marx: History and Time in the Expansion of Capitalism . Columbia University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. Late Marxism. Verso, 1990.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form. Princeton University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Johnson, Gaye Theresa and Lubin, Alex, eds. Futures of Black Radicalism . Verso, 2017.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. 1 [1976], translated by Fowkes, Ben. Penguin, 1992.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto [1848]. Verso, 2012.Google Scholar
Roberts, Michael. The Long Depression. Haymarket Books, 2016.Google Scholar
Roberts, William Clare. “What Was Primitive Accumulation? Reconstructing the Origin of a Critical Concept.” European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 19, no. 4, 2017, pp. 121.Google Scholar
Smith, Jason E. “Nowhere to Go: Automation Then and Now, Part i.” The Brooklyn Rail, 2017, https://brooklynrail.org/2017/03/field-notes/Nowhere-to-Go.Google Scholar
Smith, Jason E. “Nowhere to Go: Automation Then and Now, Part ii.” The Brooklyn Rail, 2017, https://brooklynrail.org/2017/04/field-notes/Nowhere-to-Go-Automation-Then-and-Now-Part-Two.Google Scholar
Sohn-Rethel, Alfred. Intellectual and Manual Labor [1970]. Brill, 2020.Google Scholar
Vogel, Lise. Marxism and the Oppression of Women. Rutgers University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, 1989.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×